The back nine

Pro golfer Steve Stricker readies for his next career turn

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A decade ago, after three years of poor performances, Steve Stricker left the PGA Tour and almost stopped playing golf altogether. Nobody was confident that the Edgerton native, on the cusp of turning 40, would bounce back.

Yet that’s exactly what Stricker, one of Madison’s most famous golfers, did following the 2005 winter of his discontent.

Working with the former University of Wisconsin golf coach he had spurned in accepting a scholarship from another Big Ten school, Stricker tirelessly reinvented his swing and rejuvenated his career.

Beginning at The Barclays in 2007 and wrapping up with the Hyundai Tournament of Champions in 2012, Stricker racked up an astonishing nine PGA Tour wins. Between 2007 and 2013, he finished in the PGA’s top 10 five times.

In April, he was named captain of the 2017 U.S. Presidents Cup Team — an honor he says he never thought he’d receive, even though he represented the United States on five Presidents Cup teams and three Ryder Cup teams over the years.

And despite cutting back on the number of tournaments he plays, Stricker still was ranked No. 10 on the PGA’s career money leaders list at the end of May, having earned more than $41 million since 1990.

Now approaching 50, he’s leveraging his success on the course, his perseverance off it and his loyal ties to Madison in an effort to make Wisconsin a regular PGA Tour stop for the first time since 2009, when the Greater Milwaukee Open ended its 42-year run.

Stricker — one of several professional athletes known as American Family ambassadors — will host the American Family Insurance Championship on June 24-26 at University Ridge Golf Course. The no-cut, 54-hole PGA Tour Champions event for golfers over 50 will feature an 81-player field competing for a $2 million purse.

Proceeds will be donated to the Steve Stricker American Family Insurance Foundation for distribution to the American Family Children’s Hospital and other charities.

“We kept talking about having an event,” Stricker says about his early conversations dating back more than three years ago with Jack Salzwedel, chief executive officer and president of Madison-based American Family Insurance. “At first, we thought about a smaller, two-day event that would bring in some pros and celebrities and raise money that way. And then it slowly morphed into a Champions event.”

Among the golfers participating are 27-time PGA Tour Champions event winner Bernhard Langer, 17-time PGA Tour Champions event winner Jay Haas, two-time major champion John Daly, 1996 U.S. Open winner and 2006 U.S. Ryder Cup team captain Tom Lehman, Wisconsin native Skip Kendall and two-time U.S. Open winner Lee Janzen.

Stricker, winner of 12 PGA Tour titles and five Wisconsin State Open championships, who was the No. 2 golfer in the world in 2009 and 2010, turned 49 in February and won’t be eligible to play in his own tournament until next year.

“This is meant to be a community event that embraces Madison,” says Nate Pokrass, tournament director of the American Family Insurance Championship, one of 26 tournaments in 19 different states and three countries on the 2016 Champions schedule. “The PGA wants cities to make these events their own and unique to their community.”

To that end, the week’s schedule includes an Executive Women’s Day on June 20 presented by Kathy Ireland Worldwide (an independently produced television program on Fox Business Network about health and business issues featuring Ireland, another American Family brand ambassador), followed by a youth clinic hosted by First Tee of South Central Wisconsin on June 21 and pro-am events on June 22 and 23.

There will also be a celebrity nine-hole scramble on June 25 at University Ridge featuring former Green Bay Packers teammates Brett Favre and Mark Tauscher, a co-owner of Isthmus, along with Stricker himself and two-time U.S. Open Champion and Madison resident Andy North.

The economic impact on the Madison area of the American Family Insurance Championship is expected to be about $20 million, according to Pokrass and Stricker, and the event has the potential to eventually become as successful as the Greater Milwaukee Open.

“The GMO was always a great event,” Stricker says, taking a break from hitting balls at Cherokee Country Club one day in late April. “I would get more nervous for that than some of the bigger events I played, just because of the expectations of coming back to Wisconsin and playing in front of my family and friends. You have that pressure to perform well.”

Stricker didn’t always feel that kind of pressure. In fact, as a student-athlete at Edgerton High School in the early 1980s, he competed in three sports all four years, including golf and baseball — but basketball was his favorite.

“Back then, it was different,” he says. “When you play a sport today, you do that for 12 months a year. Thirty years ago, you played everything, just concentrating on that sport during that season. I think kids who specialize today are missing out on a lot, like the relationships of getting to know other kids and how to handle themselves in multiple sports. You handle golf differently than you handle football, right? You have to adjust. That builds a more well-rounded child, which is why it’s good to play as much as you can and expand your perspective.”

