‘You’ve just got to wake up the next day and start living.’

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. - Don your funny hats and torch the birthday cake. TPC Sawgrass celebrated its 40th birthday Oct. 24. The birth of THE PLAYERS Stadium Course also marked the beginning of the TPC Network of Clubs, a group of courses around the country that have been home to tournaments, training grounds for touring pros and a place for your average player to walk in the footsteps of the world's best. TPC courses have hosted more than 400 professional tournaments, with the rent-free venues allowing for bigger purses and charitable donations. On non-tournament weeks, the TPCs allow recreational players to test their games where history has been made. It's those world-class players, though, who may have the most to celebrate. For them, the TPCs are a lot more than a bucket-list destination. They're a lifeblood; a top-quality driving range, an impeccably groomed course (or two), a place to find a game or just a putting contest. For them, it's hard to overstate the importance of former TOUR Commissioner Deane Beman's totally revolutionary "Stadium Golf" invention those many moons ago. "It's home," said 2014 FedExCup champion Billy Horschel, who lives in Ponte Vedra Beach and practices at TPC Sawgrass, where his coach, Todd Anderson, is Director of Instruction at the PGA TOUR Performance Center. "It's been a great place to practice, to get better." About 77 professionals from the six PGA TOUR-owned-and-operated tours play out of TPC Sawgrass. A recent Thursday found Korn Ferry Tour players Ben Kohles, Brian Richey and Tyson Alexander working out under the tutelage of a trainer in the second-floor fitness room of the Performance Center, which was upgraded in 2017. They stretched, pulled, twisted. Just outside the door to the exercise room, a junior golfer stroked putts in the putting studio with SAM Putt lab technology plus other gewgaws at the direction of the center's dedicated putting instructor. Downstairs sat four indoor bays equipped with Trackman, ground-force plates and video capabilities; equipment-repair lab; lounge; and fitting studio with hundreds of shafts and multiple heads from various manufacturers to choose from. Just outside, the perks include unlimited play at Dye's Valley course, a separate and secluded back tee, two putting greens, and a short-game area. Although overseeding began last week on the Stadium Course, two practice greens have been spared and will be kept as fast as possible for upcoming TOUR stops, including the Masters Tournament next month. "It really is a state-of-the-art facility," said Fred Funk, who was asked at the Performance Center to name his highs and lows at TPC Sawgrass. The high was easy: Funk was 48 when he won THE PLAYERS Championship in 2005. The low, it turned out, was also easy. It was Saturday at the 2001 PLAYERS, a day made famous by NBC analyst Gary Koch's "Better than most" call of Tiger Woods' triple-breaking, 60-foot birdie putt at the island 17th, which led to Woods' one-shot victory. "You always see the ‘Better than Most' moment," Funk said. "Well, I was playing right in front of Tiger, and I hit it 12 to 15 feet right of the hole and five-putted. I actually made a three-footer for my fifth putt for a 6. It knocked me right out of contention. I was so angry." It was, Funk recalled, the only five-putt of his career. "I hit a lot better tee shot than Tiger and walk off with 6, he walks off with 2," he said. "I had the ‘Worse than Most' putt and he had the ‘Better than Most' in back-to-back groups." Funk gave a rueful chuckle. Despite being up 20-14, he had just lost a chipping contest to his son Taylor, also a pro, on the practice green outside the Performance Center. The Funk family will be moving to Austin, Texas, soon, and they'll miss TPC Sawgrass. The TOUR's headquarters and other TPC courses are a place to compete, yes, but also to trade ideas about the swing. That camaraderie is huge. Lanto Griffin, a Ponte Vedra Beach resident who will defend his Vivint Houston Open title soon, has spoken glowingly of the influence of Hall of Famer Vijay Singh, the de facto godfather of the TPC Sawgrass practice scene. Other players have sung the same refrain. "I've been around Vijay for 12, 13 years now since I got out of college," Horschel said. "He's been a great sounding board. I've got a great relationship with the PGA TOUR because the headquarters are right there. I couldn't have asked for a better place to be since I left college. "Having access is massive," he added, "but the bigger thing is how many good Korn Ferry Tour and PGA TOUR players are out there practicing. You share ideas, have little chipping games, have matches on the course - it's just been a great spot to improve as a player." Not that it's the only spot. Joseph Bramlett moved to Las Vegas last year in part because of its two TPCs, including TPC Summerlin, which hosts the TOUR's Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. Justin Suh, Bramlett's friend from their Northern California junior golf days, made the move with him, and one of Bramlett's fellow Stanford golf alumni, Maverick McNealy, is now his Vegas roommate. Even amongst such frequent road warriors, it's always easy to find a game. "What's not to like?" Bramlett said. "I mean, Summerlin's a great fit just because it's really quiet where we're at. There's no traffic, I'm six minutes from two TPC facilities, and both have really good ranges, good practice facilities, great access to the golf courses, there are 20-plus guys to compete with when we're practicing. There's a lot of good golf; I'm around a lot of really motivated people who are trying to do what I'm trying to do." TOUR-approved golf, TOUR-grade standards, TOUR-quality players - indeed, what's not to like? Coast to coast and even overseas, suffice it to say the TPCs at 40 have never looked better.

