Posted on 01/28/2005 9:03:28 AM PST by TomB
Sean O'Hair's bizarre journey to the promised land of professional golf may have a feel-good ending, but the rest of the story is anything but.
The Boothwyn resident and member at Concord Country Club earned his Tour Card with a stirring performance in early December at the PGA's grueling 108-hole Qualifying Tournament. At 22, O'Hair is now fully exempt for the 2005 PGA Tour and is eligible to compete for millions in purses along with icons Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh.
"When you work for something for so long and it all of the sudden happens, it's not stunning because you expected it to happen eventually, but it's kind of a relief," O'Hair said. "Now I don't have to work to get my card _ I have to work to keep it. It's totally different goals. It's nice not to have to worry about where I'm going to play."
O'Hair nearly became another young casualty in a fanatical pursuit for fame and fortune through athletics. But he bucked the odds and somehow avoided the abyss despite enduring years of unrealistic expectations, suffocating pressures and a tumultuous home life.
"He had a tough road," said his wife, Jaclyn. "To this day, it still baffles me how he's turned into who he is, with everything that went on. He's a strong person."
O'Hair realized a lifelong dream on Dec. 6 in La Quinta, Calif., by placing in a tie for fourth place after six rounds of the PGA's Qualifying Tournament, the last leg of what's commonly called Q-School. On the final day, O'Hair holed a 7-iron for eagle on the first hole, followed it up with a birdie, and cruised to 68 to finish comfortably among the top-26 to earn a spot in golf's big leagues.
Five days later, Jaclyn helped organize a surprise party to revel in the accomplishment. Estranged from his biological family, O'Hair celebrated the occasion with his surrogate family and friends at Concord Country Club.
In all, about 80 friends and well-wishers showed up. But O'Hair's exploitative, overbearing father, Marc, was hundreds of miles away in Lakeland, Fla., along with his mother and 15-year-old sister.
As soon as Sean O'Hair began to stand out as a junior golfer in the mid-1990s, his father began making big plans and started grooming his only son to be the next Tiger Woods. By the time Sean was 17, however, Marc decided it was time for him to turn professional.
Father and son crisscrossed the country, traveling from one backwater locale to the next in the family sedan. Marc O'Hair was caddie, business manager, chef, chauffeur and father rolled into one, and his grandiose plans did not include stooping to any of the mini-tour circuits. Instead, Sean was entered into a succession of Monday Qualifiers for the Nationwide Tour, where at least 100 nomadic hopefuls roll the dice in an 18-hole playoff looking to snag one of just a handful of slots into that week's field.
Sean was home-schooled on the road and eventually earned his high school GED, but success as a pro golfer was elusive. Thrust prematurely into an untenable situation and competing week after week against seasoned pros, Sean rarely qualified his way into events.
Marc O'Hair claims that it took $2 million to bankroll his son's golfing career over the next few years. Together, they racked up nearly 200,000 miles on the road, but Sean earned just a few thousand dollars.
"Turning pro at 17 and playing with guys twice my age for a really long time, I kind of feel like a veteran," Sean O'Hair said. "I've been through a lot of things that have made me mentally tough. Sure, I wish I had enjoyed my childhood more. But to be honest, if I did that, I don't know if I'd be here right now. Getting your Tour Card at 22 is a pretty big accomplishment."
O'Hair's odyssey was so traumatic, it was the subject of a segment on "60 Minutes II" that aired in 2002.
"I look at Sean as my son (and) I look at him as a business also," Marc O'Hair said in the report.
For nearly three years, Marc orchestrated his son's career, and he ran things with an iron fist. Sean's daily routine started with a 20-minute run before heading to the golf course at 7:30 a.m. to begin a full day of work. The evenings usually included a 90-minute workout and reviewing tapes of his swing.
In November of 2001, Sean met the former Jaclyn Lucas at the TCP at Heron Bay in Coral Springs, Fla. The Sun Valley High School graduate was attending Florida Atlantic University and played on the women's golf team.
"We met on the putting green," Jaclyn said, laughing.
Not long after the unflattering portrayal on "60 Minutes," the 20-year-old Sean had had enough. In the fall of 2002, he moved in with Jaclyn and ended all contact with his father. They married in December of 2002 and settled in Delaware County. By 2003, he was honing his game at Concord Country Club.
Ironically, it wasn't until he divorced himself from his domineering father that O'Hair finally started making inroads as a golf pro. He decided that Monday qualifying was not the best way to improve his skills. With his new wife serving as his caddie, he began hitting the mini-tour circuits.
Soon thereafter, O'Hair's game began to flourish, first on the New England-based Cleveland Tour and then on the Gateway Tour in the Southwest. O'Hair did not miss a single cut on the Cleveland Tour in 2003 or 2004. He also qualified for the Nationwide Tour's First Tee Arkansas Classic in mid-April, finishing 28th. And last summer, O'Hair won the Vermont Open and finished No. 2 on the Cleveland Tour money list with earnings exceeding $50,000.
Despite the progress, O'Hair was a long shot heading into the 2004 Q-School. He responded by becoming one of just nine Q-School graduates to make it through all three stages of the qualifying process.
"It didn't shock me at all that he made it," Concord Country Club head pro Mike Moses said. "I really felt it was just a matter of time before he made it out on the Tour. If things go right, I can see him out on the Tour for a while."
Since earning his card, Sean placed second in the Gateway Tour Championship in mid-December. He made the final cut during his PGA debut at the Sony Open this past weekend, finishing in a tie with Tom Kite for 72nd place, shooting a 6-over-par 286.
In the meantime, Marc O'Hair claims he has signed contracts that entitle him to 10 percent of his son's earnings and is threatening legal action unless he's compensated.
Sean O'Hair, however, still hopes to reconcile with his father some day. "I would like to have a father-son relationship instead of a business relationship," he said. "I honestly don't know how he feels about that. We don't talk at all. It's a tough situation. It affects me and my relationship with my mom and sister."
The guy's father sounds like a candidate for father of the year.
Here's a quote from a different article:
"As soon as he gets famous, I am going to lower the boom," Marc O'Hair told the Sentinel. "I'm going to show everybody what he did to me. I have no intention of suing him. I intend to crucify him in the media because what he did to me is not right."
Nice guy.
Read that too and good luck to Sean on the Tour. The father was definitely way, way out of bounds. But would the son be on the PGA Tour without him? He's twenty-three and on the PGA Tour..... that's quite an accomplishment as a lot of players have to compete in bush leagues in Asia and Europe before making the big time.
Wow, I remember that news story. Typical "Dad pushing son" story. The kid didn't seem too bright, but really seemed to like Golf.
His dad apparently is a bigger a$$hole than I thought. I'm sure he blames his son's wife for ruining the (business) relationship.
I think the ONLY way he would be one the Tour is without him. Golf is too much of a mental game to have your father staring over your shoulder on a tricky 4 foot put to get your card. Maybe if the father had treated the kid like a son and not a liquor store, he would have had better results.
Q School, the hardest, most demanding, and most stressful golf tournament on the planet.
Cry me an f_ing river.
Oh boo-hoo I had to spend my teen years travling from golf course to golf course.
If he thought that was a tough road life may hold some very unpleasant surprises for him.
Here is a quote from the SI article, not yet online:
Still crying Dad?
Golf story ping.
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