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The Natural
Augusta's Charles Howell was born to play golf
Posted: Saturday April 06, 2002 8:18 PM
Updated: Sunday April 07, 2002 6:12 PM
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Ten years after his first swing at Augusta National, the 22-year-old Augustan makes his Masters debut. Jonathan Ernst
The Augusta Chronicle |
By Scott Michaux
The Augusta Chronicle
Call it an accident of birth.
On June 20, 1979, Charles Gordon Howell III was born at University Hospital in Augusta. The only thing the first of Debra and Dr. Charlie Howell's two sons had in common with the Masters Tournament was a shared dateline.
Despite their proximity to America's most famous private club, golf wasn't so much as a twig on the Howell family tree. Not until 1987 anyway, when, in a span of three months, the 7-year-old Charles went to his first Masters, swung his first golf club and was drawn into the local pastime.
Of course, not everyone born in Augusta plays golf. And not everyone who plays golf in Augusta is good enough to play in the Masters.
Howell is one of those few, but his connection to the game seems remarkably tied to his birthplace. If he had been raised in some place not so unequivocally associated with golf at its highest level, the skinny little boy with curly hair and glasses might never been introduced to the game that now consumes his daily routine.
"I think that had a lot to do with fostering his enthusiasm for golf," said Dr. Howell, the chief of pediatric surgery at the Medical College of Georgia, who dabbled in the game only after his son took it up in earnest.
But Charles was not born somewhere else. He was born in Augusta, and golf discovered him. It was only a matter of time before he'd fantasize over a putt on the 18th green: "This is to win the Masters."
"That's always been a dream," said Howell.
It's the daydream of many kids who play golf. But how many kids get to daydream within sight of the most exclusive major championship course on earth?
Howell's father paid a member $269.91 on Feb. 11, 1992, for him and Charles to play a round at the Augusta National. The 12-year-old Charles shot 79.
"I've never been shy about saying I want to win the Masters," Howell said. I've even joked that if I won the Masters I'd retire the next day because that's all I want to do. Winning that tournament will be pretty awesome."
Fifteen years after discovering the game and sealing the bond by witnessing fellow Augustan Larry Mize win the 1987 Masters, Howell is a step closer to his dream.
It won't cost him a penny to play the National this time. The Masters will be paying him.
The Board of Governors at the Augusta National Golf Club cordially invites you to participate in the 2002 Masters Tournament to be held the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth of April.
William W. Johnson,
Chairman
RSVP
With a simple invitation, the 22-year-old fresh off his rookie-of-the-year season on the PGA Tour will cross Rae's Creek this week into his dreams.
"Playing the Masters means the world to me, and it was a lot of work," he said.
A happy accident of birth may have brought Howell to the game, but what got him into the Masters 15 years after swinging his first club was anything but an accident.
Kick start
First came soccer.
The assessment of Charles Howell's potential as a 5-year-old soccer prospect with Augusta's YMCA League Flames depends entirely on the source.
"I was actually pretty good," Howell insists. "For my age I was about a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10."
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Charles Howell III chats with his father during a practice round for the 2002 Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. He tied for 12th with Tiger Woods. Jonathan Ernst
The Augusta Chronicle |
"He was terrible - terrible - at soccer," counters his mother, Debra. "He wasn't aggressive. He'd stand and wait for the ball to come to him."
Howell didn't wait for the soccer bug to come to him. If he had, the intervening 15 years might have been spent mimicking Diego Maradona and dreaming about the World Cup instead of following Mize's example as the hometown favorite at the Masters.
The magnetism of the Masters is a powerful siren song in Augusta. The attraction first lured Howell at age 7 to the neighbor's back yard on Somerset Place.
The Hills brothers, Will and Graham - the same boys who got Howell involved in soccer - unwittingly changed the course of their friend's life. All it took was a few whiffle balls, cut-down clubs and a few holes scratched in the Georgia clay around the perimeter of the back yard.
"It wasn't very elaborate, that's for sure," said Will Hill, now a golf pro at the Country Club of Tennessee in Nashville. "Pretty rustic."
