The ins and outs of a charity event

Good news, readers. The Underground Golfer is being upgraded this week. Instead of writing something myself, I've enlisted frequent magazine contributor Brandel Chamblee, PGA Tour player and soon-to-be ABC golf commentator, for this week's tale. Frequent readers of this column (a figure of speech since, obviously, there are no such people) will recognize his name. He has written in Sports Illustrated and/or in this space about golf in Ireland, a summer golf/drinking trip to Britain, his long journey from New York back to Scottsdale in the wake of the 9/11 attack, playing in his first Masters, and other topics. Chamblee has won one PGA Tour event, the 1998 Air Canada Championship in Vancouver. That tournament is now defunct. Coincidence? You decide.

More work than meets the eye

By Brandel Chamblee

I knew I was in for some kind of adventure when I came home from practicing one day about a year ago and my wife, Karen, had that look in her eye, the one every husband knows: the you're-cleaning-the-attic-today-or-else look. There's no debating it. She was on the phone when I walked into our house, and I asked whom she was talking to. She said, "I've already talked to Fuzzy Zoeller, I've got Hale Irwin, I just hung up with Jack Nicklaus and I'm talking to Tom Kite."

MAILBAG Lots of kudos for last week's shadow-job on Bill Murray. But give me a break: All I had to do was write down what he said. Even I can't screw that up, can I? OK, don't answer that. I'll answer some Mailbag fodder instead: What's up with Ernie Els' equipment? His gain in length this year is enormous. Do his competitors ever question the equipment's legality? —Mike Stoik, Bellevue, Neb. Ernie switched to the new Titleist driver, using a model that was 1 to 1 1/2 inches longer than his old one -- thus, one obvious reason for a sudden gain in distance. He also switched to the new Titleist Pro V1x ball, which will be available to us public schmoes in April (a few loose dozen reportedly are getting big bids on eBay). Legality is not an issue. But I think the USGA is going to be second-guessing itself for not making stricter ball-velocity guidelines. I have often wondered how pros like playing in pro-am events. Do they mind the obvious distractions that come with them? Would they rather play with someone like Bill Murray or with a more serious celebrity? —Mark Lembke, Fairport, N.Y. The weekly Wednesday pro-ams are generally hated by tour pros because the rounds take more than five hours to play, and they frequently are stuck with four amateur partners, many of whom refuse to pick up after paying a big fee to play in the tournament. A lot of pros can't play with birds chirping, much less Murray chirping, and want no part of him. Many others, though, like Paul Stankowski this year, think Murray is a riot and are thrilled to be in his foursome. Given the sterling performance of my man Tom Lehman at Pebble Beach (his missed birdie putt at 18 notwithstanding), do you think he can still play up to or near his old levels, circa 1996 British Open? —Kevin Humphreys, Ridgeland, Miss. Lehman is your man, Englebert? Does Melissa Lehman know about this? Let's be realistic. Lehman discovered via video last year that his swing had gotten off track. He's been working hard and swinging a lot better, much like he did during his golden years. The question is whether he can get good enough at wielding the long putter to make enough putts to win tournaments. How many guys have gone to the long putter in their 40s and started winning? At any age, putting is the most difficult part of your game to improve. The odds aren't in his favor, but back when he was playing the Hogan Tour, the odds weren't in his favor that he'd ever win a major. His return to being a major contender, if he does, would be a pretty popular comeback.

So it became official at that moment: We were going to hold our own charity golf tournament. With those big names Karen threw around, I felt slightly outclassed. "Well, can I play, too?" I asked, only half-jokingly. Karen answered, "I guess so. But we're really trying to get celebrities."

That's how it all started. Like a landslide, once it starts moving, you can't stop it. Just get the heck out of the way. Holding one of these things, by the way, is a lot harder than it looks.

