Peters takes one last drive as Mead boys golf coach

Paul Peters was the 25th man as a freshman on the 25-man Shadle Park High golf team. He introduced himself to the game by smacking balls in a vacant sandlot near the family’s Indian Trail neighborhood home.

By his senior year, he was No. 4 on the varsity and went on to play at Community Colleges of Spokane.

“I wonder if I’d been 26th,” Peters said.

“Who knows where life would have taken me. Somebody, circumstances gave me a chance to get hooked on this game.”

He’s been hooked ever since, to the tune of coaching the Mead boys golf team for 44 years, the last 37 as head coach. He’s down to one more tournament – State 3A on Tuesday and Wednesday in Olympia – and one more road trip.

Peters estimates he’s taken roughly 800 road trips with his teams. He can’t begin to count the hours he’s spent at practices and matches at Wandermere, the program’s home course. Instead of doing the math, Peters offers a sincere “thank you” to the Ross Family, the course’s longtime owners.

Peters’ long career is reflected in the numbers. He’s guided four state-championship teams – three in a row from 1991-93 – and five second-place finishes, including last spring. He’s led the Panthers to 13 Greater Spokane League titles.

“It’d be nice to get another,” Peters said, “make it an even five (titles) and five (runners-up). We’ll see.”

But numbers and legacy aren’t on his mind right now.

“I kind of liken it to a player in any sport, say a golf tournament,” Peters said. “You stay with what you’re doing and focus and after it’s all over, you might have a chance (to reflect).

“But I have thought about it. I haven’t shed any big tears, but I know I’m going to miss it. Obviously, it’s been part of my DNA for a long time.”

Asked the most satisfying aspect of coaching, Peters doesn’t mention records or championships. He points to relationships built with his players – 15 to 20 day tied for 38th, a day after he declared the try-and-beat-me algorithm he detailed in 2019 still worked just fine.

Maybe he was right, though.

Sunday, of course, will have pitfalls. With its often firm and narrow fairways and a rough whose verdant hue makes it appear more appealing than it actually is, Oak Hill has been a devilish test since the first tee shot Thursday. After two rounds, only nine players were below par. After three, that figure had shriveled to seven.

Conners held a lead that crawled as high as two strokes for much of the day, helped along by a front nine that passed without a bogey and made the possibility of his first major championship victory all the more real. Born in Ontario, not all that far from Oak Hill, he has been a favorite of the galleries, energized by an April victory at the Texas Open and confident in his putting, a welcome status for a player with a reputation for expert ball striking. But a double bogey on the 16th hole sent him tumbling out of the top spot.

Hovland again lurked at and around the top of the leaderboard throughout Saturday. He has been there before: Since the start of last year’s British Open, he has been in the top 10 at the end of every major tournament round. His afternoon darkened quickly, with bogeys on two of his first five holes, before a spree of three birdies left him poised to take the lead on the 14th hole. A sand wedge from about 75 yards brought him just inside the green’s edge, but he missed a birdie putt, settling for par. He missed another birdie try at No. 16.

Six pairings ahead, Hovland’s playing partner in last year’s final round at St. Andrews, Rory McIlroy, rediscovered some of the form that eluded him at the Masters and beyond. (Neither Hovland nor McIlroy won that Open, which Cameron Smith left with the claret jug.) McIlroy, often drenched, shot a 69 for the second consecutive day, taking him to 1 under and putting his ambition to win his first major since 2014 not fully out of reach.

“I probably hit it a little better off the tee today than I did the first couple of days, but I think this tournament and especially in these conditions and on this golf course, the nonphysical parts of the game, I think, are way more important this week than the physical parts of the game,” McIlroy said. “And I think I’ve done those well, and that’s the reason that I’m in a decent position.” former Panthers showed up at Wandermere three weeks ago when Peters was honored after the team clinched the GSL title – and stories that didn’t make the headlines.

He quickly offers an example.

About 15 years ago, a Mead player who didn’t always have great support at home fell ill during a tournament in the Tri-Cities. Peters said he did what anybody would do, taking the young man to the emergency room where he was diagnosed with myocarditis.

The youngster eventually recovered, overcame additional obstacles and rejoined the team more than a year later. He never played in a varsity match, but Peters proudly points out he’s healthy, lives in the area and works at a golf retail store.

“He always had a great heart,” Peters said. “It just wasn’t working well at that point.”

Peters, 73, has learned which players he can talk to and which ones to leave alone during competition, but his message, even without words, is unfailingly positive.

“During a round, maybe you’re not playing great and he’ll just smile at you,” said senior Benjamin Mulder, the GSL Player of the Year. “You’ll just shake your head, and he’ll keep smiling.”

