When I got a call yesterday morning to be a standard bearer at the AT&T Byron Nelson — a job usually reserved for longtime volunteers — I jumped at the chance. I was assigned to golfer Bryce Molder and a foursome of restaurant execs playing in the Nokia Gold Pro-Am.
As it turns out, Molder lived in Plano as a kid, and that’s when he first became interested in golf. “My dad liked to play, so when I was 4 or 5, he introduced me to the game,” he told me. “I’d go to the range with him and just picked it up.” Molder, who spent his early years at Dooley Elementary, moved with his family to Tulsa and then to Arkansas (where, on a break from college, he once shot a 60 at Chenal Country Club while playing a round with Bill Clinton — “from the white tees,” Molder points out).
As we walked, I learned more about his remarkable story. The 37-year-old was born with Poland syndrome, which means he’s missing his left major pectoral muscle, and his left hand is significantly smaller than his right. The fingers on his left hand were webbed, so he had surgery as a kid to repair that. He says he never saw it as a challenge. “Everyone is different in their own way. It’s really not something to overcome. It just means making some adjustments. Someone who is tall is is going to swing differently than someone who is short. Someone with long arms is going to swing differently than someone with short arms. That’s just how I saw it. And that’s how people around me treat it, too.”
Despite the rain yesterday morning, course conditions at the TPC Four Seasons were good. It wasn’t as firm and fast as it has been in the past, but it was in good shape, in Molder’s view.
He likes coming to Dallas because he has two close friends who live here — one he went to college with and one he played golf with in high school. “That, to me, is what’s fun now, seeing them and their kids,” he says. He also likes to try to play at top area courses, like Brook Hollow or Preston Trail or Dallas National.
For a lot of the players on the tour, though, the Nelson is as much about the parties as it is about the golf. Along with the action at the Pavilion, expect to see huge parties this week at some of the houses along the course.
Jordan Spieth, of course, is the face of this year’s tournament. (His image is plastered on every tee box.) People will be watching to see if he can bounce back after missing the cut at The Players last week. At a press conference, Spieth said he was feeling a little under the weather and mentioned allergies, but said it wasn’t a big deal. He also talked about how great it was to be playing in his hometown tournament. This is where he learned to love golf. Spieth didn’t always pay his way in, however. “This is the event where my dad and I used to hop the fence and come and watch,” he said.
(Side note: as I was leaving the course, a Tahoe police car rolled up right behind Spieth’s new Range Rover (temporary tags still on it) to block it. I think Spieth gets a police escort to and from the course. Two other players are staying with him at his new house — his old UT roommate, Alex Moon, and Colt Knost. Spieth’s caddie was putting his bag in the Range Rover and while he was waiting for Spieth to come out, he was apparently bored, so he started trying on all of the SWAT gear that was in the police car, including an AR-15 with a big magazine, one of those things that you use to bust doors open, and a bomb mask. I got out of my car to take a photo but he said, “No pictures.”)
