Tiger Woods isn’t playing this weekend, but I bet you will want to watch the final round of the Byron Nelson Golf Tournament in Dallas after you read this blog post, anyway.
22 year-old Sean O’Hair — who was born and raised in Lubbock — is leading the tournament going into the final round. O’Hair was a high school student and one of the nation’s top junior players when he turned pro at 17 in September, 1999, one calendar year before fellow teens and future PGA Tour card-holders Ty Tryon and Kevin Na.
However, O’Hair’s journey to the PGA Tour was anything but a smooth one. He languished on the mini-tours for the past five years, traveling over 200,000 miles in the process. O’Hair finally won his Tour card by finishing fourth in the 2004 PGA Tour Qualifying School this past fall, but as this January, 2005 GolfWorld article reports, O’Hair has had to overcome a lot more than just the rigors of travel on the mini-tours in attaining his PGA Tour Card:

Marc O’Hair [Sean O’Hair’s father], 52, signed management contracts with his son, says he invested $2 million in his boy’s professional future and subjected Sean to a physical and psychological regimen that would make most drill sergeants blush. Sean broke free in 2002 and has not spoken to his father since a perfunctory greeting at Sean’s wedding more than two years ago.

Marc O’Hair, a large man who wore dark sunglasses, subjected Sean to a rigorous routine that stood out. He was sometimes brusque to tournament, rules and school officials, event organizers and other parents. His son, by design, was treated as a commodity.
Sean signed his first contract with his dad when he was 17, requiring him to pay his father 10 percent of his professional earnings for life. He signed another when he was 20, Marc says.

“I told him, ‘I can’t blow this kind of money without a return,'” Marc says.” ‘When you make it, there has to be payback someday.'”

Taking a tough-love approach, Marc drove his son hard. While the results speak for themselves, those who watched the duo believe there was madness in the method. As a junior player, Sean was forced to run a mile for making bogeys or finishing over par at tournaments. Marc once claimed he made Sean run eight miles in 93-degree heat after shooting an 80. At a 1998 AJGA tournament in California, Sean shot 79, then spent part of the night logging seven miles on a treadmill, a friend, Christo Greyling, says.

“The next day, he could hardly walk,” remembers Greyling, a former AJGA player and a senior at University of Georgia. “We could hardly believe he [Marc] went through with it.”

Other players . . . say Marc would berate his son in the presence of others. Dad admits slapping his son, but he says he never injured him. Sean declines to discuss the specifics of his father’s behavior, but he missed numerous social activities because he was on the driving range, working out or watching tapes of his swing. “We’d go to the beach, have an outing at Disney, do something social, and he’d be out in the parking lot with his dad doing some crazy crap [drill],” says Erik Compton, who competed in AJGA events with Sean and roomed with him at the 1998 Canon Cup team matches.
In addition to the golf work, Marc awakened his son at 5 a.m., had him run a mile and lift weights. After Sean turned pro, Marc cooked meals on a portable stove in their hotel room so that Sean ate the right foods. Every day was like boot camp, and the military comparisons aren’t by accident.

“What am I supposed to do, say, ‘Oh, Seany boy, you don’t have to get up early today,'” Marc says sarcastically. “The military, they know how to build a champion. Somebody who slacks off, that’s a loser. The typical high-school kid is hanging out at the mall – that’s a loser. You have to have a goal or you are just wasting time. I busted my [butt] on this thing. I thought I was doing him a favor. You would not believe what I did for him.”

How the family dynamic develops from here is anybody’s guess. No question, dad feels a broiling sense of festering betrayal. In fact, Sean is worried that Marc will someday sue him for repayment of the money spent fostering his career. “I hope I don’t have to go through that,” he says of a legal battle, “because that’s been a bit of a concern.” Truth be told, dad has other ideas. Marc says he has placed 25 photocopies of their contracts and a cover letter into envelopes he plans to mail to media outlets when his son makes a splash on tour.

“As soon as he gets famous, I am going to lower the boom,” Marc says. “I am going to show everybody what he did to me. I have no intention of suing him. I intend to crucify him in the media, because what he did to me is not right.”

Read the entire article. Then go watch the tournament and pull for this kid to win it, and for his father never to receive a nickel from him.
Update: Young O’Hair acquitted himself well in the final round, shooting a two under par 68 and finishing in second place, one stroke off Ted Purdy’s 15 under par winning score. O’Hair won $669,600 for his second place finish.