Sports Watch
THERE will be a bunch of stories coming out of the Sony Open in Hawaii next January - 2000!, believe it - at the Waialae Country Club. Bengoechea hopes
to clean up
on PGA TourBut none will be more heart-warming than that of Aaron Bengoechea's return to the local golf scene.
The Sony Open will be Bengoechea's first PGA Tour event after he survived the gruelling Qualifying School to earn his Y2K playing card.
And what better place to begin than at Waialae, where he once cleaned bathrooms to earn practice privileges when he was a young golfer at Kaiser High School.
That was in 1983, when he was 16 years old.
"Palmer Lawrence was the head pro and Greg Nichols the assistant," recalled Bengoechea, who shared swabbing duties with John Hearn, another junior golf buddy.
Bengoechea, who now lives in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife, Kristin, can't wait to get here.
He wants to reunite with many of his old pals, especially Poipu Bay Resort pro Michael Castillo and Wade Nishimoto, associate pro at Hualalai.
In fact, the first thing that Bengoechea did after earning his PGA Tour card last month was to call Castillo and Nishimoto with the news.
HE also asked Nishimoto to caddy for him in the Sony Open.
"We used to play a lot together," said Bengoechea. First on Kauai, where they were assistant pros, he at Poipu Bay and Nishimoto at Kauai Lagoons.
Then Bengoechea made what turned out to be a career move by accepting an assistant's job at the Hualalai Resort when it opened in 1996.
By coincidence, Nishimoto also was hired right afterwards at Hualalai, enabling them to resume their golfing duels.
It was at Hualalai where Bengoechea - the name is Basque - met his future sponsor, a Minneapolis banker named John Ryan, who was looking at property there.
Bengoechea, who set course records at Poipu Bay and Hualalai with rounds of 8-under 64, must have impressed Ryan when they were playing together.
"He asked me why I wasn't playing on the pro tour," Bengoechea said.
Then one day, sitting in a pub in Ireland as Ryan's guest, Bengoechea was asked to write up a proposal outlining what financial backing he needed.
The rest, as they say, is history. Although it took a while to write it down.
BENGOECHEA, who played on mini-tours in California and the Asian Tour, finally qualified in his sixth attempt.
"As long as I had the fire and the resources, I knew I could do it. It wasn't a fluke. I expected it," he said.
Born in San Francisco, Bengoechea came to the islands as a youngster when his father, Joe, was assigned here by Meadow Gold.
He played two years at Kaiser before moving to Boise, Idaho, for his senior year.
After graduating in 1990 from the University of Pacific, where he was on the golf team with Hearn and Jerry Mullen, he returned to Hawaii, which he still called home.
His parents, including mom Jackie, will be flying in from Billings, Mont., to watch him play in the Sony Open.
It'll be like old home week for Bengoechea, who wants to get together with old friends, including the Castillo brothers.
"Especially Michael. He gave me my first job," Bengoechea said. And it was cleaning bathrooms.