When Golf Becomes Child’s Play : Braden Usher Is a Sweet-Swinging Youngster Who Already Can Tee It Up With the Big Boys

Ever watch a 9-year-old at play? Goofy is perhaps the best word to describe it. Arms and legs flailing wildly with no apparent link to each other, limbs that seem to take commands not from the brain but from some lesser anatomical part.

Kicking a ball can seem as complicated as a triple back flip with a twist off a 10-meter diving platform. Is that boy swinging a baseball bat or is he trying to escape a swarm of angry bees?

Now, imagine a child that age trying to play golf, perhaps the most precise and unforgiving of all sports, a frustrating game that has sent thousands of well-coordinated adults screaming off into the sunset, bellowing incoherently and, in frustration, snapping the shafts of their expensive golf clubs like so many used toothpicks.

A 9-year-old has as much chance of mastering this game as he does of having a long and meaningful conversation with actor George Burns about the good old days.

But there are exceptions. It’s not too difficult to find some youngsters who can kick a ball with reasonable skill. There are always a few who can hit a baseball more than adequately. And, occasionally, if you search long and hard, you’ll find a youngster for whom golf is as easy as yanking on his dog’s tail.

Meet Braden Usher. The next Arnold Palmer. The next Jack Nicklaus. The next time he chips the ball into the hole from 30 yards away you’d like to strangle him.

“There,” he said as the ball touched down softly on the green and spun backward into the cup. “That’s more like it.”

Yo, Braden, ever have a nice, shiny, red golf tee jammed under your fingernail?

“Personally, he makes me sick,” said Frank Randazzo, a member of the Calabasas Golf and Country Club where Braden plays.

Randazzo was, of course, just kidding. But the nature of golf is such that when you watch a boy who is younger than your golf shoes play the game better than you do, well, the hair on the back of your neck tends to stand up.

Braden is four feet tall and weighs 60 pounds. Rodney Dangerfield’s golf bag in the movie “Caddyshack” was considerably larger. But his size and youth become mere afterthoughts when he starts hitting golf balls, launching drive after perfect drive with a swing so sweet you can feel your teeth starting to decay just watching. Same with the irons. A machine at work, pumping out low screamers with the 2-iron and 3-iron and 4-iron, then lobbing terrific-looking shots high into the air with the 8-iron and 9-iron and wedge.

And all of them landing remarkably close to their target.

“There are maybe a handful of kids in Southern California, maybe three or four of them, who have anything approaching Braden’s talent,” said Calabasas golf professional Jon Treglown, who has been teaching the game for a decade. “When I came to this course a year ago I saw this kid on the practice range. He took two swings and my eyes lit up.”

Braden has entered nine Southern California Junior PGA tournaments for 9-year-olds this year. He won seven and finished second in the other two. But mostly he plays against 11-year-olds, and if you don’t know how crucial those two years are to the physical development of a boy, then listen to Gary Usher, the 6-foot father of the golfing whiz kid.

“Braden is just slightly above average size for his age,” he said. “But some of these 11-year-olds I see at these tournaments are almost as big as I am. You can’t imagine the difference.”

Against that competition, Braden has won once in 17 tournaments this year. But he has been runner-up five times, finished third three times and fourth seven times.

Then again, what’s the big surprise? He has been playing the game for five years.

“When he was 4, I started playing golf seriously,” Gary Usher of Calabasas said. “My wife was upset that I was at the practice range so much. She said if I wanted to keep going I had to take the kid. So he started tagging along and I cut down an old driver and gave it to him with a bucket of balls and ignored him. If I didn’t take him with me, he’d cry.

“After about one year of this, I started noticing that he was hitting the ball pretty far. And very straight. Then I started paying attention.”

Today, a lot of people pay attention. Uncorking his small frame into a powerful swing, Braden consistently knocks his drives 165 to 175 yards down the middle of the fairway. He takes about 47 strokes per nine holes and has broken 90 several times. The only reason his scores are not considerably lower is that golf courses are designed for adults, for people who can hit the ball 250 yards. And that, according to those who follow Braden’s progress, is just a matter of Mother Nature taking over.

“He knows more about the game of golf, the subtle things about playing certain shots, than most adult golfers do,” Treglown said. “He has unlimited potential. Really unlimited potential. He has all the tools to play this game at the top level. His swing is so perfect that all he has to do is get bigger and he’ll just grow into a top adult player.”

And although Braden already has set a goal of playing on the PGA Tour one day, don’t rush out and have any “Braden’s Battalion” pins made just yet. Despite all the natural talent and the sugar-sweet swing, there’s still this tricky business down the road involving adolescence and girls and cars and well, you know, that stuff.

“He’s so good and he’s so dedicated right now,” Treglown said, “but you wonder if his enthusiasm will remain so high. That’s the only question. Let’s wait until he’s 13 or 14 and discovers girls, and when he’s 16 and 17 and really discovers girls, and when he gets his first car and his buddies and the girls want to go to the beach. Then let’s see if he still wants to come to the golf course every day. Then we’ll see.”

Sometimes, Braden gives the impression that he has been sent down a treacherous road, that this game has lashed out with its powerful tentacles and is slowly squeezing the boy out of the boy.

“I have friends who don’t play golf,” he said. “I play with them for fun, kicking a soccer ball and all those kid’s games. But golf is pretty serious. They give me a hard time because I spend so much time at the golf course, but I don’t care. I want to play on the PGA Tour. I’m not going to get there by kicking a soccer ball around. When I take four days off and hang around with my friends it screws my game up. I can’t afford that.”

That is somewhat frightening talk from a very young boy. But at other times he leaves little doubt that although golf surely has taken some of the boy out of him, there’s still a lot of it left.

“I’m not going to let any girl take me away from golf,” he said, the mere thought of it causing a twisted, lemon-sucking expression to blanket his face. “I won’t get married until I’m 45, at least. Even if I meet the most beautiful girl in the world, golf will come first.”

And then you smile, wishing more than anything in the world you could be there the day the cutest, most perfect giggling little blonde and blue-eyed and dimpled and pug-nosed girl catches his eye and makes his heart thump and his throat go dry and his legs feel like tapioca pudding.

Because that’s the day you’ll want to play this youngster for a dollar a hole.