Stricker still misses playing team sports, but he quickly found out he was most skilled at golf.

“Every level that I played at, I had some success fairly quickly,” he says. “That gave me the confidence to continue on, work at it and try to get better.”

Stricker won the state high school title his junior year in 1984 and was recruited by Dennis Tiziani, golf coach at the UW. Instead, Stricker opted to attend the University of Illinois on a golf scholarship, where the men’s program was in a rebuilding phase and he hoped he would be able to have an immediate impact as a freshman.

“Illinois did a good job recruiting him,” says Tiziani, 73, who went on to become an integral part of Stricker’s life when the golfer eventually married his daughter, Nicki. “Wisconsin only had two golf scholarships back then, and one-third of one of them would have been for Steve.”

“I called Tiz up and told him I wasn’t coming to Wisconsin,” Stricker remembers. “And to show you what kind of guy he is, he said, ‘Well, I’m disappointed, but if you ever need any help in the future, don’t be afraid to come back.’”

Stricker did come back — including for a fateful private lesson during his junior year at Illinois when he met Nicki.

But that wouldn’t be the last time Stricker would turn to Tiziani for advice.

After graduating from Illinois, Stricker went pro in 1990, beginning his career on the Canadian Professional Golf Tour (now renamed PGA Tour Canada and typically referred to as the Canadian Tour).

He won his first major event in Canada in a playoff, and eventually made it past the PGA Tour Qualifying School — the term used for the annual qualifying tournaments that determine which golfers will earn a “tour card” and play the following year’s tour.

“It took me four times, but I finally obtained my card,” Stricker says. “There were a lot of good players over the years who just couldn’t make it over the hump and get through the qualifying school.”

Stricker married Nicki in 1993, and the couple have two children, Bobbi Maria and Isabella. He made his debut on the PGA tour in 1994 with Nicki as his caddy, and by 1996 he finished fourth on the PGA Tour money list. He was runner-up to tour veteran Vijay Singh in the 1998 PGA Championship in Redmond, Wash., losing by two strokes. The next year, he finished fifth in the 1999 U.S. Open, a tournament in which he’s placed in the top 20 six times.

The good times continued for a few more years. Then, beginning in 2003, Stricker’s game fell apart. He lost his tour card in 2004, and by 2005 was wondering whether his career was over.

“There was a coming-to-Jesus moment in 2005,” Stricker says. “I was basically asking myself, ‘What am I going to do?’ I just came off my third poor season in a row. I had a pretty good run, and didn’t know if I wanted to continue floundering around.”

But the thought of finding alternative work was not particularly appealing, he jokes. “I started thinking, ‘What else could I do? What else am I qualified to do? I better get to work and figure this thing out!’”

Thus began one of golf’s greatest comeback stories. After Stricker’s PGA Tour ranking plummeted below 150, he turned to Tiziani once again.

“This is normal for people on the tour who reach some success and try to go to a higher level,” says the former Badgers coach, who retired in 2003 from the UW golf team and owns the Cherokee Country Club and real estate firm Cherokee Park Inc. “Some people never come out of their rut, but Steve did — and he came back stronger than ever. He knew enough to sort things out for himself. He just needed someone to keep him on the right path.”

While Stricker never lost his reputation as a consistently reliable putter, he was struggling more than ever with his swing. During the cold winter of 2005-06, in a heated training trailer at Cherokee Country Club, Tiziani analyzed his student’s swing and realized that it finished with the club pointing to the right of the target.

“My swing was long and across the line,” Stricker explains. “From that position, I could hit the ball way to the right or hook it to the left. Not ideal. We spent a long winter in that trailer looking at my swing in the mirrors and Tiz watching me and trying to get my swing into a position where I thought I could play well again.”

Stricker went back to the fundamentals, and Tiziani let him take the lead in realigning his own swing. Together, son-in-law and father-in-law broke down the complex physics of the game, and Stricker slowly improved. “When he would swing and get no response from me, that was good,” Tiziani says. “You move the player ahead, and then you get behind him. That’s my approach. Steve’s turnaround was really 100% him.”

“Golf is a game where you’re out there by yourself; nobody is helping you,” Stricker says. “Your coach isn’t saying stuff in your ear while you’re getting ready to hit your shot. So I had to figure it out for myself.”

Eventually, Stricker started seeing results on the driving range, then at pro-ams and finally going a solid couple rounds during tournaments. “All of a sudden, I’d put four good rounds together,” he recalls. “That was fun, and I knew I was on the right track.”

