Hook & Slice May2024

Hook & Slice

The Legend and Lore of the Mulligan Tour

Southeast Michigan’s Premier Recreational Golf League

In this Issue:

The Front Nine

Memorial Tournament Preview History of the Green Towels

Making the Turn Metroparks part of Mulligan Tour fabric

The Back Nine Closed for Business

Vanishing golf courses

The 19th Hole Where are they now? Kerry Homberger

Hook & Slice

The Front Nine

The Granddaddy of them all

30th edition of the Memorial Tournament at home at Links at Gateway

Erika Fitzpatrick, Editor in Chief

The 30th playing of the Memorial Tournament will be held on May 4th at the Links at Gateway. The season’s first major championship actually predatestheMulliganTour.

Long ago, a tournament called the “Erik Meland Memorial Hey, He’s not dead yet! Golf Tournament” debuted on the Willow Metropark course in New Boston. It was 1995 and the tournament host was

very much alive, winning the inaugural event with a gross 91 among a small fieldof9players.

The tournament format changed to a 2-player scramble the next year and continues to this day - now known, simply, as the MemorialTournament.

Meland launched the Mulligan Tour in 1999, with the Memorial Tournament

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joining the schedule a year later. The “granddaddy of them all” was given major championshipstatusasthe tournament host was always thinking about comparisonstotheMasters tournament of the “big leagues”.

“The Mulligan Tour concept was always planned to look similar to the PGA Tour but for the recreational golfer”, said Meland in a recent interview. “We had the Harbour Pointe Open as ourversionoftheUSOpen and then we had the Memorial Tournament as ourMasters. That’swhere the Green towels come from - a kind of homage to the Green Jackets of the Masters”.

The first Green Towels were awarded to the winners of the Memorial (Continued from page 3)

Tournament in 2002, with past winner’s getting their GreenTowelsretroactively. Originallyplayedonalate August date to coincide with the tournament host’s birthday, the Mulligan Tour event was soon moved to a late May spot on the scheduletobeclosertothe MemorialDayholiday.

But the spring time tournament was continually hampered by wet weather. The 2004 tournament had to be postponed to a July make-up date when the

David Martin and Frank Caruana 2003 Memorial Tournament champs

Thom Bales and Mike Prieskorn 2010 Memorial Tournament Champs

course on the banks of the Huron River was flooded and unplayable. And the 2006 event was moved to Gateway GC just days before the scheduled start duetofloodingatWillow.

The tournament host decided to make the move to Gateway permanent in 2007andtheMemorialhas been played at the course now known as the Links at

Gatewayeversince.

With a pair of winner’s coming from the team event, there have been 48 green towels awarded in the last 24 Memorial Tournaments. And, there have been 12 2-time winner’s, although only 3 teams have won twice together, while the other 2time winners managed the featwithdifferentpartners.

Mulligan Tour Trivia

Willi Hesse and John Ferlito 2023 Memorial Tournament Champs

Which Mulligan Tour event was the first in history to need a playoff to determine a winner?

Answer on page 15

Making the Turn Always There Metroparks

courses have long been prevalent partners of the Mulligan Tour

Eryn O’McFitzCallaghan, Staff Writer

The Huron-Clinton Metroparks Authority (HCMA) wasestablishedin 1939 as a regional public park system and currently operates 7 regulation size golfcoursesinmetropolitan Detroit.

In all, the Tour has played57tournamentson a Metropark layout includingeveryMTSenior Open since the event debutedin2010.

The Mulligan Tour was born on a Metropark golf course. The Willow Metropark golf course was home to the Memorial Tournament, the predecessor of the Tour, from 1995 until 2005. And when the Mulligan Tourlaunchedin1999, the Huron-Clinton Metroparks played a prominent role in the Mulligan Tour’s early tournament schedules consistently advertising low prices and well groomed courses that presented the Tour with economically attractive choices for several tourevents.

And even though the Memorial Tournament eventually left Willow MetroparkfortheLinksat

Gateway, the course has hosted 4 other different eventsovertheyears.

Recent Tour schedules have had as many as 4 tournaments on Metropark tracks, including the Fifty Cent Classic playing annually on Stony Creek and the C Cool Classic making its home on Huron Meadows. TheMTSenior Openusesa rotationof MP courses and the Match Play Championship currently resides at the Huron Meadows course as well.

“The Metroparks are always great to work with”, says Mulligan Tour CEO, Chuck Withey. “They are always in good shape and have great value. The pricing at Huron Meadows makesitconducivetothe36 holes of play required for 2 days of match play. There are no plans to move the C Cool or the Match Play Championship”.

