Tucson’s sports exodus began gathering momentum about 15 years ago. A bowl game moved to Phoenix. The LPGA Tour vacated the premises. USA Baseball all but moved in the night.
Boxing? Gone.
And then it became a blur: Spring training vanished, the Pacific Coast League went poof, a pro softball franchise went bust, the Pro Bowler’s Tour failed, and, it now appears, Tucson is out of the NCAA basketball tournament rotation.
Did you know that Tucson was once the world headquarters for USA Track and Field and USA Gymnastics?
I think of this each time I turn into the parking lot at El Rio Golf Course and see the sparkling First Tee of Tucson clubhouse.
It’s new, and it’s decidedly first-class. Better yet, it’s growing, making an impact in a city whose sports past is sobering and sad.
About 1,000 kids play, work and learn in the First Tee of Tucson program, and not necessarily on golf. And it’s free. The primary mission of the First Tee of Tucson is to promote life skills, academics and leadership.
When former UA golfer and 1994 Arizona Amateur champion Dan Meyers ends his five-year run as president of the program this month, it will have been extended to the Country Club of Green Valley, Crooked Tree Golf Course, Rolling Hills Golf Course, the Sewailo Golf Club, and is now at the Randolph Golf Complex.
Why couldn’t he have been in charge of, say, USA Baseball?
“I watch the way these kids look you in the eye, shake your hand and handle themselves like responsible young adults, and it puts tears in my eyes,” says Meyers, who is part of the parent Tucson Conquistadores organization.
More than 4,000 Tucson kids have been touched by the First Tee program, including Meyers’ son, CDO senior Chris Meyers, the 2014 state golf champion who has accepted a golf scholarship to Stanford.
“A lot of people think this is a golf program, but it’s really a youth development program,” says Meyers, a Tucson CPA and financial consultant. “It’s so uplifting.”
The concept of the First Tee isn’t to produce golf champions.
“What’s great about the program is that it’s not like standing in line at school, waiting to be picked for the dodge ball team,” says Judy McDermott, executive director of the Conquistadores. “No one is picked last in the First Tee. You’re just picked.”
The Conquistadores raised about $1 million to get the First Tee program started and the clubhouse built at El Rio. It’s a volunteer organization — there are only two full-time employees — and the range of volunteers is impressive. One of those is former U.S. Senior Open and two-time PGA Tour champion Don Pooley. He now offers free golf instruction one afternoon a week.
The title in play here — First Tee of Tucson — parallels that of Dan Meyers. It’s not a stretch to say he is the patriarch of the first family of Tucson golf. Both have been overwhelming successes.
The son of a nuclear engineer from the high desert of Richland, Washington, Meyers arrived in Tucson 40 years ago. He played golf, earned a UA degree, spent a year trying to make the PGA Tour, then met and later married UA golf standout Susie Berdoy, who would be an LPGA Tour regular for three seasons.
Susie has gone on to work for two of golf’s most notable instructors, Hank Haney and Jim McLean, and for the last 20 years has been an in-demand instructor at Ventana Canyon Golf and Racquet Club. In the 2013 PGA Tour season, she worked with two champions, Michael Thompson and Derek Ernst.
If you are into golf, you probably know someone who has had a lesson from Susie. Three golfers from Arizona’s 2015 Pac-12 women’s golf team work with her.
In whatever free time they have, Dan and Susie have helped run the Thompson Invitational each summer at Oro Valley Country Club. Over the past few years, they have helped operate the “Junior Merit” club at OVCC: This year, the Oro Valley junior golfers were awarded scholarships to such places at Hofstra, Stanford and Memphis.
The highlight to the Meyers’ golf union came in October when their son, Chris, earned an invitational to the Nature Valley First Tee Open at Pebble Beach.
Playing with two-time U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen, Chris famously double-eagled the 18th hole to win the Pro Junior championship. ESPN ran the video footage for days.
Dan, who played in the 2011 U.S. Senior Amateur, recently struggled with his swing. “I asked Susie to watch me,” he says. It’s unknown whether she charged him full price for the lesson, but a few weeks later, he gained about 40 yards off the tee.
That’s similar to the touch and effect Dan Meyers has had on the First Tee program.
“The dream of the Conquistadores has been to build a program for kids,” he says. “For years, about all we had in Southern Arizona was the Ricki Rarick program, which was strictly golf. This goes a step beyond. This involves many, many more kids.
“We’ve got a long ways to go — we need more volunteers, more coaches and more kids. But it’s a very good start.”