It might as well have been Amen Corner. Howell was hooked harder than a smothered driver.
"Charles comes in the house and said, 'I want to play golf,"' Debra Howell recalls. "I thought, 'This is going to be fun - just like soccer."'
Little did she know.
"I think they kind of laughed at the whole issue," Howell said. "But golf was always different to me than soccer or basketball."
Golf proved very different, indeed. Howell took to it with an obsession. That Halloween - when his little brother Ben dressed up as a doctor, Charles wanted to be a golfer. His mother outfitted him with knickers, argyle socks and a tam-o-shanter cap.
"I looked like a miniature Payne Stewart," Howell said of the outfit his mother recently had framed inside a shadow box along with his first club and the ball he used to win the NCAA Tournament. Charles wants the box reopened to include his NCAA ring and the formal invitation to the Masters.
"I don't know what made me love the game from the beginning," he said. "It was one of those things meant to be, I guess. I like golf because it's an individual sport. There was not a team effort. I could take all the blame or all the glory. I'm not much of a team player."
Bonsai golfer
After a month or so of studying instructional videos and books, the Howells figured their motivated son needed more formal tutoring. Without membership at any local club, they steered Charles to a now-defunct driving range on Wrightsboro Road and pro Lee Hammett.
Hammett remembers vividly the day Debra Howell showed up on the range with the wisp of a child wearing glasses, white shorts and a blue golf shirt.
"He was so tiny," Hammett said. "His waist I could literally reach around with my hands."
Hammett handed Charles a Spaulding 7-iron, and the 50-pound sprite stood over the ball.
"I have never seen anybody - adult or child, male or female - that had any better posture than Charles Howell had when he was 7 years old," Hammett said. "That little butt was sticking out and that back was just as straight. He was a bonsai golfer."
When the boy swung and the ball took off high and straight about 120 yards, Hammett's admiration turned to awe.
"It was amazing," she recalls. "I said, 'Do it again.' I thought this was a fluke. He did it again. He did it a third time. So I said to just keep hitting balls, and I'll be right back."
Hammett wanted some answers.
"I thought you all said this child hasn't had lessons," Hammett said.
He hasn't, Debra replied.
"Does his daddy play?"
No.
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Howell, 12, first played the Augusta National in 1992, when his father paid a member $269.91 to let them play a round. He shot 79. Special to The Augusta Chronicle |
"Does his granddad play?"
No.
"Who plays?"
Nobody.
"Where did he get this?"
From watching TV, renting videos and reading books.
"I thought, 'This is unreal,"' Hammett said. "I'm beginning to see she's not being evasive about this. She's just telling me like it is."
Hammett returned to watch the bonsai golfer repeat shot after shot on the range.
"I never thought there was such a thing as a God-given swing or a natural golf swing until I saw Charles Howell swing a golf club," she said. "I can't explain the feeling I had that day. I knew from the first time I saw that kid hit a ball - I take that back, the second time when he repeated that swing - that he had it. There's not many people that can develop in 40 years of practice the game and swing he had the day he came to me."
That reaction followed Howell wherever he played. On a trip with his father to Sea Island, Howell's talent caught the eye of a woman in the dining room. Deedee Owens, one of Golf Digest's top 100 teachers at the time, hurriedly finished her lunch so she could get outside to speak with the boy practicing.
"Who are you?" she asked.
Fortified with some answers, Owens called Hammett to find out what she'd done with this child. Hammett told her honestly - nothing.
"He is special," Owens said.
Miss Lee, as Howell still calls Hammett, didn't need to be told. For the next year and a half, she worked with Howell once a week.
"I tried to take what the child had, which was more than I had ever seen, and go from there," said Hammett, who teaches at Bonaventure Discount Golf on Bobby Jones Expressway. "I've never seen someone that age stay that focused that long. Of course I'd never worked with anybody like Charles Howell. I felt very blessed that I had some little influence on him. I hope I gave him some guidance."
Her guidance didn't stop with Charles. She also worked with his father. One day on the range, she felt the need to offer a little parental advice to Dr. Howell.
