That Tommy Aaron became the first born-and-bred Georgian to win the Masters Tournament isn’t the most amazing part in his golfing journey. That Tommy Aaron played golf at all is somewhat of a miracle.
“I probably have the most non-golf background of anybody who played professional golf,” said Aaron, who taught himself the game on a hardscrabble nine-hole track that was at the bottom of a lake by the time he went to college. “I won a couple state amateurs and opens and made the Walker Cup team without a course in my hometown.”
Aaron built a career in golf with a swing the late Dan Jenkins once described as having “more things that could go wrong with it under pressure than the lead car in a freeway traffic jam.” But that swing took Aaron to amateur success, three PGA Tour wins, a couple of Ryder Cups and the champions’ locker room at Augusta National Golf Club.
Not bad for a player with no formal training but the grit and determination to follow his dream to a life on tour he harbored since listening to the grownups where his father worked tell stories about the Masters heroes.
“I used to sit and listen to them talk about those great players, and that’s what I wanted to do,” Aaron said. “Most people around town thought me playing golf was a waste of time.”
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