‘Line upon line’: How faith and family forged the trajectory of this BYU phenom

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 was calmer than I was out there.”

The family mantra

“My dad has always instilled in his kids the importance of working hard and giving your all to whatever you are doing,” said Kihei.

“My mom has taught us the importance of family and how to respect other people.”

Alan explains how he implemented this theme in raising their kids.

“I think the philosophy we’ve tried to teach our kids comes from our faith: ‘Line upon line, precept upon precept,’” he said. “We turned that into something more visual for them and called it ‘stacking papers.’

“I tell the kids that every day you work hard — whatever you’re pursuing — that’s one sheet of printer paper you stack on my desk. You come back after two weeks and the stack barely looks any different. You come back after a whole year — 365 sheets — and it still doesn’t even reach a full ream of paper from Walmart. It takes many, many years of consistent effort before you start to see a real difference.

“That same idea applies to their sports and to our faith,” Alan continued. “My wife and I are primary teachers in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we’ve found that teaching the basics in the shortest time is the most effective way for kids to grasp them. The gospel is simple. We shouldn’t complicate it, and we try not to complicate it in our own family.”

Kihei is a reserved kind of kid. When he celebrates a great shot, he’s always in control, almost stoic. Almost like he expects to make tough shots.

Kihei Akina lines up his putt on the 17th green during the final round of the 2025 Utah Open at Riverside Country Club in Provo on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. | Rio Giancarlo, Deseret News

“He’s a quiet kid, so he’s been pretty easy to raise,” said Alan. “He just followed along with the older boys. He always wanted to be with them, and he was super quiet and super fun to be around because he’d just do his own thing right alongside the older kids.”

It is in this family arena that Kihei developed the competitive backbone to win.

“He gets that competitive fire from them because he’s always played up. His oldest brother, Keanu, is eight years older than him, and his second-oldest brother is six years older. So he’s always been competing against kids much bigger than him,” Alan said. “When he was 4 or 5 years old, he was already doing all the same basketball moves as my older boys — up-and-under, crossover, behind-the-back, reverse layup. He had all the moves down just because he was always there, watching and copying.”

The Akinas used to have a small plastic hoop in the house, and the boys would play almost every night. There’d be a fight after nearly every game, said Alan.

“My second-oldest son could be pretty nasty on him and would make him cry. It would get to the point where my wife would say, ‘You need to stop him.’ I’d let it go right to the edge and then step in. He always ended up crying because he lost and got beaten pretty good.

“But over those two or three years, you could just see the fire building inside him,” he said. “He didn’t want to lose to those guys. He wanted to beat his brothers. That competitive spirit definitely came from being around his older siblings. All of them played sports, so he was always at the games serving as the ball boy. He had a lot of exposure to high-level competition at a very early age, and he was part of it in some way. I think that really helped develop his competitiveness.”

Hawaiian roots

Long before Kihei Akina became one of the top-ranked freshmen in collegiate golf, he was a 4-year-old kid in Kahuku, Hawaii, swatting balls off the grass right outside his family’s door.

Kihei Akina poses for a picture with his siblings. | Courtesy Akina family

His father and his grandfather, Hyrum, played basketball for BYU-Hawaii, a private school set on the beautiful North Shore village of Laie. It was there Alan met his wife, LeAnn, while they were students and later married.

The Akinas had a penchant for raising athletic, driven kids. As a middle child, Kihei found himself in the midst of a vortex of golf, basketball and high-octane pressure competition from his siblings.

Born in Kahuku, basketball was a staple of the family. His brother Kawika played basketball at NYU. His sister Kiani played rugby at Harvard. His older brother Keanu played golf at BYU from 2020 to 2024.

Kihei is named after the Maui village where his great-grandfather worked as a fisherman. Working hard is part of Kihei’s heritage. Kihei left Hawaii with his family to settle in Alpine when he was in the sixth grade. There he quickly became one of the top junior golfers in the country, earning USA Today Junior Golfer of the Year honors.

The Akina family returns to Kahuku often, where Kihei learned to hit balls into the trade winds off the North Shore at nearby resort Turtle Bay. They put on golf clinics and Kihei still competes in the prestigious Manoa Cup. His Ping putter is stamped with 808 — the area code for Hawaii — on the hosel.

Built for this

If it isn’t making clutch putts with a ton of pressure on his back, it’s his creativity and making huge shots on the course.

In Puerto Rico, his father said Kihei hit a bunker shot on the 16th hole. He was short-sided and the bunker was so deep he couldn’t even see where he was landing.

“There wasn’t much room to work with, and we were thinking, ‘Man, where is he going with this?’ He flipped it out of the bunker right up to the hole and saved par. It was such a big shot at that moment. Coach Miller came up to me afterwards and asked if I’d seen it. I had. He just shook his head and said it was darn impressive.”

When asked about the most memorable shot he has seen from Akina, Miller pointed to two standout moments from recent events. The first came in Puerto Rico on the long par-5 ninth hole, playing into the wind.

“He hit a driver off the deck,” Miller said. “It was super incredible the way he hit it off the deck.”

