Jed Dirksen
Hampton-Dumont High School
Hampton, Iowa
What were you doing when you were 17?
Probably not sitting in the airport in Myrtle Beach after competing in the Golfweek Junior at the Sea Trail Golf Resort's Jones Course because you made the Golfweek magazine Saragin ranking of the top 100 junior golfers in the country. Then making a connecting flight to Atlanta, where you had to grab a car and drive the rest of the way back to Miami because the flight was overbooked. Then getting just a few hours sleep before helping your high school team to a second-place district finish.
Probably not waiting until after dark one night a couple weeks later to play four holes without anyone knowing, because with no school for a week after a category 3 hurricane, you were spending 10 hours a day just working on the Biltmore's practice green because the course wasn't open and it was driving you nuts.
Probably not living a matter of minutes from the ocean, but never going to it simply because you can't golf on the water.
And probably not playing golf against former Miami Dolphin quarterback Dan Marino's son, while the Hall of Famer followed you around the course.
Jed Dirksen's life is probably drastically different than yours was at his age.
Jed's life is even drastically different than his own since he burst onto the Iowa high school golf scene two springs ago as a freshman, already seemingly having played a lifetime of golf and possessing an incredible short game to prove it, and turning a lot of heads even in this agricultural wasteland that can feed the world but not a golfer's soul.
Then, golf was his life, traveling from tournament to tournament, but having to hang the clubs up when the color of the dimpled ball matched the color of the ground, and having to wait to get back on the course until the snow retreated.
Now, after helping to lead H-D to a second-place finish at a state meet with freshly aerated greens months and months ago, he's in paradise, with a course out his back door, beautiful WEATHER all-year-round with the exception of a wandering hurricane or two, college scouts coming to call from the Pac 10, Big 10, Big 12, and ACC, as well as others, and nothing but a bright future ahead of him.
He can't swing a club without nearly hitting a like-minded player with a passion, a drive, and an intensity to match his.
Golf used to be his life. Now it's his LIFE.
"It's been awesome," Jed said. "There's more talent here and I feel my game has stepped up already. I want to gradually improve my game as a whole from ball striking to putting, every part. I want to be an all around better player."
Jed catches a ride to school - where he's just as good of a student as he is a golfer with A-pluses and A's for the first quarter - at 7 a.m., gets out shortly after 2 p.m., plays golf until dark, then hits the books.
He's been lighting it up. There's clips from the Miami Herald to prove it.
And Jed teed off at state - a tournament that was pushed back two weeks by Hurricane Wilma - this week in the team's first-ever trip after placing seventh individually at regionals with a 74.
But Jed, recently named an American Junior Golf Association All-American, didn't move down there because of high school golf. He moved down there because of future golf in this most important year for recruiting, a budding career that needed the move, and a dream of playing on the PGA tour that is coming more into focus with every question of "Who is that kid in the bright red hat with the curly blond locks swirling out underneath?"
Everyone else with his same dream was already getting a leg, or a club, up on him, with other parents already making some type of sacrifice for their prodigy's future. Everyone else was already golfing year-round, being seen.
In a highly competitive world of professional golf, where there are only a few spots for a few thousand, if not many, many more, Jed risked being left on the driving range instead of navigating the Blue Monster at Doral.
The courses are different in south Florida than what he was used to in Iowa and the Midwest. They're flatter, with Bermuda grass, more sand, and water, and alligators crawling out of the hazards instead of ducks.
"I don't really worry about them unless they are on land close to me," Jed said.
The junior also didn't worry much about Hurricane Katrina when it blew over south Florida as a category 1, comparing it to a very severe Midwestern thunderstorm, and thinking it was pretty cool, a storm that toppled a Ficus tree in the front yard of the house he's staying.
"They were glad it fell," Jed said of his surrogate parents. "They didn't like it anyway."
Category 3 Hurricane Wilma was a different story, creating five hours worth of work for three guys including Jed, cleaning up debris at coach Steve Blaum's house, a coach who had PGA aspirations himself, and had the talent, but was denied by unfortunate circumstances.
Emotionally, he was ready to go. He hasn't been homesick, seeing it as an extended golf trip, extended long enough to golf around the calendar. He's perfectly happy without the time off.
"I haven't been able to do it during the winter months before," said Jed, "but you don't get burned out if you truly love to do it."
But if there was any doubt what Jed, a teenager coming into his prime screwing-around years, is in Florida for, consider this - he's been to South Beach, the party capital of Florida, if not the country, but only during the early afternoon when everybody was sleeping.
"I think I'm headed in the right direction," Jed said. "I thought I'd be down here eventually, anyway. It was just a matter of time."
Full Story: http://www.ajga.org/Media_Center/Clips/Artical.asp?AID=2408&ss=Weather
