FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA | It’s a cool January morning in South Florida, and a slight breeze sends a scent of freshly cut grass through the air. The dew lingers as the sun shines down, pulling the last bit of moisture from the Bermuda turf at Coral Ridge Country Club.
In the clearing of a dogleg-right par-5 stand a girl and her dad – a player and her caddie – as they discuss where to lay up. From a distance, you see a young woman playing a match on a flawless day, but if you know the story, you see something extraordinary that can happen only in golf.
In a white jacket with “USA” stitched over her heart is 13-year-old Alexa Pano, attempting to defend her Ione D. Jones/Doherty Amateur Championship title against a four-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur winner, Meghan Stasi, who is 26 years her senior. You easily could convince a stranger that Pano is Stasi’s daughter, golf prowess and all.
As a gallery of 40 people looks on, Pano takes out her driver. Her father, Rick, brings the bag to the side and crouches down, settling his hand on top of the blades of grass below him. There is a large lake to the right and a bunker to the left, but that isn’t stopping Alexa from using the longest club she has to give herself a shorter third shot.
She steps forward and nonchalantly sends the ball piercing down the fairway, the spectators glancing back and forth at each other with eyebrows raised. Before she hit, one person in the group remarked that her club selection seemed a tad reckless. He didn’t have anything to say afterward.
Not everyone has that shot and not everyone can capture your attention with one swing.
Then again, nobody is quite like Alexa Pano.
At their home in Lake Worth, Fla., the Panos have two display cases, each 6 feet tall and 12 feet wide. Like a glass of water on the brink of spilling, they are filled to the brim with golf trophies and memorabilia.
There you can read her name plate from the U.S. Women’s Amateur she qualified for at age 11. Not far away is her first badge from a U.S. Kids Golf event. On the floor, there are some two dozen trophies without a home for the moment. A little bit of messiness is the price you pay for winning more than 300 prizes before becoming a teenager.
At age 5, Alexa walked into her dad’s office and announced she was done playing softball and wanted to start golf. Two weeks after playing for the first time, she competed in a local tournament and finished third – out of three.
“I think I shot 72 for nine holes,” Alexa says, laughing. “I still have the trophy in my house, which is pretty special.”
It didn’t take too long for her to get a firm grasp on the game. The daughter of a former University of New Hampshire football player, Alexa is a fierce competitor to the core. She hated losing from the very beginning.
“When she was 3 years old, I bought her checkers and I wasn’t going to let her beat me,” Rick says. “When she saw she was going to lose, that board went flying.”
It’s certainly not to say that Alexa is a sore loser a decade later, but her drive to win is remarkable. Some people hope to win and play not to lose. Hope is not a word found in her lexicon.
Alexa took that first trophy to bed with her for weeks. Once she started playing, she didn’t stop. And once she started winning, she kept on producing staggering accomplishments that are nearly impossible to rank.
A five-time U.S. Kids Golf world champion. A three-time Callaway Junior World champion. The youngest player (age 8) to compete in Florida State Golf Association events. The youngest player (age 11) to play in a Japan LPGA event. The second-youngest winner in American Junior Golf Association history. The third 12-year-old to qualify for match play at the U.S. Women’s Amateur in the past 117 years. And twice a victor in the Drive, Chip and Putt National Finals at Augusta National. (Watch Golf Channel’s Drive, Chip and Putt video feature on Alexa Pano.)
“This is a girl that comes along once in a couple of decades,” says her swing instructor, Spencer Graham. “It’s a Lexi Thompson, it’s a Lydia Ko, it’s a Yani Tseng. I think she’s going to be No. 1 in the world and break records like Lorena Ochoa or Annika Sörenstam did.”
Earlier this year, Alexa played up as she often does and won the 16-18 age division of the Junior Honda Classic by 11 strokes. A month later she shot 68-76-74 to capture the Dustin Johnson World Junior Golf Championship in South Carolina. In between those victories, she was nominated by the Palm Beach County Hall of Fame to be the Amateur Athlete of the Year, going up against college football stars Lamar Jackson of Louisville and Devin Singletary of Florida Atlantic.
And then there is this: Neither Alexa, Rick nor Graham feel like she has played her best golf. In fact, Graham would argue she hasn’t come close.
“I inherited a girl who won five world championships with a swing that wasn’t that good,” Graham said. “I think her dad and her felt the same way.”
