THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 23, 1994 TAG: 9407230363
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE CARLSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Northwestern golfer Scott Rowe has spent the summer working on his driving.
Seven thousand miles worth of driving, to be exact, in the six weeks since he left school for the summer. The Big Ten player of the year and freshman of the Year has been tooling around the Eastern half of the United States with his mother, playing in tournaments, including this week's Eastern Amateur.
``This is tournament No. 4 of a very long summer,'' Rowe said. ``I've already gone through three oil changes.''
The 19-year-old Rowe is already a well-oiled machine on the golf course.
He shot a 68 Friday at Elizabeth Manor, among the top rounds so far at this year's tournament. The 6-foot-5 Rowe has a sweet swing that, combined with his father's job, has already turned him into a world traveler.
Rowe was born in Puerto Rico, then lived in the Philippines, Toronto and finally Hong Kong, where he attended high school. His father is executive vice president of the Bank of Nova Scotia and is in charge of the company's Pacific region.
Rowe, who has dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship, attended Hong Kong International, which he described as an Americanized school attended by internationals. He still calls Hong Kong, where his mother and father live, home. Hong Kong is where Rowe refined his skills on the four golf clubs in the city of 7 million.
``Golf is kind of an exclusive thing there,'' Rowe said. ``The courses weren't little cow pastures, but they were not exactly Augusta National, either.''
Rowe learned to play the game proficiently nonetheless. He finished ninth in the 1992 World Junior Championships, was the youngest player to represent Hong Kong in international tournaments and won the Hong Kong National Championships.
It was at a tournament in San Diego during his sophomore year in high school that Stanford coach Wally Goodwin took note of Rowe. Goodwin recruited Rowe, but when it came time to enroll in school, Rowe fell short academically at Stanford. Goodwin previously had coached at Northwestern and steered Rowe that way - much to Northwestern coach Jeff Mory's delight.
``I think Scott was the best freshman in the country this year,'' Mory said. ``He didn't win (national) Freshman of the Year, but the player who did, Scott had a 2-2-2 record with in head-to-head competition.''
Mory said Rowe was advanced beyond most freshmen because of his experience in international tournaments.
Northwestern finished second in the Big Ten, and Rowe was the team's low-stroke leader with a 73.89 scoring average. He was fourth in the Big Ten Championships and became the first freshman to be named the league's Player of the Year. He also earned honorable-mention All-America honors.
``He had quite a few more top-10 finishes than anybody else in the league,'' Mory said. ``He was far and away the best player this year. He hardly had a bad round all year.''
The past year at Northwestern marked the first time Rowe had actually lived in the United States. He said it wasn't much of a culture shock - ``I just watched TV too much, that was the only problem. Hong Kong doesn't have much on TV,'' he said - and he enjoyed a year in which many were shocked by the freshman's poise and prowess.
``It was everything I wanted it to be,'' Rowe said. ``No one knew where Hong Kong was, and no one had ever heard of me.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN, Staff
Scott Rowe, the Big Ten player of the year as a freshman at
Northwestern, shot a 68 Friday at the Eastern Amateur.
by CNB