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PLYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS | Brendan Walsh and Jay Wick are not brothers, per se. But their bond through golf is as strong as any that true siblings have. It goes back to the 1970s, when the lads were growing up in the Philadelphia area and falling in love with the game for the first time, initially as caddies and then as competitors in local tournaments. In time, they each decided to make golf their careers. Now, some 40 years after their paths first crossed, they sit at the very pinnacle of their professions – and work only a short drive from each other, with Walsh the director of golf at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, and Wick the general manager and director of golf at Old Sandwich Golf Club about 40 miles to the southeast in Plymouth.
“Neither of us could have ever imagined things working out this way,” says Wick.
One of 15 children, Walsh was born and raised in the City of Brotherly Love. His father, William, who was known affectionately as “Sarge,” made his living in insurance and was a good enough golfer to have won seven club championships at Philadelphia Country Club – and to have shot his age more than 350 times by the time he died in 2013, at 91 years old. He also served as president of the Golf Association of Philadelphia.
As for Walsh’s mother, Barbara, she was a one-time fashion model who for many years ran the junior golf program at PCC. “She did not start playing until after her seventh child was born,” Walsh says. “But once she did, she got her handicap down to 14 and often played in GAP womens’ matches.”
Growing up in that household, it was not surprising that Walsh, who is one of seven boys and the 12th of the 15 children his mother bore, took up golf. “Once we finished our yard work as kids, we’d go play golf together,” he says. “Dad would give us three swings on a hole, and if we whiffed on one of those, we had to move onto the next.
“I liked the game, but back then, I was really only a summer golfer. I played all the other sports, especially basketball and football.”
Golf, however, occupied most of his time in the warmer months. He started caddying as a teen at a couple of area retreats, Radnor Valley and Overbrook, and occasionally at his home course. Then, with his father’s encouragement and that of PCC head golf professional Tom Wilcox, Walsh began competing in junior tournaments around his hometown. It was during one of those events that he met Jay Wick.
“I remember Jay having a nice, ’70s blond Afro,” Walsh says. “He looked like a pro, and he hit the ball a long way.”
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Wick moved with his parents and four siblings to the Philadelphia area in 1975 when his father, a CPA who went on to become treasurer of a brokerage firm, was transferred there. “I was 12 years old, and our new house bordered Overlook and Radnor Valley,” he recalls. “Our first summer there, I walked over to Overlook to caddie but only sat in the yard for two weeks. So, I left. The following year, I tried Radnor Valley and was actually able to get out for some loops. The club also let us play on Mondays.”
After his parents joined St. David’s, another nearby golf club, Wick started teeing it up more often.
“Now, I had a place where I could play regularly,” he says. “St. David’s also let the kids of members caddie. Even better was Pete Trenham, the head golf professional. He took an interest in young kids who had an interest in golf and helped us out with instruction and equipment. He’d also take us to play in inter-clubs and GAP tournaments.
“Back then, I played a lot more hockey than I did golf, and I was a better hockey player than I was a golfer. But I started to like golf more and more.”
As for Walsh, Wick well remembers competing against him as a teen. “Even back then, Brendan wore a visor when he played,” he says.
When it came time to go to college, the two Keystone Staters went off in different directions, with Wick heading south to the University of South Florida in Tampa, and Walsh going west, to the College of Wooster in Ohio.
Wick describes himself as being a “fair player” when he left home. “I was not recruited but managed to do well enough in tryouts to make the team,” he says. “I never played in any matches, however, and ended up coming home after a year. I had pretty much decided at that time that I wanted a career in golf. Not as a player but as a club professional.”
“I remembered traveling with Pete Trenham when I was a junior,” he says. “He would take me to section events, some of which I later played in as an amateur. I loved that all the pros had big bags and fancy clothes. I loved the lifestyle. I also loved the game and the atmosphere of a golf club.”
Not surprisingly, it was Trenham whom Wick approached after he left Florida. “I was 20 years old when I started working for him at St. David’s, and the following year, I became an assistant at Overbrook,” Wick explains.
The longtime golf professional at the Philadelphia Country Club, Tom Wilcox, had an equal impact on Walsh. “He had gone to Wooster and suggested I do the same,” says Walsh. “I had gone there primarily for basketball, but during my first semester, I took a class with Bob Nye, who was the school’s golf coach and a PGA professional.”
The two developed a close relationship from that point on, with Nye (whose son Scott is the head golf professional at Merion Golf Club) encouraging Walsh to devote more time to golf as a player and a member of the school’s team, and also to learn about the service and business side of the game by working at the College of Wooster’s nine-hole course. During his time there, Walsh augmented that education by working for another Wooster alumnus, Gary Welshhans, at Wooster Country Club. By the time the Philadelphian graduated, he had changed his mind about the career he wanted.
“I was all set to follow my father in the insurance business,” Walsh says. “But during my senior year at Wooster, Coach Nye suggested I go into the golf business. As I was thinking it over, I took a summer job at Sankaty Head on Nantucket. Halfway through the season, I decided to give golf a try and the next year started my first full-time job, at the Ridgewood Country Club in New Jersey.”
Eventually, both Walsh and Wick took top jobs in Massachusetts. Wick became the head professional at Oyster Harbors Club on Cape Cod in 1994, after working there as assistant for five years. Then in 1998, Walsh assumed the head professional position at The Country Club. He was only 34 years old. Six years later, in 2004, Wick went to work at Old Sandwich.
“We would see each other every now and then when we were both in New England,” says Wick, who like Walsh is 56 years old and the father of three children. “And after Brendan went to Brookline, we started to get together more often.”
Many of those visits now entail games with golfers who are members of both clubs, and the old friends enjoy the camaraderie those rounds provide as well as the competition. All these years later, they are still trying to best each other on the golf course.
It is one of those “inter-clubs” that has brought Walsh and Wick to Old Sandwich this day, and as they trade barbs about who fared better on the club’s superb Coore-Crenshaw course, they also discuss the places golf has taken them since they were first introduced to the game – and the club professionals who mentored them along the way.
“We have the lives we do today as a result of those people, the ones who encouraged us and took care of us when we were young,” Wick says.
Walsh knows exactly what his friend means. “I often think of those professionals who impacted our lives,” he adds. “They were always there for us. They were always willing to help us out. So, we have tried to do the same with the assistants who have worked for us. We have tried to play it forward for them as we also cared for our members and their guests.”
The game is richer for all that Brendan Walsh and Jay Wick do.
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