"When I went into surfer-bum mode, no one ever, ever guessed I was a police officer," he laughs. "I had the look: long hair, the beat-up car with the board and the baby seat thrown in the back. I knew the lingo. It was just an easy job for me. I never got burned out. Instead of taking overtime pay, I always took the comp time. That and the off-hours made it a good job to free me up for Hunter."
Monte took his son to driving ranges and public courses near their home, eventually joining Alta Vista Country Club in Placentia.
"I'd pick him up from school, and we'd play until dark," Monte says. "I'd take his ball out of the center of the fairway and throw it in the rough, hole after hole, and he knew it was to make him better. I really loved those days."
Monte retired from law enforcement in 1996 after being injured during a fight with a suspect. The family moved to Dallas, where Cindy was a manager at another Nordstrom. Although her salary and Monte's retirement weren't enough to avert the six-figure debt from a full schedule of junior golf, the father and son began traveling the country playing events. Often they were joined by a group that included future pros Sean O'Hair, Ryan Moore and Kevin Na and their parents. Although Mahan went on to win the 1999 U.S. Junior, defeating Camilo Villegas in the final, it was a complicated time emotionally.
"At least you could never use that Harry Chapin 'Cat's in the Cradle' song to describe our relationship," says Monte. "I was around -- maybe a little too much. Sometimes I was way too hard on Hunter. I'd start right in with, 'You should have done this; you should have done that.' But I knew he had tried as hard as he could, and because he'd just gotten beat up on the golf course, he didn't need more of it from me. So I'd stop and just say, 'I'm sorry.' I learned you can't be afraid to apologize to your son. And you know, the kids know when you're wrong.
"That was the difference between Marc O'Hair and myself," Monte says. "Marc and I were friends, but he would never say he was sorry to Sean. If Sean played bad, Marc might lock him out of the hotel room. The kid would have to knock on our door and stay with us."
Photo: Charles LaBerge
Hunter and Sean remain tight. "Hunter is a real kind of guy," says O'Hair. "We talk about a lot of stuff, some of it about our dads." Mahan, naturally, has given the subject a lot of thought. "There are very few success stories when parents get really involved with their kids and sports," he says. "When the parents are living through the child, and the child doesn't want to disappoint them -- at all -- that's big pressure. And then sometimes your parents' reactions aren't very good. My dad's reactions when I hit a bad shot were horrible, 'cause he would throw his arms up and stomp around. Then when he wasn't there, I'd have that reaction -- like somebody had to.
"Somehow the child has to figure out that what he does is what he does," Hunter says. "I'm out here to play golf for me, to see what I can do and how can I be the best player for me. The other stuff is his stuff. I know my dad was always coming from a good place, and he was never really wrong in what he said. It was the way he said it. Sometimes he'd say, 'You never listen to me.' And I'd say, 'Who would?'
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