BENTON HARBOR, Michigan — Rocco Mediate still remembers fondly the drive in his father Tony’s Cadillac down Pokagon Highway — a stretch in northwest Michigan near the Indiana border — away from Hampshire Country Club as if it was yesterday.
Nearly 39 years ago – Aug. 1, 1983, to be exact – then 20-year-old Rocco and his dad, a barber in Greensburg, Pa., were trying to get to Point O’Woods Golf & Country Club where Rocco, who had shot 74 in the morning at Hampshire, could present his invitation card for a late-afternoon practice round before the 81st Western Amateur golf championship.
Pokagon Highway, a two-lane country road, went past pig farms immediately across the street from Hampshire, and the Mediates eventually made their way to M-140 which took them north to Territorial Road where they went west through the little village of Millburg to Roslin Road and Point O’Woods, designed by the renowned late golf architect Robert Trent Jones Sr.
