'A sad day': Why the Rockford Pro-Am golf tournament won't be coming back

ROCKFORD — Scott Nicholas fought back tears, not always successfully. So did Judi Sheley and Mike Tulley, who followed him to the podium.

They came to Rockford Country Club on Wednesday morning to hold a wake for the Rockford Pro-Am, three years after its last appearance. There were a lot of laughs and smiles and old stories too, but tears were never far away as they announced there would never be a 44th Rockford Pro-Am.

“If you can’t tell, it’s a sad day,” said Nicholas, the president of the Pro-Am board.

But also an expected day. After 43 years in a row — including 29 as the longest-standing pro-am not attached to a tournament after the Amana Pro-Am in Iowa City held its last event in 1990 — the Pro-Am got canceled because of COVID in 2020. It did not return in 2021.

Last year, organizers said they would try to start it again this summer, but were skeptical they could manage it.

They couldn’t. Times had changed too much.

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Bob Hope, ChiChi and more

The Pro-Am began in 1977 at Elliot, which also no longer exists, closed down by the Rockford Park District two years ago. Most of the pros were paid only $250 that first year. When the tourney was last held, the cheapest pros were paid $5,000 each.

“The price continued to rise,” Tulley, a longtime former Pro-Am president, said. “These guys are now all millionaires. The guys used to come and everything they had was in a van. We would cover their expenses for a couple of weeks as they traveled between tournaments in Milwaukee and Chicago.”

The first 20 years, the Pro-Am brought in a big name almost every year and also held a big concert at the MetroCentre (now the BMO Harris Bank Center). Bob Hope, Arnold Palmer, John Daly, Fred Couples, Curtis Strange, ChiChi Rodriguez and others.

But after Gary Player and Nancy Lopez were co-headliners in 2001, Kenny Perry was the only Pro-Am golfer who could generate crowds by himself. He came often and liked the event so much he even came to Rockford the year he was ranked No. 2 in the world behind Tiger Woods.

“Kenny is a great guy,” Nicholas said. “Everybody loved him. There were always a few hundred people wandering right behind him. That was one of the unique things about the Pro-Am. Having a headliner allowed us to go on longer than if we didn’t have anybody that anybody knows. Kenny was really our last headliner. He meant a lot to getting us to 43 years.”

The Pro-am revolved around friends like Perry, from the beginning. Nicholas said organizers originally thought they would need a $100,000 purse to get pros to come to Rockford back in 1977. But, instead, they were talked into using most of their money on expenses to treat the pros well.

“Let them come and have fun, and it turned into quite an event,” Nicholas said.

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'Community event'

The Pro-Am quickly became known as a fun event. Pros returned to Rockford more out of loyalty to the event than for the dollars after the PGA Tour purses rose astronomically. And local Rockford people also turned out to run the event with 600 volunteers every year.

“It was always a community event,” said Sheley, who was the Pro-Am tournament director for 34 years.

When a microburst knocked down trees all over Forest Hills Country Club the day before the event one year, Sheley said people came from all over — “People we didn’t even know.” — to get the course in shape to play. And football players from Guilford and Auburn used to help set up tables and move supplies.

“Everything that was heavy,” she said, “they moved for us. It became a contest. If one kid picked up three cases of water, this kid picked up four, this kid picked up five, this kid got six and dumped them all over the ground. That’s how it worked. But great kids, always helping us.”

The Pro-Am began with organizers recruiting the pros in person.

“It was in the days when we didn’t have cell phones and they didn’t have many agents,” Nicholas said. “You had to call up the wives and beg to see if the players would come and play with us.”

The Pro-Am morphed in recent decades into an event that relied on players just trying to break onto the PGA Tour, rather than be established stars. That is how it almost landed Jordan Spieth, but lost him the day before the Pro-Am when he famously won the John Deere Classic to qualify for the British Open.

“We were loading the bus at the Quad Cities and we heard a yell from over the clubhouse when he sunk that bunker shot that we have all seen over and over and over to win that tournament,” Nicholas recalled.

The Pro-Am also tried to get a bunch of senior golfers for a couple of years. At the end, it was mostly an LPGA field — after decades of having no female golfers. It was held for most of its life at Rockford Country Club or Forest Hills Country Club, with its final year at Aldeen. Many things were tried. They could have changed the event dramatically and brought in a pro or two to put on a clinic, but officials said that would be keeping the event alive in name only.

“This was our identity, the way we always did it,” Nicholas said.

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Now only memories

And now it’s done. Existing only in memories and stories of the past. Of Bob Hope walking around the upper deck of the MetroCentre to check out if the worst seats could still see him well. Of a train stopping and backing up when it saw Arnold Palmer on the tee and yelling out he uses Pennzoil, which Palmer promoted. Of Suzanne Somers speaking at Rosecrance and telling people there her father was an alcoholic. Of John Daly hitting a ball over the Rock River at RCC with his putter. And paying the band to play an extra hour so he could play with them.

The Rockford Pro-Am is dead. But it lives on in memories. Like a good wake should.

“It was the longest running off-tournament pro-am in the country,” Nicholas said. “We will finish with that record. Nobody will ever beat us.”

“I’d like to say we could come up with a different kind of thing,” Tulley said, “but the industry isn’t here (in Rockford) anymore. But we don’t have anything to regret. We did something that was special for the community.”

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Rockford Pro-Am golf tournament is gone after 43 years