Former Myrtle Beach resident from Alaska helps World Am reach 50-state benchmark
The 37th PlayGolfMyrtleBeach.com World Amateur Handicap Championship has boasted players from 49 states and more than 20 countries for each of the past three years.
Alaska was the one state that was absent from 2017-19, and organizers wanted a clean sweep of all 50 states this year.
Ryan Hewitt, who lived in Myrtle Beach for 16 months in the mid-2000s, wanted to return to the area and was happy to oblige.
So despite limitations from the coronavirus that has cut the field from more than 3,000 players over the past few years to about 2,100 this week, the tournament can now claim all 50 with the participation from The Last Frontier of Hewitt from Wasilla and Bruce Belley from Sitka.
“It’s an awesome opportunity to meet some people from all over the world, all over the country, kind of get to see this place again, maybe play some courses I’ve played in years past,” Hewitt said.
Tournament operator Golf Tourism Solutions, a marketing and technology agency that promotes the Myrtle Beach market, ran a sweepstakes in Alaska to give away a spot in the tournament complete with travel expenses, and received approximately 300 entries. Though the winner had to cancel, the contest drew the interest of Belley and Hewitt.
Hewitt’s wife, Allie, saw a Facebook post about it. “It kind of planted the seed of an opportunity,” said Hewitt, who took advantage of both airfare prices and tournament entry fees that were reduced because of COVID-19. “It’s been about 15 years since I’ve been to Myrtle Beach, and I enjoyed my time here and the golf courses are amazing. So it was a good opportunity to come down here and play a little bit of golf and see the area again.”
The World Am is being played on 52 Myrtle Beach area courses this week, though tournament features such as the World’s Largest 19th Hole golf expo and cocktail party have been canceled because of the pandemic.
Hewitt, 39, a residential mortgage broker, is an Alaska native and said like many people who grow up there, he yearned to experience the contiguous 48 states. That, along with his passion for golf, led him to Myrtle Beach in 2004 to attend the now-closed Golf Academy of America.
The 16-month school had five branches in the U.S., including Arizona and San Diego, but Hewitt said he “wanted to be as far away from Alaska as I could at the time. I just wanted something different.”
He got a job after graduation at a course in Illinois and immediately realized the golf industry wasn’t for him – though he still loves the game – and neither was the contiguous 48.
“Like every Alaskan kid I tried to leave and tried to stay away, but the beauty of Alaska is in you,” he said. “It’s just one of those things like every day I wake up and look outside and look at the mountains and I’m like, ‘I can’t believe I get to live in this place. It’s so beautiful.’
“I think every part of the country has that to some degree, but Alaska is certainly more unique and it’s very hard to stay away from when it’s in you.”
Hewitt and Allie have a 3-year-old daughter, Henley Dru, and the family enjoys hunting, fishing and camping, so he has committed to practicing or playing golf three mornings a week during the work week in order to get his game sharp, leaving time for the family on evenings and weekends.
“This is a hard thing to leave Alaska for right now, too, because we’re in the middle of moose hunting season,” said Hewitt, who hunts moose with his wife.
Wasilla is a small town about 50 miles from Anchorage at the base of a mountain range that became famous as the home of former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Can Hewitt see Russia from his house? “No, I don’t quite have the money to have a bluff lot like that,” he joked.
Hewitt flew to the Grand Strand for the tournament, leaving his house at 3:30 a.m. Friday and arriving in Charleston 16 hours later before driving to Myrtle Beach.
But he drove a car when he enrolled at the Golf Academy, and said it required nearly 72 hours behind the wheel. “Which I regret terribly,” he said.
Hewitt, who carries a USGA handicap index of 13.1, has roughly four months to play golf, from mid-May to mid-September, in Wasilla. But you can cram a lot of golf in those four months, as there are more than 19 hours of daylight per day in the peak of the summer. Hewitt has not played more than 36 holes in a day, however.
There are two courses he can play within a relatively short drive from his house, and his company has a corporate membership at the municipal Palmer Golf Course. Settlers Bay Golf Course in Wasilla is the other.
Being accustomed to crisp Alaska air, Hewitt is battling opponents, the courses he’s playing and the oppressive South Carolina humidity this week.
“I’m exhausted. I’m cramping so bad,” Hewitt said. “I have bananas and Gatorade and water, and I’m downing that stuff. I forgot how bad it was.”
Attracting a player from Alaska may not be as difficult for GTS in the coming years.
Hewitt was more attracted by the World Am events that supplement the competition such as the World’s Largest 19th Hole, skins games surrounding the event and welcoming party, which have largely been canceled. So he hopes to return as early as next year with two or three friends in tow.
“There are so many aspects of it, it’s hard to pinpoint one specific thing. But the way it’s been organized even amid all this stuff is just fantastic,” Hewitt said. “The opportunity to have a ton of fun is what’s exciting about this, and I totally want to do it again. If I had people to bring down, it would be way more fun.”
This story was originally published September 1, 2020 at 5:45 PM.
