Home on the (driving) range

CGA's Haase hones

championship form

one bucket at a time

Commentary
By DAVID HAUGH

CULVER

Sometimes she would arrive at dawn. Sometimes she would arrive at dusk. But always she would arrive.

Nearly every day last summer, the gold car would pull into the parking lot at Mystic Hills Golf Club along Hwy. 110 in rural Marshall County. And the girl with the golden hair -- not to mention the golden future -- would get out and start hacking away on the practice tee.

Jim Walsh didn't know her name.

He will always know her swing.

For hours Walsh would sit on his front porch on the opposite side of County Road 20B, directly across from the practice tee, trying to read while the image of this girl swinging hundreds of times distracted him.

She would hit a hundred drives. Then a hundred irons. Then a hundred chip shots. Then putting practice began.

If she were an employee for the golf course, surely she would have been charging overtime.

"She worked and worked and worked so long on her swing,'' said Walsh, a retiree. "So I kept telling my wife, 'Come out here and see this kid. She's good.' ''

So good that finally about mid-summer curiosity got the best of Walsh. He had heard from friends in town about a local girl from The Culver Academies who had finished as the runner-up at the IHSAA meet in 2000. One day he walked across the street to put a name with a swing.

"I asked her if she was that girl, and she said, 'Yeah,' '' Walsh recalled. "I told her, 'I've been watching you practice all summer, and I think all this work has got to pay off for you.'''

Last month at the Legends of Indiana Golf Course in Franklin, Ind., far removed from her labor on the shores of Lake Maxinkuckee, all that work did.

Caroline Haase (Hah-see), the Culver Girls Academy junior who supplied Walsh with his personal Golf Channel last summer, bettered her state runner-up finish as a sophomore by winning the IHSAA title by four strokes.

The record will say Haase won on Sept. 29, 2001. But she knows that this was a victory clinched on a different page of the calendar.

"Golf was my first priority last summer,'' said Haase, as articulate in person as she is diligent on the course.

"I'd go hit balls every day, most of the day. My work ethic is a little more serious, I guess, and hurts me at times. Sure, I'd rather be hanging out with my friends on a Friday afternoon, but the only way I'll meet my goals is to practice.''

Since Haase won her first tournament in Fort Wayne when she was 7, those goals haven't changed.

One day Haase hopes fans like Walsh can admire her golf swing on ESPN instead of across the county road. One day she hopes to follow a player she admired growing up, Clay High product Katy Wilkinson-Harris, into professional golf. One day she hopes to become the first golfer to go from CGA to the LPGA.

"I've had aspirations to play with the stars since grade school,'' Haase admitted. "Only recently have I realized just how lofty those goals are. But if I keep working hard, who knows?''

She already works with a swing coach in Destin, Fla., by the name of Tom Stickney. He breaks down every angle of Haase's swing on a computer and shows her ways to make it more efficient.

A minor adjustment to widen the angle of her right arm at the beginning of the season, in fact, helped her finish fast but start slow -- Haase shot a 79 at Sprig-O-Mint and an 83 at Swan Lake to open the season.

Her progress encountered paralysis by analysis.

"I think she was thinking about the swing change too much,'' said her dad and coach, Fred Haase, a Latin and economics teacher at The Academies. "Once she worked that out, she was fine.''

Even after Haase smoothed out her swing, there was no computer that could help settle the jitters that made her teeter in the tee box.

"At the beginning of the season, I got nervous,'' admitted Haase, also the ninth-ranked student in her junior class. "I knew there was a lot of pressure on me (as last year's runner-up). I felt like a lot of people were watching me. It got to me.''

Her mind drowned in anxiety. To her, a college scholarship hung in the balance. A budding pro career hinged on every swing.

"I was focusing too much on my mechanics,'' Haase said. "I had to realize that golf's not a game where you're going to be perfect. At the beginning of the year, I struggled with that.''

To escape that tidal wave of tension, Haase mentally took herself back to all those summer days at Mystic Hills. Back when it was just her, the sun, the grass, and bucketfuls of balls.

And the only audience was a man on his porch, shaking his head in awe.

Next summer, there might be a crowd.

Staff writer David Haugh:

dhaugh@sbtinfo.com

(574) 235-6382