Gary Gant's recollection of his 1970 Indiana state boys' golf individual championship as a senior at North Central High (Indianapolis, Ind.) is remarkably clear. Then again, he recently benefited from a refresher course.

His 17-year-old daughter, Lauren, just captured the girls' title this past Saturday (Sept. 30) at Franklin's Legends of Indiana.

Lauren Gant's 6-over-par two-day score of 150, including Saturday's final-round 77, placed the teen and her father, the club pro at Pine Valley Country Club in Fort Wayne, in unique company. They are the first parent-child combination in state history to claim individual high school golf championships.

"I thinks it's awesome my dad won it, too," says Gant, a 5-foot-8 right-hander. "It didn't even cross my mind during the tournament, though. I knew he had done it. But when I got my award, it hit me. It was then I realized it's pretty phenomenal, because it had never been done before."

And it wasn't easy either time.

In 1970, Gant, now 48, slugged 36 holes with New Albany Senior High's Fuzzy Zoeller, who later went on to win the 1979 Master's and 1984 U.S. Open titles. Gant survived with three strokes to spare, firing a 5-under-par 139 (70-69), still a boys' state tournament 36-hole record.

On Saturday, the youngest member of the Gant family entered the final round at 1-over, holding a two-stroke edge over eventual third-place finisher Sally Shock of Noblesville High. But Gant wobbled to 6-over par with four holes to play, then got under her tee shot at the par-5 No. 15, sending it only 150 yards down the fairway.

Still needing a monster approach shot to clear a creek in front of the green, Gant blasted her second shot 20 feet from the pin, two-putted for birdie and went 1-under the rest of the way for a three-stroke victory over Culver Academy's Caroline Haase.

"That's when I knew I could win it, on 15," says Gant, whose sister, Kasey, is a senior golfer at Michigan State, and whose brother, Michael, is a freshman golfer at Ball State. "I just knew this was what I wanted and that I'd worked so hard and I knew inside I could grind it out. I just wanted it more, I think."

Gant strikes a curious figure on the golf course, playing Ping i-3 clubs and the Titleist Professional 90 ball, but often whimsically wearing trademark navy blue Capri pants. In Friday's first round at Legends, she rolled her khaki slacks up past her shins because of the unseasonable heat.

"I know how hard it is to win that tournament, and to have one of your children win it is really special," says Gary Gant. "When it comes down to crunch time, champions figure out a way to win and Lauren's pretty good at that."

But golfing championships are not the exclusive property of Gary and Lauren in the Gant family. Kasey won the '99 Indiana women's state amateur title, while Michael was the boys' state amateur champion in '98.

Lauren, who will attend Michigan State next fall, attributes her inconsistent play before and during the state championship to a stretch of five weeks without lessons from her dad earlier this fall. Between her own road trips to the U.S. Golf Association National Junior Championship in Oregon and the PGA National Junior Championship in Florida and her dad accompanying Kasey to the recent U.S. Women's Amateur and Michael to the U.S. Men's Amateur, practice sessions were nonexistent.

Lauren's swing deteriorated, with her long game suffering the most. But the two-time state girls' junior champion jammed every sliver of after-school daylight with links time.

The payoff may have been predictable, but this time, it was familial as well.