WILLIAMSBURG The father was a big-arena roughneck, a Class of '73 D-lineman at Virginia Tech, an O-lineman through eight seasons, five teams and four surgeries in the NFL, now a season-ticket-holder in Lane Stadium, a full-throated fan.

The daughter plays golf.

And plays it very, very well.

Courtney Ellenbogen, child of Bill and Janet, plays golf so well, in fact, that she came within one stroke of making the cut at last year's U.S. Open, has accepted a scholarship offer from Duke and qualified for the LPGA tournament that begins today at Kingsmill.

She's 17.

A junior at Blacksburg High.

A phenom.

In today's sports marketplace, phenoms get fast-tracked toward sign-on-the-dotted-line. One-and-done hoopsters bolt for the NBA hourly. Kentucky just offered a basketball ride to an eighth-grader from California. Precocious tennis and golf adolescents are steered from hometown familiarity to Florida academies where nutritionists and sports psychologists await.

That's the path Paula Creamer took when she was 14. She's 21 now. She's won six LPGA events, is third on this season's money list, doesn't seem warped. And Courtney Ellenbogen might've gone that route as well. She was a candidate -- the country's 10th-ranked junior golfer, a high-profile talent.

But her daddy -- the football player, the pro athlete -- resisted that pull. He and his wife didn't want to split up the family -- there's an 18-year-old son, a tennis player -- for one thing. They didn't buy into the teenager as commodity angle, either.

"There's a part of growing up and being a kid and experiencing all the things young people experience that I think is important," Bill Ellenbogen said yesterday. "I also think some of these young kids get skewed values based on the emphasis placed on athletics. I felt that by maintaining a balance, she'd have a better perspective on life in its entirety and not just sports."

Refreshing, no? And the strategy doesn't seem to have inhibited the daughter or her game. She spends time with her friends. She's paced her high school golf team to two Group AA titles. She also made the squad that represented the U.S. in last year's Junior Solheim Cup, which is a big deal.

Except she didn't make a big deal of it.

"My friends know I play golf," Courtney said. "Most people know I've done some good things with it. I wouldn't say my school has gone crazy because I've done well in a few tournaments. I try not to go crazy with it,'cause a lot of other people do good things in their activities, too."

Don't get the wrong impression here. Courtney Ellenbogen might be grounded, but she doesn't dabble at golf, she attacks it. You don't get this good this young at a sport without tunnel-visioning some. Or burning to win.

"She's a legend at our country club with how much she works at it," Bill Ellenbogen said. "She'll be on the putting green, practicing when a group goes by to start a round, and four or five hours later, they'll finish up and she'll still be there. It blows my mind how intense and focused she is."

And, yeah, the idea is that one day -- after college -- Courtney will try to earn a living by competing against all those Ochoas, Pettersens and Creamers on the LPGA circuit.

"That's the plan right now," she said. "We'll see how things go. But I'd love to make a career out of this. I would love to excel in my own country and be really good at the sport."

First things first, though. Came the conclusion of yesterday's practice round, Courtney climbed into the family car for a 270-mile drive to Blacksburg and some serious studying. She has an AP calculus exam this morning. Sometime after that, she'll return to Williamsburg and golf.

"I'm still a high school student," she said.

She's not in a rush.