Montgomery’s Hailee Cooper doesn’t exactly remember the first time she got her hands on a golf club. But she smiles at the thought.

Cooper’s father, 41-year-old Montgomery High School girls golf coach Ronnie Cooper, has a pretty good idea. You might say a definitive one.

“I’d say she was probably 3 years old,” Ronnie Cooper said on Friday morning at the Grand Pines Golf Club, a satellite course to Bentwater Yacht and Country Club, located on the northern shores of Lake Conroe. “Her grandfather (the late Mac Hairston) put a club in her hand when she was an infant. Two, maybe three weeks old.

The 15-year-old Montgomery High School sophomore has already experienced more in her career than some of her contemporaries finishing their college careers. Cooper won the UIL Class 6A individual medalist honors on April 28 in Georgetown, turning in a score of 68-71 — 141 to win the 36-hole tournament by two strokes over friend and rival Kaitlyn Tapp of Austin Lake Travis High School.

Colleges come calling

Hailee Cooper got her first college scholarship offer as an eighth grader, but the family has not yet created a P.O. box to handle the bulk of mail she’ll soon be receiving from recruiters, both in and outside the world of golf. click here for complete story