Pano, who also has been mentored by the legendary Bob Toski throughout her life, now has been working with Graham for 2½ years. When she first showed up at his academy in Naples, Fla., Pano used a swing Graham described as “handsy,” one that didn’t use her body and produced a weak draw. So they changed her swing to one that relies more on body rotation and less on timing with her hands, and her ball flight to a power fade.
“A year later, she was 75 percent engaged with her swing in tournament play,” Graham said. “Now she is closer to 85 or 90 percent engaged with it.”
Which is all to say – competition beware – that one of the most successful junior golfers ever hasn’t even scratched the surface.
Alexa and Rick relay the tale of walking along a fairway more than 4,000 miles from home at the 2017 Evian Championship in France, where Alexa’s favorite player, Morgan Pressel, is competing. In the gallery is a group of girls from Switzerland who are giddy to see a star – Alexa, that is.
By now, she is used to the attention. She received more than 500 letters after she appeared in the documentary The Short Game, a 2013 film produced by Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel that chronicled the efforts of a handful of 7- and 8-year-olds competing in the U.S. Kids Golf World Championship at Pinehurst. Alexa dominated the competition in the movie, which can be viewed easily on Netflix by kids all around the world. (Watch The Short Game trailer.)
“I watched it three times in the year when it first came out, but I kind of get a little embarrassed when I go back and watch it so I try not to,” Alexa says. “But most of my confidence in life comes from golf and the movie, so I’m very thankful it happened.”
Kids from around the globe have traveled to see Alexa play golf and, despite being barely older than most of her fans, she already has become adept at signing autographs.
What the movie has created is a fascinating intersection of stardom, talent and living in the middle of Generation Z, the Instagram and Snapchat-focused kids who have followed the millennials and don’t remember a time before smartphones. Alexa routinely receives more than 1,000 likes and dozens of comments for every Instagram post, one of her most recent chronicling a casual stroll down Magnolia Lane at Augusta National during the Masters. Pressel and former NFL wide receiver Plaxico Burress often leave messages of encouragement in the comments section.
Not bad for a 13-year-old.
With the help of Rick and others, Alexa has used her burgeoning fame to distinguish herself already. This past month in Texas, she helped host the Alexa Pano and Friends Charity Golf Tournament to benefit the Veterans Golf Association, an organization Alexa has supported since its inception in 2015. It’s commonplace to see veterans cheering quite boisterously at her tournaments.
“For as long as I play, I want to support them,” she says. “A portion of my earnings that I make in my life are going to be going back to the veterans.”
In some respects, Alexa is your typical teenager. In the “talent” section of her Drive, Chip and Putt profile, she lists shopping as one of her best skills. Her dad can verify that.
“She’s never seen a mall she didn’t like,” he says.
There’s a quick wit and a playful sarcasm to her personality, a trait learned from her father. She listens to pop and rap, although never while playing golf. The only time there is sound during practice is when her beloved New England Patriots are playing in the Super Bowl and Boston’s WEEI sports radio is airing the pre-game show.
But given all that she has experienced – movie stardom, golf success, traveling around the world – it’s fair to say that she isn’t typical. Alexa is home-schooled and has friendships mainly with girls four or five years older than she is. One of those is 17-year-old Erica Shepherd, the reigning U.S. Girls’ Junior champion and a teammate of Alexa’s at the AJGA’s Wyndham Cup.
“For as long as she lives, I’m going to call her the 12-year-old,” Shepherd jokes. “I think it’s so cool how (she was) literally that age and she (could) hit it just as far as anyone. Nobody could ever tell she was that young.”
We may know her age but the golf ball doesn’t.
“Game-wise, she is well ahead of 13 years old,” says Stasi, also a teammate of Pano’s at last year’s USGA Women’s State Team Championship. “She can hit any shot in the bag. That’s impressive for anyone, but especially a 13-year-old.”
Sitting in the clubhouse of Carolina Golf Club in Margate, Fla., Rick relaxes in his chair and reflects on one of the realities that long has been a part of his life.
Rick was divorced when Alexa was 10 months old. He has sole custody of Alexa, and he says her mother is not involved in her golf life.
What’s come of their circumstance is an unbreakable bond between parent and child. They’ve developed a friendship that is a testament to how deeply Alexa loves golf and how much Rick has sacrificed to give his daughter the opportunities few juniors get.
“We’ve had some of the weirdest conversations in the world,” Alexa says. “When you’re in a car with someone for 32 hours … no normal people drive to California.”
