It’s called the all-weather get together.
Starting in the fall of 2021, four players began meeting – after a spontaneous, sort of accidental formation – at Council Fire Golf Club in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Their only goal is to make birdies, taking dead aim from any position. Challenging the course record is not just a goal but an expectation. The background music is ’90s rap, a vibe matching their untucked shirts and swaggy Jordan shoes.
And incredibly, this chance meeting of four individuals has helped produce some phenomenal golf in real amateur competition.
It starts with Brendon Wilson, a 45-year-old mid-am who just captured the Gasparilla Invitational by tying the tournament scoring record. The first-time Gasparilla participant beat a national, stacked field of mid-ams and senior ams, a victory coming five months after Wilson won the Tennessee Mid-Am.
Wilson is a longtime member of Council Fire and struck up a friendship at the club with Sheldon McKnight, then a high school senior at Baylor School and now a college freshman at Middle Tennessee State.
“I think it really started with shoes because his shoe game is insane,” McKnight said. “He’s wearing a different pair of J’s every day. B-Dub doesn’t have swag; B-Dub is swag. We kind of had that talk on the range, and then one day I was picking his brain on the chipping green. It was kind of just one of those situations where he obviously knew I was a good player, and I obviously knew he was a good player, and we went out for nine or whatever and we started playing.
“One of the first times we played, we made like 19 birdies or 20 birdies in a day. On No. 1, we both hit it to a foot and I was like, ‘Yo, B-Dub, let's just see how low we can go. Let's see if we can break the course record.’ Obviously you're always trying to go as low as possible, but rarely do you actually say it.”
From there, they were off. McKnight’s best friend is Hayden Hunneke, a 23-year-old who plays Division II golf at Carson-Newman. Hunneke was part of the foursome and kept up with Wilson and McKnight as the 60-something scores started to flow. For comedic effect, Brad Clark, an employee of Wilson’s, rounds out the foursome by regularly shooting 85 or thereabouts from the white tees.
“It was literally like a foursome from God,” McKnight said. “Electric is like the best word to describe it. The energy is just electric.”
“We’re just playing a birdie game, and they're outdriving me. They’ve got all this power, but it's good for me to try to play them. That helps me stay sharp. It’s something I really credit for where I’m at now.”
Brendon Wilson
This group played through the winter, spring and summer of 2022. It was five days per week at some points, and in all kinds of weather. Wilson would throw up the bat signal to the group with just a number – and nothing else – to signify when their tee time would be. It was carefree golf, although everyone was learning. Wilson would ask McKnight and Hunneke about technical advice from a swing standpoint. Going back the other way was a lot of playing the game with mental freedom. It was like Vision 54, the well-known coaching program from Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson, in live action.
While it may sound like much ado about nothing, the no-holds-barred mentality started to have a real effect on each of them as individual competitors.
“We’re just playing a birdie game, and they're outdriving me. They’ve got all this power, but it's good for me to try to play them,” Wilson said. “That helps me stay sharp. It’s something I really credit for where I’m at now.”
But before Wilson’s big wins, McKnight and Hunneke were also producing in tournaments. Last year, McKnight won the Tennessee Junior Amateur and Hunneke captured the Tennessee Match Play Championship. They also both played well at the Tennessee Amateur as McKnight tied for 15th and Hunneke tied for 30th. Combined with Wilson’s mid-am triumph, the group won three of the biggest events on the Tennessee Golf Association calendar, and now Wilson has a Gasparilla title that is arguably a top-three mid-amateur event in the United States.
The group isn’t playing regularly these days because of college golf schedules, but it has had a legitimate effect on the mentality of those involved.
“I was kind of getting burned out a little bit going into college and being really overwhelmed with DI golf and everything,” McKnight said. “And then I literally just chilled (playing with the group), and I started playing great. And it all comes back to B-Dubs. He just goes out there with a smile on his face, is just energetic and just loves it.”
