It might be unusual for a guy named Lemieux to hear \u201cGet in the hole,\u201d rather than \u201cHe shoots, he scores,\u201d but that will be the case in Bermuda starting Thursday.<\/p>\n
Austin Lemieux, son of hockey great Mario Lemieux, will tee it up in the Butterfield Bermuda Classic after making it through the Monday qualifier. It will mark the first PGA Tour event for the 30-year-old amateur.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy game was good enough to get through the Monday qualifier,\u201d he stated. \u201dI felt like it\u2019s been trending in the right direction for some time now. It\u2019s just going to be a great experience for me to come out here and compete with these guys and see if my game\u2019s good enough for the time being.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although he doesn\u2019t play for a living and is still an amateur, he does have some talent on the course. He played in a Korn Ferry Tour event two years ago, shooting rounds of 78-68 to miss the cut. He recently won on the Minor League Golf Tour, a mini-tour in Florida where some pretty talented golfers play for small purses made up mostly of their entry fees. And he made it into this week\u2019s event on the strength of a 66.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was my second Monday qualifier,\u201d stated Lemieux, \u201cso I wasn\u2019t too nervous going into that Monday. Tried to learn from my past experience of my first Monday being a little too nervous. Just went out there and things kind of started rolling for me, got a few under par early and just stuck with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lemieux grew up in Pittsburgh where his father, the legendary Mario Lemieux, played his entire career with the Penguins and later became the club\u2019s owner. Austin played hockey and was talented enough to get a scholarship to Arizona State. But golf soon took over from hockey as the No. 1 sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s extremely different, but some of the movements that I find, and my coach finds are very similar,\u201d he said when asked to compare the slapshot to the tee shot. \u201cThere are certainly a few things that I took away from hockey. As of now, it\u2019s been pretty different.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 6-foot-3 Lemieux said his game is built around strength off the tee and a decent middle-iron game. Over the years, he said, he\u2019s learned a little bit more about shot-making around the greens.<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly everyone can be better at that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While his father is known as one of the greatest hockey players of all time, he\u2019s also a very good golfer, who carries a handicap around scratch. In 1998, Mario Lemieux won the American Century Championship, the pinnacle of celebrity golf tournaments. There are also regular golf games among the Lemieux family.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t until I was about 21 or 22 that I managed to beat him. He shot a lot of 66s and 67s,\u201d smiled Austin Lemieux, who was quick to point out that his mother is also a very talented player.<\/p>\n
The parents will be in Bermuda to watch their son make his PGA Tour debut. Austin has no delusions of winning and said his goal this week is to take it all in and enjoy himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It might be unusual for a guy named Lemieux to hear \u201cGet in the hole,\u201d rather than \u201cHe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":941300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[712,49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-941299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}