Kennedy spent his professional career in the law field — as a criminal investigator, a deputy district attorney, a lawyer in private practice, then 16 years as a District Court Judge based in Colorado Springs, his lifelong home.

So the fact that the University of Colorado Law graduate has served as a volunteer rules official in Colorado over the past five years, playing an ever-larger role since retiring from the bench in 2015, makes perfect sense.

“The Rules of Golf — there are only 34 — but you have a huge number of decisions,” Kennedy said by phone on Friday. “The law is very much the same. The statutes that define criminal law, for example, are relatively small in number, but there are tens of thousands of appellate court decisions which interpret those. It’s very much the same discipline (in golf) of understanding what the rule is, but also understanding how they’re interpreted and how they’re applied in everyday circumstances.

“I think it was a pretty easy transition for me because I spent my entire adult life dealing with the law, dealing with the rules and learning how to understand them and apply them to the factual situation that existed at that time. As I told people when I first started doing this, I’m used to calling balls and strikes. That’s what I’ve been doing all my adult life. My mind works in a way that I’m able to grasp some of that stuff just because that’s what I’ve been trained to do all my adult life.”

The CGA tracks the number of dates worked by volunteer rules officials in a given year — counting CGA championships and qualifiers, USGA championships and qualifiers, CoBank Colorado Open championships and qualifiers, Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado tournaments, other junior events, and Colorado-based college tournaments — and more than 50 officials worked at least one day in 2017 on the CGA spreadsheet.

Impressively, nine people chalked up at least 25 days in 2017: Greg With (46 days), John Sova (37), Tim Hersee (33), Mike Boster (32), Mike Rice (31), Dennie Runge (31), Kennedy (26), former CGA president Jim Magette (25) and Brad Wiesley (25).

The CWGA, which officially joined forces with the CGA at the beginning of this year, also has a large group of volunteer officials and it presents its Volunteer of the Year Award at the Women’s Annual Meeting, which this year will be held March 3 at the Inverness Hotel & Conference Center.

For his part, Kennedy was recently presented the Jim Topliff Award as the CGA’s on-course rules official of the year for 2017. The honor is named for Topliff, a longtime tournament director for the CGA who passed away in 2007. Of the aforementioned rules officials, Hersee (2015), Wiesley (2012), With (2011), Rice (2008) and Sova (2006) have received the award.

Kennedy took on considerably more responsibility last year in serving as the chief official for a handful of events, including the Mark Simpson Colorado Invitational that the University of Colorado hosts at Colorado National Golf Club in Erie. In 2017, he was also part of ruling crews at multi-day tournaments such as the CoBank Colorado Women’s Open and Colorado Senior Open, the Colorado Junior PGA Championship and other college tournaments.

“From the first of May until the middle of October (in 2017) I spent a fair amount of time on golf courses,” he said. “I worked a lot more than I played golf this past year, there’s no doubt about that.”

The first step in Kennedy’s increased role — following his retirement from the bench in the summer of 2015 — was taking a rules exam at the end of a PGA/USGA Rules of Golf Workshop in 2016. Kennedy recalls he scored a 96 on the exam.

“I studied pretty dang hard,” the 69-year-old said. “I told people it was the hardest exam I’ve taken since I took the bar exam. And I studied about as hard for it as I did for the bar as well.”

Besides the basic appeal of being a rules official given his legal background, Kennedy was attracted to the position for a couple of other reasons.

“I knew I wanted something to keep me active and involved and outdoors,” he said. “I’m an outdoors guy. I golf and I hike and I bike. I spend as much of my leisure time as I can outdoors. (Kennedy is pictured at Canyonlands in southeast Utah.)

“Being on the golf course seemed to be something worthwhile and you feel like you’re giving something back to the game. As a judge I spent a lot of time working with kids who had come from troubled homes so I’d always had a soft spot in my heart for working with kids. It seemed like a natural fit to work with juniors on the golf course as well.” (Besides his work on the course, Kennedy is a former chairman of the board for the YMCA of the Pikes Peak Region.)

And there are social and intellectual aspects to rules officiating as well.

“I had an interest in it and it was a good niche,” said Kennedy, a former high school golfer (Palmer HS in Colorado Springs) who plays to an 11.8 USGA Handicap Index out of the Garden of the Gods Club. “The guys that I work with are guys very much like me — my same age group, avid golfers who were looking to give something back to the game. Plus, I’m a retired judge and I wanted to have something that continued to challenge me intellectually.”

After working some events as a chief official where another person of CRO caliber was on hand to help out as need be, Kennedy was on his own in that role at the CU Mark Simpson Invite in September. And, as often occurs, an issue came up that proved challenging.

