Raising his family of seven boys and girls in Salt Lake City, Kelepi Finau gave new meaning to the saying that the word love is spelled T-I-M-E.
“My dad gave me just about every ounce of time outside of work to get me to where I am today,” said son Tony.
The story of how Tony defied the odds to become a six-time PGA Tour winner could be golf’s version of the Hollywood blockbuster “The Blind Side,” in which Michael Oher turned a love of football into a college scholarship and eventually NFL success. Of Tongan and American Samoan descent, Tony is the first player of such ancestry to play on the PGA Tour.
For being Tony’s unsung hero, Kelepi is Golfweek’s Father of the Year.
The Finau family, with Kelepi, center right, Ravena, center left, and Tony second from left.
According to research compiled by the National Golf Foundation, Tony had a 1-in-250 chance of becoming a golfer. Not a professional golfer, but even playing the game at all. The deck is stacked against children without a parent who plays golf picking up the sport.
When Kelepi moved to the U.S. at age 11 in 1974, he didn’t speak English and rugby was his sport of choice. He transitioned to basketball and football, but golf was like a foreign language. He remembers sitting in his car with Tony’s mother, Ravena, at a municipal park in Long Beach, California, where they lived at the time. They were parked not far from a golf course and when Kelepi eyed the golfers in their funny outfits and bags slung over their shoulders, he said, “That’s got to be the dumbest sport ever. If you ever see me at a golf course with all those sissies and old rich guys, shoot me!”
Fast-forward to April 1997 as Tiger Woods won the Masters in record fashion. On the day of the final round, Ravena had made the boys sandwiches and called them in to eat and that’s when Tony’s younger brother, Gipper, 5, stared at the TV set in amazement at a young man of color that looked like him on TV. Enthralled by Tiger, who soon appeared victorious on the family box of Wheaties, Gipper convinced his mother to ask Kelepi to teach the boys the game.
“What did I tell you about golf?” Kelepi said. “Just shoot me. No way.”
But Ravena would not be denied. She viewed golf as a game that would keep her boys out of trouble and away from the gangs that were a cancer to their community. So Kelepi drove to the local course one Saturday and sat in his car for four hours and observed. He knew nothing about the…
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