Bramlett, living his dream, now looking to carve his own legacy

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HONOLULU -- He remembers the school assignment as far back as his kindergarten days. The topic would come up the first week of school: What do you want to do when you grow up?

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His friends would say they'd want to be pro basketball players, or maybe pro football players. Those were the popular sports, the ones everybody played. But Joseph Bramlett said he wanted to be a pro golfer. He wanted to play on the PGA TOUR.

The response could generally be summed up like this: Huh? After all, little kids didn't exactly dream of such things. Especially African-American kids in the pre-Tiger Woods day.

"Nobody understood it," Bramlett said with a smile. "They thought I was kind of weird."

This week at the TOUR's first full-field event of the 2011 season, the Sony Open in Hawaii, Bramlett faces another assignment.

Unlike those kindergarten days, though, the topic is directed specifically at Bramlett. His classmates, those other rookies who will be making their TOUR debuts at Waialae, don't have to answer it.

As the first African-American golfer to advance through q-school since Adrian Stillis in 1985, Bramlett will hear this question many times in the near-future: What kind of impact will you make on the game?

The implication, of course, is that Bramlett is expected to make an impact. He shoulders expectations that his fellow rookies don't face.

If Bramlett's news conference on Wednesday is any indication, the young man from Stanford is ready for the task. Poised and polished, he spoke from the heart about issues that generally have been reserved for the game's top player. It was impressive, to say the least.

"Do I hope it wouldn't be an issue? Yes. Will it be? I don't know," Bramlett said. "But I think that hopefully I can leave an impact on the game that can help change things further.

"Tiger had a huge impact and I'm just one of several kids coming up right now. ... I think that by the time I'm done and sitting in a rocking chair, I think that hopefully this game will look a little different."

Although it's natural to assume that Bramlett, 22 years old, began playing golf because of Woods, who recently turned 35, that's not the case. Bramlett's father introduced his son to the game before Tiger became famous.

Bramlett did follow Tiger's steps in playing golf for Stanford but again there was no direct influence. Bramlett's family lived just 20 minutes away from the campus, and the youngster grew up going to basketball games there. It was only natural that he'd want to attend school there, too. If Tiger had any influence at all, it was "subconsciously, maybe," Bramlett said.

Woods and Bramlett certainly are friends, and they played a couple of practice rounds last year at the U.S. Open. Bramlett considers Tiger a mentor and a role model -- but there's no doubt he wants to carve out his own legacy, follow his own path.

That path on the PGA TOUR starts this week.

It will begin without the benefit of having his dad by his side. Bramlett said his family remains on the mainland. But that's OK. There are still people he can lean on at Waialae, such as fellow rookie and former Stanford teammate Zack Miller.

Bramlett's caddie, A.J. Montecito, should also help. Montecito was on the bag when Y.E. Yang won the PGA Championship and will be a nice sounding board. "He has a lot of experience I don't have," Bramlett said.

Once the action starts, though, it becomes just another golf tournament for Bramlett. The bigger issues, the social issues, will give way to whether Bramlett can make the cut at Waialae and find himself in contention on the weekend.

"It is the PGA TOUR. It is the big stage," Bramlett said. "But this is golf. When you're out on the golf course, this is where I feel most comfortable.

"There are definitely some people that help me through some of the other things that go into it. But when I get on the golf course, it's just go time."

Whether Bramlett will go as far as Tiger remains to be seen. Heaping those kinds of expectations on him -- well, on anybody -- simply isn't fair. Woods owns 14 majors and 71 TOUR victories. Bramlett has played in two TOUR events.

But there is a connection between the two, and nothing will ever change that. Bramlett will concentrate on golf but he understands that his career may be defined in different terms than those of his competitors.

The fact that Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day has not escaped his attention.

"It definitely did hit me the other day," Bramlett said. "It's interesting. Just the timing of everything and how it's worked out. So I definitely thing it's unique.

"Is it that big of a deal? I don't know. I guess we'll have to see how things go."

In other words, he'll have to see how he performs this week on the golf course. He's now a pro golfer. That's his living. That's been his dream all along.

Maybe now all those kids he went to school with will understand what he means.