North Allegheny golfer chosen to compete for Team USA
Her score didn't bother Lizzie Hammel the most, although the card the rising senior at North Allegheny used to record a 98 at last fall's WPIAL Division I golf championships likely won't be framed and kept atop the family mantle.
As she trudged off the 18th green at Long Vue Country Club in October, Hammel felt she could have done more.
Instead of swinging a tennis racket in the offseason, she wished she had been swinging a golf club.
“I knew right then that to compete with these girls, I have to be playing year-round,” Hammel said. “Playing for a few months, taking a break and coming back just wasn't working.”
So Hammel overhauled her training and moved about 12 hours away to attend one of the most prestigious golf academies around, the Hank Haney International Junior Golf Academy in South Carolina. Haney was once Tiger Woods' swing coach.
The results of Hammel's training have been hard to miss, so much so that they've earned her a trip to Scotland.
Her journey to better training began about a month after the WPIAL tournament. Hammel's parents, Don and Jeanne, started researching golf academies near their summer home in Hilton Head, S.C., and stumbled upon the Haney academy, about 25 minutes away.
Haney has been with the academy since 2007; the academy was founded around 1995 and helps elite golfers refine their games. It has produced such golf names as Webb Simpson — this year's U.S. Open champion — along with Hunter Mahan and Rickie Fowler.
Hammel excelled under the tutelage of Haney and the school's instructors.
Her newfound consistency resulted in being selected from a group of 500 International Junior Golf Tour members to represent Team USA for the 2012 Euro Cup in St. Andrews, Scotland, July 20-28 — a three-way, match play event against the Canadian Junior Golf Association and FIFE Team Scotland.
The Wexford resident will be part of a 14-member team competing in the girls under-19 division with 54 holes of triangular match play.
“She works really hard on her golf game,” her dad said. “The fact that she got chosen for this meant that her hard work has paid off.”
Hammel has always been around golf. When she was younger, her parents would bring her and her younger brother, Cameron, to the golf course with them for a round or two every Sunday.
She began taking private lessons with area professional Jim Cichra at the RMU Island Sports Center in seventh grade, though she was never quite obsessed enough to make it a 12-month endeavor.
But after her 98 — a 49 going out and coming back, complete with two 8s and three 7s — at the WPIAL tournament, Hammel snapped. She talked with her parents about doing something more, and they obliged.
The Hammels enrolled Lizzie in cyberschool temporarily, while Lizzie spent the days honing her putting stroke, tightening her drives and striving for consistency.
“Her ball-striking has gotten awfully good,” said the academy's director of instruction, Doug Alexander. “It's right down the middle; she hits it very straight. She's getting a little more draw into it and getting it out there a little further, too.
“If we had a whole academy of girls like Lizzie, one, they would have a lot more fun and, two, it would be easy to teach everybody. She just has a great attitude for golf.”
The Hammels are allowing Lizzie to travel to Scotland alone. “We felt this was her experience,” her mother said. “She needed to do this on her own.”
“I'm excited to compete against girls from other countries,” said Hammel, who is not sure if she will pursue golf in college. “The entire experience is going to be great.”
Jason Mackey is a freelance writer.
