Theodore Anthony Sliman III instantly gave up his dream of playing on the PGA Tour.
It was during his third trip to PGA Q-School, when the then 27-year-old had just wrapped a miserable rain-soaked week in Houston. The inclement weather kept backing up round after round, to the point where Theodore — known to family and friends as Theo — and his fellow PGA Tour dreamers had to play 36 holes in one day.
As was habit at the time, Sliman would never take his phone with him on the course, as he opted to leave it in the car until he was done playing. That was never a problem with his wife Mary, as she would always wait for him to call her when he got back to the hotel.
That day was different.
“I got in that car after playing, and I had 15 missed calls from Mary,” Theo said. “I’m like, ‘Uh oh, this ain’t good.’ She was pregnant with our son, and so I called her up. She says, ‘Well, I started labor. I’m in the hospital.’ And so I said, ‘All right.’ And I hauled butt home from Houston. Got to the hospital and the next day, he was born.”
He was Theodore Anthony Sliman IV, lovingly referred to as Drew, who just wrapped his senior season of golf at Lafayette High and did so by winning the LHSAA Division I state championship.
Like his father nearly three decades earlier, Sliman’s dreams were altered that day.
“When he was born, I cried like a baby,” Theo said. “And I will tell you this, that desire to chase that white ball, it just magically left me.”
Theo may have given up on becoming a professional golfer, but the game he has loved since childhood has remained at the forefront of his professional life. From golf pro to becoming the Sun Belt Conference-winning coach of the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns golf team.
The game of golf has also allowed the bond between the three Sliman men to grow stronger than any titanium driver, as Drew will be playing for his dad at UL starting this fall.
“I’m totally blessed with that scenario,” the 74-year-old Teddy Sliman said. “The fact that my son loved the game of golf as much as I do. And that he passed it on to his son, both, you know, involved with the Ragin’ Cajuns and carry on that tradition where, you know, both he and I coached here, so now his son’s playing for him. It’s just an awesome scenario.”
“I don’t think any of us could put into words what this means,” said Drew, whose name is short for quadruple. “It looks like golf is the reason we share this bond, but I think without golf, we would still have this bond. It just so happens that golf is a shared hobby of ours, and one we all love to play. It is fortunate for what we have. I’m trying to put it into words, but it’s that time three, and times however many.”
GROWING UP WITH THE GAME
The Sliman family’s history with golf has roots in New Orleans, where Theodore Anthony Sliman Sr. grew up playing the game. Even though there are no official records that have survived from a century ago, it is widely accepted that the first Theodore was one heck of an amateur golfer, winning numerous tournaments.
That success carried over when he relocated to New Iberia, where he became a prominent businessman who still kept competing in amateur events, including winning the 1956 Sugar Cane Festival Tournament.
This is when Theodore Anthony Sliman Jr., known simply as Teddy, was exposed to golf as he grew up in a home nestled along Iberia Country Club — a now closed nine-hole course located on Indest Street on the Bayou Teche.
“My dad played golf up until I was about six or seven years old, and then he saw that I took a liking to golf,” Teddy recalled. “After that, he put all his energy into me. Every day after school, I’d go play as many holes as I could with my friends, you know, who also lived on the golf course. I fell in love with the game. It’s my first love.”
Teddy would attend Catholic High of New Iberia, where he continued to work on his golf game, including finishing second at the state high school tournament — during a time when all the golfers in Louisiana competed in one open class.
He would go to play collegiate golf at LSU, earning letters in 1970-72. He helped LSU earn second-place honors in the SEC in 1970, and he earned All-SEC second-team honors.
After college, Teddy met his wife Anita and then moved to Bradford, Pennsylvania, as an assistant to former Ragin’ Cajuns golfer and prominent rules official Mike Shea. In the offseason, Teddy would pursue his dream of one day making it to the PGA Tour by playing on the mini-tours in Savannah, Georgia, and Scottsdale, Arizona.
It wasn’t long before Teddy came to a fork in the road in his life.
“Mike played in a few tournaments on the PGA Tour, and then he kept qualifying for more and more,” Teddy recalled. “So he didn’t go back to his job, and I could have gone and taken his place up there in Pennsylvania. But my wife got pregnant with our oldest daughter, and we decided not to go back up there. We came back home and settled down in New Iberia.”
Teddy worked as an assistant pro at Oakbourne Country Club for three and a half years, and earned his PGA card in November of 1977 — two years before his son Theo was born. He tried playing on the same mini-tours as before, but after a short while decided “it wasn’t for me.”
