Maturity flows from 18-year-old Hamza Sarfraz as calmly and continuously as a stream lazily snaking through a sun-splashed mountain meadow.
There's bright-eyed confidence, balanced by grounding humility. Words are carefully crafted in ways that reveal someone who considers things thoughtfully and fully. He can view things from the clouds, while maintaining tee-box-level focus.
Sarfraz has an unwitting tendency to make a person three times his age consider their own perspectives and decision-making by sharing nothing more than words and a warming smile.
Then he retraces his path as a kid from cricket-crazy Pakistan, the son of a Brigadier General in that country's army. He details memories of his first swing, at age 12, late to the game by hyper-competitive golf standards, with the clarity and precision of outlining that morning's breakfast choices.
Sarfraz explains playing in his first 18-hole tournament, where he finished 142nd in a field of 143. He explains why he didn't quit. Why he couldn't quit, really. Golf had infected all corners of him, from head to heart and the connecting arteries and veins in between.
"He got bitten by the golf bug," said his father, Bilal.
Sarfraz, who tees off Tuesday morning on Torrey Pines South in the IMG Academy Junior World Championships, is more than kid who became hooked by a game. He's a living, breathing tribute to the transformative potential of golf.
As he drives and putts among a global gathering of 51 countries along the postcard-perfect San Diego coast, Sarfraz reminds why sports matter well beyond scores and results.
"I credit golf with everything," he said. "To me, it's more than just competing. It's my center, if you will. In a day and age ravaged by social media and electronics, the golf course provides me solace. I find peace there."
Circling back to describe himself as a child, Sarfraz outlined a shy and soft-spoken introvert, a smile-and-nodder "who couldn't string two sentences together."
"My dad said, 'You can't smile and nod at everything in life,' " he said. "Golf is such a beautiful game. You can interact with anybody from 9 to 90 years of age. My communication skills, my confidence, my social skills just skyrocketed.
"Golf was a vessel. It made me apply myself in so many different ways."
Sarfraz reached for his cell phone, to share a video.
As golf began to build and buffer self-assurance, he stepped out of the shadows. At the prestigious private school Beaconhouse in Islamabad, he decided to run for the coveted position of "head boy," the equivalent of student body president in the U.S.
All that smiling and nodding found words and the courage to wield them.
Out of 110 potential candidates, Sarfraz was named one of three finalists. He ran on a platform that included bringing back a school sports event shelved for five years. He promised, and later delivered, an e-gaming room. He lured a singing and acting star named Atif Aslam for a concert. He won in a landslide, securing more than three-quarters of the nearly 1,000 votes.
The video shows the students going bananas when the result was announced, as if it was an American campus at the moment a team won college football's national championship.
The most meaningful moment, though, had yet to arrive. A requirement to choose a social issue led to a Sarfaz-led campaign addressing polio.
"Polio still hasn't been eradicated in Pakistan," Sarfraz said. "We set up meetings with ambassadors from UNICEF and the (World Health Organization). It was very eye opening in the sense that the reasons were very similar to COVID-19 reasons. People were pushing back on vaccines. There were misconceptions. There were false narratives being pushed that they would cause infertility or they're cancerous.
"It was looking into the future almost."
The love affair with golf hardly faded, even as responsibilities mounted.
Sarfraz began playing in tournaments backed by PGA Tour icon Nick Faldo. In spite of winning tournament after tournament in Pakistan and knocking on the door of a Faldo event that could elevate his playing profile internationally, a series of close calls followed.
In November 2020, he finished third, one spot out of qualifying to break into truly elite events.
"He stayed in his room for days," Bilal said.
A crossroads loomed.
"I felt like that was me saying goodbye to golf competitively," Sarfraz said. "I thought that was my last chance to book a ticket to play collegiate golf. Then some luck came."
Bilal was selected for an advanced, year-long military course in London. While quarantined in a hotel near Heathrow Airport due to Pakistan being a country medically red-listed there, he asked his son to research playing options there.
The family only was allowed out of the hotel for 15 minutes each day, Sarfraz said.
"That was our recreation every day," Sarfraz said. "We'd watch the planes take off and land, take off and land."
They targeted a series of youth events that would begin soon, the first two days after they were allowed out to leave quarantine. Meanwhile, Bilal learned his son and his brother were required to have a club membership of some kind and officially enroll their handicaps.
Sarfraz's father brokered a deal, given the unique circumstances. If organizers would allow them to join on a provisional basis, his sons would need to prove themselves in the first two events.
They did.
Kicking open an unlikely door positioned Sarfraz to play in a junior world championship-qualifying event last September at Cambridge Country Club. Only two spots were available in a tournament open to all boys 18 or younger in the United Kingdom.
Hamza's handicap had dropped from 5 to 1, but the pressure had to be withering.
"My round got off to a rocky start," he said. "Two really bad bogeys. I was 3- or 4-over at the turn. The back 9, I really stepped on the gas and made three or four birdies coming in. On the last hole, I was 140 or 150 yards and stuck my pitching wedge to two feet.
"That turned out to be the decisive birdie because there were like five guys at 2-over and there would have been a playoff (for the final spot)."
That booked a ticket to San Diego and a tournament that can link blossoming players with college programs.
The kid who could not string two sentences together in a country that shrugs its shoulders when it comes to golf sits on the verge of the sport changing and reshaping his life once again.
Sarfraz dreams of attending Stanford University.
Stanford should be so lucky.
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Torrey Hole-in-One
Seeing Torrey Pines in advance of this week's IMG Academy Junior World Championships stole the breath away from Pakistani golfer Hamza Sarfraz.
"The first thing I saw were people paragliding above the cliffs," he said. "The grass couldn't be greener. The horizon was absolutely stunning. The entire scene was out of a movie."
The movie added a stunner of a scene. In his official practice round Monday on Torrey Pines South, Sarfraz carded a hole-in-one on No. 16 South. It was the second ace of his life, following one when he was 17 on a course in Pakistan.
Also, on No. 16.
"One of the best pure shots I've hit," he said. "It was 144 yards, 9-iron, three-quarters (swing) into the wind. It took a hop and spun back in. I went crazy."
