When 17-year-old Mariah Stackhouse tees off this week at the U.S. Women’s Open — the fifth youngest player and the only African-American in the field of 156 — she will be realizing the designs and visions of a whole host of backers.
The Mariah Network is many layered, extending beyond family, beyond her classmates at North Clayton High School, beyond the local golf community to include even a one-time Olympic gold medal-winning long jumper.
This slight teen — built for accuracy off the tee, not length — emits a certain light that seems to draw supporters from all corners. What is there not to like in a senior-to-be with a 4.0 grade-point average, an amateur’s innocence, a pro’s polish, a Madison Avenue-ready smile and a touch that suggests she could perform microsurgery with a lob wedge?
It has been only about five years since Ralph Boston — former long-jump world record holder, Olympic gold medalist, 1960 — first heard of a little girl who was playing in the same benefit scramble as he. You should see this kid, the adult players in her foursome told him. She carried us.
Boston sought her out. Five years later, here he is practically a member of the family.
There is nothing he wouldn’t do for Stackhouse, short of actually playing a round of golf with her. Boston hasn’t tried that for a couple years, not since a nine-hole outing in which she “put a whipping on me,” he said.
“I’m not going to get embarrassed like that again.”
An avid golfer with a home just off Peachtree City’s Planterra Ridge, Boston helped the young Stackhouse get on some courses better than those she had been able to use. “Having been an athlete, I know practice is the key thing. And I didn’t think [where she was playing] was up to snuff,” Boston said. And if there were any questions at the pro shop, Boston would just say — wink, wink — she’s my granddaughter; she can play on my membership.
Conversely, the Stackhouses — Mariah, father Ken, mother Sharon and 14-year-old brother John — are so close to Boston that, when he was honored at an event in Nashville, they all were there, too.
21st in junior ranks
At the core of the Mariah Network is family.
Her parents did not set out to raise a golfing prodigy. It just sort of happened. When Ken went out to hit balls, Mariah tagged along. As young as 3, she would swing away with a couple clubs dad had cut down for her, then occupy herself chasing birds while Ken finished up his practice.
A gradual shift in the golfing dynamic of the Stackhouse house developed over the next few years: The better daughter got, the less dad played.
That choice was borne out early, like around when Mariah was in sixth grade, after she drummed dad on the course. “That’s not hard when she shoots a 67 and I shoot 78,” Ken laughed.
A partner in an architectural business, Ken has the ability to attend to the details of a promising young golfer’s schedule. Both parents work, Sharon in administration at Peachford Hospital.
So good is Ken at the task of getting Mariah where she needs to be that, even at 17, she has felt no urgency to get her driver’s license. More than her swing, that one fact separates her from almost every American teenager. “I can drive, but my dad can pretty much take me. If he said, ‘No, I’m not taking you anywhere else,’ I probably would get it.”
Ken will be on the bag at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colo., when Mariah tees off at 7 a.m. with the first group Thursday. They have come so far from those days of a little girl, her father’s shadow, hacking away with her sawed-off driver.
In the latest Polo junior golf rankings, Mariah is 21st in the United States. A two-time winner of the Georgia Women’s Match Play Championship (2007, ’08), the veteran of one LPGA special event (the Mojo Six last year), she made her loudest statement yet by winning one of three spots in the Open qualifier at Druid Hills. She shot 75-71, and survived a sudden-death playoff, all after a three-week layoff recovering from an inflamed wrist.
Hers was not exactly a country club upbringing. Unable to afford a club membership when his daughter began to show promise, Ken searched locally for a place where she could put in hours of practice without breaking the budget. He eventually found a believer in King Simmons — then at Brown’s Mill, now the general manager at North Fulton Golf Course. Boston was able to broaden her exposure to different, more challenging courses. And now, her reputation can gain her entry to many of the best tracks.
She does have a swing doctor — Chan Reeves at the Atlanta Athletic Club, who has worked occasionally with her since she was 9. He, in fact, gave her a little tune-up last week before she departed for the Open.
Patched together from these various sources was a program that worked to build a promising junior golfer despite the fact she wasn’t upper-crust born.
People seemed eager to help Mariah because they saw in her traits that would serve her faithfully through the winnowing process of junior golf.
Reeves initial reaction when Ken asked him to look at his 9-year-old daughter was, “She’s so young; I don’t want to babysit.”
But: “Mariah was good when she got here. She has a God-given talent to hit a golf ball, and she is very driven and focused. By the time she was 10, we were going over things that I usually work on with 15-year-olds.”
When asked about Mariah’s commitment to golf, Boston recalled a conversation with the late tennis great Arthur Ashe. Ashe had told him there were days when he lost focus and drifted as a competitor. “And I don’t remember seeing any of that in Mariah, and that’s great,” Boston said.
School ‘superstar’
At North Clayton, even the football players have taken to calling her “superstar.” Having been raised to have a strong presence in public — her parents used to have Mariah practice reciting the Gettysburg Address at home and encourage her to speak at church gatherings — she is not afraid to stand out. That’s either as an African-American in a predominantly white game; or, she said, as a player of a predominantly white game at a mostly African-American high school.
“I kind of like the fact that I have a reputation around school as a golfer,” she said. “It’s different. These kids don’t play golf. That’s something that kind of makes me unique around school. I like that.”
She applies the same kind of unbroken focus to her schoolwork. Her reaction when an AP history teacher recently refused to budge off an 89, no matter how Mariah pleaded for an extra credit assignment to gain one more point: “That hurt my heart.”
Going on to finish college is a non-negotiable goal, she said.
Naturally, she has put in a great deal of thought on how to deal with the pressures of playing in the biggest tournament of her young life.
Those around her have offered plenty of advice. Enjoy the experience. Stay contained within the strengths and limitations of your game. Pay no attention to how others around you are attacking the longest layout in women’s Open history (at 7,047 yards, a par-71, compensating in part for the longer ball flight at high altitude).
“Do I think she can play on the weekend at the U.S. Open? If she plays her game and doesn’t try to do anything she can’t do, yes,” Reeves said.
Playing her game means keeping the ball in the fairway — she always has stressed accuracy over length — and cashing in on a well-honed short game.
Mariah seemed to be paying heed to the voices around her.
“I believe that, if I played well enough to qualify, then I can play well enough to make the cut,” she said.
“I want to get there and play well. At the same time, I’m not putting pressure on myself. I’m there to enjoy myself and learn from this opportunity. I’m going to play. I’m going to be calm. I’m going to play the game that got me there.”
This will be a week to trust the two hands she interlocks on the club as well as all those other unseen sets of hands helping her down the course.
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