"Don't ever let him know how good he is," she said.
Clubbing it
Howell was just 8 when Hammett had to let him go.
"She said, 'I've taught him all I can teach him. You'll have to find someone else,"' Debra said.
"He outgrew me," Hammett admits. "I was glad to see them move on and get him the teaching he needed. I wouldn't have known what to have done with him."
The Howells joined West Lake Country Club to give Charles a place to play regularly. The club became his daylight home.
"Debbie would bring him by the club early, and he'd practice three to four hours, play 18 holes and then practice a couple more hours before Debbie would come pick him up," said West Lake's longtime head pro, Mark Darnell. "That was the discipline that he had every day. He didn't just hang around. When he was here he was either hitting balls, playing a round, or putting and chipping."
Howell's formal instruction fell in the hands of another female instructor, assistant pro Gayla Gill Davidson. Like Hammett, Davidson gave guidance without interfering with a swing that came naturally.
"I couldn't believe what he could do," said Davidson, who now teaches juniors in Wellington, Kan. "He was one of those kids you fall in love with. You show him something, and he retains it."
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Howell's mother dressed him in golf knickers, a tam-o'-shanter cap and argyle socks for Halloween in 1986, when he was 7 years old. His little brother, Ben, dressed up as a doctor. Special to The Augusta Chronicle |
With Howell's handicap rapidly dropping into single digits and his first sub-70 round achieved by age 10, Davidson helped with the fundamental touches. They'd watch tapes of past Masters to study pre-shot routines and playing strategy.
As for Howell's swing, Davidson said it's the best she's ever seen from a player his age, and she had the chance to see a young Tiger Woods in person in California.
"I thought Charles had a better swing at that age," Davidson said. "His was more put together while Tiger's was a little more wild."
Howell worked hard to get it put together that way. Davidson didn't force that work ethic. Like Hammett, the emphasis was always on having fun - a feature common with many female instructors.
"More fun vs. the drill instruction you do get with a lot of men," Davidson said.
Howell said his formative years spent with female instructors wasn't by design, but he sees the benefit.
"I think with a person my age they were more patient, and I think it worked to my advantage" he said. "Lee and Gayla were very patient because I would get frustrated. At 10 I wanted to be shooting 59 and couldn't understand why I wasn't doing that."
Like Hammett before her, Davidson in time felt Howell was ready to move on.
"I was getting concerned he was getting out of my realm," Davidson said. "I couldn't do much more with him without hurting him or burning him out."
Getting serious
More changes were in order, and each one took Howell a step closer to his goal of reaching the Masters.
The first was change of venue. The Howells joined Augusta Country Club, just a flop wedge across the fence and Rae's Creek from the National. More importantly, Augusta Country Club was much closer to home.
"I was making four trips a day to West Lake," Debra said. "Four times every day of my life. Sometimes I had to drive him around in the cart because it was getting dark and he wasn't old enough to operate one."
Augusta Country Club put Charles within daily sight of his dreams. His game took him even closer. He would bring home trophies from every junior tournament he played in, including victories in the Future Masters tournament at ages 10, 11, 12 and 13. His aspirations grew with each success.
"I fell in love with golf long before that," Howell said. "But when I won the Future Masters, that's when I wanted to be the best in the world and do something in golf."
That would require more work and advanced training. So on a visit to Orlando, Fla., for a medical meeting, Dr. Howell checked in with noted instructor David Leadbetter.
Arrangements were made to send the 10-year-old Howell to Orlando monthly to work with Leadbetter's associate teachers. Leadbetter and his staff quickly learned what everyone back in Augusta already knew.
"From a temperament standpoint, he had an unbelievable thirst for hard work," Leadbetter said. "You almost had to pull him off the range."
What impressed Leadbetter the most was the boy's consistency as a ball striker. He hit the middle of the club face every time - and he hit everything straight.
"There are certain intangibles you can't really put your finger on what it is, but something about the kid you feel that he's got IT, whatever IT is," Leadbetter said. "That IT is something that's God-given to some extent, and as coaches you bring out and nurture. That's really what we've done with Charles."
