When Canada’s men’s golf team hits the links at the Maccabiah Games this July at the legendary course in Caesaria, one of the players in the regular open category won’t be 18, as is usually required.
The youngster will be a 15-year-old scratch golfer with a wry smile and a great short game.
His name is Daniel Knight, a teen so good that he qualified last fall for the Games’ senior men’s competition, despite his young age.
Knight, a Grade 10 student at Selwyn House, will be joined by six others in Israel, a few of whom are, like Knight, members at the Elm Ridge Country Club on Île Bizard.
The men’s golf team will be co-captained by Maccabi Canada golf vets Danny Zack and Dick Marsh, who has said he sees genuine medal potential on the team.
Maccabi officials felt that Knight has shown so much talent that there was no reason for him to tee off with the juniors.
Marsh first spotted him playing at Elm Ridge, “and I guess he thought I would be good for the team,” Knight told The CJN during a recent interview in his NDG home.
Knight was understating the case.
At 5-10 and with a frame that seems ideally suited to carving out the notoriously elusive perfect swing, Knight’s first golf club was of the plastic variety, which he wielded when he was a toddler on the lush courses of Boca Raton, Fla., during winter family sojourns there.
As an older boy – around age seven – Knight accompanied his father Laurence – himself a five or so handicap – on rounds of golf at Elm Ridge, where the younger Knight first tested himself on the driving range and began to play his first rounds.
“When I was 10, I almost had a hole-in-one,” he said of a moment that has clearly stayed with him.
It was only at around age 12 or 13 – a little more than two years ago – that Knight began to get more serious and show more of a genuine passion for the game by competing “for fun” in Elm Ridge’s B Division junior club championships.
Knight also began to train with a new coach, Andrew Phillips, and competed in the Matiss Tour for young Quebec golfers, garnering the title for 13-and-unders, as well as in a Canadian Junior Golf Association event.
He then began to train under another coach, Elm Ridge’s Geoff Stewart, who “broke down” for Knight the more technical elements needed to hone his game.
Last summer, Knight also made it into the provincial junior championships for players 18 and under (where he finished 36th), and then won the junior club event at Elm Ridge, as well as becoming the first under-18 player to win its men’s and men’s match play and stroke play events.
A born jock who has also competed in organized football, hockey, baseball, tennis and squash, Knight recognizes that golf is as much a mental game as it is about form and natural talent.
“I used to get so nervous,” he said, losing tournaments in the final holes.
“I had to stop, take a few deep breaths, and I think I’ve come a long way in terms of the mental game by competing more, and by keeping more cool under pressure.”
He said he’s best at the “short game” – chipping and putting – but has also improved from the tee, where he can hit ball 280 yards on a consistent basis.
As for thoughts of turning pro, Knight, an honours science student, said he is seriously considering medical school (his father is a physician) and is not even thinking about it.
“In Florida, there are 14-year-olds playing in the junior tour there who can shoot 68s,” he said.
“Here, you can play during the summer quite a bit, but during the winter I only play at the Golf Dome [in Kirkland] and when we get down to Florida during March break.”
Interestingly, two of Knight’s favourite pro golfers – besides Tiger Woods, of course – are South Africans: Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, winner of the U.S. Open in 2001 and 2004.
Knight, who in his younger years attended Solomon Schechter Academy, is looking forward to competing in Israel, where he has been twice before for a half-sister’s wedding and prior to his own bar mitzvah.
“The other players are older, but I’m really excited about it,” he said, although his friends tease him that “golf is not a ‘real’ sport.”
