Sophia Waddell is more than familiar with the Monterey Peninsula from her days living in San Luis Opisbo.
“We used to travel up there every year or so to go and stay there and just go around the town and see everything and go to the beach,” said Waddell, 16 and now a junior at Palm Desert High School.
What Waddell never did was play the glorious golf courses of the Monterey Peninsula like Pebble Beach Golf Links or Spyglass, either because the price to play was exorbitant or junior tee times for the courses were too late in the day for her to play.
That changes this week. Waddell, through her old First Tee chapter in San Luis Opisbo, will play in the PGA Tour Champion’s Pure Insurance Championship. Paired with a to-be-determined PGA Tour Champion player, Waddell will play both Pebble Beach Golf Links and Spyglass the first two days of the event. If her team makes the 36-hole cut, she’ll get a chance to play Pebble Beach again on Sunday.
“I’m really excited,” Waddell said. “It is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I would love to enjoy and just soak in every moment of it.”
Waddell and other juniors from across the country are playing in the tournament thanks to the event’s association with the First Tee program, a junior program that focuses on golf but also on life skills that can be learned through the game, like honesty, integrity, respect and responsibility.
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Participants were selected by a national panel of judges based on their personal growth and development through First Tee’s programs, as well as their playing ability, according to a First Tee statement about the PGA Tour Champions event.
“On average, participants have been involved with First Tee for more than seven years, have a 3.95 GPA and have recorded a 1.5 handicap,” the First Tee said.
For Waddell, who only moved to the Coachella Valley in August, all of her qualifications for the Pure Insurance Championship came through the First Tee Central Coast, which has a location in San Luis Obispo. She is one of 80 First Tee members who will play in the event this weekend. There is a First Tee program in the Coachella Valley, based at The Golf Center in Palm Desert.
“For Pure Insurance, it’s not oh, you are a really good golfer and you have a really low handicap,” Waddell said. “It’s also how good you are with leadership and how you have been with other opportunities and how you act and also community service. I guess they have seen how I have been with all of those and all of my projects in starting a golf group. So they have learned and seen how I have done, so that is also why they chose me.”
Among the projects Waddell has participated in as a First Tee member was helping to create a golf program for special needs golfers in Florida, though she was still working through her San Luis Opisbo chapter. She also had to write a report about the project for her Pure Insurance berth application.
“It’s a bit of a process, I guess. I have been with my chapter as long as I can remember. I was a little kid when I joined,” she said. “It’s been almost like 10 years since I have been there. I have gone to different opportunities all over the country, and I kind of built up a rapport of doing all these projects with all of these opportunities.”
Waddell said some of the members of her old First Tee chapter will be in the Monterey Peninsula this weekend supporting her, as will some friends from her old high schools as well as family members.
While Waddell now lives in the desert and plays for Palm Desert, she admits she wants to say in contact with her old chapter while also learning how to navigate the heat of the desert.
“It’s a bit of a chance, especially with the heat and temperatures, which was difficult for golf and keeping up hydration and stuff,” Waddell said. “I think I’ve just learned to work with people in San Luis Obispo and in Palm Springs, just trying to keep that connection just so I can stay with my chapter.”
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Palm Desert High golfer gets berth in PGA Tour Champions pro-am
