Brad Faxon tees off on the first tee during Monday's action at the CVS Caremark Charity Classic.

Journal photo / Mary Murphy

Here’s one Brad Faxon story you probably haven’t heard before.

You probably haven’t heard it because it happened before Brad Faxon became Brad Faxon, back when he was just a kid, everything ahead of him, the great local amateur, the pro career, the CVS Classic, all of it.

It was the spring of 1976. He was in the ninth grade, a skinny little kid with long reddish hair, and he wanted to try out for the Barrington High School golf team.

But there was a problem.

It was the first year freshmen were eligible to play on varsity teams, and since he was in the middle school in a different building he hadn’t heard the announcement about tryouts. So one day after school he rode his bike up Middle Highway to Rhode Island Country Club where the high school team was practicing.

“I want to try out for the team,’’ he said to the coach, an amazing character named Donald “Mac’’ McGregor, a diminutive man with a big bark, complete with a barrel voice and macho demeanor.

“You can’t,’’ McGregor said dismissively. “It’s too late.’’

“I didn’t know,’’ Faxon said.

“It’s too late,’’ McGregor said again.

By chance, a kid named Dave McBride, who was a sophomore, heard this.

“Give him a chance,’’ he told McGregor. “He’s a good player.

So McGregor pointed to the best player on the team, a senior, who was about 6-foot-2.

“Play him tomorrow,’’ he barked.

Faxon was just about scared to death. Being a senior and being a freshman were worlds apart. And now this intimidating coach essentially was telling him that if he didn’t beat the best guy on the team, he should buzz off.

But the next day after school he once again rode his bike up Middle Highway to Rhode Island Country Club, this time for his tryout.

Or so he thought.

He beat the senior, 6 and 5, and as they’re walking off the 13th green he thinks he’s made the team. That had been the unspoken deal, right? That had been his tryout, right? He was now on the team, right?

Well, not really.

“You’ve got to beat him again tomorrow,’’ McGregor barked, turning away.

So the next day Faxon won again, the coach could only shake his head and walk away in disgust, and Brad Faxon had become a member of the Barrington High School golf team.

In his golfing résumé this got lost in the shuffle a long time ago, of course.

We’re talking about someone who has won eight PGA events and been on two Ryder Cup teams, someone who has won over $19 million  as a professional golfer, someone who has gone so very far from a high school golf team. We are talking about someone who long ago became one of this state’s all-time great sports stories, someone who has been in the public spotlight for nearly 30 years now.

So what’s the big deal of how he once made his high school golf team, back there when Gerald Ford was in the White House, All In The Family was on television, and every other high school kid seemed to have hair down to his shoulders?

“It was huge at the time,’’ he says.

It’s easy to forget that, to take it for granted. Easy to look back on his career and see it all as inevitable, a by-the-numbers success story.

But sports are not like that, even for the rare few who go on to have the kind of unbelievable success Faxon has had. Sports are often about finding your way when you’re a kid, finding where you fit in. Sports are often about getting a break, something that starts to change the equation.

Would Brad Faxon have gone on to have the same career if he hadn’t made the Barrington High School golf team?

No doubt.

But at a time when his career was just starting, even if no one else was aware of it, it was a big deal.

“It was very important at the time,’’ he says. “It made me part of a championship team, part of a group of guys. We traveled around the state to play. It was great.’’

The other thing it did was give him an identity, no small thing when you’re a kid in a small town.

Faxon would quickly go on to become of the elite junior golfers in the state, about the closest thing we’d had to a golfing prodigy in a while back then. He won the state juniors. He was an All-State golfer for three straight years. He won the R.I. Amateur twice while a student at Furman. In short, he delivered on all that promise that he showed that day as a freshman, when he had a rather unconventional tryout.

And did McGregor ever apologize to him?

“Not on your life,’’ laughs Faxon.

But Faxon always remembered that day, even if his coach never seemed to.

And it’s not without a certain irony.

Here it is 32 years later and Faxon is here again at Rhode Island Country Club for this CVS Classic he shares with Billy Andrade, so very far from that day when he was in middle school and rode his bike here looking to try out for the high school golf team,.

So very far from that time when he was just beginning to chase this game that long ago became his life, back before the sports world ever heard of Brad Faxon.

breynold@projo.com