Lewis Chitengwa would have turned 50 on Jan. 25. I can’t image him as a 50-year-old. In my thoughts he’ll perpetually be a humble and sort younger man, and an extremely proficient golfer, one in every of a handful of extraordinary gamers who emerged within the early Nineties.
I knew Lewis for a bit of greater than eight years, and so they have been actually good years, till the summer season of 2001 when, at age 26, he died throughout the Edmonton Open on the Canadian Tour.
In 1992, I used to be teaching the golf group on the College of Virginia and doing my finest to deliver the world’s best gamers to Charlottesville. Like each different coach within the nation, I’d been pursuing Tiger Woods, the perfect junior golfer in historical past. It was extensively recognized that he was an excellent scholar who introduced in eighth grade that he would go to Stanford. However man, he was so good I needed to no less than attempt to get him keen on Virginia.
I watched Tiger play eight full rounds of golf in the summertime of 1992 and started writing to him on Sept. 1, the date the NCAA designated as the primary day a coach might correspond with a highschool junior.
The child was phenomenal. Of the eight rounds I witnessed, he had no bogeys in 4 of them, together with a 66 within the second spherical of the U.S. Beginner at Muirfield Village, a masterpiece of 4 birdies, one eagle and 13 tap-in pars.
At Pinehurst No. 7, I noticed Tiger dominate the 72-hole Insurance coverage Youth Golf Traditional and win by 9 pictures. The third spherical there was brutal, with fixed rain and wind that pushed the common rating to round 77. However Tiger, in an incredible show of focus and focus, was in the midst of each fairway, hit each inexperienced in regulation, and shot 69 with 15 pars and three birdies to construct an insurmountable lead.
That summer season, Tiger additionally gained 4 American Junior Golf Affiliation titles and the U.S. Junior for the second yr in a row, so when it got here time for the Orange Bowl Junior on the finish of December, it was a foregone conclusion as to who would win. The one actual query was who would end second.
However on Dec. 30, the day Tiger turned 17 years previous, it was Lewis Chitengwa blowing out the candles on the 1992 season.
Lewis upstaged Tiger by beating him at Biltmore Golf Course in Coral Gables, Florida. Lewis, Tiger and Gilberto Morales of Venezuela entered the ultimate spherical tied for the lead, however solely Lewis was in a position to shoot even-par 71 within the closing spherical to complete at 2-under 282, three strokes higher than Tiger, who beat Spain’s Oscar Sanchez in a playoff for second place. Morales dropped to fourth.
Many had heard of Morales and Sanchez, however who was this unheralded Lewis Chitengwa from Zimbabwe? With some research, coaches quickly found that his Orange Bowl Junior victory was no fluke. He’d already gained the Zimbabwe Males’s Beginner, and was being extremely really helpful by famend instructors Wally Armstrong and David Leadbetter.
It wasn’t simple to trace Lewis down. Nobody had cell telephones or electronic mail again then, and the Chitengwas didn’t have a land line at their house in Zimbabwe. It took greater than a month earlier than we have been in a position to set up common contact – a weekly cellphone name to a household buddy’s workplace in Harare, the nation’s capital, each Thursday at 11 a.m. “Zim time” (4 a.m. in Virginia).
We’d established an excellent rapport by March 1993 when in one in every of our calls Lewis knowledgeable me he’d simply gained the Zimbabwe Beginner for the second yr in a row, this time by seven pictures. After an excellent little bit of time speaking about his newest victory, I requested: “So what’s subsequent on the schedule? You bought something developing within the subsequent couple of weeks?”
The excited banter with which Lewis had been describing his second Zim Beginner win turned severe. His tone modified, as if he was sharing an vital secret, and there was dedication in his voice.
“I’m going to South Africa,” he mentioned.
I knew sufficient about South Africa to know that it was nonetheless working beneath the segregationist system of apartheid – not simply unfriendly to Black folks however downright oppressive. The nation reeked of institutional racism, resettlement camps with depressing situations that tens of millions of blacks have been pressured into and handled like cattle. South Africa was a pariah, shunned and boycotted by democratic nations, and it was solely slowly, grudgingly starting to alter.
