Dana has a grip on the game

Springfield High School’s Desmond Dana made her final trip to Proctor-Pittsford Country Club on Tuesday and had a great time. She shot 129, almost double PPCC’s par.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20110610/SPORTS01/706109983

Published June 10, 2011 in the Rutland Herald

Dana has a grip on the game

By BOB FREDETTE

PITTSFORD — Springfield High School’s Desmond Dana made her final trip to Proctor-Pittsford Country Club on Tuesday and had a great time. She played 18 holes with two players she’d never met and wound up with new friends from points far removed from her home.

She shot 129, almost double PPCC’s par, and when it was over Dana smiled and laughed as she posted her round at the scorers’ table.

Beautiful.

It’s something which makes golf unique among competitive sports. You can be side-by-side with your adversaries all day and not treat them as such. You can enjoy the summer-like day, praise others’ shots, comment on the day’s play and laugh away the shanks, hooks and tops.

Dana appreciates golf for its intrinsic value, for the game, for the camaraderie, for the sunshine. She gets her fill of competitive sports the rest of the school year, playing hard at soccer and basketball. Those are where her sports dreams lie, not with the lie of a golf ball.

“I never really imagined winning states” at golf. “For me, it’s not about competition,” Dana said. “I enjoy meeting new people. I really enjoyed the girls I played with today.”

The Cosmos senior is about to enter a vastly more competitive world, to fulfill her lifetime dream to become a veterinarian. She will attend the University of Vermont and hopes to further those studies at Tufts.

Dana, whose name you have often read in accounts of her other sports, played with Katie Stames of Peoples Academy in Morrisville and Becca Howland of Harwood in Duxbury.

“There was a lot of laughing. We all struggled,” Dana said. “At one point I said ‘At least we’re not struggling in the bunker’ and on the next hole, two of us were in the bunker. … Oops!”

Let’s face it; golf on TV is nothing like golf the way we play it. Those guys and gals are good, as the ads says. The vast majority of people who pick up a club are comparatively low down on the handicap food chain and even so, we often take it too seriously.

It’s a sport where perfection is constantly on the move, like chasing your own shadow when the sun is at your back.

So why not roll with it?

Dana, who is pretty much a seasonal player, does. She’ll play a few times during the summer and other than the short high school season, that’s it. She seen improvement in her tee game and short game this year but, mindful athlete that she is, knows how to play within herself. If she’s in the woods she does not pull a Kevin Na. She looks for the easiest way out rather than the hero shot.

When times are rough she remembers a lesson from her mom, Barbara.

“She says ‘Stay positive,’” Dana says. “I try to wait for the one good hit and try to feed off that.”

“She’s the kind of kid you don’t get very often,” Springfield golf coach Larry Wetzel said. “She’s a very coachable kid. She could have packed it in and quit but she never did.”

She only started playing as a freshman. Then her uncle, Josh Nichols, helped her get her own clubs. She had been playing with her brother Anthony’s clubs, which were much too long for her. She didn’t come to Proctor-Pittsford as a freshman because she wasn’t good enough to get around the course.

Dana isn’t the only one to understand that golf is not all about scoring. Character, a staple of the game, counts. Smarts count. The drive to see something through counts.

Just to prove that, Dana recently was awarded a college scholarship by the Vermont Golf Association. She entered her senior year with a 4.16 GPA and was in the top five in her class.

“My class is very competitive,” she said.

Tuesday’s 129 was Dana’s best performance in her three years at the states, and she walked away happy.

“Have you ever made a birdie?” she was asked of her competitive career.

“No. I have three pars.”

Three pars in three years. If that doesn’t keep the game of golf in perspective, nothing will.

That might be something to remember the next time you’re grinding your teeth over a missed putt.