Reeve to Southwest on golf scholarship

The ball soars higher and higher. Finally, gravity wins and it lands... a long ways away.

Michael Reeve grins in satisfaction.

Reeve, 19, won a long drive contest at Crosswater Golf Club last summer, but no one knows how far that one went. The ball landed in some tall grass beyond the measuring zone and no one could find it. Reeve thinks it went between 330 and 340 yards.

They gave him first prize anyway, a new Nike SQ driver.

The 6-foot-3-inch youth doesn't wrap the driver around his 180-pound body as some do, but uses a powerful shoulder turn to achieve 125-mile-per-hour club speed.

He recently hit one 380 yards on Hole 3 at Aspen Lakes Golf Course, a 600-yard par 5.

The 2008 Sisters High School grad will soon put his talents to the test. On August 18 he begins his college career at Western New Mexico University on a one-half-paid golf scholarship.

Reeve chose the New Mexico school because he wanted a warmer climate and because it has an excellent golf program. Kent Beatty, now entering his 12th season, is head golf coach at the Division II school.

"Michael is exactly the kind of kid we look for at Western New Mexico. He's athletic and has a deep passion for the game. Mike comes from a great golfing family that is very supportive and I know that he will be successful here," Coach Beatty said.

The golf team plays several tournaments in the fall and spring and travels to several states in the Southwest, California and Hawaii.

However, playing on this college golf team doesn't mean sitting around a country club somewhere sipping on a cold drink and trading missed and made putt stories.

The students work at the game six days a week. They do conditioning drills and then practice, beginning at 6 a.m. After a month, they will begin classes that go from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and still work out and practice.

For each tournament, the 11 members on the team compete for the top five spots, so there is constant pressure. Reeve thinks he will do all right, although he is one of seven promising freshmen, with one standout from Montana.

There are no tournaments in the winter, but the team can still play, weather permitting.

Reeve is unsure about a major at this point. He graduated with a 3.4 grade average from high school and played varsity basketball.

His handicap is 0 or less at Aspen Lakes, where he once shot a 70. He carded a 69 in a high school tournament at Tokatee.

Reeve also did well in the Oregon Open at Aspen Lakes in July. He finished 35th in a field of 192 professionals and top amateurs. One of his rounds was a 71 with a two-stroke penalty after an out-of-bounds on the 18th hole.

His future ambition is to play professional golf, but he will wait and see after college.

He plans to work hard on his putting and chipping.

"You can't get too good at it. That's how you score," he said.

He knows there is stiff competition in the professional game, and that focus and staying loose are important.

"I'm working on it. I leave the bad holes behind and don't dwell on them too much," he said.

Reeve credits his dad, Jim, with his golf progress and Mike Lewis, pro at Pronghorn where Reeve worked last summer. He works in the kitchen this summer at Aspen Lakes.

This will be the youth's first time away from home, but the whole family is accompanying him to New Mexico.

He and his mother, Penny, leave this week, and then Jim and 17-year-old sister Lindsay will follow. She is busy playing in the Nike Shootout with a professional during a practice round on August 13, before the Jeld-Wen Champions tour event held at Crosswater.

This youngest member of the golfing family won this honor because she was co-medalist in her division at the girls' high school state tournament on the Ridge Course at Eagle Crest.

She shot 76 and 77. Lindsay will be a senior at Sisters High School next year and also hopes for a golf scholarship.

Jim and Penny teach school in Redmond. The family has lived in Sisters for two years.