Steady as He Goes
NEWPORT BEACH — Corona del Mar senior Max Wallick has long had the ingredients for great golf--a sweet swing, competitive fire and an intuitive feel for the game--but the mix was never consistent enough.
He has played well enough to be the No. 1 player for the Sea Kings for four seasons, but not well enough to satisfy his own ambitions.
Wallick plans to play in college next fall, although he’s waiting for the first sign of interest from a recruiter. He’s aiming to play on the PGA Tour, and believes he can be successful there.
“It’s a long road,” Wallick admitted last week before a high school match at Santa Ana Country Club, “but I’m really dedicated now. I’m really confident too and I haven’t been in the past.”
Fueling the confidence is a recent string of success and Wallick’s feeling that he has figured out his game. After shooting par for nine holes in a recent practice round, Wallick walked up to his coach, Paul Hahn, and said: “Coach, in my mind, I feel like I can do it every time.”
Wallick might be getting a little ahead of himself, but it’s hard to blame him: consistency on a golf course can make you feel like a world-beater.
And there’s no question Wallick is coming into his own as a high school player. Helped by his play, the Sea Kings are in first place in the Sea View League, one of the toughest leagues in the Southern Section.
It was Wallick’s two-under-par 33 for nine holes at Newport Beach Country Club that pushed Corona del Mar to a three-stroke victory over defending CIF-SCGA champion Santa Margarita. Two days later, he shot one-under 35 at Oak Creek in a 184-198 victory over Irvine. In four league matches--all Sea King victories--Wallick is one-under par.
These are the types of results Hahn, the head professional at Newport Beach Country Club, expected when he took over the Corona del Mar program three seasons ago.
Wallick, Jeff Bemis, Chad Towersey and Craig and Steve Brooks all made the varsity as freshmen and all had a better than a 42-stroke nine-hole average that season. “I was licking my chops,” Hahn said.
But improvement came slowly, Hahn said, until this year. Now, with the addition of sophomore Innes MacDonald and another senior Brian Wegener, the Sea Kings are starting to live up to their potential.
Wallick has been the Sea Kings No. 1 player all the way through, but not by much. He would shoot under par one day and over 40 the next.
His up-and-down scoring wasn’t helping sell his status as professional-in-the-making.
“He always talked about taking it to the next level,” Bemis said, “but I had always been kind of skeptical because his scores weren’t really showing that, even though you watched his swing and could see that he had game.”
Unlike most of his teammates, Wallick did not develop that game at a country club. Wallick learned on public courses--and took only a handful of lessons--but when he showed up at Corona del Mar, he was already a fine young player.
“He wasn’t the type of person I was going to give lessons to,” Hahn said. “In the last four years, I’ve basically just let him go.”
Wallick showed his natural talent early, according to his father, Tom. At 2 1/2 or 3 he was deadly with a Dodger souvenir bat, hitting every pebble pitched to him.
He excelled at every sport he picked up. As a point guard in youth basketball, “he was actually dazzling the crowds,” his father said. He usually was playing with older kids--in second grade he batted third and played shortstop for a team of fourth-graders that won a Costa Mesa summer league title--and that became a problem.
“The other players always resented him,” Tom Wallick said, “because he was so good.”
So Wallick gravitated to an individual sport, although at 6 feet 3, he would make a fine prospect for the Corona del Mar basketball team. To keep in shape, he plays pickup ball on weekends near his home on the Balboa Peninsula. It’s often a rough game--Wallick had a tooth knocked out there last year--but he’s not afraid to mix it up.
He used to be more aggressive on the golf course as well, but now patience is an asset he hopes will serve him the rest of the high school season and beyond.
Wallick and the Sea Kings are shooting for the league title that eluded them last year--they finished second. This week, they will play Newport Harbor (today at Newport Beach Country Club) and Santa Margarita (Thursday at Coto de Caza). They have also set their sights on advancing to the Southern Section team final.
“We have a long way to go,” Wallick said, “but we just feel like more of a team than we have in the past. This is our last year, we want to go out with a bang.”
