LINK: Father finds love of sport has passed to his son, 7

As one might expect, Mike Brown loves to brag about his son's exploits on the golf course, but, in this case it's warranted.

Zach Brown, a 7-year-old second grader at Summit School, has fallen in love with the game, and he's also been successful. Mike started entering Zach in tournaments at various junior golf tours throughout the state last January, and since then Zach has won 16 age-group tournaments out of the 31.

Mike Brown, a four-year letterman on the Wake Forest golf team in the 1980s, has been cautious about letting Zach plot his own course. He doesn't want his son to get burned out, and on several occasions Mike has had to tell Zach "no" to entering tournaments.

"What I like about Zach is he's turned into a fine gentleman, and golf has kind of helped him," Mike said. "He loves to play and always has a smile on his face, and I think that's why he's found success."

In his first tournament as a 6-year-old at the Duke University course, Zach shot a 123, good enough to win his age group. He's improved his game during the last year by about 40 shots. He can drive the ball around 150 yards, and the thing that his father is amazed by is how Zach shows no fear.

"He was getting ready to play in the nationals, and he wasn't nervous and wanted to go out there and just have fun and play the course," Brown said.

Among his victories, Zach won three majors on the Atlantic Coast Jr. Tour and finished third in the nationals at Sea Trail. He was also good enough to make the North Carolina team for the America's Cup, which is a Ryder Cup type of a tournament of the top 24 juniors in the state against the top 24 from Georgia.

Zach's teacher is Steve Forrest at Country Club Golf Center, and what sets Forrest apart, according to Brown, is the patience that he has with kids. Forrest gives Zach a lesson about once a month.

"Steve makes a good point in that you don't want to give a kid too much, too soon, so we have been really happy with that part of it," Brown said.

Forrest, who has given lessons to countless kids over the years, says that one of the things that Zach has at a young age is determination.

"You can just kind of see that, and he really wants to improve," Forrest said.

Forrest says that making golf fun for any kid is paramount because that keeps their interest.

"With Zach, we'll play games on the range and we keep it simple," Forrest said.

Forrest said that, with Mike Brown's background in golf, he's not making Zach do anything he doesn't want to do.

"That's really helping Zach because some parents try to live through their child, and Mike isn't like that; he's just guiding him along, and that's a big help," Forrest said.

Zach has lowered his stroke average considerably since that first tournament at Duke. His lowest score in the 31 tournaments that he played in last year was a 40 for 9 holes. At Bermuda Run West, he has shot a 38 for 9 holes in a practice round.

Mike Brown says he has not pushed Zach into golf, other than giving him a sawed-off club when Zach was about 2 years old. Mike learned a valuable lesson about pushing too far because of an older daughter.

Katie Brown, a senior volleyball player at Mount Tabor, was a good junior golfer until one day when she and her father played in a parent-child tournament.

"We butted heads one time and I went a little too far and she never played golf again," Mike said.

Mike is happy for Zach's success, but he also knows that down the road Zach might not be as focused on the game. Zach plays tennis and basketball and is a whiz on Nintendo.

"If he came to me tomorrow and said he wanted to do something else, then that's fine," Brown said. "I've already told him that he accomplished more in a year than I would have ever imagined."

Zach is also learning a lot about history through the game of golf. Mike said that Zach had a school project to do on a great American hero.

"He chose to do his project on Arnold Palmer," Mike said proudly. "That's pretty special that he chose one of my heroes for that project."

Zach has already informed his father where he wants to go to college. While daughter Katie has decided to go to North Carolina, Zach has other ideas.

"It's funny, but the other day Zach told me ‘Don't worry, Daddy, I'm going to be a Demon Deacon,'" Brown said.

Tournaments working together

North Carolina has a heavy dose of PGA Tour-sanctioned tournaments, and on the mind of every tournament director is the economy.

The tournament directors met earlier this month at Sedgefield Country Club to discuss the impact of the weak economy and how it relates to their tournaments. Those in attendance were Mark Brazil (Wyndham Championship), Jim Correll (Greater Hickory Classic), Kym Hougham (Wachovia Championship) and Jeff Kleiber (SAS Championship and Rex Hospital Open).

"We expect the economy to affect our tournaments to some degree, but we are committed to creating the best spectator experience possible for golf fans in North Carolina," Correll said.

Correll said that one of the ideas discussed was the tournaments sharing resources. This would ease the burden of expenses for all the tournaments.

"It was definitely time well spent," Correll said.

Around the green

Wake Forest's men's golf team will have to step up its play this spring if it wants to make the NCAA regionals. The Deacons opened the spring finishing 12th at the Gator Invitational. Dustin Groves was the best individual finisher for the Deacons, tying for 17th. To get a berth in the regionals, teams must have a .500 or better record. "I think we now have a .500 record overall," Coach Jerry Haas said. "We don't want to head into the ACC Tournament on the fence because there are too many good teams in this conference...."

The PGA Tour announced that it generated $124 million for charity in 2008, which includes the Champions and Nationwide tours. The tour, which keeps statistics on just about everything, says that the all-time charity amount has reached $1.38 billion. Commissioner Tim Finchem said: "Even as the economic conditions worsened, our tournaments did a terrific job of generating revenue to achieve another record year for charitable giving...."

The Hooter's Tour will be making a stop at Rock Barn Golf and Spa in Conover next month. The tournament will be played on the same course as the Greater Hickory Classic March 12-15 and will have a purse of $200,000 with $33,566 going to the winner. The Hooter's Tour boasts that it's the third largest tour in the U.S. behind only the PGA and Nationwide tours. Some of its former players include Zach Johnson, Jim Furyk, Lee Janzen, Tom Lehman, David Toms and John Daly.

■ John Dell can be reached at 727-4081 or at jdell@wsjournal.com.