A Sweet 16 at Junior Players: Jim McCarthy not ready to give up the reins as event chairman
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When Emiliano Grillo won the 2015 Korn Ferry Tour Championship at the TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley, tournament chairman Jim McCarthy congratulated him on the 18th green before a photo with the volunteer leadership was taken.
Grillo gave McCarthy a puzzled look and was clearly searching his memory banks.
“Junior Players Championship, 2010,” McCarthy told him of the last time they had met – a tournament in which Grillo tied for second with Jordan Spieth.
The light bulb went off in Grillo’s head.
“That’s right,” he said. “Best [junior] class ever.”
The quick exchange between the two illustrated two things: how power-packed the Junior Players has become since its inaugural year in 2007, and McCarthy’s impact on the two tournaments.
Grillo and Spieth were part of a 2010 Junior Players that included six PGA Tour winners, seven Korn Ferry Tour winners and 16 players who would go on to earn full PGA Tour status. Also in the field that year were PGA Tour winners Will Zalatoris, Daniel Berger, Michael Kim and Grayson Murray.
Time will tell if additional Junior Players fields will yield those kinds of results but every year it’s a safe bet that more Tour stars will have spent part of their junior golf experience at the American Junior Golf Association’s Labor Day weekend invitational.
This year’s tournament, which begins on Friday at the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, has 10 of the top-20 on the American Junior Golf Association Rolex Rankings and 25 who have verbally committed to NCAA Division I programs, including Texas, Florida State, Stanford, Oklahoma, USC, Auburn, Arizona State and Texas A&M.
Watching it all for the last 16 years has been McCarthy, a Virginia native and the only volunteer chairman the Junior Players had ever had.
He was the Korn Ferry Tour Championship chairman for two years and chairman of the ANNIKA, the AJGA’s girls tournament at the World Golf Hall of Fame for four years.
McCarthy and his wife Liz are still working full time (McCarthy also found the time to get his law degree from Florda State in May) and at the age of 70, no one would blame him if he had already started living the good life as a Florida retiree.
No chance.
“I love it, I really do,” he said. “It's so cool to watch these kids when they’re young, so incredibly talented, and watch them as they’re really getting into their game. The fact that we’ve had Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka, Will Zalatoris, Daniel Berger, Emiliano … so many of these stars, it’s very rewarding.”
Taking a chance on the First Coast
McCarthy is a native of Vienna, Va., and played guard for the football team at Bishop O'Connell in Arlington, Va. — where he once played against linebacker Gerry Bertier of T.C. Williams and "Remember the Titans," fame.
"He was never where he was supposed to be as far as I was concerned," McCarthy said of Bertier. "Every time I saw him he was already in our backfield."
McCarthy, interested in politics and government service, majored in Public Administration at George Mason University, then went to work for the CIA and the Energy Research and Development Administration. He also rose rapidly in the ranks of the United States Junior Chamber (the Jaycees) and eventually became a national vice-president.
His volunteer service on the First Coast began at the 1984 Players, where McCarthy worked with other Jaycees who traveled to the area to run the VIP Shuttle committee.
“I fell in love with the tournament and what it means,” he said.
He came to the First Coast permanently in 1985 after tiring of the weather in the Washington D.C. area. The decision was made one late October day in 1985 when he was in town to address the local Jaycees luncheon. The temperature was 81 degrees at 11 a.m. when he landed at JIA, and back home, when he left Washington, it was sleeting.
“I know that’s unusual even for Washington but I was done with winters in the Northeast,” he said. "Plus, I wanted to see what life was like outside of the Beltway."
McCarthy resigned from his Civil Service job and moved to Jacksonville without a job lined up.
“I was single at the time and I decided to take a chance,” he said.
It didn't take long for him to land a sales position at MassMutual. Business turned out to be good, to the point where McCarthy was eventually able to form his own consulting firm.
He continued volunteering for The Players, rising to oversee 120 volunteers in Tournament Support.
Short notice for first Junior Players
It was at that point, in late July of 2007, when McCarthy got a phone call from Players Championship executive director Brian Goin.
Goin put McCarthy on a speaker phone with Billy Detlaff, the national director of golf for the TPC Network, and the two had a big ask for him: chair an AJGA event at the TPC Sawgrass on Labor Day.
Ever the good soldier, McCarthy agreed and commented that he at least would have more than a year to prepare.
Goin corrected him – the tournament was starting that year, giving him five weeks to prepare.
“I just said, ‘Huh?’” McCarthy said.
Goin had no doubt McCarthy would plow into the job. In addition to working with him at The Players, Goin had talked McCarthy into serving with him at the University of North Florida’s Osprey Club and knew what he could do: put his head down and take it on like the high school offensive guard he had been at Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington, Va.