By the time Howell began working with Leadbetter exclusively at age 15, he was like a family member. He would stay at Leadbetter's house during trips to Orlando. Leadbetter still stays with the Howells every year during the Masters. Howell bought his first home in Orlando so he could be closer to his teacher.
The two seem perfectly tuned. When Howell's swing gets squirrelly, Leadbetter can bring him back in short order.
"You never really want to overcoach a kid; you let him come out at his own pace," Leadbetter said. "With Charles, he's been coached from a very, very young age, so he's used to the coaching aspects of things. So the grand advantage he has is he's grown with his technique. It's like second nature to him now. It's so ensconced in his subconscious and muscle memory that he doesn't have to think about that much."
The swing carried him to stardom at Westminster Prep and on the American Junior Golf Association circuit, where he earned player of the year in 1996. His monstrous distance has always belied his size - which now is 5-foot-11, 155 pounds.
"He is deceptively strong," said Leadbetter, who attributes Howell's enormous length to a clubhead speed in the 120-125 mph range generated by a wide stance, perfect mechanics and precise rhythm and timing.
Charles Howell III and his wife, Heather, chat with reporters after a round of the 2002 Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. They were married in June. Jonathan Ernst
The Augusta Chronicle |
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Howell said he doesn't get enough credit for his strength. His maximum bench press in college was 225 pounds, and he once leg-pressed 1,000 pounds, though he pulled two muscles in his rear in the process.
Growing his game
By the time Howell graduated from Westminster and went to Oklahoma State, the expectations for success were enormous. So enormous that being selected third-team All-America his freshman year was considered disappointing.
But working with Oklahoma State coach Mike Holder took Howell's game to another level. Holder's motivational methods - forcing him to play practice rounds without a putter or with only four clubs or by hitting his driver on every hole (including par 3s) - honed Howell's mental game.
"He did little things to make it difficult for me," Howell said. "There's so many things you encounter (on tour) when you play a full season. That's what he taught me - not to let things bother me."
Howell delivered on his promise. He was Big 12 champion and first-team All-America his second year. His junior season, he ran away with the NCAA Tournament title with a record score (23-under) and record margin of victory (eight strokes). He earned the Fred Haskins Award as the collegiate player of the year.
That success led Howell to test the professional waters a year early. As a dress rehearsal, he accepted a sponsor's exemption as an amateur into the Buy.com event in Greensboro, N.C. Howell finished second, eclipsing the tour record for highest finish by an amateur, set two years earlier when Sergio Garcia finished third in the same event.
It was enough to convince Howell that he was ready to leave school and turn pro. A week later in the Greater Hartford Open, he debuted with a tie for 32nd and earned $13,626.67.
Broadening horizons
Howell is a parent's dream. Neither alcohol nor tobacco has ever touched his lips. His mother swears he never once got into trouble.
"It's the way I was raised," he said. "My parents never drank and don't drink. The school I went to, we were raised not to do that. I never really had an interest to."
His teen-age social life consisted entirely of golf.
"I was a geek," Howell readily admits. "I never went on one date. I got forced to go to the prom by my Mom. I remember putting on my tux and saying, 'Mom, I look like a damn penguin.' I did."
How did the date turn out? Aside from the conspiracy among his Westminster classmates to unanimously elect Howell and Fran Gardner as the prom's king and queen, uneventful.
"It was all right," he shrugs. "I'd rather go and hit balls on a lighted range. That's the straight bullets."
Other than his early teachers, girls were not a big part of the picture in Charles' life. "Girls cause bogeys," he told his mother over and over.
"I used to say the only thing that might mess him up was falling in love with some cute little girl in high school and getting him distracted," Hammett said. "But he never got distracted by anything."
Said Debra: "I always told him, 'Son, when you fall, you're gonna fall hard."'
Mom was right. Charles met Heather Myers in his third year at Oklahoma State. Last June he and the only woman he's ever courted were married in a small wedding on the beach in Hawaii.
