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Twelve-Year-Old Kline Plays With Big Heart By Rhonda Glenn, USGA Her name is MacKinzie Kline, but she'd rather be called, “Mac.” At 12, the youngest contestant in the 2004 U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links Championship, made the cut. That, in itself, is enough to make her noteworthy.
You might think that Mac is just like you and me, except perhaps she's a better golfer. But there's more to Mac than just a big swing and a cool head and a smooth putting stroke. She was born with a congenital heart defect. She has just one ventricle to pump the blood through her body and the blood flow to and from her lungs is done by gravitational flow. Mac was only 11 weeks old when she underwent her first open heart surgery. The second was performed when she was 23 months old. Doctors said she would never be active in sports. “But I grew to love golf,” said MacKinzie. From the age of 5, she has been a golf prodigy. Last spring, she was paired with John Daly in the pro-am at the Buick PGA Tour event at Torrey Pines Golf Course and made quite an impression. “When he won the tournament, he called me on his cell phone and told me to get myself over to the club and be a part of his party,” said Mac. “There were about 15 people and we had the party on his bus.”
Besides meeting celebrities and playing golf, Mac goes to school. She'll be a seventh grader at Deguino Middle School in Encinitas, Calif., this fall. And she raises money for The Children's Heart Foundation. Lots of money. “I set a goal,” she said. “I want to raise a million dollars.” By playing in various charity events, Mac has thus far raised more than $250,000 as the national spokesperson for the CHF. The money keeps coming in. As her father, John Kline, walked near the Golden Horseshoe Golf Club's Green Course clubhouse at the WAPL Thursday, several people pressed bills into his hand after reading of Mac's goal in a local newspaper. “I keep it right here, in this pocket of my wallet so that I know that it's for the Foundation,” John Kline laughed. “I don't want the children to find it and spend it!” In 2002 and 2003, Mac won the 12-and-under division of the California Girls Junior Championship. The Women's Amateur Public Links hosts mostly adults but she was in her element, qualifying with scores of 76-73—149 on a course that stretches 6,159 yards. In her first-round match Mac encountered Gabby Wedding of Wilmington, Ohio. Wedding, who attends Kent State University, kept her ball in play and had a seemingly insurmountable 3-up lead after seven holes. But Mac kept chipping away at the deficit. She won the eighth and ninth holes with pars and at the 345-yard par-4 13th hole she squared the match with another par. Wedding's par won the 14th and she was again 1 up. Another par at the 15th gave her a 2-up lead. At the 177-yard par-3 17th, Mac hit a shot that few good amateurs have mastered, a cut 5-wood to within 15 feet of the hole. She drained it for birdie to stay in the match. Trudging up the big hill to the 18th green, little Mac was just 1 down. She didn't win. Both players parred and Wedding was the victor, 1 up. But Mac had staged a valiant battle and, just as she has in the rest of the few short years of her life, she showed a lot of, well, heart. Rhonda Glenn is a manager of communications for the USGA. E-mail her with comments and questions at rglenn@usga.org |
