The press has painted Steve Marino, champion of AT&T National’s opening day, as a local product. Yes, the 28-year-old was raised in nearby Fairfax and graduated from W.T. Woodson High School and the University of Virginia. But the shaggy-haired Marino is originally from the booming metropolis of Altus, Okla. (population: 21,447), some 1,459 miles from the Beltway.
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Altus is home of the Altus Air Force Base, Western Oklahoma State College, and the Southwest Technology Center. And not much else.
Along with Marino, Altus has produced a slew of country music songwriters, a pair of pro football players, and Rodney Yee, author of “Yoga: The Poetry of the Body.”
That’s a stark contrast from Fairfax and W.T. Woodson, which has produced a college basketball coach (Harvard’s Tommy Amaker), the subject of a best seller (Chris McCandless, the non-fictional protagonist of Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild”), an astronaut (Catherine Coleman) and a C-list actor (Austin St. John best known for his role as the Red Power Ranger).
