Kamiak golfer moving on

Published 12:09 am Thursday, July 24, 2008

MUKILTEO — The trips back to England have been a regular occurrence since Dylan Goodwin and his parents moved to Mukilteo four years ago.

When Goodwin leaves for a month-long visit next week, however, this trip will be different. For the first time since moving to the United States prior to his freshman year of high school, Goodwin says this will feel like a vacation, not a visit back home.

Home, finally, is here now. And because Goodwin will play golf for the University of Washington starting in September, home will continue to be in western Washington for at least another four years.

When you’ve lived on four continents before graduating from high school, as Goodwin has, home is very much a fluid concept.

“England, the last couple of years when I’d go back, it would feel like home still over there,” said Goodwin, a 2008 graduate of Kamiak High School. “But I don’t think it will feel like home when I go back this time. Here is home. It’s vacation over there, it’s not like I’m going back home.”

Goodwin was born in South Africa to an English father and Israeli mother. Less than two years later, the family moved to Indonesia, which Dylan called home for another six years before moving to England. Goodwin also spent a summer in Israel and lived for a few months in Canada.

Goodwin’s father David, a mechanical engineer whose career was the reason for this globe trotting, then got a job with Boeing, bringing his wife, Aviva, and Dylan to Mukilteo in 2004 (Dylan’s older brother Kyle, 22, stayed in London).

Goodwin has British and Canadian citizenship (his parents lived in Canada and became citizens before Dylan was born) and says he could also someday apply for South African and Israeli citizenship. He hopes to become a U.S. citizen after his green card expires.

Let’s just say Goodwin will have options should golf ever become an Olympic sport again.

After spending his past four years adjusting to high school life in a new country, it makes sense that Goodwin would elect to stay home for college.

“Yeah, it’ll be nice to be near my parents and stay in one place for eight years,” said Goodwin.

But avoiding another long move wasn’t the only reason for picking the UW.

“I just loved the school and the coaches,” he said. “I like the people in Washington a lot. And the weather is — I know people say it’s bad — but the climate is good for me, because I’m used to England. I couldn’t do Arizona, I couldn’t hack that.”

When Goodwin strolls around his home course, Harbour Pointe, he is anything but a foreigner.

“It’s a good place to hang out,” he said. “I pretty much know everybody here, so it’s always nice to come out here.”

He knows the guy driving the lawn mower on the fourth fairway, jokingly playing chicken before realizing that a 135-pound 18-year-old is no match for a riding mower. He knows the people in the pro shop and the kitchen. He knows the head pro and the woman driving the beverage cart (who he playfully calls “Gorgeous” getting away with it, sounding charming thanks to the British accent).

This is home now, and golf has been a big part of finding that home.

“Pretty much all my friends now were golfers or connected to golf,” he said.

Home will now shift south, but only to Seattle. Goodwin is one of four golfers Washington signed from the class of 2008, meaning that by the end of college, he will have lived in this area longer than any of his other stops around the world.

The big adjustment now will not be to a new culture, but rather to a higher level of golf. Goodwin has shown an enormous amount of potential in high school, shooting several competitive rounds in the mid 60s, including a 65 at Harbour Point from the blue tees that was one off the course record (held by head pro Mark Rashell), and 64 at Everett Country Club as a junior.

“As long as you can go low, you can get away with going high in a couple of rounds,” said Jonny Carey, another former Kamiak golfer and one of Goodwin’s best friends. “He can shoot 80 one day, and he can come back and shoot 65, and it’s like, ‘Dude, how’d you just do that?’”

It will be eliminating those big numbers that will make Goodwin a successful golfer in college.

“I was kind of a gamble I think for (Washington),” Goodwin said. “I don’t think my game is to where it could be yet, whereas other people’s games are closer to where they’re going to stay. I think I can be a lot better, and I think going to the U my game will get a lot better. I’ve shot a lot of good rounds, so I think I’ve got a lot of potential.”

Goodwin is surprisingly long off the tee for a 5-foot-11, 135-pounder, After banging a particularly long drive during a recent round with Kamiak grad and Western Washington University golfer Julian Peters, Goodwin flexed and joked: “That’s 135-pounds of muscle.” When his drives hit the fairway and the putts start falling, that’s when the low scores can come.

But before Goodwin moves on to college golf, there is still that trip to England. He’ll catch up with old friends, and hang out with older brother Kyle, a singer and guitarist in an up-and-coming English pop/rock band called Over and Out.

Goodwin will have fun and relive many memories from his life in England, but this time, the flight home will be the one back to Seattle, not the one leaving.

Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com