EVANS, Ga. – Only a few minutes had passed from the time Amari Avery wrapped up her second round Friday morning at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur to when she went to her bag for some fresh shoes, lacing up a pair of red, black and white Air Jordan 1’s.
Look good, play good; Avery is at the top of her game in both areas.
“I’m sitting comfortably,” said Avery, who stepped up to the interview microphone after a bogey-par finish and level 72 capped her play at Champions Retreat in 1 over. “So, I can relax a little bit.”
Avery stands just a shot off the lead shared by Beatrice Wallin and Latanna Stone, and arguably no one – other than maybe top-ranked Rose Zhang, who is three back – will draw as much attention Saturday at Augusta National Golf Club as the 18-year-old from Riverside, California.
But it should be no surprise that Avery, only a freshman at USC, exudes confidence and charisma. She has been in the spotlight since she was 8 years old, when she starred in “The Short Game,” a 2013 Netflix documentary that chronicled several junior-golf prodigies – Alexa Pano, who is tied for ninth at 3 over, was also in the film – in their quests to win the U.S. Kids Golf World Championships at Pinehurst.
At No. 32 in the latest World Amateur Golf Ranking, Avery has validated the early hype, enrolling early last January and proceeding to win twice for the Trojans so far this semester.
Now, she stands on the cusp of making history at Augusta National.
“Honestly, I would say I never saw it coming,” Avery said. “This [tournament] has only been around for four years, so obviously this wasn’t like a dream of mine or anything [growing up], but this is a huge event. It’s probably the biggest amateur event in women’s golf, I would say.
“This is really what dreams are made of.”
Full-field scores from the Augusta National Women’s Amateur
Never mind that the idea for a women’s amateur event played on the hallowed grounds of Augusta National didn’t materialize until April 4, 2018, debuting a year later with Jennifer Kupcho’s landmark victory on national television. Avery has been primed for an opportunity of this magnitude since Dec. 30, 2003, the day she was born.
If that birthdate sounds familiar, it’s because Avery shares it with Tiger Woods. But the parallels to the 15-time major winner don’t stop there: Avery was born in the same county as Woods (Orange), and to a Black father and Filipino mother; Avery’s dad, Andre, has a military background (10 years in the Navy), and brought up Amari using Earl Woods’ book, “Training a Tiger: A Father’s Guide to Raising a Winner in Both Golf and Life,” as a blueprint; Amari and Tiger both lifted Junior World titles at similar ages, and they’ve each recorded holes-in-one at Heartwell Golf Course in Long Beach.
Andre even bestowed the nickname, “Tigress,” upon Amari.
“I didn’t really like it,” Avery told Golf Digest a few years ago. “At first I did, but I want to be Amari Avery, not Tigress Avery.”
Amari ditched the moniker years ago, though her Trojan teammates, from time to time, will still call her “Tigress,” but only when they want to light a fire under her. Not that she needs it much, as she’s turned high expectations into fuel while avoiding burnout and becoming one of the most elite ball-strikers in the women’s amateur game. She possesses a blend of power, athleticism and swagger unmatched by most, even many pros.
Her talent is so evident that when Amari arrived in Los Angeles in January, already armed with an impressive resumé that included California State Amateur and mini-tour titles, she didn’t just win in only her second college start. She won the next one, too, and hasn’t finished worse than eighth in five tournaments.
As she’s ascended to No. 3 in Golfstat’s collegiate rankings, she’s simultaneously transformed from a home-schooled golfer with few college aspirations to a campus socialite. She cried before her first in-person class, the History and Geography of Drugs, a 130-person lecture and the first time she had been in a classroom since elementary school. Now, she’s made more friends than she can count, and not just on the golf teams – she rooms with a swimmer and two water-polo players.
“I haven’t been to a meet yet, if that’s the right term,” Amari said. “A match? I don’t know.” (For the record, it’s swim meet while match or game would work for water polo purposes.)
She has, however, hooked her aquatic roommates on golf.
“They’re really starting to like it,” she added.
How could they not? They have a front-row seat to a budding superstar.
“The way she’s handled the transition is absurd. I can’t believe how seamless it’s been,” said USC head coach Justin Silverstein, who caddied for Amari in the first two rounds at Champions Retreat before handing the bag to a local looper for Saturday. “We knew how good of a golfer she was, but you really never know what someone’s truly got until you see it from 2 feet away instead of 20 yards away.”
