A Redlands Connection is a concoction of sports memories emanating from a city that once numbered less than 20,000 people. From the Super Bowl to the World Series, from the World Cup to golf’s U.S. Open and the Olympics, plus NCAA Final Four connections, NASCAR, the Kentucky Derby and Indianapolis 500, Tour de France cycling, major tennis, NBA and a little NHL, aquatics and quite a bit more, the sparkling little city that sits between Los Angeles and Palm Springs on Interstate 10 has an impressive share of sports connections. There was a female golfer from Redlands who took on that sport’s greatest player on his little ride along I-10 as a 6-year-old. – Obrey Brown
CORTE MADERA, Calif. — Michele Lyford-Sine, who lives in a quiet neighborhood in this smallish community a half-hour’s drive north of San Francisco, remembers running into PGA golf professional Dave Stockton in New York a few years back.
Stockton, who was playing the Westchester Open, stayed with Lyford-Sine and her family in that 1999-2001 era.
“When we lived there,” said Lyford-Sine, originally from Redlands, “he’d come stay with us when he played in that tournament.”
Stockton, now a Redlands resident, mentioned to Tiger Woods, said Lyford-Sine, telling the five-time Masters champion, “I’m sleeping at the house of the only girl that’s ever beaten you.”
That remark might have caught the 15-time major champion by surprise way back on Dec. 29, 1981.
That remarkable date was one day before Tiger’s sixth birthday.
The site: Redlands Country Club.
“I was only 12,” said Lyford-Sine. “I was asked to play.”
Redlands Country Club golf professional Norm Bernard, described as a huge proponent of junior golf, had known Rudy Duran, Tiger’s personal coach during his youthful days. Together, Duran and Bernard formed the match – a 9-hole exhibition on RCC’s front nine.
It was Duran, Tiger, Michele and Earl Woods, Tiger’s dad who, at one point, hoisted the little guy up so he could see down the fairway.
“I was nervous,” Lyford-Sine said. “I couldn’t let this 6-year-old beat me. I was twice as old as he was and he was half my size.”
In the end, she shot 43 — not a bad score for a 12-year-old on the par-35 RCC front nine — and Tiger shot 51.
“It was,” she said 38 years later, in 2019, “a little weird not having my dad there.”
Ted Lyford, the multi-year RCC club champion, was at work. Neither was her mother present, but younger sister, Jennifer, followed that duel.
“The way people hover over their kids,” said Lyford-Sine, “kind of made it seem strange. That’s the way it was back then. Parents didn’t hover as much as they do now.”
She recalled. “I remember his dad lifting him up so he could see the slopes of the course.”
Tiger, who was just turning six, had already appeared on the Mike Douglas Show, ABC’s That’s Incredible and, perhaps, another program or two. He was a golf prodigy. Few probably figured that this kid would someday turn professional golf on its ear.
Lyford-Sine shared another small connection with Tiger. They both eventually attended Stanford.
“My entire goal in life,” she said, “was to get a full scholarship to Stanford. I won a few big tournaments and that got me in.” Her grades probably had more to do with Stanford’s acceptance.
Among those “big” tournaments, though, was the 1987 Girls CIF-Southern Section championship, beating Rialto Eisenhower’s Brandie Burton, that year’s runner-up, by eight shots at North Ranch Country Club in faraway Thousand Oaks, Calif. Burton, if anyone can recall, would later become a top LPGA Tour player.
Lyford-Sine was a San Diego Junior World champion in 1983, shooting 227 to win the girls 13-14 division. Lyford-Sine repeated in 1986, winning the girls 15-17 division by shooting 295.
By the way, a kid named Eldrick Woods was the 9-10 champion in 1984, winning the first of six Junior World titles. Eldrick Woods, of course, is known as “Tiger.”
Stanford, though, was a tough haul for golfers — male or female — with certain majors in school.
“You’re in a school that has the smartest people on the planet,” Lyford-Sine said.
If she was looking to show off her golfing accolades and her academic prowess, consider most people would take on a major that’s routine enough to include both athletics and academics. “There are some majors you can do that with,” she said.
Woods was a Stanford student – at first. Said Lyford-Sine: “Tiger left (Stanford) after two years.”
Whether he left to pursue a brilliant pro golf career, or that he was caught up in that academic-versus-athletic war is unknown. “I’ve never thought to ask him,” she said.
“You cannot compete athletically and compete academically,” she said. As golfers, “we missed so much school. It doesn’t feel good.”
After two years, she left golf to complete her academic workload. “I did okay (in golf), not great,” she said.
It was six years earlier, just after Christmas at Redlands Country Club in 1981, that Tiger and Michele duel took place. She probably wasn’t thinking about a Stanford academic workload taking place in the distant future. It was that Redlands duel that took place first.
“We had people following us,” she said, “but I got over the nervousness.”
Afterward, once Lyford-Sine outdueled Tiger at Redlands Country Club, Bernard threw a birthday party for that little guy.
“I remember,” said Lyford-Sine, “we sang happy birthday to him and he blew out candles on a cake inside the restaurant at Redlands Country Club.”
