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The PGA Tour heads to Torrey Pines this week for the Farmers Insurance Open. Our experts offer their best bets for the event.

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Stephen Hamblin has been the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) Executive Director for 35-plus years, so you expect him to have plenty of stories about some of the greatest players the game has ever seen. He does, and we’ll get to those momentarily. Tiger and Phil. Jordan and Justin. Rickie. Patrick. All of them cut their teeth on the country’s premier junior golf circuit. But first, to underline just how long Hamblin has been at it, consider that he can tell you about the junior golf careers of players who are now, ahem, seniors. “Steve (Stricker, the 12-time PGA TOUR winner turned PGA TOUR Champions pro) was not someone who you would have immediately picked out as a future star,â€� says Hamblin, who recently sat down for a wide-ranging interviewat AJGA headquarters in Braselton, Georgia. “He just got a little bit better at every level. Matt Kuchar was the same way. That’s a good way to go.â€� Hamblin’s fingerprints will be all over this week’s Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club. Brandt Snedeker (2018), Davis Love III (’92, ’06, ’15), Webb Simpson (2011), Sergio Garcia (2012) and Patrick Reed (2013) are some of the past champions who played the AJGA before they played the TOUR. That’s not unusual when it comes to players; you can find similar echoes of the AJGA up and down the FedExCup standings. Now add the fact that Wyndham Tournament Director Mark Brazil used to work for Hamblin at the AJGA, and you truly begin to understand the man’s influence and reach. Hamblin was 29 when he started in 1984. “I had no idea what I was doing,â€� he says. The AJGA had just 13 events. Now there are 120 in the United States and Canada, many hosted by AJGA standouts who have gone on to successful TOUR careers, from Jordan Spieth (in his hometown of Dallas) and Reed (Houston) to Stewart Cink, Scott Stallings, Brendan Steele and beyond. The AJGA aims to give players a platform to be noticed for college scholarships, but many keep going all the way to the top. Hamblin sees them early in the journey, before life starts to get complicated. No FedExCup points, money, agents, endorsements, autographs. Just – them. Tiger vs. Long Drive champ Ask Hamblin for his favorite Tiger story, and he prefaces it with one of his worst career bogeys – his refusal to allow Woods to compete in the 15-17 age division when he was just 14. Woods and his father, Earl, who sat on the AJGA’s board, accepted it, but Hamblin rues the decision. “It was a bad rule that’s since been changed,â€� he says. He smiles, though, when he recalls playing with Woods at an AJGA event at Legacy Golf Club in Las Vegas. Art Sellinger, a two-time world long-drive champion (and AJGA alumnus), was set to tee off with each group, and Woods — then 17 — was intrigued. “He wanted to know what hole Art was going to be on,â€� Hamblin says. “So I told him the 15th, a par 5. The whole front nine, he was relaxed, having fun, trying some different shots. But when we made the turn his demeanor changed, and by 12, 13, 14, he started to get very serious.â€� Woods and Sellinger had met the year before at a Houston Astros baseball game, and as they stood on the 15th tee, Woods tried to get Sellinger to hit first. “This is my show, Tiger,â€� replied Sellinger. Like every other junior, Woods would go first, and get just one ball. “I remember in Houston the year before,â€� Sellinger recalls. “It was Hamblin, myself, Tiger and Earl, we went to an Astros game, and it was a blast. We went into the radio booth and called a couple innings. But that day in Vegas, I’m telling you he looked right through me, and he spoke to me without words, with his eyes. He said, ‘I’m going to hit it right by you.’â€� Weighing just about 140 pounds and wielding a TaylorMade metal wood with metal shaft, Woods closed his stance and hit a percussive sling-draw that started out right, by design. The ball took a huge, helping kick off of the bouncy, dormant grass, shot forward and left into the fairway, and stopped some 360 yards away. (It was later measured.) “When I looked back at Art,â€� Hamblin says, laughing, “I could tell he was concerned.â€� Sellinger guesses that he outweighed Woods by about 100 pounds, but that wasn’t necessarily going to help him now. Nor would he be aided by any special equipment; he says he, too, was hitting a TaylorMade metal wood with a regulation-length shaft. He also didn’t play a big hook but more of a straight ball or a slight cut, which wouldn’t help matters. “I said, all right, I need to step on this one,â€� Sellinger says. “And I did. I hit it. We went up to the amateur tee and the amateurs hit, and Tiger didn’t say a word. I had a cart, and I got in, Tiger was on foot, and he almost beat me to the ball, he was so fired up to see how it had turned out. “I want to say I was 16 yards past him, because we paced it off,â€� Sellinger continues. “We just grinned at each other, and I went over there and shook his hand and said, ‘That was a big shot you just hit.’ I’d never seen someone so serious on the tee. He was like an assassin. I liked it.â€� Adds Hamblin, who still gets a kick out of telling the story, “Art put his arm around me and said, ‘Stephen, that was the best drive I ever hit in my life.’â€� Military upbringing One night, Hamblin found himself seated next to Arnold Palmer at dinner. What was the AJGA going to do, Palmer asked, about all these kids wearing hats indoors? “Oh, we don’t allow it,â€� Hamblin said. Palmer nodded. “Good,â€� he said. Manners, presentation, thank-you notes – these things matter to Hamblin, and have since they were impressed upon him by his father, Allen, a West Point man who flew 30 missions in Vietnam. “Yeah, he was tough,â€� Hamblin says with a smile. “Not in a harsh way, but just in that common punctuality was critically important, and he impressed on me at an early age. Presentation of self. Polish your shoes, iron your clothes, make your bed every day, clean your room.â€� Born in Eglin Air Force Base in Pensacola, Florida, Hamblin had the prototypical itinerant childhood of the military brat, bouncing around from the South to the Rockies to the West Coast. He never joined the military himself; he had a bad kidney that was removed when he was 13. Still, his father imbued him with a strong sense of accountability and attention to detail, which paid off both at Michigan State (landscape architecture) and when he landed his first big job in golf, as the resident pro at Innisbrook Resort & Golf Club under then-Director of Golf Jay Overton. It was there, outside Tampa, Florida, that Hamblin found himself working for a hard-driving, no-nonsense boss who reminded him a little of his father. Among other job duties, carts needed to be set out two-by-two each morning, with military precision. “Jay’s thing was, when you pull that cart up, it better be clean, and the scorecard better not be tilted one way or the other,â€� Hamblin says. “It better be square, with a pencil, and a rake. If any of those things were off … I told my guys, every day we’re perfect, I take you guys to lunch. They had this placed called Chicken King that they liked. Well, we were perfect every day, and it irritated Jay that he couldn’t catch me (making a mistake). “One day, he pulled his car up and took a rent set off our bag drop, threw it in the trunk of his car and drove off,â€� Hamblin continues. “One of my guys was coming up the ramp and saw it, and Jay didn’t think anyone was there. So, at the end of the day, Jay would always call, ‘How many rounds of golf, merchandise numbers, blah, blah, blah.’ And he called and asked about all that, and finally he said, ‘Any problems?’ ‘No, no problems.’ ‘None at all?’ I said, ‘Other than the rental set that’s in the trunk of your car.’ He said, ‘Who told you about that!?’ I said, ‘Jay, if you gotta do that, I’m really winning this little game we’re playing.’ He loved me.â€� (Overton says the man who saw him drive off with the rental set was Peter Ripa, another former employee of Hamblin’s who would go on to run the Farmers Insurance Open.) Crucially, Innisbrook was where Hamblin first encountered the AJGA, in 1980. The junior organization was holding its end-of-the-year Thanksgiving tournament, featuring juniors such as Davis Love III, Billy Andrade, Billy Mayfair, Heather Farr and others. Hamblin was smitten. “I was just absolutely taken with their maturity,â€� he says. “Their passion for the game, their willingness to work hard at it, their respect. They would lose a match and stop by the shop and say, ‘Hey, pro, thank you. Copperhead is great.’ They just lost! I was totally impressed by them.â€� Hamblin kept his head down, the carts clean, and the scorecards square on those steering wheels. In November 1983, two AJGA board members, talking with Overton at Innisbrook, copped to being at a loss over who should be the new top man at the junior organization. Overton knew right away. In a way, he’d known ever since Hamblin had worked for him as a teenager at Pinehurst, painting fences and even acting as a night security guard for a week when he slept in a mobile, soft-sided pro shop. Hamblin needed to be running something. “I said the person should be able to turn this organization into what it needs to be, not what it currently is,â€� says Overton, who is now the Host Professional at Corales Golf Club in the Dominican Republic. “They went, ‘Who?’ I said, ‘Turn around and look through the window at that guy standing in the pro shop. That’s your guy.’â€� Indelible memories Phil Mickelson still has the most career wins on the AJGA, with 12, while Woods and Charles Howell III are among those tied for second with eight. Alumni testimonials abound. Spieth cites enduring relationships, but also, “To be able to play against the best players in the world in a junior golf event at an early age is fantastic.â€� Simpson says the AJGA “built my game up and gave me confidence and allowed me to play college golf and now on the PGA TOUR.