IWA golf prodigy continues growth
Published 8:28 pm Friday, December 18, 2015
Fourteen-year-old Sydney Grimes of Suffolk has continued building on the impressive early stages of her golf career.
![Fourteen-year-old Sydney Grimes of Suffolk has been delivering on the early promise she has shown as a golfer. She had a successful 2015 season with Isle of Wight Academy, and as she prepared recently with her teammates for the 2016 season, she hit a hole-in-one on Cedar Point Country Club’s nine-hole par-3 course. (Tony Surace Photography)](https://www.suffolknewsherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2015/12/use-IMG_0618.jpg)
Fourteen-year-old Sydney Grimes of Suffolk has been delivering on the early promise she has shown as a golfer. She had a successful 2015 season with Isle of Wight Academy, and as she prepared recently with her teammates for the 2016 season, she hit a hole-in-one on Cedar Point Country Club’s nine-hole par-3 course. (Tony Surace Photography)
She was already a star representative of Isle of Wight Academy on the links as a seventh-grader, before her scores could even count for varsity competition.
She was a standout, as expected, once they did count when she was an eighth-grader, and her preparation is going well for her freshman season in the spring.
While playing on Cedar Point Country Club’s nine-hole par-3 course earlier this month with the IWA team, Grimes hit a hole-in-one on the No. 9 hole from about 70 yards out.
“I used a sand wedge,” she said. “I was surprised that it happened because I haven’t been up there every day.”
Cedar Point director of golf T.J. Young, who gives Grimes golf instruction, noted that the nine-hole par-3 course is not a regulation course, so the ace is not considered official. Nevertheless, it was another testament to her remarkable skill, with some luck.
At the age of 13, she hit an official hole-in-one on the No. 12 hole of Cedar Point’s championship course that went directly into the hole from 86 yards out.
Like that shot, her 70-yard shot earlier this month also hit the pin and went directly into the hole.
When it happened, “I could see the hole clearly,” Grimes said.
She was with two of her IWA teammates, freshman Willie Keyt and eighth-grader Jed Davies, as well as her IWA coach, Ernest Milburn.
“I turned around and looked at the coach, and then I went over and gave him a hug,” Grimes said.
Milburn said, “She just simply hit a real nice shot.”
Each member of the group expressed their admiration for the achievement in slightly different ways.
“We were all real happy,” Milburn said. “Willie turned around and looked at Sydney and said, ‘Sydney, I don’t like you,’ jokingly, of course. Jed said, ‘Nice shot, Sydney.’”
Her IWA teammates know her abilities well as she finished the 2015 season as Isle of Wight’s No. 1 golfer.
After falling one stroke shy of first in the Metro Conference tournament as a seventh-grader, she was the medalist earlier this year as an eighth-grader.
“She was the only one on the team that was individually invited to states,” Milburn said.
In a field of approximately 56 golfers at the state tournament, she finished in the top 20.
“She was absolutely tremendous,” Milburn said.
Grimes continues to have long-term goals of going to college on a golf scholarship and playing on the LPGA Tour, but for now, she has short-term goals to focus on.
“With Isle of Wight, I’d like to make it to states again,” she said. “I would also like to break par consistently, or at least shoot low 70s.”
After noting improvements in Grimes’ game and highlighting the adjustment she will have to make as she grows physically, T.J. Young said, “She’s definitely continuing in the right direction.”