TOUR rookie sprints to Hawaii, opens with 1-under 69  PGATOUR.com Senior Correspondent HONOLULU -- Brendon De Jonge was enjoying an admittedly relaxed disposition as he left the golf course Wednesday afternoon after completing preparations for his first career PGA TOUR start, which was scheduled to commence at 8 a.m. the following day. It was only 2 p.m., EST. The problem was he was departing the TPC Piper Glen near his home in Charlotte, N.C., and was not yet aware that he had a tee time in the Sony Open in Hawaii five time zones away. As the sixth alternate, the rookie from Zimbabwe already had dismissed his chances of gaining entry into the year's first full-field event. But shortly after leaving the club, his agent phoned with the news that Arron Oberholser had withdrawn to complete a chain of withdrawals and no-shows that elevated De Jonge's status. He was in. Now the question was could he get there in time? 
So much for that relaxed disposition for a man still largely reveling in his honeymoon. De Jonge (pronounced dee-YONG) made it with a few hours to spare and not a minute's worth of sleep, and he went out and shot a 1-under-par 69 Thursday morning at Waialae Country Club playing with two rather popular and well-known competitors: U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy and Hawaii native Dean Wilson. "I'm not sure where my body is; probably on East Coast time. And my brain ... somewhere over the ocean maybe," De Jonge, 26, said with a wide grin. "I think I was so much in La-La Land that I didn't notice much of anything, and I just played golf." He played well, given the company and this being his TOUR debut and not sleeping at all before his tee time. Though he hit less than 50 percent of his fairways, De Jonge scrambled to register two birdies against one bogey to break par on a course he had never seen before located on an island on which he never had stepped foot before. "There were probably some benefits of it," De Jonge, who broke Nick Price's record with a 14-stroke victory in the 1999 Zimbabwe Amateur Championship, said of the abbreviated time he had to mull his circumstances. "Not getting caught up in the first event and all, I'm sure it helped me somewhat. I just went out and free-wheeled it. "It's been a different kind of welcome, for sure," he added. "It hasn't sunk in yet what's even happened." De Jonge, who did not have a chance to see his bride, Mary, before jetting off, did well to get to the Charlotte-Douglass International Airport in time for his 4:15 flight to Los Angeles, considering he had to pack clothes and he had trouble finding his golf travel bag. (He later found out that his brother, Richard, had borrowed it.) When he arrived in L.A., De Jonge discovered that his flight to Oahu was delayed for three hours. That pushed back his touchdown in Hawaii to 3:45 a.m. HST. Rather than go check into his hotel, De Jonge instructed his courier to cruise around the island. He visited a few historical sites and Waikiki Beach, though he didn't see much of them since it was dark and the middle of the night. About 4:45 he arrived at Waialae CC, and then he showered, shaved and ate breakfast before hitting a few balls. A Q-School graduate and a member of the Nationwide Tour from 2004-06, De Jonge was relieved when his first drive found a sprinkler head down the middle of the fairway, though he didn't land in many others. But he did average more than 300 yards off the tee and benefited from the advice of his caddie, Bully Duarte, a Honolulu native. De Jonge, who got married Dec. 23, hadn't worked too diligently on his golf game over the holidays. He and Mary, an elementary school teacher, took a cruise, and assorted friends and family were in and out visiting. He hadn't planned to start his season until the fourth event, the Buick Invitational. But a guy who once played through a broken rib during his college career at Virginia Tech to finish ninth at an NCAA regional tournament wasn't going to let several thousand miles and a sleepless night stop him from embarking on his TOUR career earlier than anticipated. "I was prepared to do whatever to get here," he said. He planned to celebrate with lunch and a nap. "I might not wake up until the next morning," De Jonge mused. "I'll probably think it was a dream." Copyright 2007 PGATOUR.com. All rights reserved. | ||||||||||||||||||
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