Hours after I posted the article below on junior golf, lo and behold one of my faithful readers alerted me to a breaking story out of that cauldron of intercollegiate lawsuits, Duke University. The suit involves the school's vaunted men's golf team, composed of former junior circuit golfers. Andrew Giuliani, son of America's mayor and the former U.S. Presidential candidate, is suing his golf coach and the University for what he claims was unwarranted dismissal from the team.
In the suit, Giuliani claims he was told to pack his bag because the coach wanted to shrink the size of the squad. The coach, on the other hand, press reports indicate, believed the young Giuliani was a golfer behaving badly, tossing a club here and there, speeding away from practices in his car, and roughing up his teammates in squad football games. Giuliani has a Craig Stadler body type, and one wonders why the allegedly smart kids at Duke would want to play a contact sport with the son of the pugnacious mayor. In any case, it doesn't sound as if it was much of a bonding experience.
The mayor's son also claims the coach engaged in a Lord of the Flies experiment, giving Giuliani's teammates a chance to vote the kid on or off the island via a formal letter-writing process. It all sounds bizarre and not entirely out of sync with the public Giuliani family dynamic (recall the mayor's very public split with his wife and the mother of Andrew, Donna Hanover).
Giuliani, who was recruited by the previous coach at Duke, is a rising senior at the school. He played in just two matches last season; although he finished with a stroke average below 75, which most of us would be happy with, that ranked him 12th on the 14-man team. In the lawsuit, he contends that his removal from the team harms his dreams of reaching the professional ranks in the golf world.
Many kids on the junior circuit share those dreams, and probably many more parents. But the vast majority will never make it on any of the pro golf tours and they will settle into alternative careers without suing anyone. A degree from Duke is a valuable commodity, but dreams die hard. If golf doesn't work out for Andrew, perhaps his dad can get him a tryout with the Yankees.
You can read the entire story of the lawsuit at a number of sites, including NBC Sports.