Thailand's Prayad Marksaeng played beautifully among the millionaires Thursday at The Masters, shooting 2-under-par 70 while being embraced by the spring warmth and all the glorious trappings of a place that once had seemed to him like a distant dream..
When Marksaeng, 43, was a young boy growing up in poverty two hours from Bangkok, he learned to play golf with a club he made for himself out of a bamboo stick, with a bicycle-tire grip and a spoon at the end.
He grew up in a home where 11 siblings shared the same room. Many days, he pedaled a bicycle taxi from 4 to 10 a.m., caddied from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and then joined his mother to sell vegetables on a train.
On school days, he crossed the lush fairway of a golf course owned by a rich man, the owner of Thailand's Singha beer. One day, he decided to use his makeshift club to play the hole. He did that again the next day, and the next.
Soon the owner heard about the boy who was playing the same hole over and over and, instead of getting angry, gave him his first set of real clubs. Singha is now one of Marksaeng's biggest sponsors
Source: usatoday.com
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