Unique Sport

Beaver Golf had the pleasure of having two students receive an invitation to play in The Honda Classic Pro-Am this year.  Annika Collado played on the First Tee of the Palm Beaches girls team and Mateo Muñiz played on the boys.  A Pro-Am is when both professional golfers and amateur golfers compete in a tournament.  In this case, the First Tee teams were paired with a professional golfer to turn in an overall team score.  The boys played gross (total strokes) and the girls net (total strokes minus handicap).  

The boys were paired with Marcus Byrd who competed in the Genesis Invitational hosted by Tiger Woods just this past weekend.  They finished 3 strokes behind the girls when the final scores were calculated.  Mateo said, "I left some shots out there because my mental game was out of focus; but I learned a lot from the experience. I have some things to work on for sure."  He enjoyed playing with Mr. Byrd and thought it was cool that he had just seen him play on television last week. 

The victorious girls were paired with Erik Barnes who played in the 2022 U.S. Open. Annika said, "It was great opportunity.  I got to see how pros practice and prepare which makes me excited to someday hopefully be there myself."  She said everyone was really nice and she will always remember how the girls laughed at their mistakes and cheered when they made putts. 

This opportunity impacted Mateo and Annika in different ways and that's what makes golf such a unique sport.