In TJ Kua’s fifth golf tournament as a professional, he tied for ninth at this week’s Bridgestone Pro-Scratch Championship at Pearl Country Club, his home away from his Kauai home. Kua was eight shots behind winners Damien Jamila and Mark Takahama — not all that memorable.
More memorable was that, for the first time, Kua played a tournament with his father, Stan. The retired policeman’s goal in this "second life" is to play more golf with sons TJ and Trevor.
"I want to play the Hilo Invitational in the same flight as my sons," says Stan, 53. "I want to play with them until I cannot do it anymore."
The Pro-Scratch teams a professional with an amateur who plays to a "scratch" handicap. Next up, dad hopes, is getting 14-year-old junior golfer Trevor involved. TJ, who hasn’t hit 125 pounds yet, claims his brother is now "packing on the pounds" and is almost as "big" as he is.
The 12th annual Pro-Scratch had 44 teams and sold out in 24 hours. Sponsor Del-Marc Fujita got the Kuas entry immediately and recognized both names.
TJ was the University of Hawaii’s anchor the past four years, after boarding at Kamehameha. In 2009, he won the Manoa Cup and qualified for the Sony Open in Hawaii, then captured State Stroke Play in 2010. He will graduate next month in Sociology and still "definitely" plans to try the Asian golf tour, but has yet to fill out the entry form. Coaching kids has caught his interest since he won his first pro start in July.
His father would like to see him try a tour, like TJ’s uncle —Hawaii Golf Hall of Famer David Ishii, who won 14 times on the Japan PGA. He also doesn’t want to push TJ, who once told his mother "Dad is trying to make my life his life."
"I really don’t want him to waste what he learned in college," Stan says. "At least give it a chance. I want him to do it young so he can see what’s out there. If he does well, great. If not, at least he’s seen what’s out there.
"But I rarely tell him what to do. I don’t like telling kids what to do. I want them to learn."
Fujita, also from Kauai, was just as familiar with Stan, who started golfing at 17 after a falling out with his high school baseball coach. He played football at UH and now golfs three or four times a week at Wailua. Fujita and others a bit younger than Stan remember watching in awe when he used to hit a huge slice over the ocean on the par-4, dogleg-right second hole of their home course Wailua.
"We’d go berserk," Fujita recalled. "He’d just kill the ball he was so strong."
"He was the first guy I saw who hit a coconut tree and the ball went forward," PCC Director of Operations Guy Yamamoto recalled. "It had so much spin."
"I heard," Fujita joked, "the tree fell over later that day."
That was more than 30 years and 100 pounds ago. Stan had bariatrics surgery two years ago and is down to 185 pounds. His "berserk" drives are now a little shorter and he is trying to get used to many more moving parts.
TJ has settled on a swing and is relentlessly working on his game, when he is not pondering his future.
"I’m just by myself doing range work and practicing," he said. "If I’m really struggling I get somebody I trust to take a peek. I’m not trying to rebuild or change anything anymore. I’m just going with what I’ve got."
