Noe Can Do

Terry Noe still plays golf.

He plays lots of golf, perhaps more than he ever has.

It’s just that these days the one-time junior golf phenom from Fullerton is no longer beating Tiger Woods, winning high-profile national titles or qualifying for professional tournaments so you don’t hear about him anymore.

But Noe, 23, still plays, and after a year of struggling on the course and several years struggling away from it, he is showing signs of realizing the potential that once made him one the country’s most promising young golfers.

“People always ask me, ‘Do you still play golf?’ ” Noe said. “I hate that question. That means they don’t hear about me anymore. That means I’m not playing well.”

Noe and 21 other golfers with Orange County ties will be among the 92-player field teeing off Friday in the 101st Southern California Golf Assn. Amateur Championship at Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club.

A recent string of successes has Noe hoping to join an impressive list of past champions that includes Woods, Paul Stankowski, John Jacobs and Al Geiberger in one of the nation’s longest-running amateur tournaments. If he does, he is certain to make headlines, something he hasn’t done since 1997.

Those headlines, however, weren’t always for golf success. He qualified for the Nissan Open and the U.S. Open that year as a 19-year-old but also was suspended from, and eventually quit, the Long Beach State golf team for failing to meet the team’s academic requirements.

“Terry had an aversion to rooms with desks and chalkboards,” Long Beach State Coach Bob Livingstone said. “That year, we were ranked real high and I found out that Terry pretty much wasn’t going to class. I suspended him for a month or two even though he was still eligible under the NCAA rules.”

Noe returned to the team in time to participate in the Big West Conference finals, where he finished ninth. After the year was over, the Korean-born Noe withdrew from school, citing difficulty with English.

“In high school it was OK,” Noe said. “But in college, I had to look up things in the dictionary a lot more. It was a lot of stress to play golf and study at the same time. I couldn’t do both, so I chose golf.”

But school wasn’t Noe’s only distraction, Livingston said.

“I don’t know many 18- or 19-year-olds who make more good decisions than bad ones,” Livingstone said. “Terry’s top priority was always golf and his social life came next. That didn’t leave a lot of time for school.”

Noe acknowledged that off-course activities impeded his progress, but preferred not to go into detail.

“Let’s just say that when you are young, you don’t think much,” he said. “Now, off the course I’m trying to do the same thing I’m doing on the course. I’m trying to limit my stupid mistakes.”

At first, the decision to leave school seemed a good one. Noe had a good summer in 1997, capped by qualifying for the U.S. Open. The next year wasn’t quite as successful, but it wasn’t bad: He placed fourth in the Porter Cup and advanced to the semifinals of match play in the Western Amateur. Both are considered among the top amateur tournaments in the nation.

At one point, he was ranked among the top five amateurs in the nation.

Those performances joined a resume that already included the 1994 U.S. Junior Amateur title and advancing to match play in both the 1995 U.S. Amateur and U.S. Amateur Public Links.

In 1996, he defeated Woods in the first round of match play at the 1996 Western Amateur. It was the last time Woods, who turned professional later that year, lost as an amateur.

The sky seemed the limit, but Noe soon found out that his resume wouldn’t win golf tournaments on its own. In 1999 he struggled to make cuts in top amateur events but still managed a season-best finish of 17th place in the Sunnehanna Amateur.

One of the byproducts of quitting school was missing opportunities to compete against the other players who are also trying to reach the top. The players who stayed in school were getting more tournament experience in pressure situations. Suddenly, players Noe regularly beat as a junior were gaining an edge.

“He would have had a much better chance of maturing if he was playing in college tournaments,” Livingstone said. “He has always had excellent work ethic and practices five or six hours a day, but there is a difference between practice and playing under the pressure of a tournament.”

Tim Devaney, who coached Noe at Sunny Hills High, remembers how much better Noe was than everybody else six years ago.

“But others surpassed him,” Devaney said. “It’s such a difficult road and when he quit school he took away the opportunity to play against those kids climbing the same ladder. In golf, you just can’t get that experience playing summer amateur tournaments.”

Noe disagrees. It was merely a bad stretch, he said, one he views as a blessing of sorts because it made him stronger mentally and forced him to rediscover his goals.

“I was in a slump,” Noe said. “Let’s put it that way. Was I burned out? Yeah, why not? But for me or you or anybody else, you’ve got to pass those tough times to get where you want to go.

“I told myself, ‘You know you want to play golf and you’re getting old. If you want to be on the top of the world in golf, you’ve got to do it now. To get there you’ve got to work hard and practice.’ ”

So far this year, Noe has placed in the top 10 of the Azalea Invitational (ninth) and the Southwestern Amateur (eighth). His national ranking, which dropped out of the top 100 in 1999, is up to 64.

Devaney said that Noe’s choice of tournaments shows that he is serious about rededicating himself to golf.

“It seems like he knows now where he has to go and who he has to beat to get there,” Devaney said. “He showing now that he knows he needs to prove himself.”

Confidence, though slightly damaged during his poor 1999 season, is not a problem.

Noe has no doubts that he can hold his own as a pro. He has won twice playing as an amateur on the Golden State Tour, a professional mini tour, including a course-record 63 May 30 at Desert Falls in Rancho Mirage. And he said Woods’ record-setting victory in the U.S. Open over the weekend reaffirmed his belief.

“When I watch golf, I say to myself, ‘Yeah, I used to beat that guy,’ ” Noe said. “And he’s beating everyone else, so I think I can beat them, too. I think those things a lot. It gives you more confidence when you hear that you beat Tiger Woods a couple of years ago. It might not be true. You’ve got to work hard to get there, but I think that a lot.”

His plans include all the major amateur tournaments this summer, including trying to qualify for the U.S. Amateur in August. Afterward, he will turn professional. He doesn’t mind if it is on the Buy.com Tour, the Canadian Tour, the Asian Tour or on mini tours, he just wants to keep playing.

“Golf is my job,” he said. “This is what I want to do, I’m never, ever going to quit this golf game, so don’t ask me those kinds of silly questions like ‘[Do you] still play?’ ”