First, some background: Two and a half years ago, Karen had a difficult pregnancy that resulted in the premature birth of our second son, Braeden. He passed away after nine days, but he touched our lives and the lives of many others. Many friends and readers (I wrote about the experience in SI's Golf Plus section) shared our grief and made generous donations to a fund started for Braeden, which was really the idea of Kirk Triplett, a fellow tour player and good friend, and his wife, Cathy. Some tour players donated their winnings from the Texas Open pro-am, then Kirk and Tom Lehman contributed money from their Presidents Cup charity donation fund. The PGA Tour matched the contributions, and individuals sent in checks. I'd be at the grocery store and the clerk would say, "I saw you written up in the newspaper," and reach into her pocket and hand me $5. That happened a couple of times and always put a lump in my throat.

Anyway, by the end of 2001, we had close to $60,000 and were trying to decide how best to use it in Braeden's memory. At first we wanted to provide surgery for children with no medical insurance, but one or two kids would use up the whole fund. We hoped to have a wider effect.

The Phoenix Children's Hospital, the first dedicated children's hospital in Arizona, was being built at the time. Karen had an idea to provide the hospital with a playground. Hospital administrators were quiet at first, but Karen kept hounding them and finally they came up with almost 6,000 square feet of space in the middle of the hospital, a shaded area outdoors. Being naive, we thought we could build this thing for $100,000 or $200,000. Not even close. You have to endow structures like this, we found out, so they can be taken care of in perpetuity. We learned it would take about $1 million to build it and maintain it. We received some more money from the Santa Claus Christmas Classic, an event hosted by my buddies Gary McCord and Andrew Magee, bringing us up to about $140,000. So that's when Karen thought, Let's have a golf tournament and call it the Braeden's Playground Charity Classic.

She picked a date in April 2002, the Monday after the Senior tour's Tradition tournament. It was only 10 weeks away, a daunting task. The day I walked in on her while she was on the phone, she'd already landed a golf course, courtesy of the Phoenix Thunderbirds, and free catering. Amazing. To see Karen so excited made me excited.

My wife drafted a bunch of her girlfriends to help. I called them the Mafia Moms. It was funny because none of them knew anything about golf. At one of their meetings, my wife stood up and announced that Cleveland was going to donate a wedge to every player. One of the other wives -- 10 or 12 were in attendance -- held up her hand. "A haircut or a shoe?" she asked. (Note to men as ignorant as me: Apparently there's a haircut called a wedge.) Karen explained that, no, a wedge is actually a golf club. The wives were golf-challenged, yes, but they made up for that in enthusiasm.

Luckily, one of the women who became involved was Marcia Naseman, who does a lot of charity work in the Phoenix area. She gave each Mafia Mom a job, such as selling one foursome, finding one tee-box sponsor, calling six radio stations, putting up notices at other clubs and courses in the area, that kind of stuff. During the meetings, when the conversation started to degenerate into jewelry or clothes, Marcia would cry, "No, no, no!" She kept them on track and kept the meetings mercifully short. She was like the Soup Nazi of meetings. She was great. She got things done.

For example, Fuzzy Zoeller would be playing in the Tradition at Superstition Mountain, which is almost 50 miles away. We would need to send a limo to bring him to our tournament. Marcia's husband said he'd pick up Fuzzy, but I thought that Fuzzy probably wouldn't want to ride with an amateur and be chatted up for an hour on the way to the course. Marcia told me not to worry, that her husband has a special Rolls Royce convertible, one of only two in the country, and that Fuzzy would get a kick out of riding in it. When I saw Fuzzy at our pro-am, I asked about his pickup. He was raving. "Oh, gosh! What a ride," he said of the Rolls. "It was great. My wife sat in the back seat and just loved it." It's true: Marcia rules.

Getting Fuzzy into the tournament was a little trickier than getting him to the tournament -- and believe me, landing him was big. Kraft representatives had contacted the hospital and said that Fuzzy was in town and available, that the company has a contract with him that pays $20,000 to $30,000, and if we could come up with the other 10 grand of his daily fee, we could have him. I've seen Fuzzy at clinics, and honestly, he's worth it. He cracks you up. He's good. Golf is supposed to be entertainment, and Fuzzy understands that. I was prepared to pay the extra money out of my own pocket because I thought his presence would mean that much to our event. Then Howard Twitty, a friend of mine and another Senior tour player, said he'd talk to Fuzzy about our fundraiser and get Fuz to waive the rest of his fee.

