Linked to his grandparents through golf

Ask Eric Chaves where his golf career began and he'll tell you it wasn't with a tournament victory or a lesson from a golf professional. It began with his grandmother.

She was the one who took him to Las Cruces Country Club as a young boy. She drove him to tournaments around Southern New Mexico. She put up with the complaints when course marshals spotted him driving golf carts he wasn't old enough to drive.

"My grandparents are the ones who kind of got me into golf, mainly my grandma," Chaves said. "We didn't have the money to go play all the big junior tournaments, but my grandma would take me to all the tournaments we could go to. I really owe it to them for getting me going."

That support turned into an obsession with the game.

By the time he was a teenager, Chaves had become one of Southern New Mexico's top young golfers. He wasn’t yet 18, the age required to play in the Las Cruces City Golf Championship, but he still found a way to be part of it, carrying bags for older players and soaking in the atmosphere of what was then one of the city's biggest golf events.

"I would caddy for anybody that would let me caddy for them," Chaves said. "They'd pay me with a dozen golf balls and a little bit of money. As a kid, I was excited to get a dozen golf balls."

Among the players whose bag he remembers carrying was local golfer John Hand, one of the regular competitors in the championship flight. Chaves watched, learned and imagined the day he would get his own chance to compete.

The path wasn't as straightforward as he expected. After high school, Chaves enrolled in New Mexico State University's PGA Golf Management program, but the death of a close friend in a car accident changed everything. He stepped away from golf, left school and spent time working on his uncle's ranch.

For a while, the game disappeared from his life. Then his former Mayfield coach, Gary Bradley, called.

Bradley needed help coaching a talented team he believed could win a state championship. Chaves returned to Las Cruces, joined the coaching staff and found himself drawn back into the game he had left behind.

"I kind of missed golf," he said. "I kind of wanted to play. I wanted to get back into competition."

The return led him to Western New Mexico University, where he competed in two national championships before moving into coaching and golf operations. What followed was a career that included earning PGA Class A status and managing golf facilities around the state.

Today, Chaves oversees The Links at Sierra Blanca in Ruidoso, but one of his favorite memories remains the Las Cruces City Golf Championship. In 2007, home from college for the summer, he entered the tournament he had spent years around, as a caddy, and a spectator.  

"It was always a trash-talking, fun tournament," Chaves said. "Everybody would talk about how they were going to win. I went in there and won by a bunch. Afterwards it was kind of, 'What happened to all that talk?'"

Now, with the City Championship returning after more than a decade away, Chaves hopes a new generation of golfers embraces the same competitive spirit that made the tournament special.

"I hope this tournament gets big again," he said. "We need to call out all the golfers who think they're the best in Las Cruces. Let's bring them out and see who really is the best."

For Chaves, that challenge is part of what golf has always been about. Competition, camaraderie, and stories that get passed from one generation to the next.

For him, those stories lead back to a grandmother who simply kept taking her grandson to the golf course.