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Ed Uhlshafer spent most of that Sunday afternoon at Silverado Resort following Phil Mickelson, his favorite golfer and fellow left-hander, during the final round of last year’s Safeway Open. After the tournament was over, he and his wife Karen dined in downtown Napa. When they returned home, Uhlshafer headed downstairs to the family room and settled in front of the TV to watch the replay of Brendan Steele’s victory. “You can’t see everything while you’re out there on the course, so I recorded it so I could watch it later,â€� he explains. Meanwhile, Myrna Andrews, one of the Safeway Open’s most valued volunteers, had spent the last three weeks packing gift bags, finalizing details for VIP events and helping find housing for the PGA TOUR players. As the tournament wound down, she finally took time for herself and caught up with her sister and brother-in-law on the North Course for a glass of wine. “I was enjoying the tournament for a good hour,â€� Andrews recalls. “It was wonderful.â€� Later, she joined some other volunteers at the trophy presentation where they took a group photo with Steele, who had successfully defended his Safeway Open title. She and her husband Jim were toasted for their dedication at the volunteer party that followed before heading home. “We were exhausted,â€� Andrews recalls. “We came home, showered up, and literally just went to bed at 10:15.â€� Her next-door neighbors Dan and Cindy Dwyer also went to the Safeway Open on Sunday. He’s a senior vice president with Merrill Lynch in Napa and had a skybox at the 18th green. “We had a great day,â€� Dwyer says. “Everybody was happy and it was great seeing old friends.â€� Being in the brokerage business and living on the West Coast, Dwyer is usually up by 5 a.m. PT. So he and his wife had a light dinner that night and he went to bed. Then the phone calls started. Uhlshafer also got a knock on his door. Fueled by hot, dry Diablo winds that at times gusted near hurricane strength, what came to be known as the Atlas Peak fire was barreling over the mountain toward their home. And the Silverado Resort was located in the crosshairs at 1600 Atlas Peak Rd. Tournament director Matt McEvoy was having dinner in Napa when a friend who lives at Silverado called, asking him what he knew about the fire. He figured it was something small. Maybe someone had tossed cigarette butts in the trash or a generator had sparked a small blaze. “What are you talking about?â€� McEvoy recalls asking. His friend described the scene: It looks like the fifth green is on fire along with most of the mountain. McEvoy left the restaurant immediately. He could see an orange line stretching for what appeared to be miles on the hillside. By the time he got to Silverado, the first responders had already set up a command station on the Mansion lawn where just 24 hours earlier, the Goo Goo Dolls had performed in the finale of the Safeway Open concert series. McEvoy, who lives in a condo at Silverado, rushed to collect his belongings and find shelter. Resort staff frantically called everyone staying on the property to tell them to evacuate. “It was definitely surreal ,â€� McEvoy says. “… I got a couple hours sleep and the next morning our whole staff, they became part of the support for all of the firefighters and allied resources that came out here.â€� Even as grandstands smoldered and burned as late as Monday, the generators and light towers that had formed the infrastructure of the PGA TOUR event were redeployed to help in this real-life disaster. The Safeway Open also had plenty of bottled water, sodas and snacks left over from the event to donate to the relief effort. So the Army Reserves brought two Humvees and the operations staff loaded them up with the extras. “It was definitely a unique experience,â€� McEvoy says. “On one hand, as residents, my wife and I are in the same boat as everyone else. Then on the other side of things, we were able to get involved as much as we could to support everyone on the front lines for the fire.â€� McEvoy remembers getting texts from Steele, who was about to board a flight to Malaysia where he would play in the CIMB Classic the following week. Steele sent another one once he landed. “He wanted to check on all of us and say, hey, is everyone are right? What can we do?