A small problem developed because I'd promised our amateurs that all the names would be put into a hat and we would hold a fair drawing for partners, that everyone would have an equal chance to be in the group with Fuzzy, Hale or Dan Quayle. (Or me, but I didn't think that was a big selling point.) I thought that the drawing would be pretty exciting. Well, one day Fuzzy's people called with the names of the amateurs who were going to play 18 holes with Fuzzy in our outing, as part of his deal with Kraft. I thought, What? I had to dig through the paperwork and the contracts, but sure enough, there was a clause stating that Kraft's people play with Fuzzy. How could I have overlooked that? I was afraid that when people saw Fuzzy paired with Kraft employees, they were going to think the draw was rigged. We exchanged a lot of phone calls and finally hit on a compromise. The solution was that after nine holes, teams would switch pros. So the Kraft people would play nine holes with Fuzzy, and three lucky amateurs from the drawing would have him for the other nine.

One of my neighbors was fortunate in the draw and got to spend nine holes with Quayle, the former vice president. It was weird because when I drew the names out of a hat, I also pulled out a Barbara Bush. I'm not making this up. My neighbor saw that and asked me how I got her to play. I said, "It's not that Barbara Bush. At least, I don't think so." Actually, he said later, she turned out to be a flaming Democrat who couldn't stand Quayle's policies. There were a couple of times, my neighbor said, when he thought they might go at each other. He was so thrilled with the pairing, he's still talking about it a year later.

Meanwhile, this pro-am turned into a family reunion for the Chamblees. My older brother, Bill, who has his own law firm in Dallas, bought 16 pro-am spots and flew a bunch of his clients in for the tournament and some fishing in Sedona. He represents doctors in malpractice cases. My younger brother, Brent, who was a pretty good high school golfer, came along. So did our dad, Harrel, who put away his golf clubs years ago so he could afford to send his kids to college. We decided to have a family golf outing the day before the Braeden Fund event, and I got pretty excited when I realized that the four of us had never played a round of golf together before.

I had a Mizuno driver made up for my dad with a whippy shaft. I didn't really remember his swing until we were on the first tee at the TPC at Scottsdale. He took a waggle and a couple of riotous practice swings. He swung the club about halfway back, then halfway through until his left elbow suddenly splayed up and went straight up in the air. That stopped the progress of the club, which he then whipped around in front of him like he was fishing or brandishing a sword, or maybe both. I thought, Surely that's just his practice swing. No, that was his real swing. My dad couldn't bring the club around him on the follow-through to win a bet. After a while, it occurred to me that he grew up watching Arnold Palmer play golf. As a result, my dad has Arnie's finish.

The round itself was a damn comedy. My brothers bet on every shot: Longest. Straightest. Closest to the hole. Everything. Bill would bet whether he'd hook or slice a shot. Or he'd bet whether Brent would hook or slice. Brent is a better player but Bill got in his head. Bill would bet $10 that Brent would hook a shot. Brent usually did, and if he didn't, Bill would happily lose the bet if it meant Brent overcorrected and sliced into the trees on the right while Bill knocked his approach on the green and won the hole. The funny part was, they'd have these complicated bets. Bill would be in trouble and bet that he could hit it under this branch, around the tree, over a pole, land it in front of the green and run it on, and he had to do all those things to win the bet. It's like he drew up a legal contract. At the par-5 island green hole, Bill wanted to bet Brent $100 he could hit the green in 2. Told it's a par-5, he said, "OK, I'll bet you I hit the green in 3, but if I hit it in 2, I don't lose the bet." My dad looked at me and asked, "Do they even know we're here?"