The world’s most inspiring political prisoner, Nelson Mandela, had lastly been launched after 27 years confined to a cell, however actual change within the racist apartheid system of presidency, together with free elections, had but to happen.
My phrases got here slowly as ideas turned from golf to fundamental security.
“Lewis, why are you going to South Africa?” I requested.
“I’m going to play of their nationwide championship,” he mentioned.
One other pause.
“Lewis, what do you assume the South Africans will say when a thin black child from Zimbabwe is available in and wins their nationwide championship?”
Lewis truly laughed earlier than replying along with his customary humility.
“Oh, Coach Moraghan, you understand it is a very troublesome event – 72 holes of stroke play simply to make match play,” he mentioned. “Thirty-two will qualify after which it’s two matches every day with a 36-hole closing. And lots of good gamers. A really, very robust area. I’ll do effectively simply to make match play.”
It was about two years after that dialog that Lewis, then a first-year collegian at Virginia, was given an project in English 101 to write down an essay concerning the best day in his life.
There was the mandatory preamble earlier than Lewis might get to his “best day.” He described his arrival on the East London Golf Membership – on the South African coast about 300 miles south of Durban – and being advised by a guard that he couldn’t enter the clubhouse. Assuming the Black child couldn’t probably be a event participant, the guard advised him, “Caddies can’t are available right here, you go round again.”
He described the 45 mph wind gusts that plagued the third and fourth rounds of stroke play, and the way he’d battled to earn a spot within the match-play bracket. He described every of his first 4 matches, together with a 5-and-3 drubbing of future PGA Tour professional Rory Sabbatini within the semifinals.
“Rory had accomplished extraordinarily effectively to succeed in the semifinals,” Lewis wrote. “He had a gradual spherical and completed 3-under par, but it surely wasn’t sufficient to beat my eight birdies in 15 holes. I had reached the finals!”
After which, writing about what would turn into the best day in his life, he described the scene in the beginning of the 36-hole championship match.
“Roughly four-hundred folks packed the primary tee field. Among the many giant gallery have been a gaggle of black maids who had left their soiled laundry and dishes to observe me within the finals. This was a uncommon sight for black girls in South Africa.”
Over the course of that week, Lewis had turn into an inspiration, a hero to each black caddie and home employee and to 1000’s past the membership as phrase unfold of this extraordinary younger man doing the unthinkable. When he closed out his opponent, Hugo Lombard, on the thirty fourth gap to win, 4 and a pair of, his gallery of black caddies and maids rushed the inexperienced in celebration. Shouting, singing, dancing and crying, they fairly actually carried him off the golf course: “Lifting me up on their shoulders, and chanting of their native language!” he wrote.
“The president of the South African Golf Federation introduced Lewis Chitengwa because the South African Beginner champion and his spouse introduced me the trophy,” his essay concluded. “This was an emotional second. Lifting that trophy was such an awesome feeling of accomplishment and private satisfaction.
“Turning into the primary black to ever win this vital nationwide championship was the best day of my life and a dream come true.”
Within the eight years that adopted Lewis’ historic victory in South Africa, he continued to take pleasure in nice success. He gained the Zimbabwe Beginner a 3rd time, was named ACC Freshman of the 12 months and have become a two-time All-American at Virginia. He gained two school tournaments, tied for first in one other and completed seventh within the NCAA Championship, which was then the perfect end by a Cavalier golfer in additional than 50 years.
There at all times gave the impression to be some mad scramble involving passports, textbooks or Titleists, and whether or not Lewis was successful an extended drive contest or battling by means of closing exams with little sleep, he at all times gave the impression to be smiling. Effectively, no less than that’s how I keep in mind it now.