â€� More fun are Hamblin’s testimonials about the players. Another Woods story: He was sizing up a long second shot to a par 5 when he was forced to back off the shot by a bumbling TV cameraman approaching in a badly overloaded golf cart. Woods leaned on his 3-wood and waited. And waited. And waited some more. “All set?â€� he said when the man had finally got himself together. “All set,â€� the cameraman said. At long last, and with the camera on, Woods blasted a gorgeous shot that hung in the air forever and landed on the green. Even then, Hamblin says, Woods was used to having a camera on him. He received so much media attention that he asked if the AJGA could just tape-record his answers, since the questions he got from city to city were almost always all the same. Hamblin said no. Something in Mickelson’s mental make-up, Hamblin says, set the lefthander apart, the tip-off being when young Phil was asked by a reporter if he was happy to be out there giving it his all. With all due respect, Mickelson said, according to Hamblin, he was aiming a lot higher than that. In fact, he considered himself the man to beat any time he teed it up. “I mean, what 15-year-old says that?â€� Hamblin says with a laugh. Several years later, Hamblin played in a junior-amateur with shy, diminutive Justin Thomas, who hit nearly every fairway and green but couldn’t seem to buy a putt. “It’s OK not to make all those putts today and save them for tomorrow,â€� Hamblin says he told Thomas, “because tomorrow you’ll make them all and shoot 64.â€� The next day, Thomas made them all and shot 64. Mickelson was one of the hardest workers, always inventing new challenges for himself, even if it meant trying to hit driver from a divot. Spieth was one of the most well-spoken players, Chris Riley one of the funniest (and fastest). At one tournament, there was so much electricity in the air that Riley’s hair shot out in all directions at once, like a fright wig. “He walked by me like that,â€� Hamblin says, “and he said, ‘I think we’ve got a problem.’ We blew the horn right after that. He was like my lightning detector.â€� There was the girl with cystic fibrosis whose game was surprisingly good despite having to stop mid-round to empty her lungs of mucus. Another girl who worked at a driving range in Texas didn’t have enough money to actually play anywhere. Until, that is, a local benefactor and an ACE grant (the AJGA’s financial-aid program) got her into a national tournament, where she played so well she landed a scholarship and became the first in her family to go to college. Hamblin and the AJGA have been impactful for others, too, even if they work outside the ropes. Steve Ethun, who handles media for Augusta National Golf Club, worked for Hamblin and the AJGA, as have several PGA TOUR and Korn Ferry Tour tournament directors, plus others still who have left the AJGA only to remain in golf in some other capacity. So many roads in golf lead back to the AJGA, Hamblin calls it “a training organization.â€� That goes for administrators and officials, but especially for players, who continue to dominate the TOUR. Indeed, if a career can be measured by lives touched, Stephen A. Hamblin has few peers. “It’s been a good run,â€� he says, “but I still have a lot to do here.â€�

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The grim news we are hearing daily about the COVID-19 pandemic has brought back painful memories for Audrey Leishman. Five years ago, she was in a Virginia Beach, Virginia, hospital fighting for her life. In addition to sepsis and toxic shock syndrome, she had acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), the same thing that has proven so deadly to countless coronavirus patients across the world. “ARDS is the worst thing I have ever gone through,â€� she said recently. “It felt like I was drowning.â€� “It was the worst time of her life,â€� Audrey’s husband Marc echoed. “It was the worst time in my life, too. I didn’t even have it.â€� Related: For more on how players are giving back, visit PGATOUR.COM/IMPACT Like so many of the COVID-19 patients with ARDS, Audrey was put on a ventilator for five days. The doctors told Marc that his wife had just a 5 percent chance of survival, and the couple said they loved each other for what might have been one last time. But Audrey fought. So did her doctors and nurses. And they saved her life. So, when the COVID-19 pandemic began invading the United States, Audrey and Marc, the five-time PGA TOUR champion, knew what they wanted to do. They wanted to find a way to help the emergency room and ICU staffs in hospitals near their Virginia Beach home who were on the front lines every day. “With our personal experience of me getting sick, we realized how hard these doctors, nurses, the support staff, respiratory therapists, how hard they all work to keep patients alive,â€� Audrey explained. “I wouldn’t be here without them, and so we wanted to support them.