Well Represented Metropark golf courses used by the Mulligan Tour

Stony Creek (15)

Fifty Cent Classic 2009-23

Willow (13)

Memorial Tournament 2000-05

Match Play Ch 2008, 2019

Big Dog Pro-Am 2006

Senior Open 2013, 17, 22

Tin Cup 1999

Lake Erie (11)

Senior Open 2010, 19,. 20, 23

Strokes on a Rope 1999, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2009

Two-Stick Classic 2001, 2003

Huron Meadows (9)

C Cool Classic 2019-23

Match Play Ch 2021-23

Senior Open 2015

Hudson Mills (3)

Go Blue Classic 2005, 2011

Senior Open 2016

Kensington (3)

Senior Open 2011, 2018

Caddyshack Classic 1999

Indian Springs (2)

Senior Open 2012, 2021

Wolcott Mills (1)

Senior Open 2014

The Back Nine

Come and Go

Some Michigan Golf Courses repurposed as 90’s golf boom waned in early 21st century

Wendy Wildwood, Staff Writer

Roughly 200 Michigan golf courses have closed down in the last 15 years as land becomes more valuable as residential or commercialrealestate.

A number of those shuttered courses were home to one or more MulliganTourevents.

The Links at Pinewood hosted the inaugural Real McCoy Classic in 2005 but closed a couple of years later. The RMC moved to Farmington HillsGCin2006.

Hickory Sticks was another course that

Rest in Peace

Closed Courses once used by the Mulligan Tour Links at Pinewood (2008)

Hickory Sticks (2009)

Harbour Club (2016)

Reddeman Farms (2017)

Woodlands of VB (2018)

Harbor Shores (2021) (originally Links at Lake Erie)

Wolcott Mills Metropark (2020)

hosted a tournament just one time - the 2006 TwoStick Classic. That rural course located west of Ann Arbor closed permanentlyin2009.

The Woodlands of Van Buren, opened in 1995

(Continued on page 10)

The 19th Hole

Where are they now?

Kerry Homberger, 74, still swings the sticks in the sunshine state

Erika Fitzpatrick, Editor-in-Chief

Kerry Homberger was the next door neighbor of Mulligan Tour founder Erik Meland. The two routinely played 9-hole matches during the week inthe 1990’s.

WhentheTourlaunched in 1999, Homberger was one of the original 16 members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of HarbourPointe.

Approaching retirement from Ford Motor Co, Homberger played 7 seasons on Tour before migrating south with his

Kerry Homberger

One of the 16 original members of the Mulligan Tour 7 seasons (1999-2005) 58 starts 4 wins

1999 Western Swing

2001 Animal House Classic

2004 Par-54 Classic

2005 Tin Cup

20 Top-4’s

Career Earnings $343.50

wife, Barbara, to enjoy theirgoldenyears.

Homberger still plays golf, now possible 12 months a year, in Spring Hill,Florida,locatednorth ofTampaBay.

Page 10

(Continued from page 8)

and owned by Waste Management - yes, the same WM that hosts the PGA Tour’s WM Phoenix Open each Februaryshut down at the end of the 2018 season. The host course to 15 tournaments, including the first HP Open and 11 Match Play Championships, was reportedly always earmarked for the planned expansion of the Van Buren township landfill, and indeed that dayfinallycame.

Reddeman Farms in Chelsea was a favorite Tour stop and hosted 13 tournaments, including 5 differentevents, between 2000 and 2016. The clubhouse was destroyed by fire in August of 2017 and the golf course never reopened.

The Harbor Dunes GC

Shootout in doubt

Madison Heights planning to turn Red Oaks golf course into a park

Click on link below for C&G story on Red Oaks Golf Course in Monroe, previously known as the Links at Lake Erie, hosted the Tour’s Caddyshack Classic for 20 years. That parcel of land became more valuable to the automotive industry as a warehousing and packaging center for Ford Motor Co. and closed at theendof2021season.

Andthelongtimehome of the Runny Nose Open - and one Menage a Trois Classique - Harbour Club

(Continued on page 12)

(Continued from page 10)

Page 12 GC in Belleville finally shuttered at the end of the2018season.

The next course on the listofpossibleclosuresis Red Oaks golf course, home of the Red Oaks Shootout. Part of the Oakland County Parks system, the course is losing money and the county is considering plans to open the space uptogeneralrecreational use with much lower operatingcosts.

New Again

Not all closures are permanent. Introducing the Cardinal (shown here)

The 27-hole course at the Inn at St.John’s, closed in 2022 and 2023, is set to reopen to the public at the end of June as an 18-hole championship layout. Greens fees are reported to be $150 during the week and $175 on the weekend!!

The multi-million dollar property update also added an 18-hole putting course (2 acres!!) with various contours and undulations, and a 7-hole short course (dubbed the Little Cardinal) built to expedite a quick short-game practice session.

Mulligan Tour Major Championships

Greg Kline 10 Major Victories

The Mulligan Tour Major Championships

The Memorial Tournament

Harbour Pointe Open

Match Play Championship

The PLAYERS Championship

The WESTERN Championship

The EASTERN Championship

The TOUR Championship

2024 Mulligan Tour Results / Schedule

Apr

Apr