Stewart: Golfer in final 4

Golf Channel’s competitive reality show, “Big Break Disney Golf.”

But he is surprising everyone, including himself.

At the start of the 10-week series, there were 12 competitors. Now there are four.

Larry Stewart

Erdman, 30, a teaching pro at the Altadena Golf Course who grew up in Arcadia and currently lives in this community, has made it to the Final Four.

He gained immunity during the challenge portion of this week’s latest edition of the series, which had its first airing Dec. 1. The challenge portion tested the short-game skills of the five remaining competitors. They had to get up and down from a specified distance.

Kevin's wife Courtney Erdman

After Erdman hit a great approach shot and made his putt, he could be heard saying, “How am I still alive?” And this: “I must have said ‘Wow’ 20 times over.”

Erdman, who spent four years caddying for his wife Courtney as she attempted to make it on the pro circuit, is unquestionably the most humble of the 12 golfers who were chosen to compete on the show that gives the winner an exemption into a PGA Tour event.

The other Arcadia-area golfer in the competition, Blake Moore, was eliminated the previous week. Erdman’s humbleness seemed to irritate at least one of the other survivors. Mike Perez said of Erdman on the Dec. 1 show: “If he doesn’t believe he should still be here he should just go home.”

The most arrogant of the other competitors, Andrew Guliani, the son of former New York City mayor Rudy Guliani, was the latest to be eliminated.

Meanwhile, Erdman moves on, proving that, in this case, it’s not true that only the strong survive. Also, that sometimes it pays to be a nice guy.

(See the Erdmans’ story in the 3 1/2-minute video below.)

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