Hill has horseshoe up his past

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/07/2009 (6138 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OAKVILLE, Ont. — Look closely and you can see it, a faint, horseshoe-shaped scar in the middle of Matt Hill’s forehead. The wound is a memory, a faded flesh tattoo from another time when Hill was not the top college golfer in the United States and a Canadian amateur with designs on making the cut — and maybe even some noise on Sunday — at the 2009 RBC Canadian Open.

Matt Hill was not even the best golfer in the Hill clan when his older brother, Graham, scarred him for life, using a golf club as a branding iron.

"Matt was running behind me when I was taking a shot and I clipped him in the forehead on the backswing," Graham says. "I cut him pretty good. I left him with a horseshoe. There was blood all over his face. It scared the crap of out me. I thought I had killed him."

It was not a Cain and Abel affair, where a jealous sibling commits the most deadly of sins. It was an accident. Graham Hill swears murder was not on his mind. Although he does admit that the duels between him and his kid brother at the scene of the crime — a 120-yard golf hole, complete with a bunker, that their father Bob built at the 10-acre family homestead on Lake Huron — were life and death. There was just no way Graham was going to let Matt beat him, right up until the day he finally did.

"Having Graham, I think, for an older brother was one of the biggest things in my development as a golfer," Matt says. "He was three years older, and he was always better at every sport. At golf, he was beating me pretty much every time. It made me want to keep on working at it so that one day I would finally beat him."

And one day, Matt finally tied his older sibling. It was the first step. The younger Hill cannot remember exactly how old he was when it happened. But he does remember a dusty, par-three, nine-hole dog track where he carded a 33, the same score as Graham and his grandmother.

It took several more years before Matt eclipsed Graham as a player. Graham won a golf scholarship to Eastern Michigan University. He studied hard there, played well, and came home to win the 2005 Ontario Men’s Amateur championship.

It is the same title Matt, the No. 2 ranked amateur in the world — right behind Nick Taylor, another Canadian amateur at Glen Abbey this week for the Open — won a few days ago before coming to the Open to try and capture an even a bigger prize.

"At my last PGA event, my goal was to make the cut. That was Tiger’s event (the AT&T National), and I played pretty well the first two rounds and was even for the tournament and made the cut," Hill says. "I didn’t really have any expectations or goals. That is something I am going to change this week.

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"I have set my goal to finish in the top 20. I feel like if I play really well, I can do that," said the North Carolina State player and ’09 NCAA champ.

— Canwest News Service