â€� McEvoy recalls. “… We definitely felt the support in word and spirit from players, tournament directors, PGA (TOUR) staff and caddies across the board who have relationships with everyone here on the ground.â€� One of the more lasting images of the first 48 hours, at least from a golf standpoint, was the skybox burning at the 17th hole of the North Course on Monday. But overall, the resort’s two golf courses escaped relatively unscathed. Approximately 150 homes on the surrounding hillsides, though, weren’t so lucky, and nearly 400 buildings in the area were destroyed overall. The Atlas Peak fire was savage, killing six and burning more than 51,000 acres. There were 25 more deaths from the Tubbs and Nuns fires in Sonoma County where Santa Rosa was particularly hard hit. Uhlshafer heard the knock, and almost simultaneously, his cell phone, which he had left upstairs, rang. His wife Karen called out; it was McEvoy, their good friend, on the other end of the line. “It’s like, what, 10 o’clock, 10:30 in the evening?â€� Uhlshafer recalls. “It was kind of odd to get both a call and knock on the door at that time.â€� When Uhlshafer opened the door, he saw a representative from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection standing there. He wanted to see if he could go into their back yard to assess the fire – which is what McEvoy had called to warn them about, as well. “And I said, do we need to get out of here,â€� Uhlshafer remembers. “And he said, no, I don’t think right now you do. I said, well, I’ve lived here a little while and if you can see the fire from my backyard, I think it’s probably a good idea that we go.â€� Ulshafer and his wife were planning to fly to Cabo San Lucas the following morning, so they had packed two duffle bags and put their laptops and passports in their carry-ons, all of which were stashed by the front door waiting for a 6:30 a.m. pickup. “Once the Cal Fire guy was there, we both decided that we would just load the bags in the car and evacuate at that point and then see what happens,â€� Uhlshafer says. The couple never got to Cabo. Karen Uhlshafer called and found a room for them at a hotel about five or six miles from their home at Silverado. She got the last reservation there as people scrambled to get away from the fire. “It seemed like that was safe, although at that point, you know, nothing is totally safe,â€� Uhlshafer says. “So you’re always on the alert, especially with winds like that, if something was going to shift. There was obviously smoke in the air all the time and so you knew exactly what was going on. “And then the distance from the hotel, you really could see the glow in the hills.â€� Uhlshafer and his wife didn’t return to their neighborhood for several days. Their home, which overlooks the fifth green and sixth and 13th tee boxes on the North Course, was destroyed. The only thing left standing in the rubble was a two-story stone fireplace. Uhlshafer also lost a fully-restored 1959 Corvette convertible that had been featured at the Silverado car show a few months earlier. Oh, and a lot of what he jokingly calls “defectiveâ€� golf clubs. “I was not unhappy to see them go,â€� Uhlshafer says with a wry laugh. Andrews and her husband were roused from their sleep around 10:15 p.m., as well. A friend who was leaving the Mansion Lounge at Silverado called to warn them that there was a fire on Atlas Peak. “Jim looked at me and I said, it’s probably just a little plume,â€� Andrews recalls. “People make such big deals of things here in the country club. You know how that goes. And he said, all right, honey, let’s just go back to sleep. “ Five minutes later, Dwyer’s wife Cindy called. We’re leaving, she said. You should, too. “It still brings tears to my eyes, the devastation that we saw,â€� Andrews says. “We live up on the hill and we can see the golf course. We can see vineyards, we can see that veterans home in the city of Yountville. We have a spectacular view. “And to see the flame so close to our home. And so aggressive. It had this weird sound, sounds that just come out of nowhere.â€� She started packing, grabbing a folder with their passports and throwing sweat pants and sweatshirts into a suitcase. She packed a few extra volunteer shirts, too – which she wore for the better part of the next two weeks. “Somebody said to my husband — because we weren’t allowed to come back — can you please make sure Myrna buys some clothes because we’re sick and tired of that red shirt,â€� Andrews says with a laugh. The couple headed to their daughter’s home, then later to a hotel. As they left their neighborhood that Sunday night, Andrews started honking the car horn as loud as she could. “I thought, if you’re sleeping, wake up,â€� Andrews says. “There was no alarm. I was calling my friends up in the hill, the fire was just so intense. … “I was just either leaving messages until they answered or talking to them. Wake up. We have a fire.