As you can imagine, there are a host of inside jokes and humorous barbs between them. In The Short Game, a 7-year-old Alexa makes it clear that she hopes her father will marry Lady Gaga, a notion that now makes her shudder.
“Oh my God, no. That’s one of the main reasons why I don’t go back and watch it,” Alexa says.
“I don’t know, I think it would be nice,” Rick says, smiling. “We could take helicopters to tournaments instead of having to drive 9,800 miles in five weeks.”
A moment later, Rick facetiously reminds his daughter that she can’t date until her 40th birthday.
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Alexa says.
In junior golf circles, Rick has a reputation for being hard on Alexa. There are parents who simply don’t like the two of them, if for no other reason than that Alexa is usually holding a first-place trophy. With winning comes the incitement of jealousy, anger and the occasional emotional breakdown, which, if you have been to a U.S. Kids Golf World Championship, you have probably seen in one form or fashion.
“There’s this notion out there that if you are hard on your kid then they are not going to like the game, and that’s absolutely not true,” Graham says. “If your kid is dragging you to the golf course every day and you are also a part of that team, those are the ones that end up the most successful.”
Those who know the Panos understand that Alexa wants to play golf more than anything, a sentiment she proudly carries with her.
As she grows older, she takes further responsibility and accountability for her game while Rick takes on a little less. The dynamic changes, but the friendship never wavers.
“I’ll be around as long as she wants me,” Rick says. “Or at least until I end up in a nursing home.”
What Alexa represents in the game is part of what appears to be an underlying trend: A new wave of talent in American women’s golf is coming.
Observers point to the women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking, in which 20 of the top 50 players in the world are from the United States. That number includes No. 1 Lilia Vu, Wake Forest standout Jennifer Kupcho, 2014 U.S. Women’s Amateur winner Kristen Gillman, junior sensation Lucy Li and a long list of others.
But some of the other evidence is anecdotal. These girls just seem mentally tough. Often they can be found rebounding from a 78 by shooting 68.
“There are 10 American female players in college right now that are all attractive, they all can flat out play, but they’re also tough as nails. Nobody can intimidate them. This country has never had that before as far as female players.”
Rick Pano
Maybe no other player displayed the bulldog mentality better than Shepherd, who was enveloped by a social media hurricane last summer after she won her semifinal match at the U.S. Girls’ Junior thanks in part to a controversial ruling that was ultimately out of her control. She wiped the tears away and won the championship match with tremendous vigor.
With the rise of the AJGA, there is another factor developing. All of these girls are friends from playing together in team events, competing against each other from a young age and sometimes going to the same colleges.
“I think with events like the Wyndham Cup and Junior Solheim Cup, the top American junior girls have gotten really close,” Shepherd says. “It’s kind of weird when you are playing other match-play events, because everyone you are playing against is your friend.”
This is good news for women’s golf. Of the 2.5 million new golfers the National Golf Foundation cited as having played on a course for the first time in 2016, 37 percent were women, PGA of America vice president Suzy Whaley said in a recent interview. Graham’s junior academy used to be 90 percent boys. Now it is 45 percent girls. American girls.
The female game can only be bolstered by young, marketable stars. Rick sees them coming soon.
“There are 10 American female players in college right now that are all attractive, they all can flat out play, but they’re also tough as nails,” Rick says. “Nobody can intimidate them. This country has never had that before as far as female players.”
Like most of her friends, Alexa plans on attending college before trying to become one of those stars. Starting a year and a half ago, more than 100 colleges have contacted her looking to establish a relationship. Although she probably won’t make a decision for a couple of years, she has narrowed it down to seven at the moment: Duke, Wake Forest, Texas, Stanford, Georgia, UCLA and Alabama.
It will be another chapter in a fascinating story, and the next stage of development for a girl who could be a shining star in American women’s golf.
The media landscape makes it difficult for Alexa to avoid the labels of “prodigy” or “phenom.” We live in an era with noise, and it’s only getting louder.
It’s rewarding to be recognized for your talent and work ethic, but with it comes a deep burden. Ask Michelle Wie or Lexi Thompson. With success at any early age, there is a harsh pressure and an expectation to continue a meteoric rise. But golf is not a linear game and neither is the progression of someone like Alexa.
“When someone calls her a prodigy, I don’t even know what that is,” Rick says. “All I would say is that she is on her way.”
Probably on her way to impactful and rewarding things, regardless of how and when they arrive.