AmFam Championship filled with native sons
MADISON – Steve Stricker is the host of the American Family Insurance Championship, but he’s not the only homegrown hero playing in the second annual PGA Tour Champions event.
There’s going to be a Badger love-fest at University Ridge this weekend.
The three-day tournament, which begins Friday, includes Stricker’s Madison neighbor, Jerry Kelly; Kelly’s brother-in-law and swing coach, Jim Schuman; and Fox Point native Skip Kendall.
Their friendships go back nearly 40 years to their junior golf days.
“We’ve been competing against each other like this for an extremely long time,” Kelly said. “Every single one of us has come out on top any given tournament. Steve has had the dominant side, the way he’s played, but there’s definitely no feeling of dominance amongst us. It’s just go out and play.
“We all play really hard.
We don’t do it with malice. We do it for the love of the game and the love of competing.”
Kelly, Schuman and Kendall are playing together at 9:20 a.m. Friday and are followed by Stricker, Fred Couples and defending champion Kirk Triplett at 9:30.
“I’m playing with my wife’s brother, who is also my coach and brother-in-law,” Kelly said of Schuman, the former University of Wisconsin men’s golf coach who got in the field on a sponsor’s exemption. “He’s a great friend. But when we’re out there, we’re competitors.”
Kendall, bothered by neck pain, played only nine holes of his pro-am round Thursday and was headed for treatment afterward. But he said there was no way he would withdraw from the tournament. “I’d have to be on my deathbed,” he said. A tournament spokesman said bigger crowds were expected this year than in the event’s inaugural year, when attendance topped 56,000, making it among the most popular stops on the PGA Tour Champions.
“To raise over $1 million for charity, to have a three-mile (traffic) backup in the opening round in the first year of the tournament was just remarkable,” said PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan. “It says so much about this community, its passion for sport, its passion for doing right and doing well by its community.”
No doubt many will want to watch Couples, Nick Faldo, Colin Montgomerie and Miguel Angel Jimenez. But there’s no question about who’s driving ticket sales – it’s Stricker and his Badger buddies.
Kelly said he couldn’t think of another state that had as intimate a relationship with its homegrown professional golfers as does Wisconsin.
“I think we give them love back,” he said. “There’s a big difference with the guy who will give a wave, give a nod, you know, whatever; but we will give the love back and I think that’s important. That’s what Wisconsin’s all about and I think that’s why it resonates throughout the country.”