Balance of native sons high at U.S. Bank
Posted: July 25, 2006
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Gary D'Amato
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[/FONT] The U.S. Bank Championship in Milwaukee doesn't require entrants to hold a valid Wisconsin driver's license, establish state residency or know the difference between cod and perch at the Friday night fish fry.
On the other hand, it doesn't hurt to be born and bred Badger red.
Every PGA Tour event can count on a few hometown players to support the tournament and sell some tickets but the U.S. Bank Championship takes it to the extreme. It's as Wisconsin as the belch after a beer-soaked brat.
Fourteen golfers in the field this week call or have called America's Dairyland home (15 if you count Dan Forsman, who had a cup of coffee - or maybe it was formula - in Rhinelander before his family moved to California when he was a toddler).
"We have four or five guys from Rhode Island who play the Deutsche Bank Championship (in Norfolk, Mass.) and we think that's a big deal," Brad Faxon said. "To have 14, that's awesome."
The Badger Bunch accounts for nearly 10% of the field of 156. If all their friends and relatives buy tickets, there's no room in the bleachers for anyone else.
There are the five PGA Tour members: Steve Stricker and Jerry Kelly of Madison, Appleton native J.P. Hayes, Fox Point native Skip Kendall and Pewaukee native Mark Wilson, who is forgiven for moving to Chicago.
There are the Wisconsin PGA Section members: Charlie Brown, Bill Kokott and Jim Schuman. There are the sponsor exemptions: Andy North, Nick Gilliam, David Roesch, Mario Tiziani and Ben Walter. And there's Tim Cantwell Jr., who earned one of four spots in open qualifying Monday.
Unfortunately, they're not all going to be around for the weekend, which brings new meaning to the phrase "cutting the cheese."
Combined, the 14 Wisconsin golfers have teed it up at the U.S. Bank Championship 121 times and finished among the top 10 on 13 occasions. They've earned exactly $1,967,879.26 in Milwaukee and have spent most of it within 100 miles of Brown Deer Park.
They've won two U.S. Open titles (North), 10 PGA Tour titles and an NCAA individual championship (Gilliam). North is a member of the Wisconsin State Golf Association Hall of Fame. Kendall is to be inducted Saturday night and Hayes will join him later this summer.
But here's the most impressive statistic: 16 of the last 19 State Open titles have been won by golfers in the U.S. Bank field.
And talk about nepotism. This isn't a PGA Tour event, it's golf's version of "The Sopranos." See if you can keep this straight:
Kelly married Schuman's sister, Carol, and Schuman is Kelly's swing coach. Stricker married Tiziani's sister, Nicki, and Tiziani's father, Dennis, is Stricker's swing coach. Kokott married Schuman's cousin, Barb Gentilli, and Gentilli is . . . oh, wait, she doesn't coach anybody.
But that's not all. Cantwell's father, who by sheer coincidence happens to be named Tim Cantwell Sr., runs the locker room at Brown Deer Park. It's hard to say how Junior will play this week, but you can bet his shoes will be shined.
You think these guys have a home-course advantage?
*North helped redesign several holes at Brown Deer Park, which is a little like Matt Kenseth paving the track at the Milwaukee Mile. North's caddie this week is Gary Van Sickle, a former Milwaukee Journal sportswriter who now works for Sports Illustrated magazine. They figure, combined, they've played Brown Deer hundreds of times.
They've got nothing on Kendall, who grew up just down the block and was so small when he started playing here he got lost in the rough.
It was on the practice putting green at Brown Deer where a teenage Kendall learned the "claw" putting grip from a local named Bud Baker. For reasons only a golfer would understand, Kendall stored the information in the recesses of his brain and, two decades later, during a rain delay in Orlando, showed the claw to a disconsolate Chris DiMarco, who was on the verge of three-putting himself off the PGA Tour.
That was DiMarco, on Sunday, clawing his way into contention in the final round of the British Open.
You don't think these guys want to win in Milwaukee?
Ask Kelly to choose between a U.S. Bank title and a green jacket and he'd actually have to think about it for a minute. Remember the PGA Tour's TV spot that featured Kelly applauding the gallery applauding him? Happened here.
Kelly moved from Florida back to Madison several years ago. A lot of people would say he did it grass-backwards but he'd disagree. He doesn't love winter but he loves Wisconsin. Last year, Kelly was on the sideline at more Green Bay Packers games than Ahman Green. Some players thought he was a coach.
No Wisconsin golfer has ever won the U.S. Bank Championship but Kelly has had two close calls, including a playoff loss to Loren Roberts in 1996. If he wins Sunday, the party would make the Fifth Quarter look like the grand opening of a funeral parlor.
Then there's the beloved Stricker, whom state golf fans have embraced as a favorite son. Maybe it's because he was born in Edgerton, lives in Madison and is among the most decent and respectful athletes in professional sports. He's also a Chicago Bears fan, which proves nobody's perfect.
Grateful for everything Wisconsin has done for him, Stricker cried when he won the most recent of his five State Open titles in 2000. Imagine the scene if he won the U.S. Bank Championship. The superintendent wouldn't have to water the 18th green for a month.
The U.S. Bank Championship doesn't have Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson in the field, but ask the Packers hat-wearing, Miller Beer-drinking, Greenfield Park-playing members of the gallery if they care.
These fans would rather watch Kelly pick his nose than one of the Tour's superstars walk around with his nose in the air. You think a Milwaukee gallery would cheer for Mickelson over Skip or Strick? Not a chance. They'd wipe that grin off Lefty's face faster than he could say Oconomowoc, if he could say Oconomowoc.
And Woods? Well, let's just say he'd get badgered.
*Doubt there's anything available on a Andy North heads up, but I felt that was the most interesting part of the story...
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=476811&format=print
