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11-Year-Old Colorado Kid Is Just Tearing Up The Links

DENVER (CBS4) - Every year it's a different kid but the same story -- look out world, here's the next Tiger Woods.

The truth is most golf prodigies end up burning out. It just took Woods 30 years to burn out. But every once in a while a kid comes along with the right attitude, the right demeanor, and the right expectations. CBS4's Vic Lombardi happened to find that kid at Fossil Trace Golf Course.

From 100 yards in Jack Castiglia doesn't miss. It's like watching a professional -- if a professional was 4-foot-7 and in the fifth grade.

"I hope to be a professional golfer," Jack said.

Young Jack doesn't live on hope alone. He finished the summer as the top-ranked 10-year-old in Colorado and the 13th ranked 10-year-old in the world. He recently turned 11-years-old.

"We were at her parent's lake house in Wisconsin and we were playing croquet; he was 3 1/2. He took a club, a croquet mallet, and went like this, and held it," Jack's father Rick Castiglia said while showing a golf swing.

Rick and Lisa Castiglia knew they had something special. Not because Jack had a great golf swing, but because he wanted to work on that swing all the time.

"His first tournament was at Indian Tree, he was 7 years old and he had to play the 10-and-under division and he tied for first place," Rick said.

Since then the trophies, like the birdies, have come in bunches. Jack wins nearly every tournament he enters in Colorado, so his parents had to take him on the road.

"Pinehurst, North Carolina, he played in a tournament in Maui, we went to New Mexico," Lisa said.

Jack does play other sports -- basketball, baseball and full-contact football. His teammates like to poke fun of him about his golfing.

"They're always like dogging me about golf and stuff, like saying stuff about me like, 'You little golfer,'" Jack said. "I always say, 'Have you tried it? Because it's not an easy sport.'"

Jack also has a hole-in-one under his belt. He drained it two days after his 11th birthday.

"Eighty-five yards, I used a pitching wedge and so it's hits the green and then hits once and then just side-spins into the hole," Jack said.

One thing Jack has that other youngsters don't is the will to practice and practice and practice -- at least six days a week.

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