Everyone who picks up the game of golf has their own unique origin story. Some tales are banal and forgettable, some are fascinating. The best ones are funny. Jaden Dumdumaya has one that starts out fairly benign, but gets better the more you peel back the layers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dumdumaya learned the game from his father Stan \u2014 a PGA teaching professional in California \u2014 and was playing tournament golf by the age of 4. He emerged as a phenom on the California Junior Golf circuit, and won a 14-15-year-old division of Drive, Chip, and Putt at Augusta National in 2021. He\u2019s gone on to have a standout college career at USC. He grew up in the San Francisco area, but he made regular trips as a teenager to the Philippines to see his grandparents, and that is where the story of how his father picked up the game eventually came to light.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t start playing golf until he was 20,\u201d Dumdumaya said. \u201cMy grandfather [Teddy] told him that if he wanted to marry my mom, he had to be able to beat him at golf. I guess he got pretty good in a short amount of time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The details of any kind of epic showdown between Teddy and Stan have remained hazy in the family lore. But Stan Dumdumaya beat his future father-in-law, and the game became his profession. He eventually passed the game down to his older son, Vohn, and his daughter Angela, who excelled. Their success became the inspiration for Jaden\u2019s success.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Stan Dumdumaya eventually nicknamed Jaden \u201cLittle Dragon\u201d because of how much he liked competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pretty glad my dad beat my grandpa, because if he didn’t, he wouldn\u2019t be with my mom,\u201d Dumdumaya said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dumdumaya always considered himself an American kid, but when he was 16, he was granted dual citizenship by the Philippines, and that\u2019s when playing in the Asia-Pacific Amateur<\/a> became a possibility. \u201cBeing able to represent the Philippines after living in the States my whole life is something really special to me,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n