For as long as Bob Murphy can remember, the Murphys have been a golf family. “My father, Daniel Murphy, played an important role in developing my love for the game of golf,” said the 68-year-old CDGA member. “I really admired his commitment to the game and high-level play.”
Fittingly, Murphy and his family utilize the game to carry on his father’s legacy.
Daniel passed away in 1988 at the age of 61 due to complications of diabetes. One year later, Murphy and his brother, Jim, were searching for a way to honor their patriarch through a charitable endeavor.
“My brother and I were just traders at the Chicago Board Options Exchange in our 30s and we wanted to do something good to help disadvantaged kids in Chicago,” Murphy recalled. “I remember the day pretty well. A group of us were sitting in our office downtown just saying, ‘How can we help?’”
Those initial conversations bore the Daniel Murphy Scholarship Fund (DMSF), which provides scholarships for underprivileged Chicago youth to attend prestigious private high schools. What started with four kids in 1989 has expanded to an annual group of 500 scholarship recipients and 2,500 DMSF alumni.
“It makes me proud and I am humbled by the growth that we’ve seen, by the enduring family legacy and the number of children whose lives we’ve been able to impact,” Murphy said. “We never envisioned that – there’s no way we could have.”
Golf plays a role in the program's success in two distinct ways.
First, the annual DMSF Golf Classic serves as a key fundraising initiative to support the scholars. Each year, on the first Monday in June, the outing is held across seven di erent clubs on Chicago’s North Shore (including Murphy’s home club of Exmoor). In 2024, the outing featured more than 600 golfers and raised a record $2.9 million. The 2025 iteration was held on June 2, with the total impact still being tallied at the time of this writing.
“The outing participants, many of them also CDGA members, are incredibly generous with their time volunteering and also donating to a cause that is near and dear to them,” Murphy said. “Giving it back and paying it forward is so important.”
Hailed as the nation’s largest annual charitable golf event, Murphy views the success of the DMSF outing as demonstrative of the game’s unique ability to harbor philanthropy.
“Golf outings as a mechanism for charitable causes is unprecedented,” Murphy said. “DMSF is just one example of the potential of organized, well-missioned causes to raise awareness and further a mission.”
The second way the DMSF utilizes golf to impact youth is through its unique caddie program. Each summer, more than 100 students enrolled in the scholarship program are given the opportunity to caddie at elite private clubs. The boys bunk at Lake Forest College and caddie at North Shore clubs, while the girls are housed at Elmhurst College and loop at west-suburban facilities.
“For a lot of them, it’s their first time being away from home, being in the dorm situation, or even stepping foot on a golf course,” Murphy, himself a former caddie at Bob O’Link Golf Club, explained. “It really builds character.”
The caddie program also fosters a natural synergy with the Evans Scholarship Foundation. To date, more than 390 Murphy Scholars have gone on to earn the prestigious Evans Scholarship for college.
“Our program is in a lot of ways the high school model of the Chick Evans,” Murphy proudly stated, noting that his brother Jim was an Evans Scholar.
Now retired after a lengthy career in financial services, most recently at Wintrust, Murphy is eager to put forth even more of his time and e ort into his family’s passion project.
“The mission of DMSF is incredibly important to me, my brothers and our family,” Murphy said. “Receiving a quality high school education for disadvantaged Chicago youth is the ultimate game changer for kids, families and entire neighborhoods. I’m proud and humbled by the enduring legacy that DMSF has proved to be.”
To learn more about the DMSF, visit DMSF.org. —Casey Richards
CDGA Member Spotlight articles are a partnership between the CDGA and Wintrust to highlight an individual, group or program making their underrepresented community Better Through Golf. Individuals with CDGA Member Spotlight ideas should reach out to magazine@cdga.org.