As proud mothers are prone to do, Brenda Frederiksen likes to tell a story that illustrates how she knew her son, JD, would be an exceptional golfer one day.
“I remember his first tournament, where the parents got to caddy for their kids,” she says. “JD’s dad was caddying for him and we’re on this last hole and JD’s on the green. The two of them are waiting to putt until the other kids got on the green.
“Well, the other kids are going from one sand trap to the next sand trap, and they’re going back and forth. It was like a tennis match. JD looked at his dad and he says, ‘Dad, why are they doing that?’ All he knew was it was his turn to putt.”
A lot of rounds have transpired since then, by which JD has gone from mere protégé — another well-worn family tale is how he won his first tournament at age three, playing against six-year-olds — to steadily growing into his potential on the links. While at Van Buren High School, JD placed second in the conference his junior year and won conference senior year, going on to place fourth at the 5A state tourney and earn all-conference and all-state accolades.
From there he realized his dream of playing golf at the collegiate level where he’s a sophomore at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith. Like all elite athletes, he continues to learn the value of a strong mental game as a key complement to physical attributes and technical skills.
“I definitely can tell you that multiple times, as a young kid, I would get very frustrated playing golf. Very frustrated,” he says. “Actually, it was something I had to work on as I got older because I realized that your mental game is probably the most important asset you can have. I definitely would say that’s probably my most valuable asset now. I’ve worked so hard on that and having the mindset of next shot, next shot, next shot, what happened before doesn’t matter. It’s very valuable.”
One doesn’t have to look very far to see where JD’s mental toughness comes from. His mother is herself a former standout athlete who, after a decorated high school career in basketball, softball and track, played college basketball including one year at what was then Westark. Having a former college jock for a mother helped JD develop the mental toughness to deal with the pressure and demands that come with playing at a higher level.
“With basketball, you just have to be tough,” she says. “You know, you get knocked down, you get hit in the nose. I’ve had black eyes, I’ve had it all. Having four brothers probably helped a little bit with that toughness.
“In golf, there’s just no time to think about your bad shot and so with (JD) growing up, it was always, ‘Just dust yourself off. Get up. Let’s go. You don’t have time to think about that, go find the ball and hit it again.’”
Besides their choice of college and sports, mother and son have other things in common despite playing eras that are very different from one another. Brenda played for Greenwood High School back in the 1980s, a time before kids specialized in one sport and played it year-round. Competition was limited to school sports programs, without the traveling teams and AAU clubs that dominate the landscape today.
Not only that, the number of sports and leagues for girls were fewer back then, which caused the shooting guard to make the most of what was in front of her. She was named both all conference and all state in her junior and senior years at GHS, during the latter of which she led her team to the state basketball quarterfinals. As a player she was defined by her mental and physical toughness, and a driving desire to prove herself.
“I was good at the high school level, and I was also, I think, pretty good at the collegiate level, but I wasn’t ever a highly sought-after player,” she says. “I actually wasn’t recruited by the coach at the time who was at Westark; I was recruited by Eastern Oklahoma State College, which was in the same conference. So, I played my first year for the competition.”
Brenda enjoyed the experience, but after her first year the school was forced to make budget cuts, which it did starting with scholarships for out-of-state students. Not coming from a wealthy family, she headed for campus in Fort Smith, figuring she’d played her last collegiate game and would have to settle for being a regular college student putting herself through school.
Signing up for classes, she met up with Doc Sadler, a Greenwood native who now coaches at Kansas and who was at that time an assistant on the Westark staff.
“He’s like, ‘What are you doing here?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m registering for school,’” Brenda says. “He goes, ‘Are you gonna play basketball?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I’m not.’ He goes, ‘Oh, no, you gotta play basketball.’”
Sadler marched her over to his colleague’s office and announced she deserved a roster spot. The head coach, Louis Whorton, was skeptical.
“Coach Whorton says, ‘Well, I don’t have a scholarship for you. I’ve got this girl from Memphis coming in, I’ve got a girl from Chicago coming in,’” she says. “‘I’ve already got all these girls, great players, and if you get to play any time at all you’ll be doing a hell of a job.’
“I thought to myself, ‘OK, I’ll take that challenge.’ I started every game and by Christmas, I was on scholarship.”
Brenda was so dominant, she’d signed to play her last two years of college ball at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia — Westark was a two-year school back then — while she finished her business administration degree. But she’d made her point and hung up her sneakers for good.
“I signed to go play at Henderson, but I was really done at that point,” she says with a chuckle. “Coach Whorton and I kidded each other before he passed. I always told him, ‘You know, I was tired of overweight, baldheaded old men telling me what to do and that’s why I didn’t play any more basketball.’”
Years later, she and her husband Jerry got the joy of watching JD grow into his own sports passion, determined to let him pick the game that spoke to him loudest. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t drop a few hints along the way.
“JD’s dad, Jerry, has been playing longer than I have, and he’s a great golfer; I had just started learning to play the month before we met, Brenda says. “JD had a golf club in his hand from the time he was a baby, literally,” she says. “I mean, we have a picture of him crawling around the house before he could walk with these plastic golf clubs.”
“Honestly, I can’t remember when I didn’t play golf because my family played a ton and they would just bring me to the golf course all the time,” JD says. “I remember I was so young I didn’t have the energy to play all eighteen so I’d play nine and then I’d sit in the back of the golf cart with my iPad.
“I just enjoyed being out there, the beauty of the golf course and hearing the birds and the sun shining. I really enjoyed it and so as I got older, I kept playing and I knew this is really something I love to do.”
The decision to attend UAFS happened similarly; JD recalls growing up on campus, attending sporting events and other happenings, so the school already felt like home. His decision to stay put has allowed his family to be involved with his athletic career, but Brenda sees it as something more.
“JD is blessed with great talent and he’s using that to his fullest, but we couldn’t have orchestrated this. It definitely was a God thing,” she says. “I think about my meeting up with Doc at the student union that day and how things have just unfolded from there. It’s a huge blessing and it’s been really, really fun.”
