Lizette Salas credits father Ramon with her success

Lizette Salas has a special relationship with her father, Ramon, who nurtured her career, was her first caddie, and remains her most enthusiastic cheerleader.

Lizette Salas called her father, Ramon, when her game unraveled during the ShopRite LPGA Classic and asked him to come to New Jersey and help her. Ramon, a golf course mechanic in Azusa, California, was behind the ropes, walking the course the next day.

Salas freely admits she wouldn’t be playing pro golf without the help and support of her father, Ramon. But theirs is more than a feel-good father-daughter story. Just below the surface, the Salas family story resonates for everyone who has reached out and grabbed a piece of the American Dream.

As the youngest daughter of two immigrants who met, married, and established a family after they had immigrated to the United States, Lizette Salas was an unlikely candidate for a pro golf career. Except that Ramon, who then as now worked at Azusa Greens Golf Club, took his daughter to work, put a club in her six-year-old hands, and worked a deal with the pro for golf lessons.

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The lessons took. One thing led to another. She played every weekend, withstood and defied a prevailing cultural sentiment – Mexicans don’t play golf – joined the boys’ team in high school (Cristie Kerr also played on a boys’ team in high school), played collegiate golf for the USC Trojans while she earned a degree in sociology, and transitioned into the pro golf world via the Symetra Tour.

Without sponsors to help finance her travel expenses or pay for a caddie, Lizette Salas leaned on her father, who had been her principal cheerleader for years. He became her caddie and traveling companion. Ramon and Lizette drove from one tournament to the next in his red pickup, sometimes sleeping in overnight truck stops when they couldn’t afford a motel room.

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"We share a lot of stories in that truck. We argued, we cried, we laughed. It’s an experience you can’t describe, sharing it with your dad. It’s a great story that I could tell my kids, my grandkids down the road of what their grandpa and their great-grandpa did for me."

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Lizette Salas is playing her sixth year on the LPGA Tour. She’s twice represented the United States at Solheim Cup competitions and has earned almost three million dollars playing pro golf. She also volunteers at the Azusa Greens Golf Club, where she learned the game, where her dad still works, where she gives back to her community and the game by nurturing the junior golfers.

World ranked 52nd, Salas isn’t the best pro out there, but she’s a long way from the worst. And she brings to golf’s big stage some very old-fashioned values – hard work, love of family, gratitude.

"I came from practically nothing, to now living my dream on the LPGA Tour. I wouldn’t have done it without my parents and without my brother and sister. We’re just living the American dream and we’re loving each step of it."

While Lizette Salas isn’t the only pro who credits her father with her love of the game and her success on the pro stage, her story resonates for every little girl who secretly dreams about a pro golf career. Salas’ father, Ramon, helped shape her dream and then make it real.

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Salas is one of two Mexican Americans currently playing on the LPGA Tour. (Gerina Mendoza Piller is the other Tour player of Hispanic descent.) Is that important? It is, indeed. Today Hispanics/Latinos make up about 17% of the total U.S. population – edging ahead of African Americans, who constitute about 12.5% – and are the faster-growing of the country’s hybrid populations.

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