"That still bewilders me," he said. "Bachelorhood was right in the headlights. I don't know how that happened. But it did. I couldn't ask for a better one."
After making consecutive cuts since getting married, a string that ranks second only to Woods among current players, Howell has amended his teen-age mantra.
"The right girl doesn't cause bogeys," he says now. "The wrong girl causes quads ... or retirement."
Charles and Heather didn't take long to get serious. They started dating in September and before Christmas Howell had brought her to Augusta.
His world was somewhat foreign to Heather, especially golf. Howell took her to the Augusta National to share part of his dream, and Heather was less than awed.
"Where are all the people?" she asked when they pulled into the nearly empty parking lot in front of the clubhouse. Howell explained this was no ordinary public course. A quick tour of the grounds and a little shopping in the pro shop didn't have the same impact on Heather as it would on a golf fan.
Howell attended his senior prom with Fran Gardner in 1997. He graduated from Westminster School in Augusta. Special to The Augusta Chronicle |
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"It's perfectly understandable," Howell said. "It's like her taking me to a date party in college. We went to one and only one, and I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was the only sober individual there, and everybody was drunk and hollering and screaming. I don't dance and don't drink. I stood there with my hands in my pockets. I was more uncomfortable at that than I am on the first tee of a golf tournament."
Heather, however, has settled quickly into the life of a golfer's wife. She will complete her degree in marketing at Oklahoma State in May, taking classes four days a week, but still flies to wherever Charles is playing every weekend.
Howell's focus remains the same as always - on his game.
"There's not a whole lot I have to worry about except my golf," Howell said. "That's comforting. Heather understands my golf. She understands what I do. She understands the sacrifices that it does take. If she doesn't understand that, there is no way that it would work.
"Her life is centered around me. That's just the way it is. I don't mean to sound like a male chauvinist pig, but that's how it is. Her life is me. My life is me. That's it."
Heather laughs every time she hears Charles say that. "It sounds awful, doesn't it? But away from the golf course, I make all the decisions."
Emerging star
Howell has changed a lot from the shy young boy who stalked the local courses alone.
Polite as ever, he has dropped many of the Sirs and Ma'ams that he discovered made some people uncomfortable.
Howell has befriended many players on tour. His easy attitude and quiet confidence shrouded in genuine humility impress his peers without making them feel threatened.
"He could come out and be too cocky, which isn't good at all," said Jesper Parnevik. "But he hasn't done that."
Players Howell knows well or hardly at all rave about him in every interview tent across the PGA Tour.
"There are some kids who are good players, but then there are some players that have something a little different," John Cook said. "Charles is one of those."
Nick Price, a fellow Leadbetter pupil and a three-time major winner once ranked No. 1 in the world, gushes about Howell's potential. Price guarantees that the young man will become one of the top 5 players in the world and earn $50 million before he's 30.
Howell accepts the praise graciously.
"If people aren't saying good things about you, they don't think you're any good," he said. "So I take it as a compliment. But I also know that I still have to practice and work hard and keep my goals and the things I'm trying to do ahead of me."
In the meantime, Howell is carefully forging the proper image for himself. The chic Euro styling of his J.Lindeberg clothing might surprise some of his friends back home, but a lot about Howell is different these days. Hanging around his closest friend on tour, Parnevik, will do that to an impressionable kid.
The talented and sometimes eccentric Swede and the young Southern gentleman are thick as thieves on and off the course. Parnevik marvels at the level Howell already has reached.
"Being 22 and that good and having the whole world in front of him ... if I had started over I would have done a lot of things different," Parnevik said. "I would have taken care of my image earlier, put it that way. It's very easy to get stuck with a company, stuck with an image. Everything is going to be decided at the beginning anyway. People are going to make their opinions about you. If you're a nice guy, bad guy, boring guy, whatever.
"It's tough to change that, so it's very important at the beginning to make your mind up who you want to be and what you want to be. Do you want to be anonymous or someone who's going to be great? You can be a great player and not be a big star. Some players like to just play golf and not worry about everything else. Charles wanted to make an impact."
