Spector tees off to bright future in game of golf> Seeds of success planted early

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When Waterville High senior Abby Spector was 4, her father, Gary, took her to Squaw Mountain Village in Greenville where he was the greenskeeper and gave her an introduction to golf. Swatting the ball, hoping for contact, and celebrating when she put it in the air, Spector learned the sport in a carefree way.

“It was like a dad and a toddler going out and taking a walk. They would just play, pound the ball around,” said Chris Devlin, who was the teaching pro at Squaw Mountain then. “It was nothing formal. I think that’s what you do with somebody under 6, you let them beat it. If they get it airborne, let them run after it giggling. They won. She was little and laughing and chasing the ball.”

Spector grew to love the game as she wandered the public course overlooking Moosehead Lake – the perfect setting for a storied Maine athletic career, but an unlikely start in a sport dominated by athletes raised in warmer climates.

“I didn’t have anything to do. I lived on a golf course. There wasn’t a lot of other things to do,” Spector said. “[My father] started reading books to help me and he’s been doing that for 13 years.”

Spector played in her first major tournament when she was 9, was shooting in the 90s when she was 11 and, at 12, she broke 80. By that time, she had decided golf would be in her future.

Sitting at Waterville Golf Club last week, Spector explained her start in golf the day after she captured her second American Junior Golf Association tournament.

Spector described how the Maine Junior Boys Championship became the Maine State Junior Championship after she played in it at age 12. And as she did, she was greeted by members, men over 40, cheering her and inviting her to play with them.

“Good going Abby. Nice to see you winning,” one club member yelled.

Two weeks ago, Spector captured the women’s Maine Amateur with a record-breaking, three-round total of 211 at Rockland Golf Club. Last week in Wethersfield, Conn., Spector proved her 17-stroke victory was no fluke, as she won the AJGA Greater Hartford Jaycees Junior Classic by 12 strokes. She finished with a three-day total of 218 on the 5,814-yard Wethersfield Country Club course.

Spector enjoys her triumphs, but still is looking ahead.

“I didn’t feel like I was coming to another level. It’s a crazy game,” Spector said. “It’s not like I’m going to keep hitting low 70s, high 60s. It won’t last.”

That Spector has achieved solid positioning among national juniors was made clear when she recieved two scholarship offers in early June. The University of Tennessee, ranked 12th, offered Spector a partial scholarship and she was offered a full ride to Tulane University, ranked 50th in the Mastercard Collegiate Golf Rankings.

Still, when Spector considers the coming year she winces, thinking that before next season, she must endure another winter.

“I’m not looking forward to the winter. I was talking to my Dad. He was saying, `Your game is in great shape.’ And I said, `Yeah, this winter I’ll have to go through not playing for five months.’ He said, `Hey, but now we know how to get you to this point.’ ”

Changing times

Just as Spector’s game has been honed and improved amid Maine’s harsh climate, so, too, has her life undergone an ever-changing environment.

Spector started learning golf in Greenville, then when she was 8 her family moved to Gardiner, then Waterville.

And when Spector was 9, her mother, Christine, died of breast cancer.

“I wouldn’t be playing if she was still alive. I did play a little then, but I didn’t play in tournaments,” Spector said. “I used golf as an escape. It took my mind off it.”

If golf gave Spector release from her grief, it didn’t distract her from her loss – as she indicated when asked if she now plays for her mother.

“It’s kind of hard to answer that,” Spector said before a long pause. “I think of her all the time.”

So, despite Spector’s hardships, perhaps because of them, her game has endured in a state that allows her to play just seven months of the year. Spector said she decided to reach the national junior level when she started playing in AJGA tournaments at 13.

“I met some girls. I realized how incredible they were. After they play 18 holes they go to the driving range, just play all the time. It was amazing to me that this was going on,” Spector said.

After years of working on her game, Spector became completely devoted to improving the past two years.

Barbara Tewskbury, who befriended Spector when she moved to Waterville, said Spector has improved dramatically in the last year. Spector has visited Tewksbury of Augusta in Florida the past three winters. But Tewskbury said she saw a much different golfer last February.

Helen Plourd, who has been playing in the WMSGA for 40 years, said she saw the greatest improvement take place in Spector’s game in the past year.

