By
Bethany Bradsher
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For today’s column, let’s peek at the past and future travel journals of
a few members of the East Carolina golf community. From South America to
Africa, several Pirates are parlaying their success on the links into
mission and competition abroad.
First we check the passport of 2012 graduate Harold Varner, who is
heading to Bogota, Colombia in a month to play in the first event of the
Web.com tour’s new season. Varner earned a spot on the tour by finishing
32nd overall at the qualifying tournament, which was held in December in La
Quinta, CA. It’s the greatest triumph so far for a golfer who has worked
steadily to make his way in professional golf since concluding his stellar
ECU career.
“Something good is going to happen,” Varner said.
Varner’s finish in the qualifying event guarantees him a space in the
first eight Web.com tournaments, which include stops in Chile, Brazil,
Panama and Mexico, as well as a couple of American courses. If his scores
are high enough to stay on the tour after the rankings are reordered in
early May, the Pirate Nation will have a chance to cheer him on at the Rex
Hospital Open at TPC Wakefield Plantation in Raleigh.
He has attended PGA Qualifying School twice – in 2012 he didn’t advance
far enough to qualify for additional tournaments, but last fall he made it
to the final round, which put him in the pool for the Web.com qualifying
tournament. The new opportunities are gratifying, he said, because he has
stayed focused on improving his game any way he can – with tougher
competition, knowledgeable coaches or his recent move to Jacksonville, FL,
where he is playing with a large community of golfers at every level of the
pro game.
“People keep asking me what I’ve changed about my game,” he said. “I
don’t feel like I changed anything. I just kept working at it and trying to
get better.”
For the African leg of our tour, we catch up with the still-jetlagged
duo of Al Dickens and Jacob Hicks, two current Pirate golfers who spent a
large portion of their Christmas break leading golf clinics and speaking
about their Christian faith with amateur duffers in Nairobi, Kenya.
Neither Dickens nor Hicks had ever been on a mission trip before, so when
they learned about the Nairobi trip, which was a partnership of College Golf
Fellowship and Athletes In Action, they both felt it was time to take a step
of faith. The trip was especially appealing because it afforded them an
opportunity to teach the game they loved while spreading the good news about
the faith that guides them.
“I felt God calling me to do it, especially because it was with golf,”
Dickens said. “That’s something I feel God has blessed me with, a talent I
have, and to use it as a platform is really cool.”
Dickens and Hicks and their team spent about a fourth of their time
volunteering at a Christian school in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi,
and the majority of their days were spent at a variety of golf courses
around the city, teaching golf tips and then concluding the clinic with a
Christian message from one of the missionaries. Golf is growing in
popularity in Nairobi, Dickens said, even if it is still mostly an elitist
sport reserved for the wealthy.
That dynamic gave these young golfers a platform with some of Nairobi’s
most powerful leaders.
“We met a lot of important people in government or business, so it was
neat to be able to talk about our faith and proclaim the gospel to these
very influential people,” he said.
Dickens, Hicks and their teammates will tee off their spring season on
February 2 at the Sea Best Invitational in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL.