“He had become a very key cog for me at The Players,” Goin said. “He did some things for me that went outside the scope of his committee but I always knew he’d step up. I knew he’d be really good at this. He’s passionate, a great leader and a great volunteer. I told Billy that this is the guy we have to go get.”
McCarthy gulped a couple of times then started working the phones with his committee at The Players to ask people to now give up their Labor Day weekend.
He found about 35, which was just barely enough.
There are now around 70 Junior Players volunteers, almost all of them Players volunteers.
"They came running and I've got about 10 of them who have been with me all 16 years," McCarthy said. "It's typical of the volunteers we have. They will throw themselves into it and give it everything they have."
Five years later, in 2012,, the AJGA named the Junior Players for its volunteer staff of the year.
A different motivation
Players Championship chairmen work one year and then become members of the Honourable Company of Past Chairmen.
In McCarthy’s case, the AJGA and The Players kept asking him to come back and he kept saying ‘yes’ — even through career changes kept coming: president of the North Florida Land Trust, two and a half years of law school and now senior vice-president for Quick Tie Products.
His wife of 30 years, who worked for Palmer Course Design when it was based in Ponte Vedra Beach, is now director of development for Christ Episcopal Church.
“He keeps coming back because of the volunteers, the players and their families,” Liz McCarthy said. “They come from around the world to play this course and they are in awe of where they are. Jim keeps trying to give them one more thing that’s like The Players Championship, to make their experience more special and I think they appreciate it more and more every year.”
Participants in the Junior Players get TPC Sawgrass caddies (they have to carry their own bags in every other AJGA event), dress in the PGA Tour players-only locker room, eat in private dining and get practice facilities second to none.
Junior Players volunteers aren’t in the middle of the whirlwind that is The Players, with world-class players, 40,000 fans per day and worldwide TV.
For McCarthy and his wife (who also volunteers at the Junior Players) and other volunteers, a simple thank-you from a player or parent is enough.
“They're very grateful to be playing here,” McCarthy said. “We don’t have the crowds, the media, the TV but you can see it in their eyes when they get here for the first time. They all play the course on their video games; they’ve seen it on TV and there’s an appreciation for getting here. It’s been their goal for years.”
McCarthy said the AJGA has done a good job in building a culture in junior golf that makes dealing with the players and their parents a pleasure.
“They play at a good pace and they know the rules and etiquette of golf,” he said. “They say ‘yes sir’ and ‘yes ma’am,’ the hat comes off when they go in the clubhouse and at the end of the week they thank you for everything you’ve done.”
His wife said it’s all they need.
“When you volunteer and one person says ‘thank you,’ it makes it all worth it,” she said.
How much longer?
McCarthy said he entertained some thoughts of turning the chairmanship over a year ago but now that he’s reached 16, he said he might hang around to the nice, round number of 20 years.
“I thought I was getting to the point where I should give it up,” he said. “But the experiences keep coming back to me. It’s watching these kids do what they do. It’s hearing Jordan Spieth hit a golf ball and making a sound no one else makes at impact. It’s watching Michael Johnson get in the tournament as an alternate in 2010, then making a putt on the final hole to beat Jordan and Emiliano. It’s Logan McAllister shooting 63 [in 2017].”
There are other moments that come years later. Morgan Hoffmann won the inaugural Junior Players in 2007. He made it to the PGA Tour, but was diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy and is now attempting a comeback after years of rehab and some unconventional diet and exercise regimens – much of it conducted at a remote location in Costa Rica.
“I remember telling Morgan when he qualified for his first Players that he had 60 Junior Players volunteers cheering for him,” McCarthy said. “Now, he’s trying to make it back on the Tour when all the odds are against him. What a tremendous story.”
McCarthy is rooting hard for a Junior Players winner to add a Players Championship title. Justin Thomas in 2021 became the first Players champion who had competed in the Junior Players.
But there are other degrees of success.
“Just to turn on the TV and see anyone who played in the Junior Players and is on the PGA Tour is a big thrill,” Liz McCarthy said. “Then we see kids on FaceBook who have gone on to do well in other areas and that’s rewarding.”
The McCarthys aren’t ready to give that up just yet.
“I sure didn’t think he’d do it for 16 years,” Goin said. “We were hoping we’d get a good one or two years out of him. But once Jim gets onto something he goes all the way or he won’t do it. No one really knew what this tournament was going to be. But he was perfect to lead that charge of us.”
Contact Garry Smits at gsmits@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @GSmitter
16th Junior Players Championship
When: Friday-Sunday.
Where: Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass.
Who: The American Junior Golf Association invitational has a field of 78 players representing a record 14 countries and 17 states. Ten of the top-20 players on the AJGA's Rolex Rankings are in the field, as well as 25 players who have either signed or verbally committed to NCAA Division I programs.
Admission: Free.
More information: ajga.org.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: A Sweet 16 at Junior Players: Jim McCarthy not ready to give up the reins
