There are so many people over the years who have helped out Louie Euer in golf.
There is Bud Perkins and Dale Smith at Diamond Oaks Golf Course in Roseville.
There is Angie Dixon, Executive Director, and Megan Fidler, Director of Competitive Activities, of First Tee – Greater Sacramento.
There is the Morton Golf Foundation.
There is the ownership team at Morton Golf – Ken Morton, Sr., Ken Morton, Jr., Tom Morton, Mike Woods, Terry Daubert.
There is Kelli Corlett, Jane Siebers, and Frank LaRosa of the Morton Golf Management Team.
There is Rob Siebers, a Morton Golf Foundation board member.
They, and others, have all been instrumental in providing support and assistance for Euer, who took up golf at a young age, playing with his dad, Louis Euer.
“I was so young, (Louis Euer) would actually have to change my diaper on the course when I first started. That’s how young I was,” Louie recalled recently. “(Louis Euer) was very athletic in high school and he had a lot of opportunities to be a professional, at pretty much anything he wanted to be. He wanted me to do that, too.”
Louie played a number of sports, including football, basketball, and baseball, growing up. He also ran track.
“(Louie Euer) just loved everything. And he seemed to excel at sports,” said Jackie Euer, Louie’s mother.
It was golf that brought Louie and his dad together.
“He pushed me incredibly hard with baseball and football. With golf, he wasn’t my coach. He was just my dad,” said Louie. “And so that’s basically the foundation of why I loved playing golf, is because it wasn’t a job. It was something he and I did for fun.”
There is a lot that Louie learned about golf from his dad. He learned about respecting the game, having good sportsmanship, and the core values associated with golf.
“His main one was no whining about anything. Just move on. Move on to the next shot. He definitely did instill a lot of those in me. It was just somewhere, where we could go and have that time together,” said Louie.
Louie Euer has taken golf and made it a big part of his life, often playing with a group of friends and also playing in charity tournaments in the Sacramento area. He is very thankful and appreciative of all the support he has received from those in the Sacramento golf community.
“I want to say one thing that golf does for young people, that very few other sports can do, it teaches a young man to be a gentleman. It teaches a young man to know how to behave. It teaches a young man to appreciate nature, appreciate rules, appreciate limits, and appreciate disappointment. I think golf is fundamental in so many ways,” said Jackie Euer.
“I’m really grateful for that influence for him, too.”
Community reaches out
When Louis Euer was very sick, Jackie Euer reached out to Perkins and Smith at Diamond Oaks, to see if they could meet Louie and take a look at his swing and his game.
He was 11 years old at the time.
“We had some friends that just kept insisting that Louie had so much potential in golf and that I needed to get him more involved in a program. And that’s when I started calling around,” said Jackie Euer. “I found Bud Perkins out at Diamond Oaks, who was willing to just take a look. He and Dale were instrumental in helping me. I didn’t really have any money. At that point, Louie’s dad was very sick. And soon thereafter he passed away when Louie was 12.
“There just wasn’t any money for sports and activities. I was at my wits’ end just trying to hold everything together. Here comes Dale and Bud. Not only did they help him with his golf and fees associated with golf activities, but they gave him a golf job in the summer. When he was out of school, the first two summers, he was an assistant at Diamond Oaks. He actually helped teach golf at the age of 12.”
There were so many others who were there to also support Louie Euer.
Just a few weeks after Louis Euer passed away, in October of 2009 at the age of 55, Jackie and Louie were contacted by Dixon and Fidler with First Tee – Greater Sacramento. They got passes for Jackie and Louie for the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, a PGA Tour Champions event, at Sonoma Golf Club. On top of that, Louie got to walk inside the ropes, as he followed some of the players.
“I don’t know what we would have done, because they were definitely right there with us when we lost Louie’s dad,” said Jackie Euer. “It was just remarkable. This is truly within two weeks of him losing his father. It was just such a lift. Thanks to Megan and Angie. Megan drove to our house and dropped off some money for gas because I wouldn’t have been able to drive out to Sonoma.”
It was the first professional golf event that Louie had been to. He said it was an incredible opportunity, seeing some of the best players in golf.
“First Tee reached out to me because they heard about what happened. They heard about how my dad and I loved to play golf and everything,” said Louie Euer. “They then invited me to go down to one of the Champions Tour events. We have inside-the-ropes passes and got to meet some of the Tour players and everything. I had never been to really anything like that because we couldn’t afford anything.”
There is a whole lot that Louie Euer learned about the game from Perkins. Jackie would drop Louie off at Diamond Oaks in the summer months, and he would spend the day there, using the driving range, learning about the swing, and going to camps.
“It got me on to the golf course and I met a lot of great people,” he said. “It was the first time I had ever had a lesson. I learned etiquette. I learned how to talk to people. I learned how to be a gentleman and it got me headed in that direction and really wanting to work hard for something. I loved playing golf.
“As I look back on it, it’s incredible to think that was the foundation of getting me to where I am.”
Joining First Tee – Greater Sacramento.
Louie Euer was with First Tee – Greater Sacramento for six years, participating in programs and junior tournaments.
According to the organization’s website: firstteesacramento.org:
“We enable kids to build the strength of character that empowers them through a lifetime of new challenges. By seamlessly integrating the game of golf with the life skills curriculum, we create learning experiences that build inner strength, self-confidence, and resilience that kids carry to everything they do.”
