"IF YOU LIKE GOLF"
weekly online golf column
by
Chris Dortch

May 10, 2005

When Kip Henley won the Golf Channel’s Big Break II, he knew his life was going to change. He just didn’t know how much.

“I way underestimated it,” said Henley, the Chattanooga native who has spent more than 20 years trying to make a career out of professional touring golf, with little success. “It’s unbelievable how many people watched that show. People come up to me wherever I go and say how much they enjoyed the show and how they were glad to see me win. Recognition doesn’t put anything in your pocket or get you into heaven, but it’s been fun. I guess it’s just an ego thing like we all have.”

Big Break II winner Kip Henley
(photo from www.kiphenley.com)

If anyone deserved a big break, it was the popular and personable Henley, who had toiled most of his adult life as a club professional and PGA Tour caddy while playing the Tennessee PGA circuit and whatever pro tournaments he could enter. He always held his own among his fellow club pros—as his 1997 Tennessee Open championship, to go along with the 1982 Open he won as an amateur, would attest—but when he got out among the touring pros, his considerable game could never deliver.

Particularly frustrating to Henley was his inability to perform after giving up a comfortable club pro job in Crossville, Tenn. It was 1999, and several backers agreed to stake Henley for a year or so. Henley packed up loyal wife Sissi and daughters Darbi and Stormi for a yearlong excursion on the Hooters Tour, where he proceeded to make just six cuts in 19 events.

“It was disappointing,” Henley said. “We had a little bit of money left to keep on going the next year, but we shot right through that, too.”

Sufficiently humbled, Henley retreated to Crossville, got another club job, and also began caddying on the PGA Tour for Jason Bohn, who won the 2003 Chattanooga Classic, and Garrett Willis, the former East Tennessee State All-American.

“I’ve often said caddying is the second-greatest job in the world,” Henley said. “You’re around the game and you could conceivably make $100,000 in a weekend. But it hurt like crazy to be the one handing out the clubs instead of the one taking them.”

The Big Break II might turn around Henley’s fortunes. Or it might not. At 44, Henley knows he doesn’t have a lot of good swings left, at least when it comes to competing against players 20 years younger. But he’s going to take the four Nationwide Tour exemptions his Big Break title earned him, couple them with two more extended by the Chattanooga Classic and Knoxville Open, mix in the PGA Tour’s FedEx St. Jude Classic (he qualified along with Chattanooga’s Mike Bennett late last month) play the best he can and see where it gets him.

Henley has been practicing from sunup to sundown—“As much as these old bones will let me,” he said—and though he isn’t ready to declare himself ready for what’s ahead, he thinks he’s close.

In a recent round at the Bear Trace at Cumberland Mountain, Henley shot a back-nine 27 that included five birdies and two eagles. Yes, there with a friendly wager involved.

“I know I can take it deep,” Henley said. “A lot of guys are fearful of that. I’m not. If I get to 10 under, I’m trying to get to 12 under. I don’t do it much, but I’m capable.”

It all begins for Henley next week, at the Nationwide Tour’s Henrico County Open. He’ll fly there courtesy of the Golf Channel, which will cover all his travel expenses and televise the event.

No doubt Henley will receive a hero’s welcome, just as he did last month when he turned up for the tournament’s media day. Henley met an important contact there when he played a round with Mike Sawyer, the CEO of Saxon Capital Mortgage Company, one of the tournament’s sponsors. Sawyer will caddy for Henley in the tournament. Who knows what will result from that contact?

“This has opened up a zillion doors for me,” said Henley, who has retained an agent and signed several endorsement deals. Henley will wear the logo of an Internet company, 4GEA, on his shirt, along with Alpa, a club manufacturer whose driver Henley has put in his bag, and the Golf Channel.

“I’m not going to be able to retire on any of this,” Henley said. “But it takes me out of the hole I dug for myself when I walked away from my [club pro] job.”

His Big Break notoriety has also made Henley a commodity on the pro-am circuit. Last month he flew to famed Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, where he rubbed shoulders with celebrities and other athletes, played on a famed old course and got to stay on the premises, in the Dean Martin suite, no less.

“It was a little bit like stepping back in time,” said Henley. “But old Deano would have been upset. There wasn’t even a mini-bar in the room.”

Other friends and businessmen have come forward to help Henley, in part because he won the Big Break, but in part because he’s a decent guy. Adams Lithograph in Chattanooga created a color brochure that Henley can send to tournament directors in hopes of landing more exemptions. “My agent took a look at the thing and couldn’t believe it,” Henley said. “He said it was at least a $7,000 value.”

Henley owes the whirlwind his life has become to the loyal Sissi, who has walked more miles watching her husband play golf—with daughters in tow—than any PGA Tour wife has even thought about. It was Mrs. Henley who noticed that the Golf Channel was accepting applications for the Big Break II, and she pestered her husband incessantly about filling one out. Finally, on the last day before entries closed, Henley relented, all the while grumbling about what a waste of time it was. But it was Sissi who had to do the heavy lifting; she transcribed Henley’s off-the-cuff ramblings.

“I told her not to polish it up and make me look smarter than I am,” he said. “I just tried to be funny and say some different things to make me stand out.”

Henley’s application did the job. He made the first cut and was called to Myrtle Beach, S.C. with about 200 other applicants. After hitting 10 shots on a practice range and interviewing for about four minutes, Henley was on his way back home.

“As we got back in the car, I said, ‘Boy was that ever a waste of time and gas money.’ ” Henley said.

Henley was wrong. His secret weapon was his little band of blondes.

“My family was standing around [during the interview],” Henley said. “I think they saw that I was sincere about wanting a shot at it, and that, with my family and all, I was a good story.”

When the final call came, Henley couldn’t believe his good fortune. Sissi had always told him that anyone who wanted something so badly as Henley wanted to play golf for a living was bound to get it, if he just didn’t give up.

“When the call came, I knew my life had been transformed, no matter what happened,” Henley said. “When I won, it was incredible. Something good [on the golf course] had finally happened for me. There’s a little bit of pressure, because now I feel like I’m playing for more people than I normally do. Now, instead of just my family and my fellow club pros, I’ve got four or five more flags I’m carrying.”

Whatever Henley does with his big break, he’s had his day in the sun. People know his name. Heck, even Sissi and the girls are celebs.

Last week, when Henley showed up for the Chattanooga Classic media day at Black Creek, he played golf while his family went to Hamilton Place Mall. Driving back to the course, Sissi was pulled over by a state trooper.

“He’d seen our license plate [BedBarn] and recognized it from the Big Break,” Henley said, laughing. “So he pulled Sissi over.”

“I guess you’re wondering why I pulled you over,” the trooper told a stunned Sissi.

“He just wanted to wish me luck,” Henley said.

Luck? After years of grinding it out on mini tours around the country, giving lessons to 36-handicappers and carrying 40-pound golf bags, Henley thinks he’s the luckiest man alive.

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