Hook & Slice
The Legend and Lore of the Mulligan Tour
Southeast Michigan’s Premier Recreational Golf League
The Legend and Lore of the Mulligan Tour
Southeast Michigan’s Premier Recreational Golf League
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
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
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
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.
Which Mulligan Tour event was the first in history to need a playoff to determine a winner?
Answer on page 15
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
Some Michigan Golf Courses repurposed as 90’s golf boom waned in early 21st century
Wendy Wildwood, Staff WriterRoughly 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
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
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Kerry Homberger, 74, still swings the sticks in the sunshine state
Erika Fitzpatrick, Editor-in-ChiefKerry 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
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.
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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
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
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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.
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.
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
Apr
Apr