Thirteen years ago, Ben Crenshaw and his design partner, Bill Coore, completed a $2.5 million restoration of Donald Ross’ Pinehurst No. 2. The project, among many goals, eliminated more than 35 acres of irrigated lawn and 650 irrigation heads, while reintroducing natural areas with sand, wire grass and pine straw.
It was a huge step towards sustainability that Colin Prater can appreciate.
Prater, a 29-year-old mid-am whose day job involves teaching biology to more than 120 ninth graders at Cheyenne Mountain High in Colorado Springs, Colorado, will often integrate his two passions, science and golf. Discuss ecosystems? Golf courses like Pinehurst are great examples of the positive impact people can have on the planet, according to Prater.
“The kids love it,” Prater jokes, “because I keep talking and we don’t get anything done, and they say, ‘Oh, Prater talked for 45 minutes today about a lake on a golf course.’ ”
Just wait until next school year, kids.
Prater will soon have quite a story to tell about how the former D-II standout and now high school teacher and golf coach qualified for his first major championship and then went on to compete alongside the best players in the world at the 124th U.S. Open of next week. Pinehurst No. 2.
He just doesn’t know exactly how that story will turn out yet.
“I feel like it’s going to be crazier and more awesome than I even dream about,” Prater said by phone Wednesday evening, two days after earning one of two spots in the final qualifier at Pronghorn Resort’s Nicklaus Course in Bend. Oregon; he went up and down each of the last two holes to beat Trevor Simsby by a shot. “I think I know roughly what to expect, but I still don’t know how I’m going to react. What if a child wants my autograph? That’s not a question I’ve ever been asked. Do I need to bring my own Sharpie? Or what if I walk into the woods and all I see is Tiger Woods? I don’t know if I’m going to lose it or what.
As a youngster growing up in Colorado Springs, Prater, like Woods, wore red on Sundays. He would do everything else like his grandfather, legendary high school football coach Carl Fetters, or Dow Finsterwald, the late PGA champion who finished third in the 1960 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills. Fetters, who has now been coaching in the Colorado Springs area for more than 60 years, was a member of The Broadmoor when Prater first learned the game, and some days, between baseball practices, he would put Prater in a few spots on the court . from Finsterwald and say to his grandson: ‘Just look at him.’
As Fetters explained in a video honoring Prater as the 2021 Colorado Golf Hall of Fame Person of the Year, the suggestion was “because of how smooth he hit the ball, and every swing was the same.”
Prater remembers that Finsterwald always emphasized grip pressure, how a tight grip led to tight arms, tight shoulders and, worst of all, a tight head.
“He told me something,” Prater said, “and for the next two weeks that was all we focused on, no matter what Dow said.”
Prater was a three-sport athlete at Palmer High, the oldest high school in Colorado Springs, and played golf, baseball and basketball for the Terrors, who wore the school colors of brown and white. However, he gave up the last two sports after dislocating his right collarbone and injuring his right elbow during his junior year.
Golf was never a primary focus, but suddenly became a ticket to college for the undersized Prater, who started at D-II Colorado Mesa in Grand Junction and won the Phil Mickelson Award as D-II’s national freshman of the year. He then transferred to Colorado State-Colorado Springs, which offered him the full ride that the University of Colorado did not, and ultimately finished his collegiate career as a four-time All-American and with 14 individual wins.
“I’ve been lucky a few times,” Prater modestly claims.
Prater’s longtime swing coach Todd Laxson added: “Colin has a confidence in him that you’ll never hear. … He is never afraid of the outcome of any golf shot he hits.”
Upon graduating in May 2019, Prater made plans to move to Phoenix and begin his professional golf career. He had found a place to live, secured some financial support and found a job to pay the rest. But first he would have to complete his student teaching requirements at Doherty High in Colorado Springs.
Before finishing the semester, he realized he no longer wanted to play golf professionally.
“I really fell in love with teaching,” says Prater, whose current wife and then-girlfriend Madi, who also transferred to UCCS after a year, also didn’t want to leave his family in Colorado Springs. So Prater stayed put and accepted a full-time job with Doherty.
In recent years, Prater has taught and served as an assistant boys and girls golf coach at Cheyenne Mountain High, where most of his family attended and where his grandfather coached most of his career; Fetters was the school’s first Hall of Fame inductee. Prater married Madi in October 2021, and the couple, who have a 20-month-old daughter, Blake, are expecting a second child in about six weeks.
“I would 100% make the same decision again,” Prater said. “I really enjoy teaching. I really enjoy coaching. I’m really excited to have a family now. Being a husband and father is the coolest thing on earth. Golf is just a hobby.”
Although it is a hobby that he is good at. Prater is one of only two players to win Colorado’s state amateur (twice), mid-amateur (twice, each of the past two years) and match play. Over a six-week period in the summer of 2020, he conquered amateur and match play, taking home low amateur honors at the Colorado Open. He has competed in three U.S. Amateurs, including at Pinehurst No. 2 in 2019 and last year at Cherry Hills, where he advanced to match play as dozens of family members and students came to watch.
“Still the best golf swing I’ve ever made in my life,” Prater said of the 4-iron he hit for his third shot on the par-4 finishing hole to avoid bogey and force extra holes against upstate Ryggs Johnston Arizona would win in overtime.
And a few weeks ago, Prater and partner, Air Force aide Jimmy Makloski, qualified for the Round of 32 at the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball at Philadelphia Cricket Club.
Not bad for someone who’s lucky if he can get a few hours of uninterrupted practice once a week at Cherokee Ridge, a public facility on the west side of town with nine regular holes and nine par-3 holes.
“I probably practiced more in the two days leading up to the Four-Ball than I did in the first five months of the year,” Prater said.
That said, he deliberately didn’t plan to hit a club Thursday, a day after arriving home from Bend at 1 a.m. local time and later fielding about a half-dozen interview requests, while also covering his travel and lodging expenses for his major reserved. debut. Exhausted, Prater planned to spend the day with his daughter, go to the park and get ice cream before leaving town again this weekend.
Blake will stay home next week with Madi, who, Prater says, will be glued to the TV.
“She’ll probably be a nervous wreck if I make a bogey or something,” Prater said. ‘I already told her this is going to happen. It’s Pinehurst.’
Regardless of how many bogeys he ultimately racks up, Prater is just happy to be fulfilling a lifelong dream. A dream, he admits, was “probably a dream that you think is out of reach.”
Only now it is like that.
Prater was already thinking about possible practice round pairings. He would especially like to play with reigning US Open champion and Colorado native Wyndham Clark, whom Prater competed against at a young age.
“I don’t know, I’ll be impressed with the 60 guys out there,” Prater said. “Maybe I’ll just wait hours on the first tee and see if there’s an opening.”
He has enough for a conversation.
And who knows? Maybe he’ll teach the pros a thing or two.
