If you stood at the right angle and perhaps silhouetted him, you could mistake Harrison Crowe for a young Adam Scott.
He has broad, angular shoulders, narrow waist and more than a hint of mullet drifting southwards from the back of his cap.
While the swing isn’t quite on the same classical plane, it’s equally powerful and capable of demoralising opponents – just as the kid who began his journey to the green jacket as a three-year-old at the North Adelaide public links on the shores of the Torrens.
Crowe has that same devout love of the game.
Fully supportive of their little boy, mum Shaunaugh and dad Tony let young Harrison loose on the fairways of the very public Bardwell Valley Golf Club, just a couple of solid drives west of the Sydney Airport precinct.
His passion for the sport stemmed from as far back as when he was just 18 months old when he jumped in a mini buggy and rode it around the family’s back yard with broad smile.
He had a barrel of laughs at Bardwell Valley, where professional Ross Forsythe taught him the basics of golf and plenty more.
By the time he was 14 and winning age-group events as a new member at coastal St Michael’s in nearby Little Bay, he had the rare decency to tell a local newspaper: “Bardwell Valley is like a second home to me. They have taught me about technique.”
His coach then, as now, was John Serhan, who was on the side of the 18th hole today to see his young charge narrowly miss a putt that would have given him the outright halfway lead in the Golf Challenge New South Wales Open.
The resultant tap-in par meant Crowe had played 36 holes without a bogey and his pair of seven-under-par 64s assured him a berth in the final group on Saturday.
He still practises at “The Valley” and occasionally pours beers for its members; he proudly represents St Michael’s and his family – and he’s become the hottest amateur in Australia in this crazy summer in which he’s won the Vic Amateur, the Australian Master of the Amateurs and his coveted state amateur crown at Links Shell Cove.
Today, as he fulfilled post-round media commitments like a veteran, he patiently waited and had a sneaky little dance to a Mariah Carey track humming in the background.
He was confident. He was honest. He was eminently quotable.
Harrison Crowe is someone you’ll grow to love if you haven’t already.
He lives golf. He has for at least 18.5 of his 20 years, apparently.
He has an appetite for winning and, more importantly, a knack of achieving it when he has a chance.
It would be an undeniably enormous stretch to say that he will ever come vaguely close to matching the achievements of Adam Scott.
But if the young tyro can win his state championship in 48 hours – “I’m not here to practise”, he told the media – there’ll be many more comparisons ahead.
