At 16, Tyson Gavin can drive a ball 280 yards off the deck. And he’s looking to be the first golfer from P.E.I. to win Summer Games gold.
Tim Yorke is exaggerating when he says Tyson Gavin sends him 20 texts a day about golf. Probably. But the more you learn about Tyson, the more plausible the idea of him sending a note per hole—plus two more to reflect on the round in general—becomes. The 48-year-old Yorke, one of the most decorated amateur golfers on P.E.I., expects the 16-year-old to make his phone buzz these days, but he was caught totally off guard a few years back when a precocious adolescent rang him up out of the blue. “I get this call from this kid—he was 13 or 14 at the time—he wanted to play a practice round with myself and two of the other top players around,” says Yorke. “It kind of blew me away.”
It’s difficult not to draw a straight line between Tyson’s easygoing manner and the idyllic western corner of Canada’s smallest province. His family lives just outside Tignish, a community with deep fishing and farming roots. “Even to this day, it’s like taking a little trip back in time travelling to the west side of the island,” says Dallas Desjardins, the Prince Edward Island Golf Association’s provincial coach. Tignish is just a stone’s throw from Skinner’s Pond, the boyhood home of Stompin’ Tom Connors. Had the legend and lover of all things authentically “island” stuck around for a few more sets, you wonder if he might have penned a song about a likable kid from just up the road who got into golf following his brother, Ryan—five years his senior—around the junior golf circuit. When Ryan entered events, Tyson would tag along and spend the day in the practice area, smashing drives and rolling putts. The first chance to hit the course himself came when he was eight at St. Felix Golf and Country Club, a nine-hole layout just outside Tignish. “It was a par-36 and I shot 48, so I knew I liked it as soon as I played,” he says.
When he was 10, Tyson travelled to Bouctouche, N.B., for one of Ryan’s tournaments. Knowing it would be a long weekend for the youngster if he was limited to the practice green, Shirley Gavin entered her son in the under-14 class, just to keep him occupied. He finished second. These days, Tyson—a two handicap—golfs five or six times a week, usually at Mill River, where he’s a member. His best-ever round was a six-under at Moncton’s 7,103-yard Royal Oaks. Tyson is the 2013 junior provincial champion and P.E.I.’s top qualifier for the Canada Summer Games, where the golf event tees off Aug. 13 at the Club de Golf Milby, just outside Sherbrooke, Que. Tyson, who finished 13 shots ahead of his closest competitor during the six-round Canada Games qualification processes, is trying to become the first islander to win top honours at the event. At six-foot-one and 210 lb., he’s already a powerful player with what Desjardins calls a “homegrown” swing, and an imaginative approach Yorke says hearkens back to a different era. “He reminds me of an old ’60s player,” Yorke says. “Everything is a shot.”
When Tyson addresses the ball, it’s an opportunity to get creative. He’s fond of hitting the driver “off the deck,” meaning instead of teeing up his ball, he drops it in the tee box and cracks it about 280 yards right off the ground. For all the enjoyment golf brings him, Tyson is serious about his goal of achieving a scholarship. Yorke says he’s spoken to him about the importance of the scholastic element and has seen a more focused pupil since. But good as Tyson is at hitting shots, the way he spends the time in between them remains his defining characteristic. He’s told his mom several times that as much as he loves playing hockey, it’s just not the same participating in a sport where you don’t get to know your competitors. He was doing just that at this year’s CN Future Links Atlantic Championship in Antigonish, N.S., where a course marshal shared some of the commentary she overheard from Tyson’s playing partners. “She said they were teasing Tyson—like Tyson is chatty, friendly on the course—joking about him being from the gentle, friendly island,” Shirley says.
A love of golf and warm temperament aren’t the only P.E.I. themes that apply to Tyson. His father, Randy, works for a power line company in Fort McMurray, Alta., and is sometimes away from the family for more than a month at a time. “We adjust, but it is difficult,” Shirley says. “It’s probably harder on him than us, being away and missing things.” Tyson agrees it can be tough, but, perhaps predictably, focuses on how great it is when his dad can get back to attend one of his tournaments, as he plans to do for the Canada Games. It’s that positivity that allows him to bury bad shots and focus on the next one, a tool not every golfer—even great ones—has in the bag. And if a round goes sour, he gets over it fast. “It takes about a half-hour after a game and he’s good,” says Shirley. Combine that attitude with his ample skill and Tyson might soon be fielding more calls than he’s making.
This story originally appeared in Sportsnet magazine. Subscribe here.