Back in 1987, a group of three dozen Japanese students came to Utah to improve their golf games while learning about Utah and American culture.
Twenty years later, the Utah-Japan Golf Exchange Program is still going strong.
Nearly 40 high school-age golfers from the Aichi region of Japan near the city of Nagoya are in Utah for 10 days of wall-to-wall golf. By the time they head back to Japan, the young golfers will have played eight rounds of golf at six different courses and received more than a dozen hours of golf instruction from local professionals.
Tuesday the group was at Bonneville Golf Course, nearly filling every table in the snack bar area as they ate lunch after a morning of golf clinics. After lunch they headed out for 18 holes on the scenic Bonneville layout.
They did the same thing Wednesday at Wasatch Mountain and will do it again today at South Mountain and Friday at Mountain Dell. Wednesday night they even enjoyed a one-hour after-hours shopping spree at Uinta Golf.
On Saturday the top 10 players from the first four days will compete in a match-play Ryder Cup-type tournament against 10 top Utah junior players at Mountain Dell. Everyone will play again Monday at Soldier Hollow, Tuesday at Stonebridge and Wednesday again at Mountain Dell before concluding with a picnic in Sugar House Park that night.
Rex Underwood, a longtime local teaching pro, is the brainchild behind the annual golf exchange program. It started two decades ago as a collaborative effort between the Utah State Department of Tourism and Japanese golf coach Hiro Komura.
Underwood got involved and was asked to make a proposal to Osamu Hoshino, an American of Japanese descent, who worked in the tourism department.
"I was naive, but I whipped up a proposal," Underwood said. "They came back and said, 'they accepted your proposal and 20 kids are coming in late August."'
Soon the number grew to 30 and then 40. Underwood had a couple of months to scramble and find host families for all the kids, round up some instructors and find tee times at different golf courses.
He accomplished it all and has kept the same basic formula ever since, including the International tournament in the middle and the awards banquet on the final day.
Underwood said the quality of the golfers varies each year from scratch golfers to some who can't break 100. But after a solid week of instruction and play, most of the golfers make great improvement. This year he's pleased to have seven girls, the most girls ever in the 21 years of the program.
Also helping to run the program are local professional Brad Richard and his wife, Shiho Hori, who works as the lead interpreter. She is a former program participant, who knows the impact the program can have.
"When I first came to Utah, the experience totally changed my view of golf," she said. "It made me a more complete player and gave me a global perspective of the game."
After two decades, Underwood isn't sure how much longer the program will continue, but hopes to keep it going.
"It's fun to do," he said. "We'll keep doing it as long as we can."
E-mail: sor@desnews.com