ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. — Audrey Rollins was too humble to tell me herself, but her great-aunt, Lynn Pulser, was just fine bragging on her behalf. Not only is Rollins, 15, one of the best high school players in Florida, as Pulser told me, but she was featured in Sports Illustrated, where she was described as a player with “a very high basketball IQ that can connect from the 3-point line with unlimited range and can get hot at any moment.” On Wednesday in Sea Island, though, Rollins put her playing identity aside and became a wide-eyed superfan. Pulser had given her and her family the word that Caitlin Clark would be playing nine holes in the pro-am at the RSM Classic, and they drove up from Ponte Vedra hoping to get a glimpse of Audrey’s basketball hero. She made her allegiances clear, wearing a red Clark 22 t-shirt, and came armed with a black sharpie. On the 10th hole at the Plantation Course, Clark’s first of the day, she got her wish. Clark, dressed all in black except for the white Nike swooshes, and a dash of red lipstick for color, walked to the ropes where Rollins stood. “I like your shirt,” Clark said. “You are literally, like, my hero,” Rollins gushed. “Want to take a picture?” the hero asked. Rollins kept it together to snap the selfie, but the smile on her face afterward was so wide and so permanent that you got the sense that if she had 10 percent less self-control, she would break out in giddy laughter. — Girls like Audrey Rollins are, in many ways, the point of having Caitlin Clark play as much golf as she can at PGA and LPGA tour events. There was a joke going around the golf world a week ago, when Clark drew big crowds at The Annika pro-am last week on the LPGA, that she had just become the most popular women’s golfer in the world, and in a much more low-key, almost secretive appearance Wednesday at Sea Island — I’m covering the tournament in person, and I only learned about it Tuesday — her irresistible appeal was proved yet again by a crowd of about 50 that braved the light rain to follow her for nine holes. One man who couldn’t follow her, but who counts himself a fan, is the host of the RSM Classic and the godfather of the Sea Island golf scene, Davis Love III.
RELATED: The crowds for Caitlin Clark’s LPGA pro-am got so creazy security had to step in “I’m surprised that it hadn’t leaked out more that she was coming, that everybody did a good job of not or it would have been a mad rush,” he said. “Pretty incredible what she’s done in her sport and what she’s done for sport and what she’s doing for golf.” On Wednesday, Clark joined fellow Iowan Zach Johnson and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, along with a pair of businessmen, to play the back on Plantation. Cameras hovered on the 10th tee while she waited to tee off, and the crowd behind her began to grow on the foggy morning. In her all-black outfit, she cut a stark figure in the mist, pitched against the tall palms and the gray Atlantic to the east. When I first approached the crowd, I saw a group of three girls and a boy wearing Clark Indiana Fever jerseys, standing together with their parents. “Excited to see Zach Johnson?” I asked them, in what I thought was a harmless joke. It might have been, too, except for the fact that two of them were Zach Johnson’s actual children. Oops. But they laughed, and on the second hole, Johnson waved them under the ropes, where they waited for a free moment to get their own photographs with Clark. Like Audrey Rollins, they seemed starstruck, despite a lifetime of being around professional athletes. Even having a two-time major winner and Ryder Cup captain for a father can’t quite prepare you for the Clark phenomenon. — Clark herself has a natural knack for these moments. She’s not exactly effusive, but nor is she remote — she picks her spots to engage with the fans, flashes that charismatic smile, carries on a natural conversation, and then disengages just as effortlessly. As much as she might be reluctant for golf-specific attention (there was no indication why her pro-am appearance was kept under the radar, though it’s hard to imagine that call coming from the PGA Tour, and she didn’t speak with media afterward), she never shows it to her fans. Over and over, from kids to adults, I saw people come into her orbit, exchange a few unremarkable words, but emerge smiling. Subtle gestures by Clark, like when she preemptively asked Rollins if she wanted to take a photo, sparing the girl the difficult question, shows her keen awareness of what it means to be a superstar in the small moments. And what about the actual golf? Early indications are that Clark, who has played off and on since she was six (more off than on, to be fair) and can get down to the low 80s on a good day, is getting better all the time. Her backswing is quick and short, but the follow-through is impressive — athletic and flowing, with a great hip turn. She’s got game, too, as Alex Myers found out for Digest last year. It’s almost a shame that the most viral shot of her appearance last week was her first, when she nearly decapitated a group of fans on the left side of the gallery, because once she finds her rhythm, she can get on a roll. Unfortunately for her, the opening shot was another blunder on Wednesday. “That’s wet,” she said, after striking the ball, and a moment later a splash confirmed her prediction. She reloaded and hit a nice drive that rolled just 40 feet from the green on the short par-4, but she chunked the short pitch into a bunker, and Zach Johnson gave her permission to pick up. On the par-3 11th, she pulled her tee shot left, hole high, but once again chunked the pitch on a tough, wet downhill lie. “That’s so hard,” Johnson consoled, just before putting his own pitch to two feet. (On the tee moments earlier, a shouted “fore!” came from hole 12, at which point all eyes turned to Clark. When the danger had passed, Johnson, who had ducked behind Clark, called himself out: “I hid behind her, what does that say about me?” Another reporter and I joked that at that moment, Jay Monahan might have been as anonymous as he’d ever been on a golf course.) On 12, though, Clark picked it up, earning her first green in regulation and making par. On 13, she bombed her drive, put the short pitch onto the green, and left her birdie putt just six inches short. I exchanged a quick word with Monahan, who was striking the ball well himself, and along with appreciating her presence on the course, he marveled with me at her length. We estimated that her drive on 12 must have traveled at least 250 yards, and a hole later, on 13, she tattooed the ball on the par-5 — her best drive of the day, even farther than the last. She pulled out a wood for her second, going for the green, and hit a nice high cut that settled on the back left. At that point, she proved her mortality by three-putting, but it was a third straight par on the scorecard. — On 15, I saw another teenage basketball player walking with her father. This was Martin Davis, a junior at nearby Brunswick High School who is something of a star herself, and is already fielding college offers. She had what I thought was the best clothing choice of anyone in attendance — a “Money Martin” t-shirt that referenced her own first name, but more importantly, Clark’s longtime Iowa teammate Kate Martin. Her father was a friend of Johnson’s, and at one point a few holes earlier, Johnson waved her under the ropes. She had the great idea of having Clark sign her shoes with a black sharpie, which the star accommodated, along with a photo.The problem was, the ground was wet with rain, and black ink isn’t safe in water. Which is why, when I caught up with her again on the 15th hole, she was holding the shoes in her hand, wearing nothing but a pair of soaking wet socks on her feet. “These are going right in a box when I get home,” she laughed. Against a holy relic, wet feet are no sacrifice at all. — Clark made another par on 16, but blew her drive right on 17 and picked up. At that point, a series of adults used the opportunity to get selfies with her, including a woman in a hat that read, inexplicably, “I Pee in Pools.” (She tried to engage Clark in a discussion about the hat, which Clark artfully dodged as she retreated to the safety of the ropes.) Needless to say, these spectacles weren’t quite as heartwarming as the young girls trying to follow in her footsteps, but they did speak to the breadth of Clark’s appeal and the value in having her show up at places like Sea Island. They did their best to keep it quiet, but with a star as bright as Caitlin Clark, secrets have a way of getting out.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
