No Longer a ‘Tigress,’ Amari Avery Will Try to Make Augusta Roar

In her debut at the U.S. Women’s Amateur, she made it out of the cutthroat stroke play portion of the week and then advanced to the round of 32 in match play. She has won on the Cactus Tour, a women’s mini circuit with fields full of professionals. Last August, she verbally committed to join the powerhouse women’s golf program at the University of Southern California in 2022.The Averys credit her mother, Maria, as the one who makes the family golf pursuit possible, keeping an eye on the pressures and costs and serving as the final judge of when to pull the plug if either mounts. Andre can remotely work as an information technology consultant while on the road with Amari and Alona, 14, also a highly rated junior golfer. Of her four siblings, Amari is closest to Alona, who was on the bag for Amari’s debut U.S. Women’s Amateur last summer when big sis posted a calamitous 40 on the front-nine of her opening round, but steadied herself to rally for the second-best score of the second round to easily make the match play bracket.To balance her own drive against the disappointments that can come during a tough round, Amari worked with Jay Brunza, a psychologist whom she credited with steadying her mental approach ahead of last year’s women’s amateur. “He was saying, ‘Stay stable out there. Just try to hit fairways and greens,” Amari recalled. “He tells me a whole bunch of different things that help out. You can go out there and shoot a 40 and the next nine a 33 and you’re not out of it.”It helps that Brunza worked with teenage Tiger Woods, caddying for him during all three of Woods’s men’s amateur titles.Andre will be on the bag for Amari at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, hoping to make a different impression than when he cursed during arguments with Amari when she was 8, and was depicted as the “mean parent,” a portrayal he admits was fair.“It’s not me wanting to caddie because I want the spotlight,” Andre said. “It’s all the stuff we’ve gone through. Now it comes full circle. I think that’s the best way for us, with her going off to school next in a few months for us to play in this thing together.”“Training a Tiger” was published in 1997, well before the full impact and collateral costs of Earl Woods’s approach on his son could have been known. But for a nonwhite parent-prodigy team navigating junior golf, the Woodses’ account was the primary road map available to the Averys.Still, Andre said he’s learned to grow along with Amari. He’s given up on the “Tigress” nickname, stopped trying to impose elements of Tiger’s swing onto Amari and yielded to a coach’s instruction. Before Amari’s 2019 California Women’s Amateur title, the team went through a revolving door of swing coaches, so many that father and daughter lost count.“We were just kind of bouncing around trying to find that one key thing that will turn things around instead of just trusting a process and letting it handle itself,” she said. “I had just come to the understanding that things aren’t going to come fast all the time.”Amari has learned to push back on her father, too. “When we’re out there on the course and I’m struggling or I’m working on something and he’s trying to constantly tell me to do something, I’m like, ‘Dad, get off. I just want to do it myself.’”Both Averys have confidence that she could be a potential superstar on the L.P.G.A. Tour, and has the Tiger trifecta: entertaining golf, winning golf, and a marketable persona. Andre will still admit to his belief in a bond with the Woodses. “We’re so tied to that Tiger Woods-Earl Woods thing,” he said.