Vikings’ hope: Kid with ‘the perfect swing’

BELLINGHAM — As a 5-year-old, the son had what his father called “the perfect swing.”

And wherever the boy went to play golf and from whomever he took instruction, his father would advise him, “never to change his swing.”

It was a swing that his father upon seeing it for the first time had a simple one-word reaction: “Wow!”

Craig Koppenberg had played a lot of golf and knew a “wow” swing when he saw one. And now he was witness to the “wow” gift in his young son Jake.

That was 15 years ago, when Craig introduced Jake to the game of golf.

We never know what our sons and daughters are going to do with the gifts they show us at a young age. Grow tired of the sport or musical instrument in which they demonstrate so much talent? Reach a certain plateau and never rise above it?

Jake Koppenberg did neither.

His interest in golf never waned, but only got stronger. He took the “perfect swing” and continued to get better.

He played in junior tournaments all over the country. And wherever he went, he got much the same “wow” reaction his father had shown years ago. “His swing was impressive to other people too,” Craig said.

The perfect swing eventually would allow him to hit the ball long distances. “There are probably a handful of guys on the (PGA) Tour who hit it as far as he does,” said Steve Card, the golf coach at Western Washington University. “I mean, literally, you can’t hit a golf ball a whole lot further than he hits it.”

Jake’s dad would watch him send balls on 340-yard rides. “On average, I’d say (he) probably (hits it) 320 yards,” Craig said.

That 300-plus-yard swing, that “perfect swing,” is now hitting golf balls for the Vikings of Western Washington, and that has made the head coach a very happy fella.

“The sky’s the limit,” Card, in his 15th year as the Vikings coach, said recently. “He’s just got tremendous raw talent.”

Then, he quickly added that there was more than just raw talent packed in the powerful body of the 6-foot-1, 190-pound Koppenberg, who played his prep golf at Everett High. Besides boasting a “very sound” fundamental game, Koppenberg has what Card says is a unique characteristic.

“That’s the ability to shoot really low scores,” Card said. “A lot of guys might get to three, four, five under par early in their round and start playing defensively, not wanting to blow it.”

That’s not Koppenberg. Rather than just playing it safe to retain a lead, he becomes more aggressive. “When I get 4 or 5 under,” he said, “I want to try to birdie every hole.”

He didn’t birdie every hole in a tournament early last month in Goodyear, Ariz., but he did birdie 11 of 18, after starting the round with a bogey. By the end of the day, he had carded a 10-under-par 62 to break the school record by two strokes and to win medalist honors in the Grand Canyon University Men’s Golf Fall Invitational Tournament at The Golf Club of Estrella.

Not only did he record the best round in school history — which is impressive, because Viking golf has a glorious past — but he broke the course record by three shots.

On the first day of the tournament, Koppenberg had rounds of 70 and 68, in the latter of which he produced nine birdies, meaning he had 20 birdies on his last 36 holes.

“He just tries to go deeper and deeper and deeper,” Card said. “It’s almost like it doesn’t faze him that he’s going as low as he is.”

It doesn’t. Remember: Try to birdie every hole. “My aggressive attitude has helped me shoot some low scores,” Koppenberg acknowledged.

And it has enabled him to play some outstanding golf this fall. Besides the first-place finish in Arizona, he had two other top-three finishes in five tournaments this fall, a second in the Saint Martin’s Invitational at Olympia and a third in the Sonoma State University Invitational at Santa Rosa, Calif.

He has done all this while adjusting to a new team and a new school. After two years at the University of Idaho, the 20-year-old Koppenberg transferred to Western Washington this fall. He made the move because he and his former coach “didn’t see eye-to-eye.”

Koppenberg didn’t get into specifics, saying only, “Some stuff happened that made it impossible to play for him.”

Card had recruited Koppenberg coming out of high school but Koppenberg wanted to go to a Division I school. Card said he could understand that because there’s an “allure” attached to D-I competition. But he also noted that there’s a misconception about the caliber of golfer that can be found in Division II, which Western is.

“There’s no difference between my players and a Division I player,” he countered. “They’re still golfers, you’re still playing the same golf courses, we don’t play shorter golf courses or less difficult golf courses.”

This much Koppenberg knows. He couldn’t be happier. And it has shown in his results. He feels as if he’s playing the best golf of his life and he attributes much of that to the surroundings, calling his new home a “more positive atmosphere” than his old one. He’s also fit in well with his new teammates, some of whom he knew from having competed against them in junior tournaments, and he likes his new coach.

The coach likes having him on his team. “He’s just a quality, quality young man,” Card said. “He doesn’t have any sort of ‘I’m the man type’ of attitude.

“Golf is an individual sport, but he’s also very much a team player and so it’s not necessarily about him and that’s a difficult balance in the collegiate game because so often these kids want it to be about them. Certainly they all have their individual goals, but I think he’s come to appreciate and understand the concept that I’ve tried to have in our program and that is, it’s about the team.”

Koppenberg works hard at his game, and that includes physical conditioning, which he has improved considerably in the last year by doing some heavy duty bicycling. He did the Seattle-to-Portland ride this summer, covering 140 of the 205 miles on the first day, proving that he’s as competitive about cycling as he is about golf.

“I can’t just go out and have a fun ride,” he said. “I try to make it a competitive fitness tool. If I’m good at that (cycling), playing 36 holes on a Monday is not a struggle.”

And while he has put in more than 1,000 miles on his bicycle in the past five months, he isn’t entertaining any thoughts about becoming a professional racer.

A professional golfer? That’s been his ultimate goal ever since he started playing golf.

Ever since his dad first saw him swing a club and responded with a “wow.”