It was a wonderful day. We also had a match, those three guys against me. Which I lost because I was giving my dad 36 shots and he's creaming this blue-headed driver 220 yards down the fairway with a little cut. He was amazed at how much better he struck the ball than when he gave up the game 20 years ago. He didn't realize how much easier golf was with metal-wood heads as big as buckets. By the end of the round, he was begging for that driver. I said, "Dad, it's yours, I made it for you." It was a day I'll never forget.

Then we all went over to our place in Scottsdale for a big party with barbecue and a bunch of Bill's friends and my dad's friends. After too much barbecue and a few too many beers, we were out in the backyard on my practice putting green, putting at midnight. Naturally, Bill started betting. Bill's bet was him against me, giving no shots, but he could do anything he wanted -- except touch me -- in an effort to distract me. "You're on," I said. As I was ready to hit my first putt, this 20-footer up a small hill, Bill got in my face and fired off this powerful flash camera he'd bought just for this occasion. I was blinded. I was like Ray Charles for a minute. When my vision finally started to come back, I looked up and one of Bill's buddies was standing right in front of the hole, mooning me. Ah, golf at its traditional best. My brother was a better putter than I thought, but after I began waiting out the camera flashes, I took him down. And he paid up on the spot.

We had a big fire going in a pit in the backyard. I asked somebody to stir the logs. There was no poker, so he used a putter. I said, "You know, you could find something else to stir the fire with." Everyone just laughed. It was one of the top three golf experiences in my life.

The next day was our big event at the Thunderbirds Golf Club. Karen had a million things to do, but with the efficient help of the guys at the club, it was a piece of cake. Fuzzy did a clinic and was wonderful, as always. He had the 11-year-old son of a friend of mine hitting shots on the range. The kid's name is Corey Whittset, and he'll be on tour someday. He was amazing for an 11-year-old. Fuzzy had my brother Bill out there hitting shots and was bantering with him and ripping him. Bill, who knows very little about pro golf, came back and said, "Brandel, I don't know what that guy is but he's funny. That guy is good." I told you he didn't know much about pro golf. Never heard of Fuzzy Zoeller.

The outing was fun and, just as important, fast. We put only three amateurs with each pro and only one scramble team on each hole. We were done in four hours, 15 minutes. There was a little get-together afterward, and we handed out prizes to the winners. On the way home, Karen actually fell asleep in the car, she was so exhausted. We had another small party at our house later and were there when a lady called from the hospital with big news. Karen's goal for the outing, which had seemed inconceivable, was to raise $100,000. The woman called to tell us we were up to $140,000. "I always knew you could spend money," I told Karen. "Who knew you were so good at raising it?"

It was a hell of an accomplishment for Karen and her friends. Karen looked at me later and said, "Can you believe it? Can you believe we did it?" Sure. People love to help sick children. Plus, who's going to say no when a nice woman calls and asks for a donation? Nobody. And Karen has always had a magic touch. She once won the Miss Las Cruces pageant in New Mexico. During the interview portion of the program, she was asked what she liked best about Las Cruces. "It's so close to El Paso," she said. I'm sure the Chamber of Commerce loved that. She must've earned a lot of points in the other categories to make up for that remark, which, by the way, she is going to kill me for repeating.

The second Braeden's Playground Charity Classic is coming up next Monday. In total, we're up to about $300,000 toward our $1 million goal. With some private grants and one last tournament next year, we hope to reach our target. A few spots remain in Monday's pro-am, if you're interested (call Kelly at 602-512-8838). The goodie bag includes a Club Glove travel bag, something from Izod and other neat stuff. The celebrity field includes Irwin, Alice Cooper, Quayle and Arizona Cardinals quarterback Jake Plummer. I'm playing, too, although according to my wife, I'm not a celebrity.

If you sign up to play, though, just do me one favor -- please, no mooning.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle writes for the magazine's Golf Plus section and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.

 

Related information

Stories

Gary Van Sickle's Underground Golfer Archive

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video