We had some extraordinary adventures collectively on and off the golf course. In Puerto Rico, the place he made six birdies in a row in one of many rounds, Lewis and his teammates hiked by means of El Yunque rainforest and swam beneath a waterfall. In Tallahassee, Florida, he beat one other future PGA Tour participant, N.C. State famous person Tim Clark of South Africa, in a playoff for the person title.
Within the Philippines throughout the World Beginner, Lewis and I spent 4 hours within the U.S. Embassy due to a mistake by UVA’s Worldwide Workplace. There was the time we almost froze to demise at Royal Portrush in Northern Eire, a visit to a hospital in Knoxville, Tennessee, a few visits to UVA’s Pupil Well being Workplace and a number of nice golf, together with 9 group victories.
There at all times gave the impression to be some mad scramble involving passports, textbooks or Titleists, and whether or not Lewis was successful an extended drive contest or battling by means of closing exams with little sleep, he at all times gave the impression to be smiling. Effectively, no less than that’s how I keep in mind it now.
After graduating in 1998, Lewis turned professional and was regularly in competition on the Sunshine Tour in Africa, on the Purchase.com Tour (what’s now the Korn Ferry Tour) and on the Canadian Tour. Lewis additionally acquired a few exemptions into PGA Tour occasions, and it gave the impression to be solely a matter of time earlier than he can be on the market as a full card-carrying member.
On quite a few events over these years I’d run into Earl Woods, Tiger’s father, who held Lewis in excessive regard. In one in every of our conversations, Earl indicated that it had been “an excellent lesson for Tiger” when Lewis beat him within the Orange Bowl Junior. And Earl would at all times point out the South African Beginner victory, sometimes elevating a finger for emphasis and saying with what gave the impression of actual authority and pleasure: “What he did down there, what he did in South Africa, he’ll at all times, at all times be the primary.”
After which, out of the blue, all of it got here to a horrible finish. In June 2001, after back-to-back top-10 finishes in British Columbia, Lewis was once more within the hunt on the Edmonton Open. He adopted up a gap spherical 70 with 67 on Friday earlier than falling sick on Friday night.
On Saturday, he was rushed to an emergency room the place he died that afternoon. Meningococcal meningitis, a lethal bacterial illness that had been lingering within the Edmonton space for near a yr, had killed 26-year-old Lewis Chitengwa.
It was a devastating loss for 1000’s of people that knew and liked him, in addition to a tragedy for golf. Having at one time or one other crushed each nice participant of his technology, Lewis appeared destined for fulfillment on the PGA Tour. Fellow Zimbabwean Nick Value, a three-time main winner, and South African Gary Participant, who collected a profession Grand Slam, each insisted many occasions within the years that adopted that “Lewis would have gained majors.”
I nonetheless imagine that what Lewis did in successful the nationwide championship of apartheid South Africa was, for that a part of the world, the equal of Jesse Owens successful gold medals in entrance of Adolf Hitler within the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Maybe he may need if he’d gotten the prospect. However what he did accomplish in his brief life was actually superb. I nonetheless imagine that what Lewis did in successful the nationwide championship of apartheid South Africa was, for that a part of the world, the equal of Jesse Owens successful gold medals in entrance of Adolf Hitler within the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Or Joe Louis knocking out Hitler’s heavyweight, Max Schmeling. Or the African golf equal of Jackie Robinson integrating baseball in America.
Sure, I liked Lewis as if he was my very own son. For years I struggled to observe the PGA Tour figuring out that he would have been – ought to have been – on the market. And I think about those self same ideas will creep in now when the PGA Tour Champions is on, with Lewis’ contemporaries making their debuts as 50-year-old rookies.
After all I want we’d had extra time, and want Lewis had been given extra time for extra superb accomplishments, extra history-making. However that’s after I remind myself to treasure each second we had, and to recollect him perpetually.
Mike Moraghan was the lads’s golf coach on the College of Virginia from 1989-2004. He has been govt director of the Connecticut State Golf Affiliation since 2011.
Images Courtesy Mike Moraghan
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