golf movie about. Happy Gilmore or Tin Cup with a twist. He gives up golf at the age of 14 for the world of sporting you name it.
Then, he rediscovers golf at the age of 25, grinds his butt off, as the Americans would say, and wins his first US PGA Tour event this year at the age of 31.
The script needs a little work, so throw in a love interest, as he is accompanied by his girlfriend, Ali, on his first trip to Australia - in fact, anywhere overseas if you discount Hawaii - for the Australian Open. As colourful characters go, he is the real McCoy.
And he loves a chat.
"I played golf from aged four to 14, then quit cold turkey except for playing high school golf, which I wasn't interested in," MacKenzie said at Royal Sydney yesterday. "I surfed and skated in North Carolina, then headed to Montana after schooling finished to snowboard, rock climb and kayak.
I never thought I was going to play golf again. I was really enjoying myself, but I wasn't really making any money. That's all right when you're young.
"
For more than five years in Montana, his only place of abode was a mattress in his van. He snowboarded all day and worked nights at Olga's Bar and Grill as a cook.
He became a volunteer with the ski patrol, working as an emergency medical technician, for which he studied and earned a licence, and tampered with the thought of becoming a full-time member of a search and rescue helicopter team as a paramedic.
That would satisfy his lust for the outdoors and adventure.
But he loved snowboarding, kayaking and rock climbing, and was Then, in late 1999, came his sea change. He once more thought of golf, and his skills as a kid.
love with it," he said. "After that, I really believed I had the ability to make it. Others might have disagreed.
I'd never learned playing bunker shots and chip shots, I thought, 'Holy crud, what's this all about?'. I barely remembered how to hit those speciality shots.
That took time."
He played the mini tour in the US from 2000. He was player of the US Tour at the qualifying school late the same year.
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