On the 12th green at Colorado National, Kennedy said when the grounds crew was mowing, something had come lose from the mower and it had created a small trench — maybe a quarter-inch wide and not quite that deep — running right across the center of the green.

“None of us knew how to treat that,” Kennedy said. “You get that kind of oddball thing that I hadn’t seen before. That was the first time I was the chief official so I had to make the final decision. That was interesting. What I did was to let players repair (the damage) as if it were a ball mark in the line of their putt so the ball wasn’t hopping across this trench. I don’t know if that was the right decision or not, but that was the only thing I could come up with that made sense for me to do. I’d be curious to see what the USGA guys would say that we would do about that.”

Kennedy, and many rules officials like him, face more challenges ahead as the Rules modernization plan announced almost a year ago by the USGA and the R&A will take effect in 2019.

“I haven’t spent a lot of time really digging into the weeds with the new rules,” Kennedy said. “Some of the things certainly needed to be updated. I don’t mind having to learn new stuff; I like learning new stuff. Some of the stuff might create some challenges for the officials just because it’s going to be a change, and most of us have been playing the game under these rules or using them as officials for a long time.

“The purpose is trying to speed up the pace of play and also make (the game’s rules) seem like they’re fair. You have the publicized things like Lexi Thompson losing (the 2017 ANA Inspiration after incurring four penalty strokes). and the Dustin Johnson thing (at the 2016 U.S. Open, which he still won). Some people look at that and say, ‘Those rules are just unfair’ and it might cast a negative view on the game of golf because it seems like the punishment does not match the crime — like a quarter-turn of a golf ball that gives you no advantage. My feeling is they’re trying to make the Rules of Golf appear more fair. If you have a minor infraction, you shouldn’t have something that costs you a major golf tournament, like what happened to Lexi Thompson.

“I hope it accomplishes what they want — that people can look at it and say that’s fair and we avoid some of the slow-play issues which sometime are caused by (rulings).”

Spoken like someone who knows a little something about rules.
  

The CGA and CWGA utilize many volunteer rules officials who work tournaments not only in Colorado, but in far-flung locations as well.

But it’s probably a safe bet that not many local rules officials have taken it to the extent that Windy He has.

In Colorado, He (pictured) has been a fixture at many significant — and widely varying — golf tournaments. Besides CGA and CWGA events, that includes USGA qualifiers, Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado tournaments, the CoBank Colorado Women’s Open, boys and girls state high school championships and even one NCAA Division II tournament. In all, she devoted 33 days this year to volunteering as a rules official.

But now, she notes with a laugh, “It’s officially closed for the season.”

Before moving to Colorado, He did similar duty in her native China, in and around Guangzhou, a city in the southeastern part of country, near Hong Kong. In fact, He got her start as a rules official in China, after being spurred to do so by an incident at a golf tournament involving her son, Li Chen, who currently plays on the University of Northern Colorado men’s golf team.

“That was a very interesting story,” He recalled this week. “In 2003 my son Li Chen was trying to qualify in China for the Junior World Golf Champioships in San Diego. He was 6 years old, and he hit the wrong ball. Somebody told me, ‘There is a two-stroke penalty.’ I said, “What!? There is a penalty in golf? Seriously?’ The guy said, ‘Yes, that’s the rules.’ I said, ‘How many rules are there in golf?’ And the guy said, ‘Lots of rules.’ I had to figure it out. So I bought some rules books and began to read the rules.”

Several years later, she was ready to take the next step.

“When my son played golf in China, he played on a junior golf team and they wanted to do some tournaments and they needed some rules officials,” He said. “I thought, ‘OK, I can do it.’ And I got the certificate (in 2008) and helped them to do some junior events. That was the first time I was a rules official.”

After teaching in a Chinese elementary school, then starting up a company that sold golf shoes and later developing the first junior golf website in China (chinajuniorgolf.com) in 2004, He officiated at tournaments in China in 2008 and ’09.

In 2010 He and her family moved to Colorado after she had never before been to the state as her husband, Damon Chen, was transferred from China to the Niwot-based headquarters for shoe manufacturer Crocs. The family now lives in Broomfield.

For several years, He helped facilitate son Li’s development as a promising junior golfer. Li went on to twice finish runner-up in the 5A state high school tournament and earned a spot on the UNC men’s golf team. And when Li was a senior at Legacy High School, He returned to officiating, starting in 2015. (He is pictured this fall giving guidance at the 3A state high school tournament to eventual champion Oliver Jack.)