Longtime Gonzaga Prep coach Dennis Dougherty first met Peters in the late 1980s. The Bullpups and Panthers have battled in recent seasons for GSL supremacy, but that didn’t interfere with their friendship.

“He’s really the exact idea of what a coach should be in high school golf or athletics in general,” Dougherty said. “He wants his players to get better, wanted them to compete, but he’s the most kindhearted and generous person out there.

“We’ve gone at it, but I’ve also had him into my home and we’ve played golf together.”

Keith Ross, Mead’s girls coach since 2009, played on Peters’ teams from 1994-97.

“My first thought of coach – I still call him coach – was all the mental and parts of golf that aren’t physical,” said Ross, who will succeed Peters as the boys coach next season. “Whether it was calming you down, breathing, how to be present, controlling your anger or even controlling when you get excited after making a couple birdies in a row.

“As a teenager, all you want to do is hit the ball as far as you could. He taught us there’s lot more to golf than that.”

To that end, Peters employed innovative methods. At practice, the team would play scrambles or three-club tournaments.

One tourney was called “miss ’em all,” meaning players weren’t allowed to hit the green in regulation. It forced players to think where they needed to miss the putting surface to have the best chance of getting up and down. If they hit the green in regulation, it cost them a stroke to putt the ball off the green before completing the hole.

To provide a different perspective, Peters once brought in a “mental guru” from the Midwest to conduct a seminar for the boys and girls teams.

“I think he’d met the guy on a flight and they got to talking,” Ross said. “I think Paul paid for it out of his own pocket. It was quite fascinating.”

Golf has changed, especially in terms of equipment, from when Peters first entered coaching. Golfers have changed, too.

“The athletes now, look at the Mulder twins,” Peters said of senior standouts Bradley and Benjamin. “They’re bigger and stronger. There were always good players around, but there are more now.”

Peters is exiting the coaching ranks with another talented team. Of the nine GSL first-team selections, six were Panthers. Peters instantly provides insights into each player.

All six have tournament wins to their credit. At last week’s District 8 3A championship, Cameron Cantillana, playing as an independent, was tops on the team and finished second overall.

“We’re really deep, I mean our seventh kid is pretty good,” said Peters, who retired from teaching in 2002 after 30 years, the majority spent at Northwood Middle School. “Some of the scores they’ve been able to manufacture (including a GSL record at Deer Park), I have just kind of stepped back and giggled a little bit and been mostly amazed. I’m not surprised.”

His perspective on 44 years of coaching isn’t surprising either.

“I’m really spiritually, philosophically about all of this,” he said. “I’ve loved the opportunity. Like anything, it’s been right place, right time. We’re on these paths together for a reason.

“What I’ve thought about a lot is how much appreciation and gratitude I have for the whole situation, the relationships and people I’ve met. They call you a legend, but also if you’re around that long sometimes that just comes off their lips.”

And sometimes it’s an apt description.

Local watch

Joel Dahmen (Clarkston) struggled during the third round of the PGA Championship on Saturday, shooting an 8-over-par 78 to bring his three-day total to 11 over, tied for 71st of 76 remaining golfers.

The rain-soaked Oak Hill Golf Course got the best of Dahmen, who did not birdie. He made bogey on Nos. 1, 6, 8 and 18 and double bogeyed Nos. 9 and 10.

Dahmen shot a 69 on Friday to make the cut. He will tee off in the second pairing at 5 a.m. on Sunday with Japan’s Kazuki Higa.

Sunday’s final round. The PGA of America, three-time major winner Padraig Harrington noted, is deeply skilled at setups.

Koepka has not gone as long as McIlroy without a major victory, although he has been more battered with injuries these past few years. He began to gain ground early in the day, with birdies on the fourth and fifth holes. At No. 5, christened Little Poison, his 179-yard tee shot landed neatly on the green, setting up a putt for birdie. Unlike plenty of other past major champions – including McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau – on Saturday, he avoided a bogey at No. 6, a havoc-inducing par-4 that has been playing closer to a 5.

A second shot at No. 13 landed in the rough, leaving Koepka

96 yards from the hole. His next stroke put him on the green, setting up a birdie putt from roughly 18½ feet. That putt, though, seemed puny at the 17th hole, when Koepka rolled one in from about 47 feet. With the wet conditions forecast to clear, players expected the tees to be moved back for

“If they want us to go out there and shoot a good score, being 68, they’ll set it up that way,” he said. “They could, if they want, set it up for a low one for sure, but that wouldn’t suit the leader. The leaders always want a tough challenge on Sunday so they can play safe and the chasers get caught out.”

But the universe of chasers is a small one. Again, its members are pursuing Koepka.