It is the stuff of spy stories. Trenchcoat espionage in the days when there was a wall.
Man goes to check in at an airport in Qatar, an Arabian country on a peninsula in the Persian Gulf.
His flight is to take him to Dubai, then to Singapore.
All he needs to do is pick up his ticket, but when he goes to do this, he gets a long stare from the agent and is told they’ll have to reissue.
They hustle him down narrow hallways into an office the size of a closet where two guys are sitting. They don’t utter a word. Finally they tell him it’s going to cost him more than the original ticket.
The man knows he’s being taken for a ride, but by now, all he wants to do is to get out of there.
He gladly pays. With money. Not his life.
A story out of the pages of a Robert Ludlum novel?
No. A chapter out of the life of Rob Rashell, professional golfer.
It’s just one of many stories he has to tell about his year on the European Tour. Not all of them filled with intrigue, of course, but certainly the stuff of a book, if ever he has time to sit down and write it.
That won’t happen anytime soon. There are trips to be made and tournaments to play.
To paraphrase Dorothy, “We aren’t in Qatar anymore.”
No. This is the big one. The PGA Tour. The best of the best.
Vijay Singh. Tiger Woods.
And now, Rob Rashell, former walk-on at the University of Washington who on last week earned the right to take on the Singhs and the Woods with a second-place finish in the U.S. PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament at La Quinta, Calif.
Six intense high-pressure rounds played on two courses with the top 35 golfers earning PGA Tour cards. And Rob Rashell was only one stroke out of first place at the end.
Dramatic? Emotional? Life-changing?
It was all of this and more.
His mother and father were there. With tears in their eyes. And Rob couldn’t help but get choked up, too.
“One of the most gratifying days of my life,” said his old college coach, O.D. Vincent.
“Very emotional,” said his mother, Donna. “This was his dream.”
“Great story,” said his current coach, Jeff Coston. “Dreams do come true. Right?”
Right.
And this one couldn’t happen to a better guy.
This is who Rob Rashell is. An even-keeled, hard-working, warm, caring guy who grew up in a solid, loving, supportive family. He took up golf at the age of 10. Rob, with his older brother Mark, used to spend countless summer days playing at Cedarcrest Golf Course in Marysville. He never had a golf lesson until he got to college. He had no intentions of becoming a pro when he started at the UW but just kept getting better and better. He paid his dues by playing several years on various mini-tours, culminating with second-place finishes two years in a row on the Gateway Tour. He then qualified for the European Tour a year ago, the only American playing full time. He ended up as the best putter on the tour. He was ranked 363rd in the world out of 950 professional golfers at the end of the year. And last Monday he earned his PGA Tour card on his first trip to the finals of Qualifying School.
Oh, yes, and he also got a check for $40,000.
Is this going to be a Merry Christmas or what?
“It’s been crazy the last few days,” Rashell said at mid-week. “I had 40-some messages (on his phone-mail) and I erased half of them. Three hours later, I had 40 more.”
He was in his car, approaching the Phoenix area, where he lives. He’d been on the road for almost four hours, returning from the tournament, and he’d literally been on the phone since early that morning.
There were calls from well-wishers. And golf manufacturers. And management agencies.
If he thought his life was hectic then, he hadn’t seen anything. For in addition to Christmas and all that it brings, he now has to begin getting ready for his first PGA Tournament, the Sony Open next month in Honolulu.
“I have three-and-a-half weeks to prepare mentally and physically,” he said.
He has to get back out on the course and practice, escape into his own little sanctuary where he can shut out distractions for a few hours a day to get his game and his mind right. That’s in addition to the various and sundry things he must do off the course, such as find an agent, secure tournament credentials for his family and others, and on and on and on.
As chaotic as things might seem, if anyone can put it all in order and be successful, it is this former Lake Stevens High School athlete who spent the last year traveling to more than 20 countries, which is a lot of language barriers to overcome.
As if that wasn’t daunting enough, he also was his own travel agent, booking flights, finding hotels, renting cars. And, at least that one time in Qatar, engaging in what looked like a cloak-and-dagger melodrama.
All that time, he was out there by himself, a young fella who thought playing in his first college tournament in Oregon was a big adventure. “That was the furthest south he’d ever been,” laughed Vincent, now the head coach at UCLA. “He wasn’t very well traveled.”
He is now. Rashell estimates he flew between 175,000 and 200,000 miles last year.
Life gets easier from now on. Aside from the competition, that is.
After a one-day orientation of what the PGA Tour provides for its players, Rashell said, “The perks are far more than I envisioned. They put you up in a hotel, they provide breakfast and dinner, they provide a courtesy car and a (cell) phone. The greatest thing is the people are super nice. They said, ‘You’ve just got to ask (for what you need). ‘”
He can ask it in a language in which he’s proficient. “Traveling in the U.S.,” he concluded, “is going to be a piece of cake.”
Rashell will go into this venture well prepared, you can bank on it. Just as he laid out a game plan for Qualifying School.
He stayed with an old friend in Palm Springs, Bruce Richards, one of his original sponsors when he turned pro. Richards and his wife Gail, who live in Bellevue, asked Rashell what he wanted the ground rules to be for the week.
“I said I don’t want to know anything about the tournament the entire week,” he recalled. “I didn’t want to know where I stood on the leader board.”
“We had a lot of fun with that,” Bruce Richards said. “He’d walk into the room and I’d have to turn off the TV.”
The most Richards might say about the tournament was, “Good round today.”
“At the end, they wanted so badly to ask me questions,” Rashell said, “but we had a good plan and we stuck to it.”
What made things immensely easier is that Rashell played superb golf, shooting 68, 68, 70, 67, 74 and 69. He knew he was in good shape when he was in the last group starting the fifth round and in the next-to-last group for the final round.
“The hardest thing about six rounds is it gets grueling at night,” said Costen, a former PGA Tour player who is now director of instruction at Semiahmoo Golf and Country Club. “What you think about in between rounds (is important). You have to enjoy the journey rather than always looking at the outcome.”
The journey has been long and arduous, but enjoyable, too, for the 28-year-old Rashell.
And it’s about to get even better.
“It’s pretty cool how he’s matured and grown the last six years,” said his brother Mark, the assistant pro at Harbour Pointe Golf Course. “He’s played everywhere, all the while with the goal of playing the PGA Tour. He knows he’s put the time in and now it’s time to get going and just let it happen.”
Bill Meyer, a sports psychologist who works with Rashell, says his protege has a “good mind for golf.
“He has a passion for it, he appreciates it, he is intrigued with it. He enjoys all the other things about golf, the people, the competition, the volunteers, the travel.”
Vincent, who brought several of his UCLA players to the tournament, praised his former student for his growth as a player, saying he continues to improve every year. “I am convinced he will not move backwards,” Vincent said.
As for Rashell the person, Vincent said, “He’s rock-solid, the same old Rob, only more mature. The way he goes about everything has always been very even-keeled.”
Best of all, he’s still loyal to his friends and they to him as well. Several old classmates from Lake Stevens flew down to the tournament and were among a gathering of 20-30 supporters cheering him on the final day.
Now they’ll gather behind him in the biggest arena in golf.
As the man said, dreams do come true.
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