Tucson girl, 14, to play in Drive, Chip and Putt contest at Masters
Mar 20, 2018, 4:21 AM
(Southwest PGA Facebook Photo)
(Southwest PGA Facebook Photo)
PHOENIX — Tucson native Mackenzie McRee will be one of the 80 participants playing at the Drive, Chip and Putt Masters Championship on April 1.
The 14-year-old made the cut in September after competing in the qualifying event for the past five years.
“My daughter keeps her emotions inside and this particular moment in time, her face was lit up,” father Jim McRee said. “It was just magic.”
Eighty boys and girls ages 7-15 from around the country qualified for the event in Augusta, Georgia. The contest is a free nationwide junior golf development competition that focuses on the three fundamentals skills of the sport.
Winning her way into the competition may have seemed impossible to McRee a few years ago when she was learning to live with a medical condition.
She was diagnosed with scoliosis as a child and doctors concluded that she would have to wear a back brace every day for more than a year in middle school.
“I felt like I couldn’t walk normal, like I was waddling like a penguin,” she told the Golf Channel. “Some people had said, like, I was only wearing it to get attention and stuff like that. And I kind of just ignored it because my friends knew the real reason I was wearing it.”
Despite having to wear the brace for 21 hours a day, McRee was allowed to take it off when she went on the golf course.
“When I go out to golf, I don’t have to wear the brace anymore so it’s like I get to be myself,” she said.
The scoliosis has shown signs of rapid progression over the past two years.
