Lauderdale: Hilton Head Islanders watch son's dream come true at PGA Championship
Tiger Woods was long gone by the time Brian Gaffney walked up to the 18th green Sunday in the PGA Championship.
So was Zach Johnson, winner of the Open Championship, and a number of others who should easily beat the club pro from Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y.
Gaffney was feeding off a crowd that was feeding off his accomplishment as the first club pro to make the cut in five years at the PGA Championship.
And when Gaffney sank his 8.5-foot putt to par the 520-yard par 4 at Whistling Straits in Sheboygan, Wisc., his father saw it as a bit of redemption.
It meant he broke par to finish 71st in a field of 155 at a major. And he erased the memories of Saturday's more human 78, when he finished the day dead last on the scoreboard.
"As I walked off the final green, my shoulders just finally gave out, and I wanted someone to hug me without having to hug back," he wrote in a blog for Golf.com. "I just needed to be squeezed."
His wife, Allison, was there for him.
And so was his father and former caddy, Tom Gaffney of Long Cove Club on Hilton Head Island.
Tom and Cathy Gaffney are well-known leaders in the island's spiritual community. Both are teachers with the ecumenical Community Bible Study, and Tom leads a weekly Christian men's luncheon started in 1979 by Rick Turner.
"Everyone asks, 'What do you do now that you can't caddy for him?' " Tom Gaffney said. "I cheer and I pray."
Brian Gaffney is the baby in a family of six children, raised in Westfield, N.J., caddying at Plainfield Country Club and winning the club championship at 17.
He was an all-America at Montclair State University and tried three years of the tour life before becoming a club pro. At 44, he recently landed one of the best jobs in the country, caring for an historic club in the shadows of New York City that boasts a course ranked 71st in America.
"Brian represented the club pros well," said his father. "These are the guys who don't have time to practice much. They're working all week long with members, promoting golf, teaching golf, getting children interested in the game."
Brian Gaffney has qualified for five majors: four PGA Championships along with the 2012 U.S. Open. This is the first time he's made the cut.
He was 20th to qualify for the 20 positions for club pros in the PGA Championship, birdying a playoff hole to represent a profession of 4,000.
His tournaments are typically quiet affairs. But before this week was out, people were wearing "Gaffney's Army" T-shirts while his two sons, ages 5 and 7, were being kept by their mother's parents, Pete and Carol Ryan at Colleton River Plantation in Bluffton.
Brian Gaffney came into this major red hot. A week earlier, he set the course record with a 63 at Quaker Ridge, an A.W. Tillinghhast layout that opened in 1918 and hosted the 1997 Walker Cup. George Gershwin used to make beautiful music on that course to the beat of a 10 handicap.
A heart attack four years ago keeps Tom Gaffney off his son's bag. But the competitiveness that raced through the father's veins in 20 years of professionally racing Indy-style formula cars in addition to a career in commercial real estate still shows up in his quiet, tall son.
"Brian never had a lesson until he was a pro," Cathy Gaffney said.
About the time today's phenoms start taking lessons, Brian was getting in nine holes with his mother before his afternoon kindergarten session.
"He played with a cut-off 5-wood, 5-iron and a putter," Cathy said.
Tom Gaffney said Brian showed the maturity of all those years of practice at the PGA Championship on the shores of Lake Michigan.
"He has said to me, 'I'm good enough to get here, but I'm not good enough,' " Tom Gaffney said. "They have too much work and no time to practice. But this time he had played a couple of tournaments recently and it was not like running out of the golf shop and teeing it up."
Brian's mother cites his even temper. And she said he realizes it is privilege to work long days as the head pro in a classic golf club.
Brian Gaffney got to hang around for the nationally-televised trophy presentation after Jason Day won the tournament. Gaffney was given a trophy as the top-finishing club pro.
When he got home at 11:45 p.m. Monday, posters on the garage door from club members and staff congratulated him.
At 6:10 a.m. Tuesday, he called his folks on Hilton Head while driving to work, back in the real world.
Follow columnist and senior editor David Lauderdale at twitter.com/ThatsLauderdale and facebook.com/david.lauderdale.16.
This story was originally published August 18, 2015 at 5:31 PM with the headline "Lauderdale: Hilton Head Islanders watch son's dream come true at PGA Championship."