Cook: Shean has a special link with her caddy
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Kelli Shean hits off the 18th tee during the first round of the U.S. Women's Open at Oakmont Country Club Thursday.
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I'll get to all the pertinent golf stuff in just a moment, how Kelli Shean is a senior-to-be at Arkansas, an amateur at just her second professional tournament and one of the most unbelievable names you'll ever see near the top of a U.S. Women's Open leader board, how she's a protege of South African golfing great Ernie Els and how she stood up to and stared down famously difficult Oakmont Country Club Thursday.
But first, a love story.
It's an amazing tale of a big, tall kid from Little Rock, Ark., meeting a shy, quiet girl from Cape Town, South Africa, a girl who was alone, a long way from home, away from her family for the first time and probably just a little self-conscious -- OK, a lot self-conscious -- because of a severe hearing disability from a childhood illness that left her virtually deaf in her left ear and with only 70 percent hearing in her right with a hearing aid.
"Of course, I remember when I met her. It was in a communications class freshman year," Chandler Rackley was saying early Thursday night after lugging Shean's clubs for the most amazing 18 holes of her life.
You think caddy Steve Williams has Tiger Woods' back on the course?
He has nothing on Rackley when it comes to Shean.
"She has that hearing problem, but she's one of the best communicators I've ever met in my life," Rackley said. "She's so good with people. That's what first appealed to me about her ...
"She's a catch."
It took awhile for the relationship to blossom. Shean and Rackley have been dating for just 10 months. But now? They're inseparable.
"He's just made me love life so much more," Shean said. "He's made me appreciate everything a lot more and not to take anything for granted."
Clearly, the couple savored every minute of their day at Oakmont. It ended with Shean in a four-way tie for second place at 1-under 70, one stroke behind the leader, American Brittany Lang.
Actually, it ended with a very meaningful message from Els.
"Ernie's caddy, Danny Quinn, texted me to let me know that Kelli was one of Ernie's kids," Oakmont pro Bob Ford said.
Yes, that Danny Quinn, the former Penguins center.
"Ernie wanted me to tell her that he was watching, that he was rooting for her and that he wished her good luck," Ford said.
As far as Shean was concerned, that was like God reaching down and touching her. Els is a sporting icon in South Africa, a winner of three majors on the men's tour, the first coming at Oakmont in 1994. Shean credits the Ernie Els & Fancourt Foundation, which takes kids from limited-resources families in South Africa and gives them the opportunity and funding to develop as golfers, for her promising golf career. She spent three years in the program.
First Published July 9, 2010 12:00 am
