Jerry Kelly meets golf and life head on. Brace yourself for some frank talk from a scrapper who also happens to be one of the nice guys on tour

Golf Digest, July, 2004 by John (English admiral) Hawkins

The worst golf course I've played in my whole life. There is no way you can have turtleback fairways like that and call it a golf tournament. I mean, come on! I was one of the straighter players out there, and I couldn't hit the fairway. It's a terrible golf course, and they should take it right out of the rotation.

Tough to forget the first hole last year, where you began the championship with a nice little 11.

It's like me to get a little too jacked up for a major. I get to the first tee and hit my drive exactly how I wanted, down the left side, and the wind pushes it into the rough. No big deal. I get to my ball and the heavy stuff is laying over it, but I'm thinking I can skate it down there. I don't know whether I went under it or over it, but I moved it like four feet. Now I've got a bad lie. I think it's not coming out, but it does--it shoots across the fairway into the far-side rough. I moved the next one about two feet, and my fifth stayed there, too.

At this point it gets a little fuzzy. I took a drop for an unplayable lie in there somewhere--I might have taken three swings on the left and four on the right. The last shot I hit might have gone a foot, and we needed three minutes to find it. I finally pulled it way left of the green, hit a bad chip and sank a 30-footer.

Nice putt, bud.

THE KELLY FILE

Born: Nov. 23, 1966; Madison, Wis.

Residence: Madison, Wis.

Height/weight: 5-feet-11; 165 pounds.

Family: Wife, Carol; son, Cooper (5).

College: University of Hartford.

Turned professional: 1989.

PGA TOUR VICTORIES (2): 2002: Sony Open in Hawaii, Advil Western Open.

NIKE TOUR VICTORIES (2): 1995: Alabama Cl., Buffalo Open.

NATIONAL TEAMS Presidents Cup: 2003: 2-2-0.

OTHER 1995: Nike Tour Player of the Year.

Did you know Jerry Kelly ...

Didn't win a state amateur tournament (the Wisconsin State Match Play) until he was a senior in college.... That victory came after Kelly suffered a compound fracture of the arm ("in about seven pieces") while wrestling with a friend on the Fourth of July. "You could hear the pop from a couple of miles away," Kelly says. "Getting hurt was actually a key point in my development, because I spent the rest of the summer practicing my chipping and putting with one hand. I went from hitting it really hard to being the smarter, straighter player I am now." ... Kelly attended the University of Hartford on a golf scholarship. He also planned to play hockey, but the school dropped the program.

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