â€� The name of the road that the Andrews and Dwyers live on? Burning Tree. “We plan on changing that soon,â€� Andrews reports. Dwyer’s wife woke him up to tell him about the fire. He went out on their deck, saw the blaze and knew what had to be done. He estimates that he and his wife had about 15 or 20 minutes to gather up some belongings and outrace the fire. “We left behind so much that we kind of kicked ourselves about,â€� he now says. Among the things he wished he had saved was his coin collection. He caddied at the Olympic Club in San Francisco as a kid – he’s a 50-year member at the prestigious club — and would use his earnings to buy coins. Nothing survived the relentless heat. “It was just molten,â€� says Dwyer, who has lived in Napa since 2005. “The silver and even the copper-headed pennies were all just melted together. I had some gold coins and that was all melted, too. “And my grandfather’s watch, his gold pocket watch; I was able to resurrect that and that was all destroyed and all the gold had washed off the brass casing.â€� For a while that Sunday night, they waited in the dark with their friends in the parking lot of Nob Hill Foods, which is about a mile and a half from Silverado, desperate for information. The smoke was heavy and the fire glowed on the hillside. “Nobody knew anything,â€� he says. Eventually, the Dwyers headed to their son Jeff’s home on the west side of Napa. Once there, they discovered it was being threatened by another fire so the family went to Dwyer’s office near the riverfront downtown. About 2 a.m., they decided to go back to Jeff’s house to try to get some sleep. But 90 minutes later, they got word the conditions there were getting more dangerous so they headed back to the office. On Monday afternoon, Dwyer received a call from Jim Andrews. Dwyer’s house had been hit hard. “My interpretation of that was OK, maybe I lost some of the house and maybe the rest of it’s still standing,â€� Dwyer says. “But I actually got up there Monday afternoon and realized the devastation and the house was completely flattened. “Just it was nothing, nothing left.â€� Next door, the Andrews’ house was standing, windows shattered and smoke-damaged, but it would be livable again. It was one of only five homes in their neighborhood of 16 that survived. “They were probably more upset about our losing our house than we were, I mean, they were just devastated by it,â€� Dwyer says. “That shows really true friendship and that they are great, great people.â€� Dwyer is rebuilding on the same lot next to his friends. In fact, he met with the contractor 10 days ago and the footings for the foundation had already been dug out. “He’s going to be probably putting in rebar and forming it in the next couple of weeks,â€� Dwyer said. “So hopefully in the next three weeks, the new foundation will be re-poured.” On Tuesday morning at 6 a.m., Andrews’ nephew, who works with the Sheriff’s Department, took Myrna and her husband up Burning Tree Road. Firemen were putting out a blaze in their backyard. “They saved it,â€� Andrews says, a hint of wonder in her voice nearly a year later. “A bunch of young kids. And so I said, can I go in the house and give you some food? And they said, no, you cannot come near.â€� So her husband told the firefighters to feel free to break a window and get some blankets because it was getting cold. Help themselves to food and water, too. About two months later when the Andrews were able to return home they found a note taped to the mirror in the guest bathroom downstairs. It was a message from the firefighters, members of a fire department that traveled from 50 miles away. Thank you for your hospitality. Fittingly, on the bench by the front door of the Andrews’ house when the couple returned was the pillow she had put in advance of the upcoming holidays. On it was the word “Thankful.â€� “When we came up I gazed at the ground and said, ‘Why, why did my friend’s house burn and mine not,’â€� Andrews recalls. “You get that guilt feeling. … “Our house survives. I took a picture of the front door and the pillow. We’re so grateful and thankful for that. It happened somehow.