A first for South Florida golf: Broward’s Tyler Strafaci is the U.S. Amateur champion
Only 22 years of age, his golfing résumé was already stacked.
From being an individual state champion at Plantation American Heritage in 2015, which landed him the Miami Herald’s Golfer of the Year trophy for Broward County, to Academic All-American at Georgia Tech, Tyler Strafaci was racking up more trophies than he had room for in his trophy case.
But after last week, Strafaci might have to build an entire separate room for his most recent trophy.
After surviving two days of stroke play and then navigating his way over the next four days through five rounds of match play at the Bandon Dunes Golf Club on the southwest coast of Oregon, Strafaci found himself in the championship match of the United States Golf Association Amateur Championship.
With the sun setting and the fog rolling in off the Pacific Ocean, a long 10-hour day of 36 holes battling Ollie Osborne from SMU had come down to the final hole.
THE PERFECT SHOT ON FINAL HOLE
With the match all square, it was time for Strafaci to hit “the shot of his young life.”
With his father, Frank Jr., on the bag and facing a second shot of 246 yards into the par-5 18th, Strafaci pulled a 4-iron. And what a four iron it turned out to be.
Strafaci “flushed” it with a perfect strike as the ball landed just 18 feet from the cup. He would go on to two-putt for a birdie and when Osborne could not get up-and-down from the short side of the green, missing a 15-foot birdie putt, son and father jumped into each other’s arms after the 1-up victory.
“It’s tough to describe a moment like that,” said Strafaci nearly 36 hours after the feat, still in his hotel room in Oregon fulfilling USGA media obligations. “It was weird. As I was lining up over the ball, maybe for about five seconds, I actually closed my eyes and kind of had a quick flashback at that moment.
“Everything I had ever done in my golf life up to that very minute, from my first Snoopy club when I was 3, to hitting shots with my buddies at Grande Oaks to those late-night sessions at the range with my dad flashed through me. It was so cool and it might’ve actually helped me relax a little over the ball. I knew when I hit it, I had flushed it and don’t think I’ve ever hit a 4-iron so good, not even on the driving range.”
With the U.S. Amateur title, the most coveted title for amateur golfers, Strafaci now will see his name added to the Havemayer Trophy alongside some legendary names. Names such as Bobby Jones (1924, ‘25, ‘27, ‘28, ‘30), Arnold Palmer (‘54), Jack Nicklaus (‘59 and ‘61), Phil Mickelson (‘90) and, oh yeah, some guy named Tiger Woods, who won three in a row from 1994-96, the only one to ever three-peat.
But the title also carves Strafaci’s name into the South Florida history books as well. In the 105-year history of an event that began in 1895, nobody from South Florida had ever won the U.S. Amateur. Strafaci ended that drought.
The title also opens up more doors to help pave a way for a career on the PGA Tour for Strafaci.
In addition to the golf sponsors that will now come running his way, Strafaci has now qualified for the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines next June, the Open Championship at Royal St. George’s in July and is now a member of the U.S. Walker Cup team, which will play at Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach May 8-9.
But then comes the biggest reward of all. Tyler will fulfill the dream of anyone who ever picks up a golf club in their lifetime — take a drive down Magnolia Lane at Augusta National next April to play in the Masters.
In addition to his father and him sharing the moment at Bandon Dunes, his mother, Jill, and brother, Trent, joined them to celebrate on the green as well. And it was only appropriate that the Strafaci’s were all together because the championship only added to the family golf legacy.
A STRAFACI FAMILY LEGACY IN GOLF
Theirs is an athletic family tree that dates all the way back to 1935 when Frank Strafaci Sr., Tyler’s grandfather, won the U.S. Public Links. Three years later, in 1938 he won the North/South National Amateur, the same one that Tyler, with his dad also on the bag, won in early July at Pinehurst in North Carolina.
Frank Jr. has his own impressive golf résumé, having qualified for seven different USGA events, three U.S. Amateurs and four U.S. Mid-Amateurs.
Jill has some game as well having played for the University of Florida women’s team in the late ‘70s before eventually coming to work for the Miami Dolphins in 1989 where she would spend the next 25 years working her way up the ladder to Senior Vice President of Finance and Administration.
“To win this is something that’s the pinnacle of amateur golf,” Tyler said. “Something that, as a kid, I’ve been watching growing up each year before school started and to now do this and join such great USGA champions — it’s just incredible. In a way it feels like maybe that this will bring me a little bit closer to my grandfather which is .... I never met him [Frank Sr. passed away in 1988, 10 years before Tyler was born] .... always wanted to know him ... maybe somehow this brings the two of us just a little bit closer.”
