SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Iceland’s best golfer, Arni Sveinsson, has wrapped up rounds of golf at 4 a.m. He has shielded his head with a golf club while walking into lava fields to keep from getting pecked by birds during searches for errant tee shots.
And then, for something completely different, there was Wednesday’s practice round for Sveinsson, the first player from his country to qualify for the U.S. Open. He played nine holes with Scottie Scheffler, Sam Burns and Gary Woodland.
“It’s pretty surreal, obviously, being around here,” said the 19-year-old from Garðabær, who is going into his junior year at LSU and, now, is on the tee sheet Thursday at Shinnecock Hills.
The path from his home near Iceland’s capital of Reykjavík, to Louisiana’s capital of Baton Rouge, and now to Long Island has, not surprisingly, been anything but direct.
Golf isn’t all that much of a novelty in Iceland. There are, Sveinsson estimates, between 50 and 60 courses there. Still, tee times come at a premium during the summer months when the locals itch to get outside.
Thankfully, Iceland is a land of the midnight sun during summer. And Sveinsson is tight with the man who runs the Borgarnes Golf Club, about an hour from Reykjavík, and can get him tee times.
“I can make a day trip and he can prep the course however I want, so I can practice however I need to,” Sveinsson said.
As for oddities folks might encounter on golf courses in Iceland that they won’t find anywhere else - well, it’s those birds, who are very protective of their nests.
“They’re trying to knock you on the top of your head, so everyone has to go in there with an umbrella or a golf club protecting your head,” he said. “That can be pretty dangerous.”
To sum it up, Sveinsson said, “whatever you think of Baton Rouge, it’s the exact opposite back home.”
“But that’s how you grow as a person, it’s going out of your comfort zone, whether that’s for golf - playing with the big boys out here - or just living somewhere else,” he said.
LSU coach Jake Amos was at East Tennessee State - the school that once recruited Rory McIlroy - when word about the red-headed teenager from Iceland who could really play started filtering to the States.
“I have no kind of agenda,” Amos said, when asked if he thought twice about signing a player from a country with no golf pedigree. “If they’re good enough, I’ll take them.”
But, he conceded, the first time he saw Sveinsson was a bit underwhelming.
“He had no spin on the ball, it wasn’t pretty,” Amos said. “But you could see, the core fundamentals were great and the way he carried himself was great. And former players and people around him said how hard he works and how good he was. It was pretty easy to see his potential.”
Not long after he and Sveinsson met, Amos got the job at LSU. In his freshman year, Sveinsson won a tournament - the Blessings Collegiate Invitational - and was named a third-team All-American. His sophomore year, he won another tournament, the Fallen Oak Collegiate Invitational, and played in his second Arnold Palmer Cup - a Ryder Cup of sorts for college players.
He played in the U.S. Amateur last year. Now, the U.S. Open. After missing in a close call in qualifying last year, Svenisson made it through a four-for-three playoff in the qualifier at Lakes Golf & Country Club in Ohio earlier this month. The whole experience has been “a little surreal,” Sveinsson said.
“But then you start playing with them and you can see, even with the nerves and all that, they don’t hit it perfect every time like you think when you watch them on TV,” he said. “I’m just taking it all in. Learning. Listening to what they have to tell me.”
Burns, who played two seasons at LSU, set up Wednesday’s game. The day before, Sveinsson played with Denmark’s Nicolai Hojgaard, who he called his new favorite player.
What would a good week at Shinnecock look like for Iceland’s first U.S. Open qualifier?
“It’s a lot of growth that happens in weeks like this,” he said. “I’m not really putting any expectation on anything. The only real expectation I want and I really need to follow is just to have fun and enjoy it.”
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