â€� The clean-up took about six weeks. Crews took rugs and draperies to be laundered, and repairs were made. But Myrna and Jim finally got back into their home. “There was still some smoke, but not as bad,â€� Andrews says. “It was OK for us to come back and sleep in our bed and get some kind of normalcy as they call it. More normalcy returns this week when the Safeway Open presented by Chevron kicks off the 2018-19 PGA TOUR season at Silverado. A tournament that raised nearly $4 million for charity in its first two years has earmarked 100 percent of its ticket sales in 2018 to benefit fire relief efforts in the area. And that’s on top of the $200,000 committed to the relief effort after last year’s event. It’s a delicate situation, to be sure. People lost lives. People are still rebuilding in the hills around the resort. But the Safeway Open is part of the fabric of the community, too, and it’s a chance to showcase the resiliency as well as look forward to better things to come. “It’s definitely a situation that we’re very respectful of,â€� McEvoy says. “But in a lot of ways I think this year’s tournament is a celebration –not of the fire itself, but of the bond and the community that we have here in Napa, “Everyone at Safeway and Chevron are truly proud to be a part of this community and proud to be able to rally around this tragic incident and help support and rebuild where we can in the Napa Valley.â€� Andrews and her husband will be volunteering. Dwyer will again entertain clients in his skybox at the 18th green. Billy Idol, Sammy Hagar and Young The Giant will entertain. Celebrity chefs Thomas Keller, Morimoto and Charles Palmer will be there, too. The way Dwyer sees it, the tournament is a great opportunity to reintroduce people to Napa. “Napa’s back, open for business — come out to get your massages and get your wine and have a great time,â€� he says. “It’s a very positive, very positive thing. The PGA TOUR and Safeway should be very proud of the tournament they’re hosting here because the field just keeps getting better each year and it’s a great venue.â€� Andrews is excited to see all the tents and skyboxes being constructed. She doesn’t want the players or spectators to be worried about what they might find when they get to Silverado. “You can see the bright colors out there in the tents and these suites that are setting up,â€� she says. “And I send back to the players that we are looking forward to your arrival. “The energy of the tournament, it’s exciting to see.â€�

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So, Martin, just making sure we’ve got your story straight: You were a month shy of your 27th birthday last March, a definite “fledgling pro� who just a few weeks earlier had traveled to Mazatlan, Mexico, for a qualifying tournament to earn back playing privileges on PGA TOUR Latinoamerica, when on your way to that circuit’s opening event, the Guatemala Stella Artois Open, you decide, just for chuckles and a challenge, to try a Sunday qualifier in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico, for that week’s Web.com Tour El Bosque Mexico Championship by INNOVA. All good, so far? Big smile. Martin Trainer indicates we can move on. It’s all good. And then, you not only survive a 3-for-1 playoff for the last spot into the El Bosque, you post rounds of 67-70-68-69 to finish 14-under and win the bloody tournament, just the second time you’ve even made a cut in eight Web.com Tour tournaments. Wild and improbable, all of that, but there’s more, right? Because, don’t you miss the cut in nine of the next 13 tournaments, then strike again? You shoot 62-68-65-68 to win the Price Cutter Charity Championship presented by Dr Pepper, a second Web.com Tour victory that virtually assures you a PGA TOUR card for 2018-19 and . . . well, I mean, you start the year without even Latinoamerica status and you end it with PGA TOUR membership? Crazy, no? Another smile. Another laugh. Crazy, yes. What makes it even more wild – and please excuse me for sounding surprised – but it’s not like you blazed a trail through AJGA circles and meandered the country playing the big-league stuff by invitation only. You’re sort of the anti-pedigree kid . . .  Respectfully interrupting, Trainer laughs. “I almost skipped amateur golf, in a way.