He won the PGA Tour Comeback Player of the Year two seasons in a row (2006 and 2007) and was runner-up in the 2007 FedEx Cup Playoffs to Tiger Woods.

The relationship between Stricker and Woods — practice partners and Ryder Cup teammates — has been fodder for golf journalists for years, especially after Stricker tutored one of the most successful golfers of all time.

“Whatever he says, I’m going to do,” Woods told reporters in 2013 after Stricker gave Woods some putting pointers before the first round of the WGC-Cadillac Championship at the Trump Doral Golf Club and Resort in Florida. “He’s one of the best putters who ever lived. He can see what’s off a little bit because he knows my stroke so well. Friends help each other, and Steve and I have been friends a long time.”

Stricker finished one stroke behind Woods that day in Florida, and the story lends credence to the widely held belief that Stricker is one of the nicer guys in all of professional sports. In 2012, he won the Payne Stewart Award, given to the golfer who best displays respect for the game’s traditions, is involved in charity and presents himself in a professional manner through dress and conduct. (Stewart, a three-time PGA champ, died in a plane crash in 1999.) 

Stricker’s friendship with Woods has continued, even as Woods struggles on and off the course.

“We’re two completely different people, but he has a trust in me, and we’ve enjoyed each other’s company,” says Stricker, adding that he still exchanges text messages with Woods, whose absence at numerous stops on the PGA Tour in recent years has been notable. “He sounds like he’s in a really good place right now. He seems happy and wants to get back out there and kick some of these young guys’ butts, he told me. He wants to get healthy, and he’s working toward that. Hopefully, he does, because the tour is definitely better with Tiger out there.”

For more than a month, Stricker, Pokrass and countless paid and volunteer staff members have been hard at work onsite at University Ridge, prepping to welcome professional golf to Madison.

“There is a sense of urgency and excitement about something brand new,” says Pokrass, who also is executive director of the Steve Stricker American Family Insurance Foundation. “The philanthropic connection is unique to the PGA, and it’s rallying the community.”

Unlike other professional sports organizations, the PGA Tour relies on more than 100,000 volunteers annually to run its tournaments, and the vast majority of those tournaments are structured as nonprofit organizations designed to donate 100% of net proceeds to charity. In 2015, the PGA Tour and its tournaments generated a record $160 million for charity, marking the first time they surpassed the $150 million threshold in a single year.

All told, Pokrass expects an estimated 1,500 people to be involved in working the championship event. When the call went out for volunteers, 1,100 individuals answered within the first six weeks. “That shows the commitment people in this state have toward golf and toward charity,” he says.

Up to 15,000 spectators per day are expected on the course, depending on who is in contention as play progresses. Tickets for the event (disclosure: Isthmus Ticketing is the agent) are available online or at the tournament entrance: $25 general admission or three-day pass for $60.

Stricker isn’t the only Madison golfer with ties to the Champions tour. Andy North, a two-time U.S. Open champion and winner of one Champions tour title, is a prominent Champions tour professional. Another player on the Champions tour horizon with local connections is Madison native Jerry Kelly, who turns 50 in November.

Stricker will be onsite all week for the American Family Insurance Championship, visiting with players, sponsors and fans, Pokrass says, and will be part of the opening ceremonies and trophy presentation.

He also, no doubt, will be keeping track of the action on the course. After all, Stricker will become a member of the Champions tour next year and has a reputation to maintain as a player who improves with age.

Part of that, Stricker says, still has something to do with what he discovered during those winter training sessions out at Cherokee.

“I think that’s why I played well for a longer period of time,” he says. “I found out what worked for me in that trailer in 2005 and 2006, and I’ve whittled it down to three or four things that I continually work on. That’s what has made it enjoyable and fun, because I really don’t deviate from those things.”

Stricker took particular joy in watching 58-year-old Langer, a regular on the Champions tour, stay in contention entering the final round of the Masters in April. Langer had already committed to play the American Family Insurance Championship, and Stricker was beside himself with excitement.

“I was rooting for him, because if he went and won the Masters, we would have the Masters champion playing our event. I was like, ‘Holy cow, that would be really cool!’”

Langer faded at the Masters but still serves as an inspiration. “Watching him, it makes all the older players — and I hate to say it, but I’m one of them now — feel like we can compete on the big stage for quite a while. It’s harder, no question, but if you work hard during the week and make your putts and get everything clicking, it’s possible.”

Stricker will find out what’s possible soon enough. Next year will be his first on the Champions circuit, and he’ll be a contender, Tiziani predicts.

“Steve’s going to be a factor for the next 10 years,” he says. “I often say his history is in his future.”