Asked if what he had accomplished had sunk in yet and how many text messages and phone calls he had received from well wishers the previous 36 hours, Tyler could only shake his head.
“We might be over a thousand by now,” quipped Tyler. “The first 24 hours were almost like a blur. If I slept two hours that first night after I had won, that was a lot. You’re just on this emotional high that’s unbelievable and you almost can’t come down from it. Stuff that you could only dream of as a kid.”
“I’m a pretty emotional person so I worked really hard to try and hold it in or I would’ve completely lost it and probably made a fool out of myself on the green,” said Frank Jr. chuckling while admitting that he was pretty worn down having carried his son’s bag for seven straight days and 162 holes. “Everything is still in the dream-like stage right now. We as a family, we understand what this means. It’s a culmination of a lot of hard work and dedication on Tyler’s part. The craziest part of this is that not only do you have to play well to win this, but there’s no way you can do it without some good fortune and getting a few breaks along the way. Then I think of Tiger Woods doing it three years in a row and that doesn’t even register with me.”
As if there weren’t enough story lines in this tale, let’s add a few more.
Tyler Strafaci’s win marked the first time in the history of the event that two players from the same school won it back-to-back. A year ago, Strafaci’s Georgia Tech teammate, Andy Ogletree, won it at Pinehurst. But he wasn’t just Tyler’s teammate. The two were roommates as well. Two guys living in the same dorm room each winning back-to-back U.S. Ams? What are the odds?
And had it not been for the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak and subsequent shutdown of the country, we wouldn’t be writing this story.
Having struggled his junior year and not made the Walker Cup team, something he really wanted badly, Tyler’s head was dragging a little.
“He just called us up one day and told us he was going to forego his senior year and turn pro,” said Frank Jr. of a phone call he and Jill got last January. “We told him we would support him in whatever he wanted to do.”
Of course, then came a global pandemic and Tyler’s plans, like the rest of the world, changed. He would stay in school and retain his amateur status.
“Once everything got shut down there was just nowhere really to go,” Tyler said. “So I just went home and started hitting golf ball after golf ball into a net in my backyard and I actually think the hard work and repetition really helped me. It’s crazy to think how things work out sometimes.”
HIS HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE A FOUNDATION
While his success at Georgia Tech and now winning the U.S. Am will vault his golf pedigree into elite status, Tyler says he will never forget “where he came from.” That he will always cherish his days at American Heritage and the memories that he created with his golf teammates and head coach Brandt Moser.
As a freshman and a junior he helped Moser and the Patriots to team state titles in 2012 and 2014. Then in 2015, he closed out his high school career in style when he not only won the individual state title but literally blew away the competition, lapping the field by finishing six strokes ahead of his nearest pursuer, a state record.
“American Heritage will always have a special place in my heart,” said Tyler. “Me and my teammates, we’ve all kind of gone our own way but I’m still close with all of them and very thankful for everyone on those teams. I’m also thankful to my teachers that helped mold me into the person I am today. You don’t go to that school just for sports, you go there to get ready for college at the next level in the classroom as well.”
But the one he is most thankful to is Moser.
“Coach Moser was and still is like a second father in my life all the way back to the seventh grade,” Tyler said. “I would eat lunch with him everyday and just a great guy who helped turn me in to the player I am today. He knew that perfect balance between putting his arm around you and encouraging you but also had the ability to show some tough love at times when maybe I needed a good boot in the rear.”
“The one thing that I learned about Tyler early on and something that gave him some separation from the others is that the really great players despise losing more than they love winning,” said Moser who, now 25 years deep coaching the Heritage boys’ golf program, has seen his share of talent come down the pike. “He’s cut from that mold. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a gracious loser and will always congratulate his opponent, but when he’s home later on, he’ll beat himself up over coming up short. His internal determination is remarkable and it probably had a lot to do with him winning that trophy. We all can’t be more proud of him.”
The final story line, of course, was the big picture. A young man growing up in a household where the golf expectations and the bar of success were set extremely high based on family history. It’s something that Tyler readily admitted he did not handle well at first.
It wasn’t easy at first and to be honest it was a pretty tough burden to have,” Tyler said. “Early on I was probably a pretty immature grade school and high school kid and it [high expectations] was something that forced me to mature and grow up quickly in these last few years. But all of that forced me to be mentally tough and maybe ‘being a Strafaci’ played a part in me being able to deal with all the pressure I had at Bandon Dunes.”
This story was originally published August 21, 2020 at 3:04 PM.