past + present
Looking back 70
december 2021/january 2022 | DFWCHILD
PHOTO COURTESY OF SHERI KOHLES
MINI GOLFER: Long before he ever stepped on a fairway (and before he could even walk, actually), professional golfer Ben Kohles was DallasChild’s January 1991 cover kid. About 9 months old when the photos were taken, Kohles was in a phase that made the photo shoot a bit challenging, according to his mother, Sheri Kohles. “He was at this weird stage where all he would do when we talked to him or looked at him was make this face we called the ‘O face,’” she recalls. “It took the photographer quite a long time to get him to make some other expressions.” Sheri Kohles framed the final cover and hung it in her son’s bedroom. The cover went with the family when they moved from Dallas to North Carolina— where Kohles began playing golf at age 10. He became competitive as a teenager and attended the University of Virginia on scholarship. Kohles won seven events before graduating with his psychology degree in 2012. Today Kohles, 31, is playing on the PGA Tour. He lives in a seaside community in Florida with his wife Lindsey, whom he married in 2018 after meeting through mutual friends. Looking back on the cover, BELOW // Kohles laughs, “I can’t Ben Kohles, say I’ve opened any of professional those books.” —Alexis golfer Patterson