He’s From Outback but Plans to Be Out in Front

Steve Elkington didn’t win the Los Angeles Open. He finished in a tie for eighth. But Elkington did finish first among all the pro golfers who are natives of the Australian Outback and are allergic to grass. And this is nothing to sneeze at.

Elkington, who began Sunday’s final round in a three-way tie for second place, began life in Inverell, in the northeast section of New South Wales along the MacIntyre River, 220 miles from the big city life of Newcastle.

His family moved to nearby Narrabri when he was young.

“We didn’t have much to do,” Elkington says in explaining his youth in the remote region.

Of course, there was rock-kicking. And he and his friends pulled carp from the rivers. But mostly, there was golf.

“That’s how we spent most of our time,” he said. “I’ve been going at it pretty strong since I was 10 years old.”

This comes as a surprise to most people who imagine the vast Australian Outback as a wasteland, devoid of water and life and, one surmises, golf courses.

When you learn of Elkington’s background, you tend to imagine him as a sort of bushman, a Crocodile Dundee wielding a sand wedge.

He played Sunday’s final round with winner Chip Beck and Ed Fiori, and appeared to be the equal of both men in social graces.

When Beck begins to pull away from Elkington and the rest of the field, you think that perhaps Elkington will attempt to bring Beck down with a well-placed poison dart or a whirring boomerang to the neck. He does not.

Elkington is not, you discover, some sort of backward tribesman. He is a sophisticated 25-year-old who lives near Sydney and who also spent three years at the University of Houston. Despite his, let’s say rural background, he has become a rising star on the PGA Tour, a two-time All-American at Houston who earned a very respectable $75,738 on the tour last year, his rookie year.

And he has also had to deal with his allergy to grass, which is not unlike a hockey player being allergic to ice or a wine critic breaking out in a horrible rash when exposed to grapes.

“It’s grass mostly that gets to me but really, anything that’s green, I’m allergic to,” Elkington said. “Grasses, leaves, trees, shrubs. Most everything. I sneeze and I can’t breathe and I get bronchitis. I definitely can’t play golf. I need two injections each week to keep it from becoming active. It just surfaced last year, and it’s something I’ve gotten used to. Sort of.

“I don’t see it as funny, but folks do think it’s odd that a professional golfer is allergic to grass.”

Perhaps the allergy didn’t surface during his childhood because, with the exception of golf courses, there was little grass to be found in the greater Inverell or Narrabri metropolitan areas, each having a population of about 10,000.

“Both those places, and the town I live in now, Wollongong, are way out in the country,” he said. “They’re sort of like Abilene, Tex., without the city.” Abilene, without the city is, for all intents, a desert.

He earned $22,500 for his performance at Riviera this week, his biggest payday ever, by shooting rounds of 69-67-66-72. And it is, Elkington says, just the start.

“It was a very good tournament for me,” he said, “but I should have done better today. I wanted better than 72. But my time is still ahead. One day I believe I’ll be a big name on this tour, one of the golfers everyone knows. I believe it will happen. I’m just not sure when.”