Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 10 No. 5 | May 2018

inside.hokiesports.com 39 B y definition, a superstition is not based on reason or logic or fact. Yet in the golfing world, golfers totally buy into the effectiveness of various superstitions in an attempt to gain an edge on the game. For instance, Tiger Woods always wears a red shirt for the final round of a tournament. So, too, does Patrick Reed (who won the Masters, by the way). Jack Nicklaus, arguably the greatest golfer of all time, only played when he had three coins in his pocket, believing the number 3 to be a lucky number. Lee Trevino refused to use yellow tees because he thought yellow symbolized cowardice. Davis Love III used currency as a ball marker, but only coins minted in the 1960s, as he believed any coins minted after 1970 to be bad luck. Ben Crenshaw only used balls with the numbers 1 through 4 on them because anything higher would result in scores that equaled that number. All those guys were successful professionals—and Mark Lawrence Jr. hopes to follow a similar path. Virginia Tech’s top golfer certainly resembles the pros, as he may be as superstitious as one gets. He only uses a green sharpie to write on his ball (as a way to honor a deceased friend whose high school’s primary color is green). He marks the ball with a quarter, and the head must be up. If he hits a perfect first drive on the range while warming up, he immediately puts his driver in his bag. And he always has to find and fix his ball mark, lest the golf gods hold it against him. “I have a ton of superstitions,” Lawrence said, smiling. “I have a lot more than that. There are a lot of little things that I do, and when I don’t do them, I’m like, ‘I’ve got to do that.’” Much to the dismay of more analytical types, Lawrence’s results are proving that maybe superstitions actually work. Less than two seasons into his career at Virginia Tech—after transferring from Auburn University—the Richmond native ranks as one of the best golfers in program history. He seemed destined for great things in the sport shortly after his birth. At the age of 3, he broke out his plastic set of kids’ clubs and started mimicking golfers on television, while his dad, Mark Sr., watched Sunday afternoon final rounds. Of course, most of his love for golf came from his dad, who was—and still is—a heckuva player, with a Virginia State Golf Association [VSGA] Amateur Championship in 1980 to his name to prove it. “I’m just a really competitive person, and I just love the competition,” the younger Lawrence said. “And then, I like the fact that no matter how hard you work or whatever you do, you’ll never be perfect, so you have to learn to adapt and look at it from a different perspective. “You can have a perfect game in other sports. A perfect game as a quarterback is all completions and four touchdowns. Or you can have a perfect game in baseball. You can’t have a perfect game in golf. I don’t know, I just like the fact that there is something going on every round. It’s different.” Lawrence’s golf awakening came during his freshman year of high school. He got into a playoff at the state championship tournament, and on the first playoff hole, he hit his approach to within a foot of the hole. The subsequent birdie propelled him to the first of three individual state titles. He went on to dominate the junior golf circuit, winning three consecutive Virginia State Junior Amateur Match Play Championship titles, and he finished as the runner-up at the VSGA Amateur Championship—the same tournament his dad won. He lost to former Tech golfer Maclain Huge in 2015 before heading to Auburn, where he committed as a sophomore in high school. “I was looking at a bunch of different places,” he said. “The coach down there is a really good guy, and I liked him a lot. They had great facilities, and Jake Mondy from Blacksburg was there, and I kind of looked up to him growing up because he dominated Continued on page 40 the state in junior golf for a while. It just felt like it was best for me to do that.” His stay on The Plains, though, lasted for just a year. He played periodically in the Auburn lineup, but was 11 hours from home, away from his parents and his friends, and in the summer of 2016, he decided to come back to the Commonwealth. Fortunately for Hokie Nation, he chose Blacksburg. “Auburn just wasn’t the best fit for me,” Lawrence said. “I wanted to be closer to home and be able to work with my dad when I needed to and talk to him. I needed a change and was very fortunate to be able to come here, and things have gone pretty well.” Lawrence admitted that his golf swing—and game, in general—was a bit of a mess at the time of his transfer. His rounds at Auburn only counted about half the time when he played, and for a guy often used to winning, he only managed one top-10 finish there. The presence of Tech assistant coach Brian Sharp, who had struck up a relationship with Mark Sr. while on the recruiting circuit, also factored into Lawrence’s decision to come to Tech. The elder Lawrence liked Sharp and felt the longtime assistant and former Hokie great could help his son. Sharp’s calm, patient disposition turned out to be exactly what the competitive Lawrence needed. The two worked on Lawrence’s game, and last spring, he led the Hokies in stroke average (71.5). He recorded two top-five finishes and received an individual bid to the NCAA West Lafayette Regional, where he came in 12th. “In less than a year, Coach Sharp got me pretty much to where I am now,” Lawrence said. “That says all it needs to right there.” “He gives me far too much credit for a lot of this stuff,” Sharp said. “We talked about making a couple of changes, and it was more me explaining where I thought he needed to be—but he did all the work. I didn’t hit a single practice ball for the kid. I wasn’t the one spending hours hitting balls and putting and doing all the work that was necessary. I was just a sounding board.” Last summer, Lawrence enjoyed the best two-month span of his life. In June, he won the VSGA Amateur Championship, avenging his 2016 loss to Huge. In doing so, he matched his dad’s 1980 feat, and they became the only father-son duo in the tournament’s 104-year history to win titles. The victory came as no surprise to Sharp. Lawrence visited with Sharp a week before the tournament just to fine tune some things, and Sharp saw little to fine tune. “I told him, ‘The way you’re hitting the golf ball right now, you should go down there and expect to win,’” Sharp said. The victory meant a lot to both dad and son, but especially the younger Lawrence. Each time he had played in the tournament, he sought the trophy beforehand just to get a glimpse of his dad’s name. “The amount I’ve learned from him is unbelievable,” Lawrence said of his dad. “Pretty much every thing aspect of how I mentally attack a round of golf and my mindset with shots, what I need to do, where I need to avoid, I learned that from playing with him and watching him. Probably the biggest thing I’ve learned from him is how to score.” Mark Sr., who played in the 1981 U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club outside Philadelphia, is a short-game guru—even once earning compliments from longtime former PGA Tour player Dave Stockton, a two-time major winner and another short- game guru. For years, Mark Sr. staved off his son on the course because of his ability to hit wedge shots close to the hole. As he got older, the younger Lawrence came to appreciate his dad’s game and took note. golf spotlight mark lawrence jr.