“My son has played golf for more than 14 years now, and I’m thinking for this long term what makes us stay (closer) together,” He said. “If I play golf it’s not possible for me to be as good as my son. But rules, I can do it. It’s all about reading, decisions and experience. So I do the rules and he plays golf. That makes us stay on the same page. It makes us more close so we can stick together.”

Li Chen is a sophomore at UNC this season and He attended many of his fall tournaments, particularly given that the Bears played all of their fall events within the state.

So how does rules officiating differ in China and the U.S. for He?

“There’s some difference,” she noted. “The first is the language. In China, I used my native language. Here, I use a second language, which is English. It’s a little bit difficult for me (He speaks three languages overall: Cantonese, Mandarin and English). That’s the biggest difference. And here, I can choose which tournaments I’m going to work because there’s lots of tournaments. In China there’s just a few tournaments. There’s not as much opportunity to work.”

Fortunately, that’s not an issue in Colorado, which is why He has become a familiar face at some of the biggest tournaments held in the state.

While He got into rules officiating for reasons related to her son, her enjoyment of officiating now goes beyond that.

“It’s (nice to) work — I cannot say it’s a job — with people,” she said. “I especially enjoy working with junior players because a rules official always can help them on the course — and that makes me happy.”

A tweet from the Pacific Coast Golf Association put it succinctly: “Dr. Joe Salvo, RIP to one of golf’s great volunteers. We will miss you”, adding the hashtag #bestsmileinthegame.

Indeed, Salvo will long be remembered for many things, not the least of which was his amiable manner and how he gave of himself and his time.

Salvo, a member of the CGA board of governors for 16 years and one of the top volunteer rules officials in Colorado, passed away unexpectedly on April 10 at the age of 78.

A memorial service will be held for the longtime Colorado Springs resident on May 26 at 1 p.m. at the Broadmoor Community Church (315 Lake Avenue in Colorado Springs).

Salvo passed away just a day after CGA executive director Ed Mate said goodbye to him in the Portland airport after both had attended the Pacific Coast Amateur spring meeting along with USGA regional affairs director Mark Passey. The next night, Mate received an email saying that Salvo had just died, leaving a significant void in the Colorado golf community.

“First and foremost, Joe was just a special person,” Mate said. “He collected friends everywhere he went. He had an incredible gift with people, whether it was with the CGA, the Pacific Coast, his medical practice or anywhere else. Everybody liked him because he was so sincere and so in the moment — and you can’t fake that. He touched people in a special way. We’re lucky because he was so passionate about golf and the Rules of Golf. He had a lot of passions, but golf was a focal point the last 20 years or so.”

Indeed, Salvo had been a CGA volunteer for more than 25 years, and he currently was chairman of the association’s Rules Committee. But Salvo’s golf-related volunteerism certainly didn’t stop there. He also gave of his time with the USGA, often working as a rules official at the U.S. Senior Amateur and the U.S. Senior Open; as a trustee for the Pacific Coast G.A. and its Pacific Coast Amateur; with the Arizona Golf Association as he was a part-time resident of that state; and in college golf.

In fact, Salvo was scheduled to work last week’s Pac-12 Conference Women’s Championships at Boulder Country Club. “He was looking forward to being here,” noted that tournament’s head rules official Bob Austin, while still taken aback at how Salvo passed away so abruptly.

And Salvo didn’t just volunteer a few hours here or there to golf. Indeed, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the oral and maxillofacial surgeon volunteered thousands upon thousands upon thousands of hours over the years.

Mike Boster, a fellow prominent rules official and a good friend of Salvo, estimates that Salvo — who’s held memberships at the Broadmoor, Kissing Camels and Tucson National — typically worked 70-75 days a year on the course, and that doesn’t include traveling and the like.

“Joe gave so much to the game and to every association he was with,” Boster said. “He was pretty much a year-round rules official.”

Another longtime rules official, Rich Langston, still remembers the first tournament he worked alongside Salvo — the 1994 CGA Senior Match Play at the Ranch Country Club.

“Joe was always just a super guy,” Langston said. “He enjoyed the game and always had good stories about growing up. He and I were probably the only two youngsters I know of who wore knickers when we were little — Joe because his dad was a tailor and could make a pair of knickers for a dollar, and me because that’s what my older brother had, and that’s what I wore.”

While many people knew Salvo through golf, he led an eventful life in many realms. He spent eight years in the Army, doing two tours in Vietnam; he played college golf at Tufts University in Massachusetts — where he was born; he spent 34 years in his private oral and maxillofacial practice; he was a member of the Professional Ski Instructors of America; and he was a certified pistol and personal defense instructor. And Joe and his wife, Beth, played golf in more than 35 countries on five continents.

All in all, a life well lived.