Even more impressive, in the coach’s eyes, was an 85-yard pitch on the 17th hole at San Diego Country Club. With a back-right pin and the tournament hanging in the balance, Akina faced an uphill lie. He and Miller walked up to the green and identified a tiny flat landing area — roughly 2 feet by 3 feet — about eight paces short of the flag.

Kihei Akina poses for a portrait with the trophy after winning the 2025 Utah Open at Riverside Country Club in Provo on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. | Rio Giancarlo, Deseret News

“He just landed it right on that spot where we wanted it under those nerves and conditions. He knew he needed another birdie to probably win that tournament, and he birdied the last two and won by one.”

The touch and precision stood out even to rival coaches on site.

“One of the coaches came up to me right after he hit it,” Miller said. “He was like, ‘Man, what did he hit there?’ I’m like, ‘Well, he had a lob wedge.’ He was kind of a little bit surprised because he had hit such a good ball flight off this uphill lie, and it just was perfect. Even the other coaches were impressed by what he did.”

The BYU golf family has found the Akinas easy to love because of their Aloha spirit, humility and eagerness to get involved.

Kihei Akina poses for a picture with his parents, Alan and LeAnn. | Courtesy Kihei Akina

“They treat everybody like they are part of his family,” Miller said.

“They call my wife Auntie Shannon. It’s pretty cool being around him because everybody’s just a big part of the family. When you’re around them, you just feel like, ‘Hey, we’re adopted family.’ I’ve always felt that from them.”

On the course, Akina’s quiet leadership extends to his faith. He attends church with the team every Sunday on the road, arrives on time, and lives his beliefs consistently.

“He’s very diligent,” Miller noted. “He’s just a good, quiet leader. He’s the same kid whatever circumstance you have him in. You don’t see him in private act really any different than he does in public. That’s really impressive. You don’t see that a whole lot.”

Following legends

Young Akina will be among the favorites when BYU and Utah play in the Big 12 championships at Prairie Dunes Country Club April 20-27 in Hutchinson, Kansas.

For longtime BYU golf coach Bruce Brockbank, a former all-conference college golfer and two-time Utah State Amateur champion in his own right, expectations for Akina continue to rise.

Brockbank has coached 25 All-Americans and 12 PGA Tour players during his coaching career at BYU. He sees Akina as a player similar to former No. 1 college-ranked Cougar Peter Kuest, now on Tour.

“Peter, when he got close to the lead, he was really, really tough. And, you know, he won 10 times. Kihei’s game is different than Peter’s, but they both have a great mindset and are really tough in the heat of the battle,” said Brockbank.

“They seem to handle things really well. Danny Summerhayes is very much like that. Again, you can go to the list of the guys who have played really well at BYU and done great things. They’ve had their own way of doing things. Kihei is really advanced when it comes to that with his mental toughness. I mean, he just loves to compete, and he wants to win. He doesn’t say a lot, pretty quiet kid, but you can be assured he’s gonna do his best to shoot the low score.”

Brockbank said he and Miller have known for four or five years Akina was special.

“It just seems like every aspect of the game has polish. He’s just really good at it. He has an incredible feel for the game and club swings. He has a great short game and is very creative. He is a great putter.

Two BYU stars — AJ Dybantsa, left, and Kihei Akina — pose for a picture at a charity event they co-hosted at Black Desert Golf Club in southern Utah. | Courtesy Akina family

“If you go across the board, his mental capacity on a golf course is impressive for a young kid and as we’ve watched him play the last few years on a national level, it’s been fun to watch him compete. He learned to win as a junior player and to see him do it so young and quickly at the college level is really exciting.”

Brockbank said Akina sent a putt right over the edge at Stanford, a miss on 14 and left another on the par-3 17th right in the jaws. If he’d made either one of those, he might have had his third win.

Brockbank has seen Akina practice hard and long, and he doesn’t mind doing it alone.

Early in the recruiting process, Brockbank believed BYU had a chance at Kihei coming to play for him at BYU because his faith has been important to him.

He remembers the day Georgia Tech coach Bruce Heppler came up to him at a junior tournament and had been recruiting Akina. He told Brockbank he didn’t think he had much of a chance because he got on him late. “But he was impressed with what Kihei said about his faith and religion and what was important to him.”

“When BYU recruited me, they asked me to list my priorities in life. My faith and my belief in God come first, and that helps me keep my life in balance.”

BYU freshman golfer Kihei Akina

Akina said, “When BYU recruited me, they asked me to list my priorities in life. My faith and my belief in God come first, and that helps me keep my life in balance.”

“He’s a very grounded kid, but wants to play at the highest level,” said his coach.

Akina is headed in that direction.

“He makes a lot of really good shots and when he’s challenged, for whatever reason, he can dig in and get a little more. He has another gear when he needs it. He can get it out there past 300 yards and milk another 20 if he needs it off the tee.”

Humble, yet a young man that plays with a fire and determination. That’s rare. Akina’s two wins, and a runner-up finish this spring do stand out. The Lamkin win with a record personal score was, well, kind of a ridiculous athletic feat after leaving the PGA Tour event in Puerto Rico.

His advice for young kids these days?

“Never give up on your dreams and always be yourself.”

BYU freshman Kihei Akina blasts out of a bunker during photo day, Sept. 2, 2025. | Jaren Wilkey, BYU Photo