Daniel Carson lives and breathes golf.
The 14-year-old golf enthusiast from Waihī College took his first swing at the sport in April last year, and hasn’t looked back.
It was clear the young golfer was not only passionate but also skilled when he made “the best shot of my life” at a recent golf tournament.
Daniel not only competed in the Division Two Tournament of the Omokoroa Junior Open Golf competition on October 18, he also walked away a champion as he snapped up the Stableford and Net Trophies, scoring 83 over 18 holes.
The young golfer, who learnt how to swing a club from golf coach Stevie Heyes, said “it was pretty nice” to win the awards and that he felt “a little bit better at golf” than he was before the tournament.
He acknowledged that while his swing was still the same, he was “slowly getting better”.
It was when he got to the last hole that he could see the possibility of a good score.
Daniel hit the ball with his 7-iron golf club, the ball bounced on to the green and rolled a few centimetres past the hole.
“I was like, ‘okay, that that’s probably the best shot of my life. And I’m probably going pretty good in the tournament’,” he said.
Daniel’s golf accolades don’t stop there.
The young athlete went on to receive the Golfer of the Year Award at the Waihī College Sports Prizegiving on October 29, and also competed at the Omanu Futures Junior Open on November 1, where he placed second with his Stableford score and ninth overall in Division Two.
Daniel said he achieved what he set out to do at the Omanu Futures competition as he wanted to land a top 10 spot.
The hardest part about playing golf was “just coming back the next day or after having a bad round and not just giving up”, he told The Profile.
It was important to go back and focus on “trying to fix what you did wrong”, he said.
While he hadn’t yet decided if he would pursue the sport of golf professionally, the young golfer said he would like to stay connected to the sport.
“If it doesn’t work out, I would actually like to do something related to golf, like design courses or build courses or greenkeeping and stuff like that. I could be a caddy or something.”
Daniel’s mum, Jo Carson, said she wanted to acknowledge that the Waihī Golf Club was “amazing” at recruiting young members, and they were “super supportive and encouraging” for Daniel and his brother, Thomas.
Daniel’s advice for others who wanted to pursue golf was to the point – playing once a week was not enough.
“You’ve got to keep at it to actually play good – you need to [play] at least two times a week to actually keep at it.
“And if you want to get good, you’ve got to play a lot,” he said.
By DAVIDDA HIKATANGATA