� Ah, right. You and no one else. But there’s the matter of your upbringing – which is quite cool and eclectic, don’t get me wrong. Yet, with all due respect, being born in Marseille, France, wouldn’t seem to be a gateway to the PGA TOUR. Paris, Texas, maybe, but not the south of France. It explains why you speak fluent French to your French-born mother, Isabelle, and English to your California-born father, Paul, and why you can make a terrific blanquette de veau – which I would love to savor, should the opportunity present itself – but, listen, let’s be honest, it doesn’t explain how you got to the PGA TOUR, especially without much junior golf stardom, then a collegiate career that was, well, unique. I mean, many kids quit college after their junior year to play golf. You quit golf after your junior year to stay in college. “I’ve always been sort of unusual in the way I’ve passed through the golf world,� laughed Trainer. Duly noted. But that begs the question: What do your cousins in France, the folks back home in Palo Alto, California, and your old teammates at the University of Southern California think about you having a PGA TOUR card? No hesitation, just another big laugh and smile. “I’m sure,� said Trainer, “that they’re as surprised as I am.� Against a backdrop of cookie-cutter swings and gold-plated junior/amateur/collegiate resumes, there are those who arrive at the PGA TOUR having forged a solitary path as if mentored by the Dalai Lama. They are players who possess “it,� according to Chris Zambri, the University of Southern California golf coach who recruited Trainer for his incoming class of 2009-10. “In golf, the intangibles are hard to come by,� Zambri said. “But Martin had them.�                                                          Stewart Hagestad, who has since won the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship, was a heralded member of that class. He knew of two of the other USC recruits that summer, T.J. Vogel and Sam Smith. “But Martin Trainer I had literally never heard of,� he said. “I did wonder, but then again, you had to trust coach’s judgment.� Zambri’s gut-feel was validated, too, on that first big day of tryouts in the fall of 2009. “We were freshmen, three weeks into the season and in a qualifier,� said Hagestad, “I shot something like 74 or 75 and Martin had a bogey-free 64. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘this kid can play.’� Turns out, it is Trainer’s MO. “When Martin is good,� said Vogel, “he is very, very good.� Like the spring of 2011, when Trainer closed out his sophomore year with a victory in the Pac-10 Championship. “The ability to execute when you’re nervous, Martin can do it as well as anyone we’ve ever had,� said Zambri. “He’s a calm customer.� But so, too, is he as unique a customer as Zambri has ever coached. Things went off script in the fall of 2012 when Trainer, concerned about a sore elbow (he eventually had surgery), decided his senior year would be spent working toward his degree in business administration and gearing his solo practice sessions toward his pro aspirations – no team play for him – and while coach didn’t understand, time has healed all wounds. “Looking back, Coach was a great guy and he taught me a lot,� said Trainer, who graduated with his degree in business administration. “Hey, I was a young coach and he was a young player and maybe neither one of us felt college was everything it could have been for us,� said Zambri. “But Martin’s a bright guy and super-talented and I have a lot of respect for what he’s done.� What he’s done is pretty much secure a PGA TOUR card in a most improbable manner – 42 tournaments on PGA TOUR Latinoamerica and just 28 on the Web.com Tour – that Trainer thinks confirms the glory of pro golf. There is no blueprint, no one way to proceed. “There are different paths, different journeys,� he said. “When I went to play college golf, I just assumed I’d try pro golf. This is a dream.� That the dream kicked off October 4-7 at the Safeway Open in Napa, California, a mere 90 minutes from Palo Alto, where Trainer moved with his family when he was 5, provided more flavor to his story. Paul and Isabelle were there to watch, as were a couple of aunts and plenty of friends, and for sure, it was never like that when he played PGA TOUR Latinoamerica or Web.com Tour events. Trainer did resist, however, the temptation to seek out Phil Mickelson and Fred Couples for autographs. “I thought about that,� he said. “(But) I’ve been on TOUR a few days, so maybe I shouldn’t charge in to meeting everyone quite yet.