Weaver was properly nervous,
but not in U.S.Open at Bethpage
FARMINGDALE, N.Y. – Drew Weaver, age 22 and just an amateur, was plenty nervous standing on the first tee. His stomach was churning, and his blood was either racing or frozen, he wasn’t sure which, but it was a bad feeling. Maybe like greeting a blind date. But lord, there he was, standing there, and he had to do it. He had to take that club back and fire away. That’s what he came for. But this wasn’t at Bethpage Black, in the U.S. Open. This was in the qualifier just to get into the U.S. Open, when six guys went into a playoff for four spots. He was far out of his element.
“Fred Funk was in it,” Weaver said. “Couple Nationwide Tour players. And everybody’s playing well. It’s just a matter of controlling your nerves and managing your adrenaline. It was extremely nerve-wracking.”
Weaver was 3-under for the first round, but only 1 under in the second. “I knew I had to get something going,” he said, and this he did by birdieing the 15th from 40 feet and the 16th from 30, the kind of thing stone-cold amateurs can do. But he missed from 20 feet at his last hole and the par sent him into the playoff and a frazzling time.
But he held himself together and parred the first two holes and got his spot. And now, after, oh, at least one other crack, he’s in his first U.S. Open. But going to the first tee was nothing.
“I was more nervous in the playoff than I was on the first tee here,” Weaver said. “I don’t know why, but for some reason, I was so much calmer here.”
There was a time, too fresh in his mind now, that even the playoff seemed like a piece of cake. That date was April 16, 2007, on the Virginia Tech campus. Weaver was a student then, and heading for the Engineering Hall, and was less than 100 yards. Another way to look at it is, he was less than 100 yards away of possibly dying.
“We heard the shots and just freaked out and ran for cover,” Weaver said. “It was kind of terrifying.”
Ah, youth. “Kind of” terrifying. With a crazed gunman blazing away, there are hardly degrees of “terrifying.”
This was Cho Sueng-Hui, a student, calmly going on a rampage. He killed 32, wounded many others, and finally killed himself. Most Virginia Tech people were wounded without being shot, Weaver among them.
“It’s not something we can ever forget,” said Weaver, a business marketing graduate. “It will always be in the back of our minds. We definitely haven’t forgot those we lost in 2007.”
Two months later, Weaver won the British Amateur and dedicated it to the victims of the massacre.
Weaver is one of 15 amateurs in the field, the highest number since 1981, and he intends to stay amateur so that he can play on the Walker Cup match in September. But none of them will remember this U.S. Open with quite the fondness and thrill that he will. He could look up at the leaderboard Friday and for that magic moment see his name at the top, in his first U.S. Open. It wouldn’t stay, of course. Mike Weir shot himself a 64 and a bunch of other guys played well, but still, Weaver wrestled a 1-under-par 69 from the long, demanding, shaggy but soft municipal course that they ought to make New York governor candidates play before they get into the state house.
For a while, his first U.S. Open round was going straight under, like a diving bird. After a birdie at No. 4, he bogeyed three straight, missing the soggy fairways when his hands slipped on the drenched club. He birdied the eighth and bogeyed the ninth, then coming in, he got three saving birdies – the 13th from 20 feet, the 16th from 15 and the 17th from 20. The way innocent amateurs do.
The Open has been won by an amateur eight times, the last by John Goodman in 1933, and that trend of history is not likely to be reversed at Bethpage Black, no matter that it was playing about 7,100 yards for the completion of the rain-delayed first round Friday, instead of at its nearly 7,500.
Winning the British Amateur got him into the British Open and also into the Masters, so this was no neophyte coming to Bethpage Black. This was a grizzled veteran amateur, despite his boyish 22. And he’s not a rubbernecking amateur anymore, either.
“I think anybody’s very impressed with their first U.S. Open,” Weaver said, “but I’ve seen some big crowds. And the British Open was awesome. The Masters is unlike anything else. Yes, it’s a huge advantage to have had a couple starts under my belt.
“I’m not really a guy that’s on the driving range looking left and right – oh, wow! I’m next to Tiger Woods or whatever. It’s nice to be able to do your own thing and just get really prepared for the tournament.”
Then the amateur in him really blossomed. Someone asked whether it was too much to ask of an amateur, on a stage such as the U.S. Open, to “be there” near the end. To be in contention, maybe even to win.
“I don’t think it’s too much to ask,” Weaver said.
The way innocent amateurs do.
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