The Guy Who Defeated Michelle Wie When She Was 11

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Scott Lipsky leads off some U.S. Senior Open notes with an item on Doug Williams, making his Senior Open debut and who, at 43, faced an 11-year-old Michelle Wie in the Hawaii State Amateur Match Play Championship.

Lipsky writes:

“At 11 years old, she had an unbelievable swing, she hit the ball farther than any woman I had ever seen, and almost as far as the guys,” said Williams of Wie, who had already won the state women’s stroke-play championship and had made her USGA championship debut a year earlier in the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links at age 10. “It was a bit of a circus, there were about 50 people watching. Her family was there, Hawaii press, national press.”

Wie tees off Thursday at Royal Birkdale in the Ricoh Women's British Open as the reigning U.S. Women's Open champ.

"It’s a Huck Finn-Forest Gump adventure, an incredible story."

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On the Monday when so man dreamers take their crack at the US Open, it’s worth checking out this Iain MacIntyre Vancouver Sun story on PGA Tour Canada Monday qualifier Ryan Cook, former oil patch worker, self taught golfer and part-time Darrell Survey taker. He's not in a sectional today, but maybe one of these days.

From MacIntyre's story, sent in by reader Joel:

The 28-year-old from Burnaby, who quit his job in the Alberta oil patch two years ago and moved to California to teach himself to be a golf pro, was in the field Thursday at Point Grey for the first round of the $150,000 PC Financial Open, the opening event in the PGA Tour Canada season.

Cook played junior golf competitively but claims his handicap would have been around 25 when he moved to Palm Desert in 2012.

When a reporter claims baloney, Cook says: “Twenty. I’m serious. It took me two months to break 80 when I first went down there. I quit golf for at least five years. But I’ve always known that I had talent. I just thought if I could down to the golf mecca and meet the right people I could start playing.