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Dear Head Nut,

My putting mat was not rolling true, so I ripped out all the carpet and rented a grinder and leveled the floor.

Now my putts roll true.

Doug Kyle

#4021

Sign him up and give that man a number! – The Head Nut (#0001)

Golf Nuts,

In one of the great moments in Golf Nut Society and Masters history, fellow Golf Nut #1746, Jim Whittemore, was attending the 2000 Masters as a guest of the inimitable Fuzzy Zoeller.

During the Wednesday practice round, Fuzzy stepped to the par 3 12th tee when he spotted his friend Whittemore in the gallery. The rest is now part of Masters lore.

Check it out here…

Jim Whittemore (#1746) earned 5,000 Nut Points and was inducted into the Golf Nut Hall of Fame for his great feat.

Way to go, Whit!

The Head Nut

#0001

At the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, Memphis golf history is just a few feet from the first tee

By Mark Giannotto, Gannett News

They were standing at the fence line as Bubba Watson, Brandt Snedeker and Paul Casey stood ready to tee off their practice round Tuesday morning. This is where Dave and Nancy Wells live, adjacent to the tennis courts, with a backyard overlooking the first hole at TPC Southwind.

So on the first day reporters were allowed at the first fan-less World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, Dave Wells was one of the few Memphians doing exactly what he would have been doing if the tournament hadn’t been completely altered by the coronavirus pandemic.

He was watching the world’s best golfers, and none of them could have possibly known that the history of professional golf in Memphis sat right up the hill from that first tee box.

“I’ve got a museum of sorts on my second floor,” Wells said. “Do you want to come inside to see it?”

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The scene this week at the Memphis area’s annual PGA Tour stop is strange. There are no grandstands. There are no concession stands. There is no buzz. Just the hum of a few generators, and the cascading sounds of pool water filtering from some of the homes in this exclusive neighborhood. About the only familiar face running around the grounds is Millie, the well-trained dog of TPC Southwind course superintendent Nick Bisanz.

But Dave and Nancy Wells are here, even if this is all a bit odd for them, too. Nancy has been volunteering at this tournament since it was the Danny Thomas Classic at the old Colonial Country Club. She started as a walking scorer and, in recent years, worked at the information desk.

“There’s no one to inform this year,” she said. “It’s kind of a shame.”

So this will be unprecedented for unfortunate reasons, which also means it might just need a place in the room Dave Wells, 82, turned into an homage to the game he loves.

The son of Memphis Amateur Sports Hall of Famer Buddy Wells, who oversaw Crump Stadium and then Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium for the city, Dave Wells retired almost 30 years ago from his job at Schering-Plough. And even then, when someone would ask what he did for a living, Wells would joke, “I play golf.”

“The business relationships, a lot of it had to do with golf,” he explained.

Dave Wells stands in front of one of the many bookshelves filled with golf memorabilia inside his house next to the first tee box at TPC Southwind. Photo by Mark Giannotto/The Commercial Appeal

It means almost every inch of almost every wall of this “museum” is filled with golf memorabilia from seemingly every significant golfer of the past century. Sam Snead. Ben Hogan. Arnold Palmer. Jack Nicklaus. Lee Trevino. Seve Ballesteros. Tom Watson. You name it, aside from Tiger Woods, Wells probably has an autograph up somewhere.

There are also golf clubs from 1924 and golf balls commemorating rounds at the golf’s greatest courses, or holes-in-one, or times when Wells shot his age.

But it’s the pieces of Memphis golf lore that feel so important, particularly this year when most of Memphis can’t be here.

There’s the Ben Hogan signature, which prompts Wells to tell the story of how he once met Hogan at old Cherokee Golf Course at the corner of Lamar and Prescott. There’s also an autographed picture from Al Geiberger with this note: “You were here that great day.”

That great day is, of course, the day Geiberger shot a 59 at Colonial Country Club back in 1977. Wells was there, and he was there in 1965 when Jack Nicklaus won in Memphis.

“You would bring a chair and stand on it so you could see over the people in front of you,” Wells said.

There’s the faded program from the 1979 Danny Thomas Classic that his son used to get autographs. When they came home, Wells asked how many he managed to get. Three, his son said. It was only a few years later, when Wells leafed through the program in his son’s room, that he realized who those three autographs were from.

Gerald Ford, Bear Bryant and Danny Thomas himself.

There’s a poster from the 1985 tournament that notes the purse for the entire event was $500,000. Last year, the top three finishers at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational all earned more than that. This year, the total purse is $10.5 million.

On another shelf sits a photo of Patrick Reed from when he won an American Junior Golf Association event at TPC Southwind as a 14-year-old.

Another prized possession is a signed picture from Cary Middlecoff, the greatest Memphis golf product. It’s the first piece of memorabilia Wells ever got. It’s from 1948.

There’s also a Masters scrapbook that sits near it, with Palmer’s impeccable signature. Wells had it signed when he played a round with Palmer at Bay Hill decades ago.

“Arnold Palmer told me the most important thing about the game of golf is who you meet on the golf course,” Wells said.

And so for a little while Tuesday, walking around that second floor room full of magazine covers and photos and balls and clubs, this year’s tournament felt a little like every other PGA Tour event this city has hosted. Because the best part of this tournament is rarely the golfers. It’s the Memphians, be they fans or volunteers, who you meet.

