Alex MattiaAlex Mattia
Scottsboro, Ala.
UAB student
Alex Mattia reaches for the stars.
He did so as a pole vaulter in high school. He does so now with the dream of becoming a PGA Tour professional.
He launched himself over a bar set at 12 feet, 6 inches just a couple years ago. That height, about the same as the top of an NBA backboard, is as close to the stars as he's come with his own propulsion.
In regard to his golf game, he hasn't broken 70, so the golfing stardom is still a far away galaxy.
But he loves the game. His grandfather taught him.
And he loves vaulting. He picked that up on his own.
"I wish there was a place where I could do that every day," said Mattia, who has lived in several places around the South and was visiting his father in Chattanooga on Monday. "But golf is something I can do for the rest of my life. I can't vault when I'm 50."
But that one track and field event provides even more of a rush to him than crushing a drive down any fairway.
There's something about taking each step, which increases in speed as he goes down the runway, planting the pole, using his upper-body strength to get his lower body off the ground and flying for a moment that can't be matched.
"A friend of mine had a pole-vault pit in his back yard," Mattia said, "so I tried it once and fell in love with it."
Many golfers have said the same thing about instant love. Mattia developed his love for golf on a more gradual scale.
"My grandpa (Don Myers) introduced me to the game and he played all of his life," he said. "He got me started before high school. Then I really picked it up when I started college."
If Mattia can't reach a professional tour, he still has dreams that are very starry-eyed for a 23-year-old. Maybe he will reach them.
"Even when I'm in school I try to play three times a week," said Mattia, who will have a degree in industrial distribution at the start of 2016. "My goal is to have a job where I can golf every day and possibly make the tour some day."
- David Uchiyama