� He did, though, charge into a mode that explains much about who he is. Having opened with 75 and sitting 2-over with five holes to play in Round 2, Trainer hit it to 12 feet at the 14th, 3 feet at 15, 6 feet at 16, 3 feet at 17, and 3 feet at 18 – five straight birdies to shoot 66 and make the cut on the number. “That,� laughed Hagestad, “is such a Martin thing to do. It’s classic Martin.� Like the scintillating 64 he had shot in that USC qualifier and how he turned a qualifying spot into an El Bosque win and PGA TOUR card? “Exactly,� said Hagestad. “It’s a Martin thing.� Like getting into position to win and doing it? “Martin is wired that way,� said Zambri. An engineer, even a retired one who now makes his own electric bikes, could possibly explain, but the best Paul Trainer can do is offer this: “He’s streaky. He’s been like that all his career, so it didn’t surprise us that he won twice (to get his PGA TOUR card). He just needs to put it all together.� If Paul and Isabelle have fully supported their son’s pro golf aspirations – “almost irrationally,� laughs Martin – likely it is rooted in their own commitment to a life that was not the norm. A 6-foot-7-inch basketball standout at the University of California, San Diego (he still holds records for career points and rebounds and was enshrined into the Hall of Fame four years ago), Paul Trainer in the mid-1970s figured he’d play a few seasons of pro basketball in France. Only 22 years later he was still there, married with two sons. He worked as an engineer in the satellite TV world, but his passion was the outdoors, bikes, drones, and using his creative mind – sometimes to try and assist his son’s career. “He built a 3D putting template that I use,� said Martin. Paul Trainer has also used drones to offer video lessons to his son. But mostly, the father is is enjoying his son’s eclectic pursuit of a nomadic lifestyle that has already seen him play professionally in more than 15 different countries. “His story is a little different,� said Paul, who will travel with Isabelle in their RV to watch Martin play a handful of tournaments on the West Coast. “He didn’t play as a young boy in France, and he got a late start into the game, but when he became totally into golf, he put a lot of time into it.� Martin Trainer had moderate exposure to national tournaments – he qualified for the 2007 and 2008 USGA Junior Amateur, making it to the second round of match play the second visit – but some of the youngsters against whom he competed (Jordan Spieth, Emiliano Grillo, Brooks Koepka, Cody Gribble, Patrick Rodgers and Vogel the most notable) had far more experience on the big stage. What convinced Trainer that he might be able to make a career out of golf, however, was his victory in 2008 in the San Francisco City Golf Championship, and Zambri concedes that made an impression on him. “It’s a very good tournament with a lot of veteran players (Trainer beat 48-year-old Randy Haig, a former champ, in the final) and he showed great composure,� said Zambri. “Martin was very green, but I think that’s when he decided he wanted to be a golfer and he dove in, head over heels.� In golf, the intangibles are hard to come by. But Martin had them. It has been an intriguing ride, with Trainer fully embracing his reality (“I’ve never been the best, but I’ve kept improving�) and his approach to the game (“If I drive it straight, I’ll do well; if I don’t, I’ll miss cuts�). When he teed it up at the Safeway Open, he was wide-eyed about everything – from the courtesy car, to sharing a putting green with Mickelson, to being asked to come into the interview room for a pre-tournament interview. Talk about a whirlwind; just eight months earlier he had booked a schedule built around tournaments in Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile and Nicaragua, only to somehow make it through at Sunday qualifier for the El Bosque, then author a miracle of miracles. “I cried. I couldn’t believe it,� said Trainer. “The night before (the fourth round), I couldn’t sleep. I was two off the lead and I was as nervous as I’ve ever been. “But now, I’ve certainly surprised myself and I’ve had to pinch myself. It’s crazy, but at the same time, you just can’t just sign up (to play the PGA TOUR). I’ve earned it.�

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