By SCOTT MARTIN
Tina Trimble is the fourth (and final) daughter of a former member of the University of Texas golf team who bought each of his offspring a set of junior clubs. It was only Tina who took the bait and expressed an interest in playing when she was eight.
"I think I was bored or curious or both and just started to swing the club in the back yard," she says.
That back yard backs up to the well-known Champions Club, the Houston course that has hosted numerous serious tournaments including the PGA Tour’s season-ending Players Championship.
Almost immediately after those first swings with the club, Trimble, now 30, asked her dad if she could take some lessons. Trimble took those initially from the professional at Champions. But after showing some strong initial promise, Trimble wound up on the lesson tee at Austin Country Club under the tutelage of Harvey Penick who had taught Trimble’s father.
Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, which became the number one best-selling book in all of sports publishing, had not reached the bookshelves. Still, Trimble recalls that Penick never charged for the lessons.
"He just loved golf so much and loved to teach it that getting paid for it never seemed right," she says. "The club made him charge something eventually, especially after the book came out, but it was never very much, only about $15."
During the first lesson, Penick changed Trimble’s grip and told her to hold a ruler to remember how the grip should look and feel.
"His approach was to keep things simple," Trimble adds. "The results were almost miraculous."
Penick worked with Trimble on the range and also around the practice greens, usually from his golf cart. With chipping, he told the young and talented golfer to clip the grass just behind the ball and to "give luck a chance" with putts.
"He was not an advocate of charging putts into the hole," says Trimble. "He wanted the ball to be rolling slowly when it got to the hole. He told me to spend a lot of time practicing my short game and I still do; he told me only to practice my long game if I was having a problem with something."
Penick also imparted wisdom beyond golf, emphasizing good behavior with phrases like "pretty is as pretty does." Eventually, Penick encouraged Trimble to enter some junior tournaments, launching an extremely successful teenage golf career that included two victories at the prestigious World Junior in San Diego and too many American Junior Golf Association tournaments to remember. An All-American for most of her junior golf career, a swarm of women’s golf coaches from college programs across the fruited plain rolled into Houston hoping to lure Trimble. She eventually chose Furman.
"I wanted to go to a smaller school so that I wouldn’t get lost," she says. "Academics were really important to me plus Furman has an excellent women’s golf program."
Trimble feels that her college career was a bit of a disappointment. She made the Lady Palladins’ traveling team, but never won a tournament. Her professional aspirations began to dissipate.
After graduating from Furman, Trimble moved to Pinehurst in the hope of finding a game that would move her to the LPGA tour. The magic eluded her but she worked for an accounting firm, beginning her career in that field. Today, she is a tax specialist with the High Point office of Dixon Odum & Co.
She lives in Browns Summit and plays out of Sedgefield Country Club where her handicap index is 1.
"She’s the best woman golfer at the club," says Sedgefield assistant professional Josh Dickinson. "Her work habits are excellent. She keeps the ball in front of her and has a really good touch around the greens." Dickinson says that Trimble is usually around the course in the evenings looking for a game.
Trimble isn’t happy with her play at the moment. She lost some weight last year, which is hard to believe given her slender frame, and barely played during the past tax season. She’s working to regain some form while also adding some needed oomph off the tee: a well-struck all-out Tina Trimble drive rolls to about 210 yards. As a result her bag is packed full of lumber - all the way up to an 11 wood.
Despite her relative lack of distance, Trimble has enjoyed an impressive amateur career, particularly in 1999: she was runner-up at the Southern Amateur and again second at the Carolinas Amateur; she also reached the quarterfinals of the Women’s Mid Amateur. During that glory year, one golf publication ranked her in the top 20 of all amateurs nationally.
In 2000, she finished sixth in the Women’s Eastern Amateur at Whispering Pines.
"When I play well, I stay out of trouble, find a lot of fairways and score with my short game."
Her career best score is 66. One of her best moments came in the Southern Amateur when she beat two Curtis Cup players including Beth Bauer – one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Her near term goal is to get back to that same form and play "boring golf."
"I’d like to get back to the top 20 nationally and win some amateur tournaments," she adds.
Rick Murphy of Carolina Golf Academy is currently working with Trimble on her game. As strong as Murphy is, there must be times when she wishes she could fly back to the practice tee at Austin Country Club and work with Harvey Penick.
"As he got older and his eyes started to fail, Harvey could watch the impact and tell where the ball traveled," she adds. "But more importantly, he was like a grandfather to me. I still hear him telling me to ‘take dead aim.’"
Trimble’s father must be happy that one of his daughters found golf and continues to find inspiration from one of the most important and impressive figures in golf.