“I think [it was] due to the time she spent in Florida with the pro down there. If she continues to grow like she did this year, certainly she would have a chance at the LPGA [Tour],” Plourd said. “She is a kid, only 18. She’s already learned how to manage a course. She stays fairly relaxed in competition. A lot of people take a lot longer to learn.”

Waterville Country Club general manager Lee Spalding has seen a remarkable metamorphosis take place in the past five years as he watched a shy child turn into a confident champion, a likeable Pied Piper, and a powerful role model.

“She’s done to golf with young people to girls what Cindy [Blodgett] has done to basketball in Maine. Maybe more,” Spalding said. “I don’t think that many were involved in golf. Between her and Tiger Woods, golf at Waterville has grown.”

Spector said maintaining her calm is hard – but has gotten easier and become more valuable as she has risen to the national junior ranks. Through her calm facade Spector has learned to play the course – not her opponents. Spector explains her discipline and unwavering calm on the course are a result of her father’s teaching – of his decision not to teach her bad habits.

“My Dad does not play golf because he has a temper. I think he didn’t want to teach me to react at a bad shot, so he stopped playing,” Spector said. “A lot of people told me at an early age not to show emotion. If someone is looking across the green at you they want to see you throw the club to the ground. If you’re walking along calm, they don’t know what you’re thinking. You have an advantage.”

Team effort

What some golf fans wonder about, and a few skeptics criticize is the relationship between Spector and her coach and caddie, her father.

Alyssa Munger, a 21-year-old from Bridgton who was runner-up to Spector this year in the Maine Amateur, said Spector will face a hard time improving beyond her father’s guidance.

In all three of the Amateur Championships Spector won, Gary Spector served as her caddie and coach. Before her tee shots in Spector’s record-breaking amateur performance this year, her father stood behind her, helping to line up her shots.

Munger said not having such a mentor, and getting used to not having such an intensely scrutinized game, will be hard for Spector in college.

“In college it’s just you out there. You have your coach, but they’re not out on the course with you telling you how to play shots,” Munger said after this year’s amateur tournament. If you’re in trouble, you have to figure it out.”

Plourd also said Gary Spector has monitered his daughter’s progress very closely, but she has noticed him start to give his daughter more room.

“I think Gary has backed off a little. He definitely has been her coach and, best friend, really,” Plourd said. “I think he’s got to back off a little. I talked with him a little about it and to other people. He realized that.”

Gary Spector is tired of the comments, that the rumors arise from jelousy. Spector is not bothered by the rumors she hears of her father. She said they are far from the truth.

“I’ve gotten pretty close to him, as a single parent. Golf hasn’t hurt that at all,” Spector said. “Everyone says he pushes me too hard. It’s something I want to do. He actually has tried to get me to quit in the past. He tried to get me to quit a couple of summers ago. He’d say, `I don’t know if this is what you want to do.’ I think people had been telling him he was pushing me too hard and he would worry about that. I talked him into continuing to take me to golf tournaments.”

Gary Spector said except for his daughter’s two trips to Connecticut, he has not traveled with her this summer. And he only caddied once, in the Maine Amateur, where Munger made her comments.

“She has a lot of heart. She is very diligent, she’s a very smart golfer. I am certainly not her caddie. Without her dad, she is extraordiI am certainly not her caddie. Without her dad, she is extraordinary,” Gary Spector said. “I didn’t plan golf. Golf was done more or less as a social event. It just kind of took off. She got real good this past year.”

Golfer and golf coach Jeff Stafford, who runs into the Spectors only occasionally at University of Maine women’s basketball games or shopping centers, is certain Gary Spector is nothing but a supportive teacher.

“I think some people think maybe his enthuasiasm relating to her and everything, is an overzealous parent,” Stafford said. “If you know him, that’s not it at all. He is all about fair play, all about learning. He’s not living vicariously through her.”

Among the nation’s top golfers, help and guidance from parents is not unusal.

Arizona State coach Linda Vollstedt, who led her team to the 1997 and ’98 national championships, said women who are raised by parents who closely watch their daughters’ golfing careers excel.