â€� But how? Audrey texted the pulmonologist who she says saved her life, as well as one of the physician’s assistants on her case. She also contacted some of her friends who are nurses. What did they need? How could the Leishman’s aptly named Begin Again Foundation make a difference? While the lack of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers is, she said, “literally keeping me awake at night,â€� she knew that was too vast a problem to tackle. Other friends simply told her to pray for them. Her response? “Absolutely, but I want to do more than that.â€� Someone mentioned that restaurants were afraid to deliver food to the hospitals, and suddenly the Leishmans had an idea. They have lots of friends in the hospitality industry, people who have donated food and other services for the Begin Again Foundation’s celebrity golf classic over the last four years. With restaurants closed to in-house dining and able only to offer takeout in these days of stay-at-home orders and social distancing, those businesses were suffering, too. Why not help them by buying meals that might allow the owners to pay employees for a little bit longer, then having them delivered to different hospitals? “It just seemed like a really natural fit,â€� Marc said. “With what happened to Audrey … we know how, on a normal day, we know how hard the medical staff work. And I mean when something like this is going on and it’s got to be, I don’t want to say tenfold, but more than that, like 100 times harder. They’ve got so much more going on, and a lot of them aren’t getting home to see their family because they might be infected. So, it’s just a huge burden on them. “And then the restaurants having to be closed for eating, we want to keep them employed. And I know four meals for just us … it’ll make a little difference, but not a huge difference. … I don’t know how many meals they’re buying, but 60 or 80, or whatever it is. If we buy that many, that could make a difference to that restaurant, possibly staying open or not. “We’re just trying to help in any way we can.â€� The first hospital the Begin Again Foundation served – quite literally, and quite fittingly – was the Sentara Princess Anne, which is where Audrey got her second chance at life. And the couple is in it for the long term, too, sending meals to a different hospital each week, because they know all too well that defeating COVID-19 is not going to happen quickly; it’s a marathon, not a sprint. “One thing I have seen is that a lot of people offer to help right in the beginning,â€� Audrey said. “That just comes to happen in any kind of crisis. I still want to be there when it’s getting harder for people to help. … Especially in a situation like this as time goes on and people are out of work for longer, it may be harder and harder to do so. “We’d like to keep doing this for as long as we can.â€� That’s not all Audrey and Marc are doing, either. In partnership with the Patient Advocate Foundation, the Begin Again Foundation, is also giving out 10 $1,000 grants per month to survivors of ARDS, sepsis or toxic shock syndrome. These LEISHLines can be used to help with uninsured expenses like rent, utilities, food, lodging and transportation. And recently, the Foundation placed an order for 1,000 cloth masks to be delivered to grocery stores in Virginia Beach to protect the cashiers and stock clerks who work there. A Masters flag signed by Tiger Woods will be auctioned off to support those efforts. Marc and Audrey have been keeping busy at home, too. They have two sons and a daughter, aged 2 to 8, who miss their friends. FaceTime calls help, though, and there is plenty of schoolwork now that Mom and Dad are doubling as teachers for the foreseeable future. Marc is quick to point out that his specialty is the physical education part. He’ll leave the math and English lessons to his wife. “I’m helping Harvey, he’s only in second grade and there’s a few things I’m like, dude, I don’t know how to do this,â€� Marc said with a chuckle. “… They’re doing addition and subtraction a different way now. So, I don’t know how to do that. There’s a lot of things I can help with, but there’s a lot that I can’t as well.â€� He can help Harvey with chipping and putting, though, at the short game area in the backyard. And Ollie, who’s 6, has taken up Taekwondo and kick-boxing – and his father has a shiner to show for that after an accidental headbutt. The family lives on a golf course that is closed right now so there have been field trips, of sorts, to fish and look for frogs and tadpoles. Now that the weather is getting warmer the pool in the backyard is getting some use, and Marc has also taught the kids how to build fires and cook smores. Golf has been put on the back burner. Leishman, who won the Farmers Insurance Open earlier this year, said it just doesn’t feel right. “Once the weather gets good and everyone is allowed out there again and things are sort of starting to turn for the better,â€� he said “I think that’s when I’ll start to get back into it. … “A lot of tournaments this time of year that I really enjoy, and to be missing them is tough. But again, the family times, they’re positive.â€� And so is the work of the Leishman’s Begin Again Foundation.

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