He got back into the golf pro business, working for Curley Romero at Tri-Parish Golf Club, taught at a golfing range on Johnson Street in Lafayette, worked as a part-time coach for the Ragin’ Cajuns, and even fixed clubs in his spare time.
“I would do club repairs in the back room at my mom and dad’s house,” Teddy said. “I had a hodgepodge of jobs. I was just trying to make a living anyway I could.”
Teddy would become the first golf pro at Squirrel Run Golf Club when it opened in 1986. He then went into a partnership to purchase Sugar Oaks Golf Course, also in New Iberia, where he worked for nearly two decades.
Not surprising that Teddy’s professional life had an impact on his son, despite the best efforts of his wife.
“When he was born, she put a golf ball in his face and said, ‘You’ll never do this for a living’,” Teddy laughed while remembering.
Despite his wife’s best efforts, Theo grew up on the golf course, loving the game just like his father had done.
“I had such a great childhood,” Theo said. “Him being in the golf business allowed me to grow up on a golf course, but not only did it allow me to play this game, I also learned how to speak to adults quickly at a young age. I had the opportunity to work around the game.”
“Theodore was a social guy and he still is,” Teddy said. “He would go out and hit a few balls, and then he’d go BS with the guys.”
Teddy made it a point to never push the game onto his son.
“I never tried to deter him from going into golf, and I didn’t try to force it on him either,” Teddy said. “I just let him take his path.”
Theo loved the game, and his father would soon become his swing coach, which sometimes led to passionate discussions.
“I looked up to him from day one,” Theo said. “We worked together a lot. He taught me the swing, and as much as he was a fanatic about the swing, you could imagine at times, there were probably some arguments over the swing, particularly in the evenings, at home.”
Teddy also made sure to teach his son about work ethic, which is why the young Theo would earn his keep by cutting the greens at Iberia Country Club or cutting fairways at Sugar Oaks during the summers.
“If I wanted a new pair of golf shoes, he would say, ‘All right, how many bags of balls are you going to hit before you get those shoes?’ Theo said. “And he’d say, “You have to hit 25 bags of balls before you can get a new pair of shoes or whatever. He taught me what a work ethic is.”
Those lessons of hard work, while also not pressuring his son to follow his path, Theo has passed down to Drew.
“He’s made it clear that whatever I want, I have to go get,” Drew said. “I’m not competing for him. I’m competing because I want to, and because I love to compete. The game’s much more fun when I am walking in the fairways and walking on the greens because I want to. I am doing it because I have a love for it.”
FOLLOWING IN HIS FOOTSTEPS
It may be hard for many to believe now, but Theo grew up a die-hard fan of the LSU Tigers, from where his father graduated. That fandom was on display when Teddy took his 14-year-old son to the 1994 Masters. Theo stood in the fairway for a picture wearing an LSU hat.
Theo wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and play golf at LSU, but that didn’t happen.
“Luckily, my good friend George Cestia, who is two years older than me, came to UL,” Theo said. “He was like a brother to me, and LSU didn’t want him. He was probably the best player in his class back then, and then LSU didn’t want me. I had some options to go elsewhere, but I wanted to stay close to him. I wanted to be within arm’s reach of my dad, my mentor, and my teacher.”
It is one thing to go to college and play a sport, but it is another thing to play the same sport as your father, especially considering he was an accomplished competitor. Theo never felt the weight of playing the same sport as the man with which he shares a name.
“I never felt pressure or expectations from him,” Theo said. “If anything, I felt the opposite. I felt confident. I would always listen to the older guys talk about how good of a golfer my dad was. That Sliman name meant something. For me, it just felt that it’s in my blood, and there’s some confidence that instills rather than pressure.”
Theo’s highlight as a collegiate player playing for the legendary Bob Bass came during his senior season at the Sun Belt Conference Tournament in Destin, Fla. The younger Sliman needed to make a long birdie putt on the final hole to lock up All-SBC honors.
“He hits a ball and it’s a nice drive,” Teddy said. “He hits his ball on the green, and it is 12 to 15 feet from the cup. So my wife and I got the camera out. We take the picture as the ball is rolling towards the cup, and then another picture, and it’s on the lip. Then we take another picture, and the ball’s gone. It just hung on the lip, like it was teasing us, and then it fell in. I cherished that moment.”
