Scrambling with Jarome Iginla

The strong leadership he brings to the Avalanche makes this future Hall of Famer an even better teammate on the golf course

The strong leadership and stickhandling skills he brings to the Avalanche make this future Hall of Famer an even better teammate on the golf course. 

On the first hole for Jarome Iginla’s team in the shotgun start to September’s annual Colorado Avalanche Charity Golf Tournament at The Ridge at Castle Pines North, all four of his playing partners missed their mark on the downhill, 169-yard par-three 14th.

This explains the cheers that broke out on the tee box when their famous teammate, a likely Hall of Famer after his hockey career ends, struck his first shot.

“We found out who we were playing with when he drove up to the tee box,” said Dave Tolson, a Castle Pines North resident who plays The Ridge regularly. “I thought, ‘This is awesome!’”

“He said, ‘Hi, I’m Jarome,’” added Brian Toerber of Parker. “It took about three seconds for it to sink in, then the reality factor hit. I thought, ‘This is the real deal. This is Jarome Iginla, one of the premier hockey players in the world!’ It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Little wonder, then, that no one in the group made a good swing.

“They all had first-tee jitters, threw them all into the bushes,” Iginla said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, God. C’mon, please.’ I got lucky. It wasn’t that close, but I put it on the green.”

It didn’t matter that Iginla’s ball was about 30 feet from the hole. Hitting the green meant the group had at least an outside chance at birdie—the minimum competitive score in any scramble.

Tolson, Toerber, Mike Miller of Denver and Erik Olson of Fort Collins all made valiant attempts with their putters, but all missed. Then came Iginla’s turn, and what can only be described as a jaw-dropping moment right out of the closing hole of a PGA Tour tournament.

The Avs’ leading scorer last season with 29 goals and 59 points crouched slightly, paused, then stroked his putt. It rolled determinedly toward the hole, proceeding slowly or so it seemed, until it disappeared into the cup.

Tolson thought: “It’s going to be a good day. We’re not going to have to do much.” Toerber, Miller and Olson had similar reactions, a mixture of surprise, relief and sudden hope at the birdie start.

“We were in trouble,” Olson said.  But Iginla, ever the clutch competitor, bailed them out.

“Their putts weren’t that close,” Jarome said, “and I didn’t expect to be close, either. When it went in, they were excited. I was thinking, ‘That’s just one, guys.’”

The Jarome Iginla team didn’t win the tournament that day. But by all accounts, it was a great round with a truly great guy.

“When you play golf with someone who’s famous for what they do,” Tolson explained, “you expect them to be less approachable. He was very gracious, very humble. He was interested in who we were. It was like you picked up someone at the course who was just out to play a round.”

“We were talking about it afterwards,” said Toerber. “We all felt it was the best experience we ever had. He’s got a fan for life.”

“I just look back fondly on the experience,” Miller says. “Weren’t we lucky to be playing with Jarome!”

A hockey star for more than two decades (counting juniors in Canada), Iginla is the Calgary Flames’ all-time leader in goals, points and games played over 16 seasons; a six-time National Hockey League all-star; a three-time Olympian with gold medals in 2002 and 2010; a member of three world championship teams, all at different levels from junior to pro; and 19th in the NHL all-time in goals scored with 589 starting the 2015-16 season.

What his playing partners all quickly learned is that Jarome is not only a great hockey player and “a world-class human being,” as Tolson puts it, but also an outstanding golfer.

“We asked, ‘What’s your handicap, what kind of player are you?’” Toerber said. “He said, ‘I’m okay, a six.’ He was being modest. He’s every bit a six. He didn’t hit a bad shot all day.”

“We talked about it at other points in the round” added Miller. “If you’re a gifted athlete, you can excel at a lot of sports. His athleticism transferred to golf.”

Iginla became a golfer around the same time he started his NHL career, and it’s no coincidence.

“I started playing when I was about 18,” Jarome says. “But it was expensive. Once I got in the NHL and had a contract, I could afford to play more.”

He’s a big believer in lessons.