It’s people like Dave Wells, leaning against his fence watching the world’s best tee off in his backyard, just a few feet away from Memphis golf history.

Dave “Iron Byron” Wells, Nut #2803, is a legendary member of the Golf Nut Society. He earned thousands of points for this story and all that was revealed within. – The Head Nut #0001

Ken Kellaney (#2020) has been a local legend in Arizona competitive golf circles for decades. He has won 15 Arizona state golf titles including a record 5 Arizona state amateur championships and has been named Arizona Golf Association Player of the Year a record 10 times. He has also participated in 13 USGA championships.

Now 63 years of age, he recently shot 10-under par 62 which included a double bogey and a missed four-footer. Good grief… No wonder we call him “The Legend”.

For that feat, Nut #2020 earned himself 620 Nut Points. I would have had no alternative but to award him 1,590 Points had he made the four-footer and not had a double bogey during the round.

But wait, there’s more…

Rockford’s greatest golfers No. 2: Ken Kellaney becomes an Arizona all-time great

This just in from a recent news article in Kellaney’s hometown…

Matt Trowbridge

Rockford (Illinois) Register Star

Golf? Or swim?

Ken Kellaney chose to golf.

But he didn’t just play golf. He worked at it. From the very start when he first began as a 10-year-old at Mauh-Nah-Tee-See Country Club.

“My parents joined and at that time in the summer you could either play golf or swim,” said Kellaney, 64, who would grow up to become the most decorated amateur golfer to ever come out of Rockford. “I decided I liked golf much more than swimming. I just absolutely loved it from the day I started.

“I would go there every day. Even when I couldn’t play the course, I would go to the driving range. I just wore out the driving range. I didn’t have an instructor at that age. I would read Golf Digest and bring the magazine with me. They would always have some pro pointers. I would try it out on the driving range and see if it would help my game.

“I just loved the process. I have always been a driving range guy. To this day, I try to hit balls every day.”

Kellaney, picked the second-greatest golfer in Rockford-area history, went on to become the only Rockford golfer to finish in the top five of the state tournament three times, finishing, third, third and fifth for Guilford from 1972-74. He also had a standout career at Illinois, leading the Illini in scoring average for three years and making team captain as a senior, when he finished third in the Big Ten and was named honorable-mention All-American.Kellaney decided to go into banking after he graduated rather than chase a pro career, but he still had many of his greatest golf achievements ahead of him. He moved to Arizona in 1987 and has gone on to win eight Phoenix city titles, a record five Arizona State Amateur titles and is the only player to win the career grand slam of Arizona amateur golf, winning the Publinks, Mid-Amateur, Match Play and Stroke Play state titles.

He’s also a record 10-time Arizona Golf Association Player of the Year.

“You don’t get those kinds of awards being a poor golfer,” said former long-time Rock Valley College golf coach Steve Benjamin. “He could really play. And he was a really nice gentleman. I miss him.

“Kenny and I played a lot together back in the day. He had all the tools and knew how to use them. He hit the ball long and was a very good putter. Ken, his shots were professional. You could hear them. I’ve only played with a few amateurs where when they struck the ball, you could hear it. Kenny was definitely one of them.”

Kellaney won two tournaments in college, including one where he beat John Cook, a future 11-time winner on the PGA Tour, by six strokes.

Former Illini Butch Pegoraro, Boylan’s 1967 state high school champ who went on to become the head pro for many years at Forest Hills Country Club, helped Kellaney get a scholarship from Illinois.

“The University of Florida was talking to me, but they weren’t able to offer me any type of scholarship and Illinois stepped up,” Kellaney recalled. “Butch Pegoraro lived right across the street from me and went to Illinois eight years ahead of me. He paved the way for me to meet the golf coach. The coach liked me and offered me a scholarship.”

After graduating from Illinois in 1979, Kellaney went to work as a bank examiner for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago while also earning his MBA. When he moved to Phoenix in 1987, he began a 30-year career servicing the banking needs of middle-market businesses, including 23 years with the National Bank of Arizona.

He also was appointed last year as the Independent Director of the Southwest Section Board for the Arizona Golf Association.

But he’s mostly known in Arizona golf circles for winning the Phoenix area’s biggest amateur tournaments. Many, many times.

“I feel very fortunate,” Kellaney said. “There are a lot of great players who have come down here, and we’ve got some great golf schools. I was competing against kids from Arizona State and the University of Arizona, plus a lot of former professionals that got their amateur status back.”

Kellaney considers his fourth and fifth Arizona State Amateur titles as his favorite golf achievements.

“No one had ever won more than four, and I was recovering from a bout with melanoma a couple of years before that,” he said. “That really set me back. When I rebounded from cancer and won the Arizona State Amateur two years back-to-back, that was my most rewarding moment in golf, because of what I overcame.”

Ken Kellaney, Nut #2020, picked up 10,000 Nut Points for his 10 Player of the Year titles, 2,000 for his Rockford Hall of Fame induction, and another 1,500 for winning another Arizona State Amateur after defeating melanoma. No wonder they call him The Legend in Arizona competitive circles. The man can score. – The Head Nut