To say that Alex Shead has a passion for golf is an understatement. To say that he eats, sleeps and breathes the sport is clich.

But how else does one describe an 8-year-old boy who wakes up at 4:30 a.m. on tournament days because he's so excited to play golf? Or even to talk about it?

"I thought after the third or fourth tournament, he'd settle down," said Alex's mother, Linda. "But instead, he's getting up earlier and earlier."

The third-grader from Appling, is home schooled and, because golf comes after schoolwork, he likes to wake up early to get his schoolwork done before he plays.

During one of the tournaments in the U.S. Kids Golf Atlanta Fall Tour, Alex woke up at 3:30 a.m. His enthusiasm serves him well; in his second year of competition but first full year on the U.S. Kids Golf tour, he was the tour's top point-earner for the season in the 8-year-old division.

The win in his age group means Alex will compete in the U.S. Kids Golf World Championship in Pinehurst, N.C., next August.

Linda has found that the best ways to teach Alex his lessons are to tie them into golf. For instance, if he spells a word right, he gets to putt.

"We spell and putt," Linda said.

But Shead's favorite subject is math.

"You gotta be good in math to be a golfer," he said. "Because you add when you count up your score."

Alex has always loved golf, and his aptitude for the game was first noticed by his uncle, Jay Burdett, when Shead was 2 and chasing a plastic golf ball around the house with a plastic golf club.

His father, Jim, bought him a youth club when he was older, but sometimes he'd run out of golf balls.

"I started hitting pine cones," Alex said.

Alex's parents took him to the First Tee of Augusta, where he started taking lessons and playing in a couple of local tournaments.

Alex entered the U.S. Kids Golf's Atlanta Fall Tour in the second tournament this year and played in the final seven, winning five times. He ended the tour with 200 points. The second-place finisher had 137 points.

Alex said his favorite thing to do in Atlanta after a tournament was to play virtual golf with his dad at the PGA Superstore, which he said is a lot different than real golf.

"(The ball) rolls a lot farther (in virtual golf)," he said.

He spends a good bit of his free time at home playing virtual golf, as well. A new PlayStation tops his Christmas list because he "wore the old one out" playing golf, his mom said. Second on his list is the video game Tiger Woods 2007.

Predictably, when his mom asked him what he wants to be when he grows up, Alex replied without a moment's hesitation:

"A golfer."