“When I started, probably being a little macho, I thought, ‘I’ll just teach myself, and maybe get some books and read about how to play.’ So for a lot of years I didn’t have lessons. I got better, but only so much.

“I had some buddies, and they took lessons, so I tried it. I wish I hadn’t been so stubborn earlier, because I feel like I wouldn’t have developed bad habits that I had to break over time in lessons—things you really don’t understand until you learn the right way.”

Now 38, Iginla signed for three years with Colorado before the 2014-15 season.  Still feeling the pain of losing Game Seven of the Stanley Cup Finals to Tampa Bay in 2004, he was attracted to the Avalanche by the core of young talent assembled by Joe Sakic and Patrick Roy, who are hoping to do again off-ice what they did on-ice in 1996 and 2001.

“I really think the Stanley Cup is within reach,” Iginla said. “Not many teams have the young stars that are here. MacKinnon, Duchene, Landeskog—their speed and skill is very impressive. There are so many young stars here; it’s very exciting to be around them and to play with them.”

Throughout the golf round, Iginla and his foursome chatted about many things:  how he started playing hockey at the age of 8—a little late in Canada—but had caught up with his age group, and maybe even passed most of his peers, by the end of the first year; how much he and his family are enjoying Colorado, especially—somewhat to their surprise—its weather; how his three children, daughter Jade and sons Tij and Joe, enjoy sports, particularly hockey; and how, as the oldest player and one of only three on the 64-man training camp roster born in the 1970s, he serves as a role model. His message: play hard and have fun.

 “His persona in hockey is a gritty forward,” said Toerber, noting a clear contrast. “He couldn’t have been nicer.”

An unofficial statistic dubbed the “Gordie Howe Hat Trick” defines the persona Toerber had in mind. It consists of a goal, an assist and a fight in the same game. In what seems a monumental contradiction, likeable Jarome Iginla—honored repeatedly for his many humanitarian and charitable endeavors—is among the NHL’s active leaders in Gordie Howe Hat Tricks.  

“On the ice it’s a fierce game, sort of like football,” Iginla explains. “You’re battling. You want to win. Fighting is part of our game. You fight for different reasons, whether it’s to earn your own space, to help a teammate, to protect a teammate, or you’re responding to a cheap shot. Or sometimes you just get mad. That’s just competing.

“If you don’t like a guy on the ice, it doesn’t mean you won’t like him off the ice.”

When Iginla talked during the tournament round about being a role model for the Avs’ younger players, it had particular meaning for Olson, himself a pro athlete after earning all-conference honors for Sonny Lubick on Colorado State’s first-ever Mountain West football champions in 1999.

“He reminds me of guys I looked up to,” said Olson, a safety for the Jacksonville Jaguars between 2000 and 2002 before an injury ended his playing days. “He shows the young guys how to carry themselves, how to prepare, how to be a professional.”

Most hockey experts agree that Jarome Arthur-Leigh Adekunle Tig Junior Elvis Iginla is destined to join the likes of Gretzky, Orr, Lemieux, Richard, Howe and, yes, Roy and Sakic, in the Hockey Hall of Fame. But that’s hardly crossed his mind at this point.

“Honestly, the goal right now is to win the Stanley Cup,” he said during his 19th NHL training camp. “That’s where my focus is. We have good chemistry here that I believe is going to translate into some wins. We have a very good team. I think we do have a shot in the next couple years.”

As good as his golf game is, Iginla expects it to become much better once he trades his skates for full-time golf shoes.

“When I’m done, I’d like to play golf a lot more,” he said, “get in some weekly groups where you keep that camaraderie and also the competitiveness—compete and have fun. I have a goal of one day getting to scratch.”

Imagine being his scramble partner then.

Colorado AvidGolfer Contributor Denny Dressman’s piece on North Dakota’s Lewis and Clark Golf Trail (May 2014) won the 2015 Colorado Authors League Award for Feature Articles. His latest book, Heard But Not Seen, is available at comservbooks.com.)

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Colorado AvidGolfer is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it. It publishes eight issues annually and proudly delivers daily content via www.coloradoavidgolfer.com.

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