Addilyn Stephens, 10-year-old Princess of Patrick Farms, wins huge golf tournament in Paris ...Middle East

PEARL – Meet Addilyn Stephens. She’s 10 years young, cute as the proverbial button, weighs all of 65 pounds and unless you are really good at golf – I mean really, really good – she will beat your brains out.

Listen to how Addilyn celebrated the Fourth of July weekend: She went to France with her parents, Randy and Melissa Stephens, and won the Paris Junior Golf Invitational against an international field, shooting 4-under-par for 27 holes. Competing in the 9-10 age division, she won the top prize by 10 shots. She shot a 3-under 33 the final nine holes. She lapped the field is what she did.

And this is what will most impress people who play the eternally frustrating sport of golf: The soon-to-be-fifth-grader played 27 holes and hit 24 of the 27 greens in regulation. That’s precision. Scotty Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 ranked golfer, leads the tour hitting 72.5% of greens in regulation. At Paris, Addilyn Paige Stephens hit 88.9% of the greens in regulation.

The Stephens family flew back into Mississippi around 5 p.m. Tuesday. By 6:30 p.m., she was back on the practice tee at Patrick Farms in Pearl, where they live next to one of the greens. Jet lag? At 6 the next morning, she was on the putting green practicing again. That persistence, that dedication to improving, surely is her greatest asset.

Says Patrick Farms pro Derek Benson, Addilyn’s primary teacher for four years, “I have worked with a dozens of kids over the years, but I have never worked with one who is as driven as Addilyn. She is a perfectionist. I mean, she works at it for hours day after day after day. She wants to be the best she can be. She wants to be the best in the world.”

But before you begin to think Addilyn is pony-tailed golfing robot, listen to what Benson says a few moments later, “She is the sweetest, kindest soul I have ever been around. Everybody in this golf club loves her. Everybody gravitates to her. She’s the princess of Patrick Farms.”

I watched Addilyn practice late on a hot, humid Wednesday afternoon. After spending much of the day at a theater camp in Brandon, she began by hitting wedges on the practice range, aiming at a target pole about 100 yards away. Shot after shot, she hit a nice, little right-to-left draw, all landing within five yards either side of that pole. She moved to an 8-iron with the same result, hitting the same little draw about 20 yards farther. Shot after shot she hit squarely in the middle of the club face. 

Next, her dad handed her her driver and she started pounding 200-yard draws, none of which would have left any fairway she’ll ever play. Then, we went to the practice green where she began with a three-ball drill, lining the balls up for putts of two, four and six feet. She sank them all, dead center of the cup over and over. When she finally missed one, she grimaced, lined it up again and sank it. When she began chipping drills, she sank the second one she hit from about 30 feet. She sank two more before she put her wedge away.

All this skill doesn’t necessarily come from genetics. Randy Stephens is a self-professed “80s shooter.” Melissa, the mom, doesn’t play. “I provide the snacks and the wardrobes,” she says. “That’s my job.”

Randy started taking Addilyn to the golf course when she was 4. At 6, she began lessons. At 7, she beat her dad for the first time. She now gives him six shots a side and wins nearly always. 

“I remember one day I shot 74, which is about as good as I can play, and I was feeling really good about myself,” Randy says. “Then Addilyn reminded me she shot one-under.”

She said she doesn’t feel sorry for her dad when she beats him: “No. Because on the tee box, he is, like, flexing and all that.”

Randy, who is from St. Louis, works in sales. Melissa, from Fort Walton Beach, Florida, is an assistant principal at Rouse Elementary School in Brandon.

Addilyn, an only child, plays a golf schedule that includes 22 tournaments this year. Not all are as costly as the Paris trip, but, Randy admits, “It does get expensive. But then you see that joy on her face. She loves it. She loves to compete. If she didn’t enjoy it so much, we wouldn’t do it. We pick and choose the tournaments, and this year Mom wanted to go to Paris so we just treated it like a family vacation. We had a blast.”

Both parents talked about with obvious pride abot how Addilyn used Google Translate to converse with the girls from all over the world during the competition. A girl from Utah finished second, but Top 10 finishers included girls from France, Cambodia, Turkey, Nicaragua, Romania and Turkey.

Asked what she enjoyed most about the trip, besides the golf, Addilyn said it was meeting girls her age from so many different places and cultures who spoke so many different languages. As her dad put it, “She figured out how to communicate with girls who didn’t speak a a lick of English.”

Addilyn saw the Mona Lisa in a visit to the Louvre. “I thought it was cool,” she said. “It was really small.”

She also saw the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumphe and her favorite, the Palace of Versailles. 

Winning the tournament – her biggest victory to date – surely made it all the more enjoyable.

Now then, anyone who plays golf, knows not all her golf experiences will be 10-shot victories. Golf, perhaps the most fickle sport of all, will rip your heart out. Jack Nicklaus, the most accomplished golfer of all time, put it this way: “Golf isn’t, and never has been, a fair game.”

David Duval famously went from No. 1 in the world to barely being able to crack 80. Michelle Wie qualified for the U.S Open at 10, turned pro at 15, was ranked No. 2 in the world at 16 and was widely predicted to become the greatest women’s player of all-time. She won only one major tournament and stepped away from the LPGA Tour at age 32, unranked in the world.

Ray Floyd, the World Golf Hall of Famer and winner of four majors, may have said it best: “They call it golf because all the other four-letter words were taken.”

Watching Addilyn practice brought back memories of watching Greenwood’s Cissye Gallagher hit balls nearly half a century ago. Gallagher, who has won the Mississippi State Am 12 times, was a remarkable junior player and then helped raise two daughters who were terrific golfers. She knows a thing or two about expectations. She hasn’t watched Addilyn play yet but looks forward to the opportunity.

“Good for her,” Gallagher said. “She’s got so much to look forward to. That’s so crazy winning a tournament in Paris at age 10. When I was 10, I hadn’t played farther away from Greenwood than Greenville.”

There will be struggles. In golf, there are always struggles. Gallagher knows that, too.

“Golf’s hard,” Gallagher said. “Expectations can destroy you. Golf really is a marathon, not a sprint.”

Marathon or not, Addilyn Stephens is off to a remarkable start. Next? She’s headed to Pinehurst, North Carolina, July 30-Aug. 2, for the Junior World Championships, which will attract 1,500 golfers from more than 50 countries. Last year, competing as a 9-year-old,  she finished 42nd in the world.

“I was so nervous last year,” she said, sheepishly. “I didn’t play my best.”

She’s a year older, a year wiser, a good bit stronger and she has won on an international stage. Believe this: She expects to do better.

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