Before joining the Trojans’ roster, Amari struggled with the course-management aspect of the sport. She didn’t truly know her yardages, and she had a limited understanding of external effects on golf shots (i.e. wind and temperature). But she’s quickly bought into USC’s data-driven approach, diving into analytics and bolstering her repertoire beyond just her God-given ability to hit a golf ball.
Silverstein likens the adjustment to a quarterback learning a new system. And though the data is still building, he has already noticed a few tendencies: Amari often hits her putts too hard and misses them on the low side, and when she misfires with her approach shots, it’s usually short.
The dividends continue to be paid off this week.
“The first 16 holes of her second round were probably the best ball-striking round I’ve seen her have,” said Silverstein, whose player went 1 under in windy conditions during that stretch, a day after nearly gaining strokes on the greens, a win for Amari considering her ball-striking prowess.
“She just needs to continue to stay disciplined with her iron game,” Silverstein added. “When you hit it as well as she does and as talented of a ball-striker as she is, it’s easy to get more aggressive. But what we try to teach is the better you’re hitting it, the more conservative you get.”
When it comes to Amari’s prospects for Saturday, however, she’s not aiming for the middle of the green.
“I want to win more than anything,” she said. “I think that’s just in my blood. I’m almost a perfectionist. It’s like I put myself in a pretty good position, so I think that whatever I set my mind to, I can do.”
Being shy has never been Amari’s style; not Andre’s, either.
“We want to speak it into existence,” Andre told the New York Times before his daughter’s ANWA debut last year. “We’re going to play Augusta in the tourney. That’s going to happen.”
With her dad on the bag that week, Amari missed the 36-hole cut in a playoff. This week, Andre has traded in his caddie bib and instead is following along with Amari’s mother, Maria, and 15-year-old sister, Alona, also an accomplished golfer.
“Even though he’s outside the ropes, he’s still inside helping,” Amari said.
Like Amari, Andre has experienced his own personal growth in the past decade. He endured negative publicity and harsh criticism after the release of the Netflix doc, which portrayed him as a helicopter dad who could be seen berating Amari for her poor play. These days, Andre feels remorse for his past behavior, and he’s more content letting Amari have her independence and watching from afar.
“You have to grow with your child,” Andre said. “We all start out as toddlers, and then we become adults. Early on, she was a kid, and I was a toddler learning golf. Now, I’m an adult and she’s an adult, so we’ve grown together.”
And yet, he remains his daughter’s most fervent fan.
Andre knows what a win Saturday would mean for Amari and their family. He also is aware of the impact it could have on minority golf – specifically among Black golfers – considering Augusta National’s history: Lee Elder became the first Black golfer to play the Masters, in 1975, and Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. secretary of state, was one of the club’s first two members, invited in 2012.
“It’s going to be a long, hard day, but if she were to come up with the win, I think it’s going to set a precedent for people to come behind her that look like her – and even people that don’t look like her because people of all nationalities look up to her,” Andre said. “But for African-Americans, it’s really going to do a lot.”
Amari may still be a teenager, but she relishes the unique opportunity that is in front of her. She won the Mack Champ Invitational last year, and it was there that she met tournament host Cameron Champ, also of mixed race and an advocate for growing the game amongst minorities.
Amari and Champ share the same instructor, Sean Foley, who has worked with Amari for about four months and on Friday afternoon offered a simple word of advice to his pupil: Just go ahead and see where you go.
When it comes to Amari, the possibilities are certainly endless, with her golf game and her ability to transcend it. In the age of NIL in college athletics, Amari has already inked an endorsement deal with Bank of America, and she has other sponsorships expected on the horizon.
At the same time, she’s aware that she can’t get too far ahead of herself.
Win, and everything else takes care of itself.
“I think I have a glimpse of what [a win Saturday] would look like and what the impact would be, but it’s a lot to think about even right now,” Amari said. “There’s a lot of great players out here. I think I’m playing some pretty good golf. We’ll see. … I think it’s a good time for women’s golf, especially minorities.”
Earl Woods once predicted of his son, “Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity.” In the past, Andre has expressed that he truly believes there is a divine connection between his daughter and the five-time Masters champion.
The similarities speak for themselves, though on Saturday at Augusta National, Amari will just be Andre’s daughter – fun-loving and polite yet also gifted with extraordinary abilities and the chance to do something special:
Sitting comfortably on the leaderboard today, potentially sitting in Butler Cabin tomorrow – and likely wearing Jordans, of course.
