The traditionalists in golf who wring their hands over increased distance may be missing the boat when they blame modern equipment.
The rules makers, of course, can throttle that down any time they want. What they can’t reverse are the players holding those clubs — who are becoming more athletic all the time, following the original blueprint set down by Tiger Woods, which has evolved to contemporary players such as Brooks Koepka or Lexi Thompson.
They play golf but they look like they could have achieved success in other sports.
The two All-First Coast high school golf players of the year, Brett Schell of Bartram Trail and Chloe Schiavone of Bolles, did just that — they were solid athletes in other sports before they decided to focus on golf.
Neither were weaned on a golf course. While their fathers introduced them to the game at a young age, it wasn’t a high priority in terms of competitiveness until they were in middle school age. There were no long hours on the range, no video, no launch monitors, no mental coaches — and no burn-out.
“My father was never pushy,” Schell said. “He wanted me to give my best effort but have fun.”
Frank Schiavone, a member of the Timuquana Country Club, said club members such as Steve Melnyk stressed to him the importance of perspective when it came to the sport.
“Everyone I talked to told me the same thing,” Schiavone said. “Keep it fun.”
Schell and Schiavone gradually discovered something else: winning is fun.
From run-stuffer to birdie machine
Take Schell, for example.
The Bears senior, who won the Region 1-3A tournament and finished second in the Class 3A state tournament, is 6 feet 1 and nearly 240 pounds. BT football coaches joked with him about why he never came out for the football team.
Schell did play the sport until he was 13 years old, in a no weight-limit league in St. Johns County where he was a fullback and inside linebacker. He also played youth league baseball, at first base, and was one of the better hitters in the league.
“We get that all the time,” said Schell’s father Mick, a four-year letter winner and linebacker at the University of Cincinnati from 1987-90. “People see him, or see a picture and wonder why he’s not playing football. He also loved baseball. I think Brett is part of a generation of athletic golfers who can do other things and be successful, but they decided to play golf.”
Schell’s football career ended when he broke his wrist and began to focus on golf as a Bartram Trail freshman. He said it wasn’t much a fear of more injuries but gravitating towards a sport that was simply more fun
“I started playing more in the seventh and eighth grade, coming out with friends at St. Johns [Golf and Country Club],” he said. “I enjoyed playing and practicing after school and it was after the eighth grade I knew golf would be my main focus.”
Mick Schell and his wife Leslie — who lettered in volleyball at Cincinnati — didn’t mind their son going into a sport where no one hit back.
“We’re glad he’s in golf,” Schell said. “We went through surgeries, injuries and we’re not upset he didn’t stay in football. Not one ounce. He’s found his passion and we’re happy for him.”
Schell peaked at the right time of the season. He shot 66 at the Killearn Country Club in Tallahassee to win the region by two shots over teammate Jacob Saarela, then fired rounds of 67 and 69 at the Mission Inn Resort in the 3A state tournament to post an 8-under 136. At the time, Schell broke the state tournament record regardless of class for lowest score at the course and was the leader in the clubhouse. But Brett Roberts of St. Thomas Aquinas birdied three of the last four holes to pass him and win by one shot.
“One of my strengths is to put disappointments behind me,” said Schell. “I would have signed for those scores before the tournament started and taken my chances. If you had told me, as a freshman, that I would be in that position one day to accomplish that, I would have been thankful. It’s upsetting at the time but it was something I can learn from.”
Schell has signed to play golf at Ole Miss, after fielding offers from UNF and FSU. He will be the second SEC athlete in the family after his sister Courtney, who recently completed a four-year career at Auburn.
“I loved it, the coaches, the facilities, the campus, everything,” he said. “It was like there was a blinking light saying, ‘come here … come here.’”
Mick Schell is proud that his son will be at an SEC school in any sport.
“He’s big, but not SEC football big,” he said. “He’s in the right sport.”
Big workload
Perhaps it helped Chloe Schiavone handle such a heavy golf workload to have been a baseball, basketball, softball, soccer and tennis player in the past.
