Teeing it up with the big boys
For the last 23 years, Dr. Steve Szabo has been competing each year with the top golf pros in the PGA’s season-ending Disney tournament in Orlando, FL. The former Euclid resident, who starred on the St. Joseph High golf team in the late 1950s, is now a psychiatrist with a Tampa Bay area practice.
He was planning to tee it up with the big boys again this year in the Disney pro-am, in which the amateur competitors play alongside the pros for the first two days of the event, scheduled for Nov. 11-14. It is one of the few PGA events in which the amateurs are permitted to play with their professional “partners” during the actual tournament—rather than in a Wednesday “warm-up” pro-am that doesn’t affect the final results.
In past years, Dr. Szabo has played alongside such pros as Tiger Woods, Justin Rose, Davis Love III and Corey Pavin, who captained this year’s U.S. Ryder Cup team.
Contacted by the Observer prior to the pairings party where the amateurs learn who they’ll be teamed up with, Dr. Szabo said he’d prefer to play with “a major champion or the people near the top of the money list.”
Steve, who was the No. 2 man on the St. Joe Vikings’ golf team in 1958, also played golf for Western Reserve University and was recently inducted into the CWRU Sports Hall of Fame. He frequently returns to the Cleveland area with wife Jan for visits and typically squeezes in a few rounds of golf with old friends from the Euclid area, as well as family members. His local friendships date back to his days as a student at Holy Cross School in Euclid.
He reports that the best round of golf that he ever shot in the Disney pro-am was a 31-39--70 in 1994, during which he carded five birdies on the first eight holes. (And, yes, he beat his pro partner that day.)
After playing golf for more than 50 years, Steve says: “I love golf more now than ever, because it is the only sport where you can get close to the big guys and play with them on their turf—inside the yellow ropes.”
At age 70, he still takes golf lessons on occasion and practices whenever he gets a chance. As far as his psychiatry practice is concerned, Steve likes to amuse people with this line: “I’m not practicing anymore—I’ve finally got it down pat. I can do it with one hand tied behind my back.”
But he doesn’t say that about his golf game.