“I find a lot of players who have the guidance of parents do quite well,” Vollstedt said. “They come in and have good self esteem and confidence. Some people think overbearing is a bad thing. I think it helps with self confidence.”

A different time and place

What remains unseen is can Spector, who plays just seven months of the year, be successful in Division I college golf or beyond.

Vollstedt said the key about getting to the Division I level is playing in national tournaments – which Spector spent the last few years doing.

“Coming from Maine, she’s probably learned to play golf in all kinds of weather,” said Vollstedt, who had heard of Spector but is not recruiting her. “She’s not just fair-weather.”

Tulane coach Sue Bowers, one of 20 coaches interested in Spector, said it’s hard for players to improve in college. Bowers said the key to developing into a solid Division I player is adapting to the longer distance and the AJGA tournaments help.

Spector isn’t sure how she’ll fare in college. The prospect, she said, is both frightening and exciting. She isn’t even sure if she will go play year-round in the south or continue to battle the cold winters in the Northeast playing at Yale.

“It’s tough to say no to Yale,” said Spector, a National Honor Society recipient.

The pull to paradise is also tough to resist.

“The coach at Tennessee said, `We play golf 10-12 months a year. Is that something you would like?’ I said, `ABSOLUTELY,’ ” Spector emphasized. “It’s such a pain in the spring, after five months, getting my game back in shape.

And in the face of her decision, Spector said she doesn’t know how she will stack up to the Division I competiton she’ll face in two years. This query concerns her the least, because she knows she has prooven she’s just as good.

“If you compare my 218 to the girls all over the country, that holds up,” Spector said. “That’s pretty good to break 220 in a three-day tournament.”

She hopes her game will continue to improve and hold up against the nation’s best.

“I have it in mind to try to be on the LPGA, that all depends on what happens in college and if I lose interest. I don’t think I will,” she said.

There are 451 American and foreign players on the LPGA roster and not a lot of native New Englanders, but that’s not to say Spector would not be in good company if she made the Tour.

There’s LPGA Hall-of-Famer Pat Bradley. Born in Westford, Mass., Bradley compiled her amateur resume in New Hampshire where she won the amateur in 1967 and ’69. And Hall of Famer Patty Sheehan got her amateur golf start in Nevada, but is originally from Middlebury, Vt.

Jane Blalock, who was born in Portsmouth, N.H., got her start as the New England junior champion. She is now ranked 52nd on the Tour with more than $1 million in career earnings.

But if Spector is to make it to the LPGA Tour, chances are she’ll have to relocate. The typical player on the LPGA Tour this year resides far from Maine. Half the players are from either Florida or California.

Plourd said it is “imperative” that Spector goes to a southern climate to play if she is to make the LPGA. Rockland Golf Club pro Keenan Flanagan has no doubt Spector will make the LPGA.

“You can’t always tell, some other people her age burnt out and had some potential and didn’t make the next level,” Flanagan said. “Hopefully she will keep her focus throughout the next four to five years.”

Growing gallery

The irony for Spector is that while she has excelled in a low-profile high school sport, her fan base is strong.

When Stafford coached golf at Narraguagus High School in Harrington three years ago, he saw Spector play in a tournament for the first time. He was mesmerized.

“I kind of had heard and read a lot. I finally saw her play. As a coach, I couldn’t stay with my own kid. I followed her. Gosh, she played the lights out,” Stafford said. “She shot two or three under par that day. She played very well. It was pretty impressive. Her demeanor and everything.”

Spalding said three years ago the junior program at Waterville was half what it is today. The club maxed out this year with 30 student memberships. Spalding said the growth is because of Spector.

Spector’s steady assault on golf’s barriers seemed natural to Flanagan.

“She’s gotten bigger, stronger, just the way she handles herself,” Flanagan said. “The best of her golf is how she manages the course. I would say she developed that from her father and watching other players, being around better golfers.”

Spector has even impressed outsiders.

While Bowers couldn’t comment on Spector, she couldn’t – and didn’t try – to restrain her reaction to Spector’s final round of 66 in the Maine Amateur.

“Ohh 66!” Bowers gasped. “You don’t see too many 6’s in junior golf. You see 78s and 80s, when you see something with a 6 and another 6 – that’s incredible.”