Schiavone, a junior at Bolles, has played more than two dozen golf tournaments in the past year, partly because she loves the competition and partly because she loves the travel with her father Frank, a Jacksonville dermatologist.
“Everything that I am and that I have I owe to my father,” said Schiavone, who lost her mother Lori to cancer when she was 8 years old. “I love traveling and playing golf and being with him.”
Frank Schiavone calls Chloe, “a miracle baby,” since his wife gave birth when she was 46 years old, and after the couple had been married for 25 years.
“She’s exactly like her mother,” he said. “She’s spirited, high energy, intense. … every day is exciting.”
Schiavone didn’t begin playing competitive golf until she was around 13 years old. Until then, golf was largely a father-daughter activity and Chloe’s most cherished memories of the game are when the family would vacation at the Greenbrier in West Virginia.
She and her father would pack a lunch, go onto one of the resort’s courses, play two or three holes, then settle down off one of the fairways for a picnic.
“Golf was always fun,” she said.
Her first taste of competitive sports came when she was 6 and played soccer in an association on the west side of Jacksonville. She said she was a bit shy at first but her mother, who swam at Arizona State, encouraged her to be more aggressive.
The epiphany came when Chloe scored three goals in one game — two for her team, and one for the other team, by accident. From then on she asserted herself so much, she was nicknamed “the Bulldozer.”
Rapidly, she found a sport for every season, and sometimes more. Chloe played shortstop and batted third as the only girl on an NOL Little League team, played junior high basketball and softball at Bolles, and began wearing her father out on the Timuquana Country Club tennis courts.
Chloe then began playing more golf, intrigued with the challenge of needing so many diverse skills to post a good score. In her first year of competition on the Florida Junior Tour she had five starts and posted five top-10s.
Pounding the ball off the tee was her favorite shot. Schiavone carries her Callaway Rogue driver about 250 yards and said her first teacher, Bob Mattiace, encouraged her to swing away.
“I love it when I have a wide-open fairway and I can hit it as hard as I want,” she said.
But there’s something called the short game and Chloe quickly learned she had to develop her chipping and putting to complete the entire package. Timuquana, with its intricate greens, would seem a prime place to develop those skills but Frank Schiavone said his daughter initially disliked it.
“She was losing tournaments because of her short game,” he said.
Enter Todd Anderson, director of golf at the PGA Tour’s Performance Center at the TPC Sawgrass. He impressed the importance of the short game on Chloe, which was a big reason she raced through the high school postseason without an over-par round.
Schiavone won the District 4-1A tournament with a 67 at the Slammer & Squire, shot 70 to finish fourth in a highly-competitive Region 2-1A tournament at the Gainesville Country Club, then had rounds of 69-72 to record the area’s highest finish in a girls state tournament, regardless of class, finishing alone in fifth at the 1A state tournament at Mission Inn.
Schiavone had only one over-par round the entire season, a 37 in a nine-hole match in which she lipped out her final putt for a 36.
Bolles coach Debbie Caruso, also a Bolles middle school basketball coach, said Schiavone brings a team sports mentality to golf, especially interaction with teammates.
“She’s a great kid, very fun-loving and very dedicated,” Caruso said. “Her teammates love her and they all look up to her. She also does a remarkable job juggling athletics and academics. She’s an A student, very proactive with her academics and gets everything done. She’s a real scholar-athlete.”
Schiavone has verbally committed to Notre Dame, where her father got his undergraduate degree.
After the 1A state tournament, Schiavone took a much-needed break: for a month she didn’t touch a club.
“I played a lot of tournaments, maybe almost too much,” she said of her past year. “I’m not burned out but a maybe little overwhelmed. I was playing great golf and having fun but I wasn’t able to see friends, be home, hang out and do things normal teenagers do in Jacksonville.”
But she also has plans. Schiavone said she will try out for the Bolles tennis team and begin playing in Florida Junior Tour events after the first of the year.
“Other sports are my haven,” she said.
But golf will write the ticket.
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