Soul & ice : Mike Weir is a left-handed hockey player from Canada

Golf Digest, July, 2001 by Bob Verdi

If it happens, if Mike Weir becomes the greatest professional golfer ever produced by Canada, his soft hands will get him there. He has that touch around the greens, and always has. Even before he could really play, he could really score. He was gifted with a short game; then he learned the total game. Of course, prior to having either, he skated through childhood, a typical native son in a country that worships hockey. That would explain why Weir's hands, for all their velvety feel, are not those of a concert pianist but instead belong to a feisty former left wing. They are slightly gnarled in places, and there is that scar on the index finger of his south paw from another guy's tooth. Weir led with his fist and wound up with a dental chart.

"I didn't take anything without giving it back," recalls Weir, smallish as a kid and only 155 pounds now. "If somebody hit me with a cheap shot, I'd take his number, and he'd get a two-hander, guaranteed. But I wasn't a goon. In fact, don't make me out to be an NHL prospect. If I had made it

. . . if . . . I'd probably be a checker who scores maybe 10 goals a year. Besides, I'm 31 now, which means I'd be just about through. Instead . . . "

Instead, Mike Weir is a staple on leader boards at PGA Tour events, where he has established

himself as something of a baby-faced assassin. He is polite, friendly, courteous, popular, admired. But above all, which is saying something for a fellow who goes 5-foot-9 in spikes, Weir has the competitive desire and the instincts of a warrior that brand him special. In hockey, they're the guys who burrow fearlessly into corners, where angels fear to tread. In golf, it tends to be more about whence you come. Sweet-swinging George Knudson, with eight victories on the U.S. PGA Tour during the '60s and '70s, is generally regarded as the finest golfer born in Canada. Al Balding won four times, Stan Leonard thrice, legendary Moe Norman still attracts a crowd whenever he tees it up, and he's in his 70s.

But otherwise, our neighbors to the north regard Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr and Gordie Howe as history's heroes. At least until Weir won Canadian Male Athlete of the Year for 2000, honoring a season during which he won his second tournament, the WGC-American Express Championship at Valderrama, and earned a berth on the 12-man International team for the Presidents Cup matches last autumn against the United States. Mike Weir shoveled a lot of snow to help dispel the myth that golfers can't come in from the cold.

"There might have been some of that thinking among the guys who were trying to make it when I was," Weir says. "Maybe a few of them felt, 'Well, I'm from Canada, so it wasn't meant to be.' And they packed it in for something more secure. But you have to make sacrifices in any profession to get to that elite level, and at the time I kept going, I know there were guys in my age group who were at least as good, and a lot who hit it better."

Breaking through as a pro

When Weir won his first pro tournament--the Infiniti Tournament Players Championship at King City, Ontario, in July 1993 for a check of $18,000 (Canadian)--he beat Steve Stricker by one stroke. Stricker was born in Wisconsin, played college golf at Illinois, and worked his way up to the PGA Tour. Two months after Weir won $1 million in Spain, Stricker snagged a $1 million payday at the next WGC event, in Australia.

"Similar paths, Mike and me," Stricker says. "I know in college, we'd leave the cold and go to play southern schools. My legs looked like two O.B. [out-of-bounds] posts. Winter white. There was this perception we weren't as good, from up north. But you could see in Mike a determination--you still do. You could see he would be a winner. All he needed was confidence."

Weir figured it out early. His father, Richard, bought a neighbor's used set of left-handed clubs for $50 when Mike was 10. Soon, the Polysar Corporation for which Richard worked took over a golf course only a couple of blocks from their home in Bright's Grove, Ontario, a "suburb" of Sarnia, about 60 miles northeast of Detroit. Mike was an all-sports junkie. Besides hockey, he was both pitcher and catcher in baseball. A glove had to be made up for his right hand, because he was the only catcher who could throw to second base with any accuracy. But, in time, his home away from home became Huron Oaks.

"He was there a lot, hitting balls, chipping, putting," recalls Steve Bennett, then the pro. "Not many kids his age would spend hours practicing. Mike did."

Bennett hired Weir to do odd jobs, then "fired" him for a week when the young man passed on picking up range balls in the rain. "Mike never had to be talked to about responsibility after that," says Bennett. Working the cash register was another matter. Bennett left the counter one day and returned to learn that young Mike had sold a golf bag. For $35! He had misread the price tag of $135. Bennett reasoned, correctly, that Weir was destined for outdoor golf.

"He wasn't a big kid," Bennett recalls, "but when he played with us adults, we'd be hitting short irons to greens and Mike would be behind us, with his 4-wood, hitting it inside us. The other thing: Huron Oaks was a place where you could make some birdies. Not easy, but you could go low. Mike wasn't afraid to be aggressive. If he got to three under par, he wanted to make it six."