Should selflessness and golf be two cherished components to the world in which you live, then these are turbulent times. Depressing, perhaps. Definitely sad. Greed is running rampant, which stinks, but we can handle that. It’s the disingenuity that sickens us.
What to do? A few deep breaths are highly recommended. Then wrap your emotions around a role model who embodies all that is wonderful about living life to help others and having a pure passion for golf that has never been corrupted.
May I suggest Mary Bea Porter-King. Her life story, her continued dignity, her sense of proper life structure. All of it inspires, but any mention of this marvelous woman begs for a flashback to that March day in 1988 when Mary Bea reacted to a badly-played golf shot in a way that still captivates our attention.
She ignored her ball, which was well off the fairway, and instead went rushing when she saw a 3-year-old boy floating in a swimming pool on property abutting Moon Valley CC in Phoenix. With help from her caddie, Porter was up and over a 6-foot fence and within seconds was helping revive a young boy by the name of Jonathan Smucker.
Stop the story there and Mary Bea Porter-King is a hero. She saved another person’s life, an overwhelmingly impactful reality when you consider it was a 3-year-old child who would have died had it not been for her selflessness.
But there is much more to her story, including what in tarnation Porter-King was even doing at Moon Valley that day. At 38 she was no longer exempt on the LPGA, but the passion for competition led her to that qualifier for the Samaritan Turquoise Classic in Phoenix, where she lived. (A year later she moved to Hawaii and Kaua‘i has been home ever since.)
“She was trying to balance playing and being a mom to a young son on the road,” said Dottie Pepper, who was a 23-year-old rookie on the LPGA in 1988. “She had the motor home, child, dogs – all of it.”
Pepper remembers being in the locker room that day when the incredible life-saving incident took place. She had already been befriended by Porter-King and clearly Pepper was in awe of what her fellow professional had done.
But there is so much more as to why Pepper looks at Porter-King as “a role model in so many ways.”
There have been all those years of looking at the big picture and creating ways for others to enjoy golf, the incomparable manner in which she helped build an impressive junior golf program in Hawaii, no easy feat when you consider that you’re navigating four islands for “state-wide” tournaments. Her volunteer work with the U.S. Golf Association, being a board member with the PGA of America, running national tournaments like the upcoming Ladies National Golf Association Amateur Championship in St. Louis, and serving as one of two officials overseeing Team USA’s participation in the hugely popular Palmer Cup, a team tournament that just concluded in Geneva, Switzerland.
Substantial and quantitative, all of her contributions back to golf, and at 72, Mary Bea Porter-King is more passionate, more influential, and more needed than ever. She truly is helping to “grow the game,” which is why her thoughts matter when it comes to what is going on in this LIV business.
No surprise, she is saddened.
“I read something about how these players will promote the game,” said Porter-King. “Are you kidding? How is this better for the game? They are brain-washing them, giving them talking points.”
They are also giving them gobs and gobs of money, which would be fine and good if players conceded they were in it for the money. They don’t. They hide behind this silliness about “growing the game” and Porter-King, speaking for herself and for so many colleagues who truly pour efforts into golf at the grassroots level, is offended.
To Porter-King, who lives on Kaua‘i with her husband, Charlie, the rewards for her efforts have always been gained by the way in which Hawaii junior golfers have used the game to great benefit. Michelle Wie is well known, of course, and Kimberly Kim won a U.S. Women’s Amateur, but Porter-King is equally proud of Allisen Corpuz, a rookie on the LPGA, and Dr. Miki Ueoka, who attended Kaua‘i High School, then starred at the UCal-Santa Barbara and is an internal medicine specialist in Honolulu.
“These girls loved to play, they got educations,” said Porter-King. “I’m always running into someone who learned to play in our program and it’s so rewarding to see their success.
“Golf is a gift that was given to me and it’s an honor to give it back.”
There is a “relentless resilience” within Porter-King, said Pepper. “She’s the standard for doing things the right way.”
Anyone who has had the pleasure to meet Porter-King would wholeheartedly agree.
Thirty-four years ago, Porter-King did things in a heroic way and while it was over-the-top inspirational the day she saved Smucker’s life, the story has only been enriched through the years by the special bond they share.
“He’s now 38 and has four children,” said Porter-King. “But in 2019, before COVID and when there were only three children, I flew Jonathan and his wife to Kaua‘i for a vacation. It was so much fun. He’s a wonderful young man.”
Porter-King laughs.
“Crazy story, I know. But it’s the best bad shot I ever hit.”
Fortunately for golf, she has been on target ever since.
