Coming Out Swinging
Unleashing a swing that whistles with controlled violence, golf pro Gregg Sawaya sends the ball zinging toward a far corner of the Van Nuys driving range.
An 11-year-old boy named Jason nods in approval. “Geeeeezz!” he reacts, watching the ball sail over the chain-link fence 350 yards away.
Sawaya turns, giving him the studied look of a coach or doting dad.
“OK son, now you try it,” he says. “Show me some style.”
*
For more than an hour, Jason--wearing a gold chain, baggy shorts and a glittering, street-smart earring--takes his cuts at the ball, sometimes spraying shots this way and that, but mostly straight down the middle.
One day each week, Jason has a father figure in his life, someone who genuinely wants to know how he’s doing. He lost that years ago when he became a ward of the court, placed in a Shadow Hills group home with other adolescents who were abused at home and often rebelled by joining gangs or experimenting with drugs.
Thanks to a program sponsored by the Van Nuys Rotary Club and the Human Services Network, which runs several group homes, youths from troubled families are getting some of their childhood back.
Last Thursday, 18 boys gathered at the Van Nuys Golf Course, tutored one on one in the mechanics of golf by Rotary Club members--tire salesmen, roofers, real estate salesmen and electricians with children of their own, working professionals who take an afternoon off every few months to give something back to luckless kids in their community.
Last year, a Rotarian named Judi Rose, who works as community relations director for a private service organization, envisioned a way to get middle-aged volunteers together with youths hailing from a thinner social fabric. All she had to do was mention golf and they all came running.
For the boys, many of them former gangbangers, it’s like going from drive-by shootings to the driving range.
The range resembles some chance meeting of rapper Ice-T and television’s Mr. Rogers. Boys with shaved heads or ponytails and baggy jeans stand hip to hip with men sporting military haircuts with plastic pen holders in their shirt pockets.
“Boom!” yells young Josh as he sends a ball into the fairway.
A teenager named Angel never imagined himself wielding a golf club.
“I always thought golf was for old people,” he says. “But now that I’ve tried it, I think it’s pretty cool. It’s like baseball, only you swing down, not across.”
Gregg Sawaya joined the group after a Rotarian to whom he was giving lessons invited him.
What he found were boys sheltered in more ways than one. At his first of four seminars, Sawaya asked how many kids had ever played baseball. Only three of 25 raised their hands.
“I thought I’d have to deal with a bunch of kids throwing clubs and getting angry,” he says. “But what I saw was a group of gentlemen who came to have fun. They take turns. They have little competitions. They are truly amazing.”
At that first seminar, Sawaya worked with one youth with a natural swing who paid attention to his every word. “I couldn’t stay away from him,” he says.
Out of that grew weekly lessons between the 35-year-old Sawaya and the boy: Jason.
*
Sawaya says the sudden popularity of professional golf freshman Tiger Woods--who is of African American, Chinese, Thai, American Indian and white descent--has impressed minority youths. But Sawaya also knows it’s an unlikely pairing--that this aristocratic game has rarely, if ever, reached out to minority kids.
Not long ago, Jason penned Sawaya a card that read: “I love you just like you are my Dad. . . . I wish every night that you will accept me. I love you a lot, so much that sometimes I feel like crying.”
The teacher has set up rules for the student: No drugs. No sleeping in class. And Jason must do well in school. So far, so good--and Jason brought his report card recently to prove it.
“We gotta work hard in the next few months,” the coach tells Jason. “In school and on the course.”
The wide-eyed boy nods.
“Gregg’s my favorite golfer of all time,” he says. Tiger’s good, but he’s only No. 2.”
