Stacking work. Building yourself up layer by layer, line by line, to achieve great things.On Sunday, March 8, young Kihei finished playing in the PGA Tour’s Puerto Rico Open, where he finished tied for 16th place. It was the first time he’d made the cut in a PGA Tour event.

The next morning, he was registered to tee off with his BYU teammates in the R.E. Lamkin Invitational at San Diego Country Club in Southern California.“I think the philosophy we’ve tried to teach our kids comes from our faith: ‘Line upon line, precept upon precept.’ We turned that into something more visual for them and called it ‘stacking papers.’ Alan Akina, father of BYU golf star Kihei AkinaTo pull this off, he and BYU director of golf Todd Miller, who was his caddie in Puerto Rico, had to make a 6 p.m. flight from Puerto Rico to Miami, fly to Los Angeles, pick up a rental car at 1:30 a.m., and drive for two hours to San Diego.

They slept for two hours at the team hotel before showing up for a 7:30 a.m. tee time in Chula Vista.Kihei had never seen the San Diego Country Club course before. Miller reminded him, “Remember, I can’t carry your bag here like I did in Puerto Rico as your caddie.”His dad, Alan, said, “You should have seen the look on Kihei’s face.”Before taking this trip, Miller gave his young, budding star a blunt warning: “Look, if we’re going to make this decision, you’re only going to get a couple hours of sleep before you play on Monday. I don’t want you going out there and then making excuses,” Miller recalled.Akina’s response left a lasting impression.“Coach, I’m doing this for the team,” he replied.

“I’ll be all-in. You don’t have to worry about me.”That commitment, Miller emphasized, is rare.Finding excuses?“There’re a lot of kids — you hear that a lot in junior golf and collegiate golf — but you don’t get any of that from him,” the coach said. “He doesn’t make excuses.” Alan and LeAnn Akina, parents of BYU freshman sensation Kihei Akina, pose by the scoreboard at the PGA Tour Puerto Rico Open.

Their son not only made the cut, but tied for 16th. | Courtesy Akina family That makes what followed remarkable, because golfers are creatures of habit. They have routines, superstitions. They like to map out a course, get a feel for the fairways, greens, bunkers, hazards and speed of the putting surface.

They like to control things if they can, including practice rounds and researching the layout. Akina had none of that. He was like a carpenter asked to take his hammer and saw and go to the construction site with no blueprints.The next day at the Lamkin, Akina was required to play the first two rounds, 36 holes of the 54-hole tournament, in one day.

During the back nine, he turned to Miller and told him, “I’m kind of hitting the wall. Are you?” Indeed, Miller could feel the fatigue blanketing him and could only imagine what Akina was feeling.Asked how he felt in that moment, Akina explained, “There was definitely a huge drop in my energy level, but after pushing through for a few holes and drinking a bunch of electrolytes, it totally went away. I actually felt like it was a great challenge to see if I could push myself and perform at a high level with that amount of rest.”Akina fired rounds of 67-71 to finish third on the day.

His 6-under day included a stretch where he made nine birdies over his last 11 holes during his first 18. That included five consecutive birdies from holes 8 through 12. The 67 matched the lowest scoring round of his career.The next day, Akina had the lowest 54-hole score of his life, shooting a 64 to win individual honors at 14 under par.

His BYU team finished third. BYU golfer Kihei Akina on the first tee during an NCAA golf tournament on Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025, in Fayetteville, Ark. | Michael Woods, Associated Press Akina won his second-straight individual honors March 24 at the Bridgestone Invitational at Silverado Country Club in Napa Valley, where he broke his personal 54-hole scoring record at 21 under par. He then finished runner-up at The Goodwin at Stanford on March 28.

This past week at the Western Collegiate at Pasatiempo in Santa Cruz, he finished fifth.The worst he finished in this stretch was 16th in the PGA Tour event in Puerto Rico.Akina’s poise under pressure stands out. Miller has watched this young star since he played junior golf and then followed him at Lone Peak High in Alpine. “He’s pretty calm in any circumstance, and he proved it again in a Tour event. You’d expect a kid that age to get pretty nervous playing in a PGA Tour event, but I would say he