Heiring it Out at Augusta

The Stadler’s will ride into history as the first father-son duo to compete in the same Masters field

Craig Stadler’s final Masters marks son Kevin’s first. It’s the only time in the event’s history a father and son have been in the same field—but is this twosome currently on the same page?

Similar in build, temperament and swing tempo, Craig and Kevin Stadler have something else in common. Neither can remember the last time they played golf together.

Craig: “It’s been years.”

Kevin: “I don’t have a clue.”

That will change at Augusta National this month when they become the first father and son to compete in the same Masters. Kevin, who was two years old when Craig won the green jacket in 1982, earned his berth by winning February’s Waste Management Phoenix Open, his first PGA Tour victory in 239 starts. A 13-time winner on the PGA Tour, Craig turns 61 in June. He last made the cut at Augusta in 2007 and says this will be his final appearance in the event.

“He probably would have liked it better if I had gotten there five years ago or so,” Kevin said after his win. “He’s been telling me for a couple of years I need to hurry up and get there before he calls it quits.”

Augusta’s secretive Competition Committee “isn’t likely” to pair them in the first two rounds, according to one insider, but they’ll play at least a practice round together. An exciting, historic moment, right?

Craig: “It’ll be great. It doesn’t get any better.”

Kevin: “I really don’t know what to expect. It’ll probably be a zoo.”

To some degree, understanding the contrast between the father’s enthusiasm and the son’s deflective indifference requires grasping the complicated emotions associated with divorce. Craig and Sue, Kevin’s mother, split up six years ago, and Craig remarried in 2010. Craig and Jan Stadler live in the shadow of Mount Evans in a stunning home to which he moved from Cherry Hills. Kevin rarely visits.

Amid a richly furnished room brimming with trophy game hunted mainly in Argentina and artwork featuring the tusked arctic mammal that inspired his nickname, the man known as “The Walrus” has nothing but praise for his son. “I’m his biggest fan,” he says. “He’s a wonderful iron player and he is now playing with more confidence. Watching Kevin the last 10 months, I see his course management improving. He is rapidly reaching his capability. The thing I am so happy about is at Phoenix he made a double-bogey on 11 and hit into the water on 15—and in both cases he came right back. That’ll help him more than anything.”

“I don’t want to get into it,” Kevin says respectfully via telephone of their current relationship. “It’s not what it used to be.”

Photographic evidence of how it once was lines the main hallway of Craig’s home. There’s Craig with little Kevin on his shoulders at the Masters; teenaged Kevin caddying for Dad during the Wednesday Par-Three; and the two of them at The International at Castle Pines. There are shots of Craig caddying for Kevin, who won the Colorado 3-A high school championship and Doug Sanders Junior World Championship while a student at Kent Denver; and two Colorado Golf Association match-play titles and second team All-America honors during his four years at Craig’s alma mater, the University of Southern California.

Working Kevin’s bag often meant risking injury from a thrown club—“something he’d seen me do 100 times,” Craig says—but it also came with great rewards.

At the 2002 Colorado Open at Sonnenalp Golf Club, Craig agreed to loop for Kevin shortly after he’d graduated from USC. “He calls me at 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon and says, ‘You gotta caddy really well because I want to make some money,’ Craig remembers, laughing. “Seems he’d turned pro an hour earlier. He won the event—beat Gary Hallberg and Brian Kortan in a playoff. He got $25,000 and I didn’t get squat.”

“Having him as a caddie, the only thing I remember is him screwing up the yardage,” Kevin jokes.

The pair teamed up a few months later as players in Paradise Island to win the Office Depot Father/Son Challenge. “I played horrible and he was just awesome all week long,” Craig admitted at the time. “We won $200,000 and realistically he should have gotten $175,000 of it.”

Of late, Craig’s competed in the event with his younger son, Chris, a former college football player now working as a sommelier.

“They changed the eligibility rules so Kevin and I can’t be a team,” Craig says. “So I played with Chris. It was the most awesome event. There’s nothing better than playing with your kids.”

Another explanation for the distance between Craig and Kevin comes from Raymond Floyd’s son, Robert. He and his dad won the Father-Son event each of the two years before the Stadlers did. Robert’s grinded it out on the PGA Tour and mini-tours for almost 20 years. “Nobody out here has surpassed a famous father,” he says. “Doesn’t happen.”

“In eight years on the Tour, Kevin’s won one time and has already blown by what I earned in 27 years,” counters Craig. Earnings are one thing; wins are another. And the perpetual comparisons to his famous father put no shortage of pressure on Kevin, who initially struggled to keep his card but has averaged 27 PGA TOUR starts per year since 2007.

Did Craig ever give him advice? “I encouraged, never pushed, golf,” Craig says, allowing that Kevin loved the game from the age of two. Craig never even corrected his son’s reverse baseball grip— cross-handed with all ten fingers on the club—until seven-year-old Kevin wanted one of the new metal woods that had just come out. “I told him he couldn’t have it until he fixed his grip,” Craig says. “He was so mad. So I sent him to see the club pro who fixed his grip—and he got his club.”

“That was about the only thing I remember in terms of advice he gave me,” Kevin says. “I wrack my brain but there’s really absolutely nothing. He was pretty hands-off.”

Kevin now consults with Dan Campbell, the PGA director of instruction at Tatum Ranch, about 20 minutes northwest of Kevin’s home in Scottsdale. “It’s the first time I’ve really worked with anyone,” he says. “I am so far on the feel side of golf than the technical side. The main work we’ve done is through the impact area.”

The area in which his game stands to be impacted—negatively— is putting. The long putter he’s used for more than half his life will be banned from competition in 2016. “I’ve got no interest whatsoever in moving back to the shorter putter,” he says. “We haven’t attacked it yet. I have another full year.”

A full year ago, Craig’s game was in tatters. But he has had a renaissance, thanks to Billy Harmon, the PGA Director of Instruction at Toscana Country Club in Indian Wells. “I was ready to hang it up,” Craig explains. “I decided to give it one more go. I called Billy and told him he had two days to fix it or I was through. We worked on alignment, ball position and grip. He flattened my swing. In three hours we did a major overhaul.” The changes reaped immediate benefits.

Last June he won the Champions Tour’s Encompass Championship—his first victory since 2004. He went to see Harmon before this January’s Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai and shot a 69-66, but hitting out of the the lava rock during the final round, he tore cartilage in his wrist and finished with a 79.

Craig says the wrist should be healed in time for the Masters. “I can still easily make the cut,” he says, “but is just making the cut really a goal?” It is—if he and Kevin both make it and somehow wind up playing together on Saturday or Sunday.

Kevin’s excited about competing at a course on which he frolicked as a kid and played once in college. A good showing at the Masters will earn FedEx Cup points (as of April 2, he’s 14th in the standings) and only the top 70 qualify for September’s BMW Championship at Cherry Hills Country Club. “I’m really, really hoping to play in it,” he says.

You know Craig, his biggest fan, hopes his son will play in it, too

RELATED LINKS

Kevin Wins Waste Management Phoenix Open, Punches Ticket to Masters

Craig Stadler: I am the Walrus

The Official Masters Website

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