“First Tee – Greater Sacramento has positively impacted the young people in our area since 1983 with youth development programs running throughout the year, reaching over 58,000 young people annually. Today, First Tee – Greater Sacramento is one of First Tee’s largest chapters. We are a leader in the field of programs for young people and the disabled. First Tee – Greater Sacramento serves juniors from the ages of 3-18 with a variety of programs including summer camps, after school & Saturday programs, California Eagles (Special Olympics), adaptive physical education classes, a competitive junior golf tour, Swing Club for the Blind, First Tee School Program, and much more. First Tee – Greater Sacramento has 11 program locations in the greater Sacramento area. We have created a true farm system that supports children as young as 3 until they reach college.”
“With over 35 years of history, our youth development organization has positively impacted the lives of countless young people in the Sacramento area.”
Louie Euer represented First Tee – Greater Sacramento in the PURE Insurance Championship Impacting The First Tee, a PGA Tour Champions event on the Monterey Peninsula, in 2013. He played with Duffy Waldorf. The event, which includes juniors from First Tee chapters across the country, is hosted by the Monterey Peninsula Foundation.
High school years
Louie Euer attended Del Oro High School in Loomis and played golf all four years. He graduated in 2015.
He was team captain his senior year and was a three-time All-Sierra Foothill League team selection.
Euer said he spoke with college coaches during his senior year of high school. He was injured in a car accident his senior year and then also injured his ankle later in the school year.
He elected not to play in college and worked during those years, for family reasons, at Sac State.
“I wanted to be able to work a lot in college and I wanted to be able to provide everything that I possibly could for my mom going through school,” he said.
“I was always golfing and then I just kind of realized that I love to golf, but slowly it was turning into a job for me. I didn’t want to ruin the game that I loved so much.”
Support of Morton Golf Foundation
Louie Euer was the recipient of a Morton Golf Foundation Junior Golf Development Grant. The Grant, according to mortongolffoundation.org, provides “financial support for families to help their children learn to compete, develop skills, enhance core values and build lasting relationships through the game of golf.”
Grant funding covers expenses for tournament registration fees, transportation to and from tournaments, lodging, and meal costs for junior golfers only in travel tournaments, golf equipment, and golf lessons, according to mortongolffoundation.org. The Morton Golf Foundation, according to Morton Golf Foundation, also “funds programs offering a healthy outdoor recreational environment that stresses the building of lasting personal relationships while seamlessly instilling life’s core values for the youth, disabled, and under-served communities of Sacramento.”
Louie Euer was awarded a scholarship by Morton Golf Foundation. This helped to cover his college expenses when he attended Sacramento State. He graduated from Sac State in 2020 with a degree in communications.
Morton Golf Foundation also provided Louie Euer with a set of clubs shortly after his father passed away.
Jackie Euer is so very thankful and appreciative of everything Morton Golf Foundation and First Tee – Greater Sacramento has done for Louie over the years.
“There are no words to describe my gratitude to Morton Golf Foundation and the First Tee. When Mike Woods (PGA member, Vice President and General Manager of Haggin Oaks Golf Complex, Vice President-Morton Golf Foundation) called to say, ‘We’ve got some clubs out here for Louie,’ and we went out and picked up this gorgeous set of clubs for Louie, it makes me want to cry. It was just unbelievable,” said Jackie.
Louie spent several years working with Tom Morton, a PGA member, Vice President of Player Development for Morton Golf, and President-Morton Golf Foundation.
“Tom worked with him on his swing and worked with him as a young golfer, but also as a young man,” said Jackie Euer. “He was a part of Tom’s family. They treated Louie and me like family. They invited us to holiday dinners.”
Tom Morton worked with Louie, as his swing coach, throughout his high school days.
“Tom Morton was one of my mentors back in high school. He was like a father figure, a great guy. I was like a part of the family. I am so unbelievably grateful for that experience. He helped me through a lot of things. He was my golf coach.”
“I could ask him things and he would help me through a lot of tough situations. When you’re 14 to 17 years old, you’re feeling a lot of different emotions and sometimes you get hot-headed and confused – everything like that.”
“He was the one that would always pick up the phone and would always invite me over for dinner and to go golf together. I would attribute a lot of where I am now to him because he is the one that taught me how to conduct myself as a man.”
Tom Morton also caddied for Louie at the PURE Insurance Championship Impacting The First Tee.
Working and playing golf
Louie Euer, 25, makes his home in Rocklin and works as an insurance agent for Pilcher Insurance Agency, Inc., in Loomis.
He is a Northern California Golf Association member and gets out to play golf in the area, at Morgan Creek Golf Club in Roseville, Turkey Creek Golf Club in Lincoln, and Ridge Golf Course in Auburn.
“Louie has continued to excel at golf and enjoy golf,” said Jackie Euer. “He has this extended family – the golf community.”
* Marty James is a freelance writer who makes his home in Napa. He retired on June 4, 2019, after spending 40 years as a sports writer, sports editor, and executive sports editor for the Napa Valley Register, a daily newspaper in Napa County. He is a 1979 graduate of Sacramento State and a member of the California Golf Writers & Broadcasters Association. He was inducted into the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section Hall of Fame in 2016.
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