When senior women’s golfer Melissa Martin was five years
old, her father gave her the nickname “The Mighty Mo,”
named for the battleship USS Missouri which saw action in three
wars and was known for never having sunk.
Though she had been playing golf for all of one year, Martin
already showed signs of a competitive fire and resilience that
would eventually become her trademark.
When a four-year-old Martin watched her older brother come home
one day from a golf tournament with a trophy in hand, she knew she
had to have one too. Soon after, her name was being etched into
championship hardware.
When she came to UCLA in the fall of 2000 along with four other
recruits, she knew she had to distinguish herself on the course.
She earned the No. 1 spot in only her second quarter at UCLA.
And when Martin lost both her father and very best friend in her
junior year, she knew she couldn’t wallow in self-pity. She
never did.
“It was difficult and I was in kind of a haze, but I
don’t feel at all like I have been given the short end of the
straw,” Martin said. “In order to truly thrive, you
can’t have an ounce of self-pity. There’s really no
time in life to feel sorry for yourself.”
To this day, Martin never has.
Battling through it
A native of nearby Alta Dena, Martin came to Westwood amid very
high expectations. Everyone involved in junior golf in Southern
California knew Martin’s name and when she entered a
tournament, there was a good chance she was going to walk away as
champion.
Having first picked up a club at the ripe age of four, however,
Martin wasn’t exactly known for her length off the tee as
much as she was for her feistiness on the course. So it
didn’t come as a surprise to UCLA women’s golf coach
Carrie Forsyth when Martin separated herself to quickly become one
of the team’s young leaders during her first two years in
Westwood.
But that’s when tragedy struck.
In the summer between Martin’s sophomore and junior year,
her lifelong best friend passed away from a chronic illness.
Then just two weeks after a disappointing NCAA Championship at
the end of her junior year in May 2003, her father, who watched
Martin compete in that event, shockingly died of cardiac
arrest.
“I’ve never had a player go through anything to that
extent,” Forsyth said. “All players go through things
at college, but to lose two very close people in so close a time
span, I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Although Martin had lost her best friend, her confidant, her
golf coach and her father all within a calendar year, she never
looked at her situation in negative terms.
Instead, she only chose to focus on what she had gained.
“I feel nothing but gratitude for the time I spent with
(my father). I had 20 really good years with him. Some people have
none.
“He taught me a lot in life ““ how to conduct myself,
that’s what was important. It would have been really nice to
learn more from him. But I can only feel gratitude.”
At the time Martin was in the midst of deciding whether to
redshirt her senior year, but her father’s passing made the
decision all but a formality.
Instead of grinding and working out for the 2003-2004
women’s golf season, Martin needed to find her bearings and
opted to move back home to be with her family and began preparing
to study abroad in Italy for three months.
No quit in her
Yet even during one of the worst periods imaginable for any
person to go through, Martin never looked backwards. She knew she
had to keep pressing forward with her golf game and her life, if
for no other reason than to adhere to her father’s
advice.
In Italy, Martin cleared space in her tiny living quarters so
that she could hone her swing. And after having her clubs shipped
overseas, Martin hiked through nearby vineyards and stumbled upon a
course, which she would end up playing frequently.
“It never occurred to me to stop playing,” Martin
said. “I couldn’t let (the circumstances) stop my
life.”
Upon her return to Los Angeles, Martin had come to the
realization that golf was indeed her calling card.
Absent from competition for over a year, Martin decided a
qualifying event for the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links
was the perfect tournament to jumpstart her return. And was it
ever.
Martin, who focused and prepared for the event for months in
advance, won the qualifier by shooting a 4-under par 68, earning a
spot in the prestigious Public Links Event.
“That was really refreshing,” Martin said. “I
remember being really elated that day, and I was glad to be back in
competition. I realized that my golfing career will always be tied
to my father and my family. Ultimately, it’s my
masterpiece.”
This past collegiate season, Martin rededicated herself to her
golf game and the Bruins, moving back to Los Angeles to join her
teammates in their rigorous practice schedule.
Martin had been constantly around the team during her redshirt
year, watching from the gallery as UCLA won the national title in
2004. But Forsyth saw a much different player in Martin when she
actually returned to the course.
“She was much more rejuvenated,” Forsyth said.
“She had grown so much, in large part because of what she had
to go through. She had matured a lot as a person and as a player.
She had a tremendous sense of stability out there.”
When Martin teed off in the NCAA Championships this past May in
Sunriver, Ore., it not only marked the final event of her college
career, but was close to the two-year anniversary of her
father’s passing.
Yet, as she was struggling in the miserable conditions on the
Meadows Course en route to UCLA’s second-place finish, her
mind never wavered.
She wasn’t seeking sympathy for the events that had
transpired just a few years earlier, but instead was doing the only
thing that felt natural: fighting, scratching and clawing for as
low a score as possible.
“Everybody’s life has tragedy of some magnitude, and
it’s easy for anybody to feel sorry for themselves,”
Martin said. “But it’s a lot easier to quit than it is
to persevere. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned,
the most arduous of tasks are the most rewarding. Golf is what I
have chosen.”