“It was my senior year,” Theo said. “I worked my butt off. I had trials and tribulations, fights with the coach that toughened me up, and I became a man. It was a reward for that. It was a nice feather in the cap.”
Theo had become an all-conference golfer like his father, and he would follow his dad’s path by getting married after graduation and then trying to become a professional golfer.
This is when Teddy made his son a proposition.
“He made a deal with me at the time,” Theo said. “We’ll see how much you want it.” And he said, “You have to work for it. He said, “I’ll match every penny you save.” And that was his way of saying, “You’ve got to earn it. It’s not going to just be given to you.”
That’s what Theo did. He went and worked at Le Triomphe Golf and Country Club for David Church. Despite making only $19,000 a year, Theo, anchored by his wife Mary, who had a stable job, was able to save $15,000 for his pro career. Teddy honored his word and matched it, and then a local doctor matched that total.”
For the next three years, Theo tried his hand at becoming a golf pro. He would play in over 50 events on mini-tours such as the Adams Professional Golf Tour, PGA/Nationwide Tour, and others, including playing a few times at the Chitimacha Louisiana Open.
But he was never able to break through, and then after the birth of his son, he again followed his father’s path — as a coach. The idea of becoming the Ragin’ Cajuns golf coach had already taken root years prior. To be more exact, on the way home from the SBC Tournament, his senior season.
“Coach Bass says to me, ‘Well, partner, what’s going to be next?’ I said, ‘Well, Coach, I’m going to marry Mary. I want to give professional golf a shot. I don’t want to be 45 years old and say, I wish I had. Coach, I’m going to give it everything I got.’
“But when I knew that it’s time to hang it up, I said, ‘I’m coming after your job’.”
Less than two years after Drew was born, Theo would take over the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns golf program.
“This program educated me,” Theo said. “It gave me a network of people that I can rely on. It gave me a wife, you know? A family. So I just wanted to give back to this program for everything it gave me.
A CHAMPIONSHIP FOR TWO
After having played at the state championships as a team his junior year at Lafayette High, the goal for Drew as a senior was to win the individual state championship.
“That was the only focus I had was getting to that final destination,” Drew said. “Everything else was prep and practice for the result — state championship.”
Back in May, the LHSAA state championships were taking place across Acadiana, and Drew found himself in contention at the Division I championship after an opening bogey-free round of 67.
Yet, Drew wasn’t thrilled with his day on the Wetlands course.
“I was three back and I got off the golf course, and I left a little bit out there,” Drew said. “But I’ll never complain about a 67. I just remember being like, ‘Man, I’m three back.’ But I remember going to bed excited for tomorrow. I had a chance to go chase.”
Drew wouldn’t chase for long. He managed to hit two shots on the back nine before they blew the horn on the second round, as severe weather would ultimately shorten the championship.
“There was a buzz that I was in the lead when scores were put in, but I was still telling people, I want to go play more golf,” Drew said.
The LHSAA called the tournament after 27 holes, which gave Drew the state championship.
“I found a little corner in the cart barn, and I called my dad,” Drew said. “I said, ‘I think it’s going to be a 27-hole event.’ And I was just kind of quiet, and then said, ‘Holy smokes, I’m a state champion.’”
After that first round, Drew may have felt he needed to do more to win the title, but his father did not.
“After he shot the 67, I knew that he was going to win it,” Theo said. “Whether it was gonna be nine holes or 18 holes, I knew he was going to win it. I said this on that day to myself and God. You’ve got to understand, I won the state championship as a junior, and I was in position to win it my senior year, but I didn’t.”
Theo didn’t win it in his senior season. He was three holes away from repeating as champion when he made a fateful decision at the state tournament held in Crowley.
“I have the lead, and I’m in the woods, and I’m taking some practice swings, and my ball moves,” Theo said. “I waved my partners over. They didn’t see me because I’m in the woods. I told them my ball moved. The rules official says that is a two-shot penalty.”
Sliman chipped out, made double bogey on the hole, and then made par on the last two holes. He ended up going into a playoff and lost to Garrett Prather.
“I like to say that honesty cost me the championship,” Theo said. “You can’t be a golfer and cheat. So when he shot 67 and I saw how good he was playing, and I said, ‘God, you’re gonna give me a state championship that I lost, and you are going to do it through my son’.”
BUILDING A LEGACY
It is a humid afternoon in Acadiana, and storm clouds begin to form on the horizon overlooking Oakbourne Country Club, and the horn sounds to get off the course and driving range. The Slimans don’t have very far to take cover as they head inside to the home for the Ragin’ Cajuns golf team right off the range.
