Improbable as it may seem to anyone who ever played there, the now defunct Pea Patch, aka Port Groves Golf Club, owns a lofty perch as a spawning ground for developing Port Neches-Groves players who have reached golf’s highest level.

Andrew Landry (173) and Chris Stroud (191) are currently listed in the top 200 of the Official World Golf Rankings. Both are among the 125 players with full exemptions for the 2017-18 PGA Tour season. Braden Bailey, a junior at Baylor, is No. 19 in Golfweek’s collegiate rankings.

Two full-time PGA Tour players and one high-ranked college player coming out of the same high school, and growing up on the same scruffy nine-hole course, might not seem that unusual, but it actually is. Thousands upon thousands of golfers worldwide strive to reach golf’s top level. A relative handful get there.

One guy who can put that in perspective is former Lamar University and current Arkansas coach Brad McMakin. McMakin, who Landry followed to Arkansas from Lamar, and nearly helped win a national championship, says it is mind blowing that PNG has two players on the PGA Tour.

“As a college coach, if you get two or three players in your career who make it to the PGA Tour it is a big deal,” said McMakin. “ It is unbelievable to me that PNG has two and may have a third. For them to have gotten that far coming from the Pea Patch is off the charts.

“It says a lot about quality of parenting and kids who are used to toughing it out. I know all three of them and they are as far from spoiled, entitled rich kids as you can get. They did it the hard way and I have no doubt that is a factor in their success.”

To put the head-shaking aspect of the Pea Patch pros in another context, compare the much more favorable odds of attaining the highest level in other sports. There are 360 full time NBA jobs, 750 openings on Major League Baseball rosters and 1,440 spots available in the NFL.

Being one of 125 on the PGA Tour, and one of the top 200 in the world, is clearly a more difficult proposition.

As best as could be determined for this piece, the high school with the most players fully exempt on the PGA Tour is the very private, very posh Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Four players from the school — Harris English, Luke List, Keith Mitchell and Stephen Jaeger — are currently exempt on the PGA Tour.

In-state tuition to attend the Baylor School is $23,980. Out-of-staters pay $48,842. The fee for anyone like Jaeger from outside the United States is $52,422. Aspiring golfers at the Baylor School have their own short-game center on campus and are granted access to the finest courses in the Chattanooga area.

Obviously, the Baylor school, Port Neches-Groves and the old Pea Patch are light years apart in terms of resources and opportunity for aspiring golfers.

Second to the Baylor School with three PGA Tour players, but much more comparable to PNG, is Baghdad High School in Milton, Florida. It was home to Bubba Watson, Boo Weekley and Heath Slocum. Slocum, though, grew up in Baton Rouge and didn’t move to Milton until he was in the eighth grade.

Stroud, Landry and Bailey were all reared in Groves, population 16,000. They collectively defy conventional wisdom that rising above the pack in golf is dramatically enhanced by wealth, a country club background, access to expert professional instruction and frequent playing time on the American Junior Golf Association Tour.

So how did this happen? How did these three players, two of whom are not exactly the physically imposing prototype of the modern golf star, overcome the odds? How did they get so good while learning the game on a nine-hole course without a practice range or sand traps, a course made up of short holes and tiny greens that might have run six on a Stimpmeter?

Before tackling those questions, let’s take a brief look at the trio’s accomplishments.

• Stroud, 36, in 11 years on the PGA Tour, has banked more than $10 million. He broke through in late July with his first victory at the Barracuda Championship in Reno, then was in contention until the final five holes in the PGA Championship.
• Before that, he was a record shattering two-time All-America at Lamar who was the Southland Conference Player of the Year four times. In his peak season at Lamar, he won seven tournaments and finished third in the NCAA.
• Landry, 30, has won twice on the Web.com Tour and, in his second stint on the PGA Tour, already has two top 10 finishes on the early part of the 2017-18 schedule. He gained national attention by shooting a 66 to lead the first round of the 2016 U.S. Open at historic Oakmont and continued playing well enough to be in the final twosome on Sunday.

At Arkansas, he was a three-time All-America, led the Razorbacks to a runner-up finish in the NCAA championships his senior year and left with a school record 22 top-10 finishes.

Bailey has won one tournament at Baylor and has been a top-10 machine in his two plus years in Waco. He is an integral reason why the Bears are one of the teams with a realistic shot at winning the NCAA championship.

Interviews with the PNG exes reveal the common threads for their successes are talent, over-the-top desire to be good, a relentless work ethic when it comes to practice, a chance to compete early thanks to junior tournaments in Southeast Texas and parents who were extremely active in helping create opportunities.

All admit they faced disadvantages because of the Pea Patch, but contend things they learned playing there, especially in the all-important short game, have been instrumental to what they have been able to achieve.

“When I would go play in Houston Golf Association junior tournaments, kids would ask me about my home course,” said Stroud. “I would say the Port Groves Golf Facility and Resort. It was my way of poking fun at kids who came from the fancy country clubs.

“For a while, I was intimidated by knowing the HGA kids had better places to play and practice than I did, but I knew I had all that I needed to work on the important things and get better. The short game stuff, the ability to get up and down are fundamentals I learned at the Pea Patch that still serve me well.

“Beyond that, the skill set that it takes to get to the PGA Tour is extremely hard to come by. It is a God-given talent. But you have to want it and I did. And I had great direction and the opportunity at the Pea Patch to play and practice as much as I wanted. A key for me was that my dad really stressed short game and mental game.”

Stroud, who makes it a point to thank Pea Patch pro Josh LaBove for making him feel welcome when he was just starting, and to high school coach Tommy Tucker, was a trailblazer of sorts for Landry and Bailey. He showed them what was possible coming through the Pea Patch, if you had talent and a strong work ethic.

“Chris was the start of pushing Pea Patch golfers to the next level,” said Landry. “He was the role model of what you can do with hard work. With Braden, he got to see Chris do it, then see me do it. I also got a lot of inspiration from my older brother, Adam. He helped so much in my development because he was a really good player and I wanted to beat him so bad.

“I never really thought too much about disadvantages at the Pea Patch. For a while, I didn’t know any different. But I learned a lot of shots playing there that I would not have, things like the bump and run and how to chip a wedge from 90 yards and land it 30 yards short and roll up.

“One of the things from out there that really helped was the big Tuesday money game. You had guys like Rick LaBove, Richard Scully and Charley Heider playing in that who were really good. I learned a lot about competing from playing in that game. There was a skins game and all kind of side bets. It tested you.”

Bailey, whose dad — Groves mayor Brad Bailey — helped extend the life of the Pea Patch a few years, says he would not trade his golf background for anything. He has no doubt growing up there made him a better player.

“The condition of the course obviously was not the greatest, compared to what the country club kids had,” he said. “But I still see it as an advantage. You didn’t have a choice but to develop a strong short game. You went out and learned and played and kept playing.

“I had so much fun and have so many fond memories from there. It is how I fell in love with the game, how I came to be really passionate about it. I think I developed a sense of feel and creativity out there that a lot of other kids didn’t have.”

And how about the Stroud-Landry factor?

“They definitely were an inspiration. You see it done not once but twice with the same exact background and it helps you believe. I have seen them do it at the college level and now at the professional level. For sure, they have given me hope for the future. I want to be out there with them.”

Meanwhile, if you drive by the parcel of land on Monroe Street, where Stroud, Bailey and Landry honed their games, all you see is a housing development in its early stages. But, thanks to three special golfers whose arrows are all pointing up, the legacy of the Pea Patch lives on.