Stories: Jordan Stephens
Jordan Stephens has been playing golf at the Overton Park golf course practically his whole life. He shares the story of one truly special weekend on the links.
One of my earliest memories of swinging a golf club is at Overton Park. For the golfers in my family, the course at Overton served as the perfect place to learn the game and “earn your stripes.” My grandfather played there, my dad learned the game there, and both my brother and I were first taught the game of golf out there. While it isn’t the longest or most difficult course in the city, the Overton Park golf course is one of the many gems that makes Memphis so great.
As a golfer, part of the appeal of the course is that it plays host to one of the oldest junior match play tournaments in the U.S. Going on its 68th year, this tournament is an excellent opportunity for young golfers to compete in one of the oldest forms of golf – a form that, in my opinion, is an art that is being lost in the U.S. Match play differs from traditional stroke play in that it involves two players going head-to-head, with a point awarded to the player that wins the hole. The golfer who wins the most holes wins the match, as opposed to the golfer with the lowest total score. It was during this tournament that my story took place.
In the summer of 2000, a few weeks before my 13th birthday, I was 3 holes down with 4 holes to play as I stood on the tee box of #6. Even from the elevated tee, you can only see the top of the flag peeking up from the hill 250+ yards away. I grabbed my 4 iron, lined up my shot right at the flag between the two giant trees overhanging the fairway, and swung. The ball took off right at the flag and disappeared behind the hill. As we approached the green we only saw one ball off to the side which we quickly verified as my opponent’s. While searching frantically around the green, in the brush behind the green, anywhere I thought it could possibly have rolled, I heard from my opponent’s mom who was following the match, “Hey, is this your ball?” I turned around to see her standing over the cup looking straight down. Sure enough, that was my ball! I had made a hole-in-one before, but never on a par 4! With the remaining holes I tied up the match, but lost on the third hole of the sudden death playoff. I hated to lose the match, but nothing could overshadow the excitement of claiming a double eagle.
The tournament that summer turned out to provide more than just the hole-in-one. A few days before, during the stroke play round to flight the matches, I was paired with three other guys, one of whom I noticed had some sort of accent. At the time, I had a fascination with the UK and British culture following a visit to Epcot and seeing a Beatles cover band in the United Kingdom attraction. I can clearly remember walking up the fairway on #5, telling him my score from the previous hole, and noticing that there was something strange about the way he talked. When the only conversations you have on a golf course are the fragmented bits of “What did you get?” / “Par” / “OK,” it isn’t incredibly easy to pick out any accent. It wasn’t until I asked him where he was from that I found out he was from London and in town for the summer.
We continued to chat throughout the remainder of the round, and our families all met outside the clubhouse afterwards. With his grandparents living here in Memphis, he and his family continued coming here every summer. The tournament became a summer tradition for all of us. As the years went on, his sister and my brother would also join in the tournament play. What began on the course at Overton Park has continued as a great friendship for the past 13 years. To this day, his visits are always marked with a round or two at Overton.
