After his walk-off double-eagle at Pebble Beach’s famed 18th hole, Canyon del Oro senior Chris Meyers found himself on ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” NBC/Golf Channel, in Golfweek magazine and featured in a string of other golf publications, podcasts and keep-your-eye-on-this-kid lists.
Finally, after returning to Tucson from a pinch-yourself-it’s-true week playing on the Champions Tour, winning the best-ball title with two-time U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen, Meyers re-entered Earth’s orbit.
“He told me, ‘OK, this is great, but I’m ready to move on,’” said Dan Meyers, Chris’ father, himself a former Arizona and Tucson city amateur champion. “Chris has played better, but not in that type of environment. To win that tournament, with a double-eagle on the 18th at Pebble Beach, on national TV, it probably can’t get any better.”
Meyers and his mother, Susie Meyers, who is the golf teacher/instructor for, among others, PGA Tour regular Michael Thompson and Arizona’s All-Pac-12 golfer Lindsey Weaver, won’t step back and soak it in for long.
In preparation for next month’s state championships — and while most of the Tucson golf courses are down for overseeding — Chris and his mother will fly to New York this week to play Winged Foot Country Club, a U.S. Open course, and several other of the East’s leading golf facilities.
Playing at Pebble Beach wasn’t new to Meyers. He got his first hole-in-one at the Peter Hay Golf Course, a nine-hole layout next to the ocean at Pebble Beach. He was 7. How’s that for breaking into golf?
Meyers, who will play college golf at Stanford, was one of 81 PGA Tour First Tee players invited to the Nature Valley First Tee Open. The PGA Tour paid all expenses: airfare, hotel, ground transportation. While there, he listened to motivational speeches from, among others, former NFL quarterback Steve Young, and played in a foursome with PGA Tour winners Fred Funk and Jay Haas.
“I was encouraged not just by Chris’ performance, but by how comfortable he was and how he handled himself,” his father said. “That’s half of the battle right there. It’s a big step forward in the goals he has set for himself.”
