Dressed from hat-to-cleat in his Little League uniform, Blaine McCallister first swung a golf club on a course adjacent to a ball diamond while he was supposed to be warming up for a game.
"I grabbed the club like a baseball bat and hit it about 200 yards with a slight fade," McCallister recalled. "I thought, 'Man, that's pretty neat.' "
The next day he tried again with much different results. The ball never got airborne.
"Swinging for the fences," McCallister said. "Just falling backwards all over the place."
But McCallister was intrigued by the game of golf.
"The aspect of the ball sitting perfectly still and I couldn't hit it? That made me want to get better and better at it," McCallister said. "I just got hooked."
McCallister went on to win five times on the PGA Tour and comes to the 3M Championship this week in Blaine in search of his first Champions Tour victory.
In preparation, he spent time on the driving range using camera analysis. But when a few other players showed up, it didn't take long for a conversation to start up about the Astros, and the big AL West series with the Angels in Houston.