The team’s $800,000 state-of-the-art facility has offices, a locker room, monogrammed bags of all the former Cajun players who made it to the PGA Tour, championship trophies, framed photos, and paintings along the walls. There are also two all-weather hitting bays for players, and more technology than you can shake a 5-iron at.
Akin to the renovations at Russo Park, which were spearheaded by the passionate vision of the late Tony Robichaux, the efforts for the golf facility were a dream of Theo’s. To offer a standout facility that would allow the Cajun golfers to have the amenities to compete with larger programs.
“I would like to say I learned it from Coach Robe,” said Theo, whose wife Mary was a student worker of Tony’s. “I kind of feel the higher calling to do this more than just golf. I feel like it is my responsibility to raise these boys into men. To be an example to them. I feel that a big purpose of mine is to be an example of God to these college players that can kind of go astray.”
“The thing I am most proud of is the person he is,” said Teddy, who co-hosts a weekly golf show with Ralph Bergeron on KANE in New Iberia. “And that he is trying to instill that into his players. That’s probably the biggest achievement or biggest thing I am proud of with Theodore. That’s invaluable because that’s going beyond golf.”
In addition to having that facility to raise boys into men, while also winning a conference tournament and earning a NCAA Regionals berth in 2023, the facility also had a direct impact on Drew’s career.
“When we built this facility, they gave me a membership,” Theo said. “That opened up the floodgates, because now, all of a sudden, we can come out here and play. It’s ours. If we don’t build this facility, and Brad Mosing doesn’t start this facility for us, and we don’t have all the backing from our supporters, then Drew doesn’t have the opportunity to play golf as much as he has. Therefore, you know, he probably won’t develop into the player that he is.”
“I think it’s easy to learn a lot from the right people, that is my grandpa and my dad, but also all the guys that have come through here,” Drew said. “So that’s what I think, that’s what’s most important, just trying to be a sponge over the years and just soaking up as much as I can from them. Because they’ve been around it long enough to know what they’re talking about.”
The young boy who was once star-struck by having Jason Day fist bump him at the 2015 Zurich Classic, took the same path as his father and grandfather. He diligently worked on developing his golf game, but he also had something that his grandfather and his father did not possess.
“He is a winner, said Theo. “The best golfers know how to win. I see that in Drew. I don’t know if I ever knew how to win. I knew how to play good. I could shoot a score, and I could scrap and fight my way onto that all-conference team, but I didn’t have that mindset. Neither did Dad. I’ve seen him put his mind to it that he is winning and do it. There’s something to be said about that.”
“I never won the state junior, and Theodore never won the state junior, either,” said Teddy, who took Drew to The Masters when he was 14 in 2021. “I never won the state high school championship, but Theodore did win it once. I was never ranked the number one junior player in the state of Louisiana. Drew’s the number one in the state of Louisiana. The future is limitless for him.”
That experience of growing up around the Cajuns facility, and being around the program that both Theo and Teddy coached made Drew’s college decision an easy one.
“I wanted him to feel like he can go wherever he wants,” Theo said. “I think from a very young age, the Ragin’ Cajun logo means so much to him that we both kind of had our understanding of that. Yeah. It was gonna happen.”
“When I went on a visit to Rice, I went in with an open mind,” Drew said. “It was such a cool campus, and they have awesome coaches. But I just remember the whole time walking around and thinking, ‘Wow, this is cool, but this doesn’t feel right. This is not home for me.’ So I knew that I wasn’t going anywhere.”
That means another Sliman will be coached by his father, a tradition that holds special meaning to both father and son.
“I vividly remember a conversation I had with Robe,” Theo said. “This is back when they were unanimously number one in all five polls. We’re at a head coaches’ meeting and we’re talking about the season, and I said, ‘Coach, it must be nice to be number one, but how cool is it to have your boys on the team with you?’ He smiled and looked at me, and said, ‘Theo, I missed so many birthdays, so many high school championships, so many Easters, you know, God’s given them all back to me when they’re in college’.”
Theo added, “That’s what stuck with me. He was born in October, and I have missed the last 10 birthdays. I missed Easter with them and so much more. Now it’s going to be kind of neat to have that all back.”
“I’m excited for it,” Drew said. “Some of the guys that are coming back next year have already told me if I call him dad that they are going to give me crap. So it’s going to be ‘Coach.’ I don’t know what the future has for me, but whatever it is, I will get to do it with my dad.”