The Legend of Eddie Pearce How the “Next Nicklaus” found new life on the rocky road to the Sandhills By Bill Fields
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s things go in dating, once things have gotten serious, you meet the parents. The first time Linette Smith visited the Florida home of Doris and Wes Pearce, she was struck by the contents of one particular room with a bunch of trophies. Linette knew her boyfriend, Eddie, as a car dealer at Larry Rigby Chevrolet in Abilene, Texas, who had sold her a new 1986 Camaro Berlinetta. “Were you good at something?” Linette asked Eddie upon seeing the shelves full of silver curated by Eddie’s mother. “Oh, yeah,” Doris interjected, “he was a golfer.” In fact, Doris’ younger son was a very, very good golfer who before he had a driver’s license was being viewed as someone who not only could win on the PGA Tour but dominate it, a generational star in the making. Eddie played liked a man when he was a boy.
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Gary Koch, a six-time tour winner and longtime television broadcaster, recalls a 1969 high school match in which he and Pearce, his fellow King High School star in Temple Terrace, Florida, were grouped with the No. 1 and 2 golfers of another team. It was a water-guarded par-5 that called for a drive, layup and third shot onto the green. But not if you had Pearce’s talent and strength. “The three of us had layed up, and Eddie takes out his 1-iron, which he was so good with, and powers it up in the air, over a lake and onto the green,” Koch says. “I glanced over at the other two guys and they’re shaking their heads like, ‘Are you kidding?’ I would still put Eddie among the top 10 ball-strikers I’ve ever seen — and that’s when he was 18 or 19 years old.” Pearce is 68 now, nearly a half-century removed from winning the 1971 North and South Amateur at Pinehurst No. 2, another rung on his ladder to the greatness so many predicted. He has been back in the Sandhills since late 2018 as general manager of
May 2020 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills
