The PGA Championship will be upon us before we know it, and that means one of the best golf stories of the year – the club pros. Twenty of them will get slots on the year’s final major, an honor which pays glowing tribute to the ethos of all golf..
Kelly Elbin, director of communications for the PGA of America sums it up perfectly: “Not only are many of the PGA club professionals outstanding players, players that are experts that deserve a chance to showcase their outstanding talent, they maintain their excellence as players while juggling a huge obligation to their members. By qualifying for a major championship, their members live vicariously through them, and share in the joy the players feel. It’s a great honor that the player, members, and community can get behind and celebrate with great pride.”
Most of them will merely be ceremonial golfers on the score sheet but – a few notable exceptions aside like the clown at Atlanta last year who panned the setup, refused interviews, and shot double 80s-ish before rolling out with a trunk slam and a screech of tire, good riddance – but that singular example aside, the club pros are generally the standard of grace, class, and gratitude. It’s refreshing to see their bright smiles, unquenchable fire, and pure joy in competing.
One of those pros is Kevin Roman, who may have had a tough time at Hazeltine National in ’09 on the leaderboard, but who impressed everyone with his friendly demeanor and self-effacing humor.
Head pro at Cherokee Town and Country Club in Atlanta, Roman will have not one, but two communities celebrating his remarkable success in qualifying for the year’s final major. Not only is the membership of Cherokee rooting for him to once again make the last major field of the year, but his childhood hometown of Utica, tucked cozily in the snowy Mohawk valley of central New York, will also be watching, hoping to once again gathering in homes, restaurants, bars and clubhouses to cheer on their homegrown favorite if he can get to Kiawah.
Sure Kevin shot double-snowmen at Hazeltine in ’09, but there he was sharing a laugh about it afterwards:
Q. Okay what do you do well out there today?
K.R. – I ate lunch well. I ate ice cream like a PGA Champion…
Sure Kev had a rough outing, but what was he doing afterwards?
He was working with 13 year old kids back at the house where he was staying, then playing his own version of “The Glory Game” with them – some cross country golf along roads, woods, and backyards with his buddies and their young sons.
Then to add insult to injury, he and his wife went to watch some golf early the next day, and what happened? Some drunken lugnut sloshed a Bloody Mary all over his new slacks and shirt shortly before his tee time while trying to scream Ernie Els’s name.
Kev just shrugged it off like the pro he is.
“He had to buy new clothes in the pro shop,” explained his pretty wife, laughing and shaking her head at the lunacy of it all.
Kevin made lots of fans that week. How cool was it when a bunch of nubile teenage girls started shrieking his name as he strode to the first tee?
Winning smile, cheerful waves, and aplomb – he won far more fans than John Daly that week – Kev and those like him put the “pro” in PGA Head Professional.
So keep a careful watch this week on the tournament out at Bayonet and Black Horse. You’ll see those guys again in two months, and who knows? You may see a far more sterling example of the virtue of golf then you get week in and week out. And the best part about it is, you can walk right up to them afterwards for a chat without having to negotiate a phalanx of scowling bodyguards or sit on the outside of a barrier…
Kevin on Kiawah Island:
“As for Kiawah, I like to be tortured; I want to play the hardest courses I can find. It doesn’t bother me if I shoot 90, if that’s the best I can do. It tested every possible shot, my imagination, and my mental toughness. It made me think all the way around. Also, I love heavy winds. It makes me focus better. I play better in tougher conditions. I’m more target-oriented from a visual standpoint. That’s why Twin Warriors [where he qualified for the ’09 PGA] was so tough. There were no targets to hit at in the desert.”