It does all come back to Wilson, an unknown commodity on the mid-am circuit. Wilson moved around a lot growing up as his father was a terminal manager for a couple of different freight companies. He spent much of his youth in north Alabama around the Athens, Huntsville, Madison and Decatur areas. Wilson got involved in golf from an early age and enjoyed time at Decatur Country Club where head pro Jerry Aldridge was also the head of the Alabama Junior Golf Association. He stayed local, not playing a single AJGA event or similar national tournaments.
Wilson played two years of college golf at Wallace State just north of Birmingham.
“My senior year of high school, I finished second in the state championship and (future Korn Ferry Tour pro) Scott Weatherly finished first. He got the scholarship to Auburn, and I ended up at Wallace State.”
Wilson gave a verbal commitment to South Alabama, but the coach ghosted him. Needing a full scholarship to attend school, Wilson ended up finding a match with Tennessee-Chattanooga and became the Mocs’ top player in 1998-2000. He had a successful career and stuck around, in part because he met both his wife and his future business partner, Stephen Smith, while at school.
“He's always been very natural,” Smith said. “He's never been real technical.”
Wilson went on to play the Golden Bear Tour in South Florida in 2000. He won the fifth event in which he played, taking the title at PGA National, and finished 13th on the circuit’s money list. Wilson thought he would have enough funding from a friend who had bankrolled the first year, but that funding dried up before year two.
“I had made a little bit of money, nothing crazy,” Wilson said. “And then (the sponsor) decided not to help me the next year. And because I'd already committed and thought that was coming, I didn't know what to do. And instead of being smart and putting the package together and getting out there to sell stock in myself, I just didn't know how to handle that. So I ended up coming back in Chattanooga pouting a little bit and ended up going to work.”
Wilson tried getting back into professional golf a couple of years later, but it didn’t go well. He had lost the momentum he built through college and his first year of pro golf. Monday qualifiers became a dead end, although he did come away with a funny story from a 2004 qualifier at Ironhorse Country Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Paired with future PGA champion Jason Dufner, Wilson was playing well when he teed off on a par 3 late in the round. Just before Dufner was getting ready to hit, Wilson’s phone went off. Ironhorse had a strict no-cellphone policy at the time.
“My claim to fame is that I backed Dufner off his ball,” Wilson said jokingly. “I kept hearing Dufner’s caddie say to him, ‘Look, if it gets close, I'm gonna have to say something.’ It didn’t, though. I shot 67 and he shot 68. I think 65 got in.”
Wilson, like many who fall out of pro golf, focused on other endeavors. He now has two daughters, ages 9 and 7. He is a co-owner of EZ Loader TMS, a transportation-management software developed in the process of growing a $50 million freight brokerage. Life took precedence over golf.
It wasn’t until 2010 when he really got back into competition.
“I finally just played the (Council Fire) club championship and was leading and then I basically gave it away,” Wilson said. “And I just told myself after that I'm either going to practice and get better or I'm done. And so I just started getting up in the mornings before work and going to hit balls. I'm so glad I did that because I really feel like I want to play golf for the rest of my life.”
He has stayed active in the local Chattanooga golf scene – Wilson is also a member at The Honors Course in nearby Ooltewah – rarely playing tournament golf outside of the area. A couple of friends persuaded him to play in the Gasparilla, a decision that worked out swimmingly. Now he is considering the occasional foray into national competition.
“My goal is to try to get into some of these USGA events,” Wilson said. “I think I would be a good fit, and I would really enjoy it.”
That connects back to the all-weather group and it connects back to the mentality of having fun on the golf course. Smith, a former college teammate of Wilson’s, has seen the transformation over the years.
“He’s become so much stronger mentally,” Smith said. “I've got to watch it over the years, and it's getting better and better, which is making him play better and better.”
That’s perfect for mid-am golf. And it’s perfect for every type of golf.
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Top: Competing with a group of friends has benefitted Brendon Wilson and his younger playing partners.
photo courtesy of Gasparilla invitational