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It happened on Mother’s Day, which was fitting because it was Jennifer Wyatt’s mom, Pat, who helped convince her daughter that she really did belong on the LPGA Tour. Twenty years ago this week, Wyatt proved that mom was right. Aren’t they always? On a cool spring afternoon of May 10, 1992 in Chesapeake, Va., at a tournament called the Crestar-Farm Fresh Classic, Jennifer Wyatt fought off her own self-doubt as well as established stars like Juli Inkster and Ayako Okamoto and a rising star in Donna Andrews to win on the LPGA Tour. “It was huge, it was like a childhood dream come true,” says Wyatt, now a successful teaching pro at Savage Creek Golf Centre in her hometown of Richmond. The money was nice — Wyatt earned $63,000 and change for her two-stroke win over Andrews — but it was about a whole lot more than that. “It was about making my sponsors happy,” she says. “And I think it was a five-year exemption, so the job security was nice. It meant better tee times, and I guess recognition, your peers know who you are.” The win was also important because Wyatt’s 10-year LPGA Tour career was not always filled with birdies. There were lean times and during those struggles it was comforting to have that win in her back pocket. “It really made up for a lot of my struggles,” Wyatt says. “I was not a top player, it was sort of like I was making half the cuts or less out there. I am not a power hitter. In hindsight, I think I scraped a lot out of my game. Part of that is due to my mother because she just always told me how good I was.” Her mother, of course, was thrilled about her win. “She was very excited,” Wyatt recalls. “It was Mother’s Day that day and I remember trying to phone them and I couldn’t reach them and they had heard it on the radio. It was pretty cool.” Her win came before email and text messaging, so it wasn’t until she arrived at her next tournament the following week, the LPGA Championship in Bethesda, Md., that Wyatt got all the congratulatory messages. “It was the days of faxes and I remember going to my locker room at the LPGA Classic. I wish I had taken a picture of my locker with all post-it notes and faxes covering it. It was a dream.” A few days later she received a nice letter from a former pro-am partner. “I got a letter from Brooks Robinson, the ball player, because I had played with him at the Dinah Shore (tournament), and he wrote a wonderful letter saying congratulations. It was so cool, just such a neat thing.” Sadly, Wyatt’s win did not propel her to greater things on Tour. The golf remained a struggle and after a couple of particularly lean years, she packed it in. It was 1998 and Wyatt was in the midst of her 10th season on Tour when she decided she’d had enough. “I remember the wake-up calls the last year at five in the morning and saying to myself, ‘I have to get up and play tournament golf.’ It wasn’t as fun as it used to be. Finally, I just drove home in June 1998, packed up the car and was toast.” Wyatt was through with competitive golf, but not with the game. It remains a big part of her life. Although she acknowledges struggling for a time after leaving the LPGA Tour, Wyatt quickly transitioned into teaching and is now in her 14th year. She credits a pair of local pros, Dave Bolton and Darryl Stubbs, with helping her get into instruction. “I landed here (at Savage Creek) and I liked the method that they teach, the things they showed me about technique that I wish I had learned long before. They valued my tour experience and they made the transition pretty easy, taught me a system and kind of taught me how to teach. But it was scary, too. It’s scary to tell somebody it’s going to be $200 please, plus GST, and can you give me your Visa card. You are putting yourself out there and you owe that person a good experience. That was scary and took a while.” But as the testimonials on her website (jenifferwyatt.ca) attest, she has developed into an excellent teacher. “It has been 14 years now and my business has grown,” she says. “It’s funny as my reputation as a teacher has grown, my reputation as a LPGA player is mushrooming almost. That I did on the Tour now means more to people than it did before.” Her teaching philosophy is about keeping things simple. She tries not to overload her students with too much information. “It doesn’t have to be complicated,” she says. “There’s not enough time in a swing to think about all these things, this 20-point checklist … For the average player, I think getting your hands and arms to work and then learning to connect your body to it works best.” She finds the teaching rewarding and values the relationships she develops with her clients, many of whom she now calls friends. “What I most like now are the people. It doesn’t matter about someone’s ability; it’s about whether they are a nice person. We have a laugh and I try to make it fun.” MP 59 R11 MP 69 This article is from http://www.golfnewstalk.com/ More Golf News at http://www.golfnewstalk.com/ X-24 RAZR X 712 AP2
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