Movin' on up
Howell has grown up since turning pro in 2000. PGA Tour rules changes prevented him from getting his Tour card for 2001.
Forced to try to earn Tour status through sponsor's exemptions, Howell scaled every hurdle to obtain his card for 2002. His $1.5 million in earnings without benefit of victory and five top-10 finishes for 2001 impressed his peers enough that they voted him rookie of the year.
Off the course, Howell has been given another taste of the big time - a lawsuit filed by his former manager, Rocky Hambric, after Howell left him to sign with IMG. The lawsuit has not been a distraction, as Howell has posted three top-10 finishes in his first seven events this season.
Howell is fast becoming one of the top players to watch.
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Charles Howell chips out of the bunker at Pebble Beach earlier this year. Howell has nine top 10 finishes in 48 starts. Jonathan Ernst
The Augusta Chronicle |
"That's Charles Howell III," come the whispers at every turn. "He's going to be great."
After his final round at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, where his playing partner was Augusta National member John Harris of Charlotte, N.C., one of the other celebrity guests approached to shake Charles' hand.
"Hello, I'm Charles Howell," he said reflexively.
"I know who you are," said Donald Trump.
He's far from Augusta's secret any more. The only thing he hasn't done yet is win a professional event - he's finished second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh among his career top-10 finishes in only 47 starts. It's coming, everyone insists.
"As the old saying goes, if you keep knocking on the door, sometime it's going to open," Leadbetter said. "Augusta would be a great place to do it."
Howell still dreams of getting his first victory at home on a lengthened Augusta National course even more well suited for his long game.
"It would be nice to win a major," Howell said. "It bumps you up into being a world-class player. After I finished second in Milwaukee my opinions suddenly mattered more. Same thing when I won the NCAA, all the sudden I became smart. A major changes you a lot in that regard."
Living the dream
Howell can pinpoint exactly when his Masters obsession began - April 12, 1987.
"The first Masters I ever went to was when Larry Mize won it," Howell said. "That got my attention right there. No doubt. Before that it was just another golf tournament. I wasn't old enough to understand what it was."
By the time Mize chipped in on the second playoff hole to beat Greg Norman, Howell was already at home celebrating his brother Ben's birthday. But the energy he'd experienced at the course stuck with him. It became his personal calling.
"Larry Mize being from Augusta and the whole atmosphere did it," he said. "Growing up in Augusta, you play golf. Growing up in New York, I guess you play basketball."
Once Howell secured his 2002 PGA Tour card, his lifelong goal loomed closer. But he had more work to do to avoid the unpleasant feeling of being a Masters patron and not a participant another year.
"It was not fun being out there last year and on the other side of the ropes," he said of his 2001 visit to the tournament, where Thomson native Franklin Langham was feted as the local hero. "I didn't stay very long."
The Masters invites the top 40 money leaders from the PGA Tour, of which Howell's earnings should have qualified. But recent changes in tour policy listed Howell among the "nonmember" leaders. The Masters, which offers special invitations to foreign players, didn't seem inclined to give an Augusta golfer any special treatment.
"It was strongly inferred to me that even if I finished in the top 40 on the money list I would not get an invitation," Howell said. "I ran into Buzzy (Johnson, Masters Tournament director) at the U.S. Open, and he just said, 'Get your world ranking up. Play hard young man."'
That meant top 50 in the world, which was a long way for a player who started the year with no worldwide tour status and a ranking of 324th.
But even after Howell locked himself in with a ranking of 45th at season's end, he remained uneasy.
"With the Masters, I never felt comfortable until I got my invitation, to be honest with you," he said.
So he waited. On a trip home to his parents' house, Charles and Heather scoured the mail that built up. Shortly before Christmas, he was sure he found it - a letter with an Augusta National return address. He ripped it open, but it wasn't the invitation.
Nothing else looked promising. Then Heather began opening what looked like a Christmas card with only a P.O. Box return label. She peeked inside and dropped the envelope.
"Oops! I think this is for you," she said.
Howell pulled out the card.
"The Board of Governors of the Augusta National Golf Club cordially invite you to participate ..."
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