A sellout crowd of 190 people attended the 45th annual Colorado Golf Hall of Fame induction and awards dinner, held Sunday night at Sanctuary in Sedalia.

Included was a veritable who’s who of Colorado golf, past and present. Among the many CGHOF inductees on hand were Judy Bell, the first female president of the USGA; and longtime PGA Tour players Dale Douglass, Dow Finsterwald and Mark Wiebe, who have combined to win 17 events on the PGA Tour, 16 more on PGA Tour Champions, one major championship and two senior majors.

Inducted on Sunday was M.J. Mastalir (pictured), a former CGA president and USGA Executive Committee member, while annual awards went to the Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado (Distinguished Service), Rick Polmear (Lifetime Achievement) and Jennifer Kupcho (Golf Person of the Year).

In his speech, Mastalir noted a personal bond to golf that no doubt was shared by just about everyone in the room.

“The game has provided me with a multitude of fond memories, a heck of a lot of good stories and many good friends,” he said.

For a story on some of the accomplishments of Sunday’s honorees, CLICK HERE.

Tom Green, who just wrapped up a 15-year-plus run as an anchor of Channel 2’s “Daybreak” show, served as master of ceremonies on Sunday.

Below are some photos from Sunday’s festivities: from top, representatives of the Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado; From left, Hall of Famers Maggie Giesenhagen, Tish Preuss, Joan Birkland and Judy Bell; Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Rick Polmear; and a look at Sunday’s setting at Sanctuary.

This summer, there’s an opportunity to both play a stellar golf course which isn’t easy to get on, and to help honor three of Colorado’s all-time golf greats.

The Colorado Golf Hall of Fame will hold its annual tournament on June 29 at a very popular, picturesque venue — Santuary Golf Course in Sedalia — with first-come, first-served registration opening on Friday (Feb. 10) at 9 a.m.

And following the round of golf, three of the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame’s most notable inductees will be recognized — Judy Bell, Dale Douglass and Dow Finsterwald.

Bell was the first female president of the USGA. Douglass won three times on the PGA Tour and 11 on the PGA Tour Champions circuit, including the 1986 U.S. Senior Open. And Finsterwald claimed a dozen PGA Tour wins, with the 1958 PGA Championship being the most notable.

The Colorado Golf Hall of Fame tournament on June 29, which will feature a “shamble” format, will begin with an 11:30 a.m. shotgun start. The cost is $1,000 per foursome. To register for the event beginning Friday at 9 a.m., CLICK HERE.

The reception where Bell, Douglass and Finsterwald will be recognized will follow the golf.

Also this year, the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame will be holding its induction dinner on May 21, also at Sanctuary. Inducted that night will be M.J. Mastalir of Denver, with annual awards going to the new Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado, Jennifer Kupcho of Westminster, and Rick Polmear of Greenwood Village.

For more information on either the induction dinner or the golf tournament, contact CGHOF executive director Sammie Chergo at sammiechergo@gmail.com or 303-594-9159. To visit the CGHOF website, CLICK HERE.

M.J. Mastalir turned 70 years old earlier this month, and on Thursday he received a belated birthday gift that certainly was worth waiting for as he was voted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame.

The Denver resident is a former CGA president who spearheaded the acquisition of a CGA-owned golf course — now known as CommonGround Golf Course — on land that had long been the site of Lowry Air Force Base. Also in a volunteer role, he served on the powerful USGA Executive Committee, eventually becoming a vice president of the association.

On Thursday, the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame Board of Directors selected Mastalir to become the lone person enshrined in the 45th class of inductees. That induction will take place May 21 at the Santuary in Sedalia.

“It’s a nice honor — and humbling,” Mastalir said in a phone interview. “I’ve been really fortunate. I’ve worn a lot of different hats in golf, I’ve met a lot of nice people and gone to a lot of nice places.” (Mastalir is pictured above in blue, flanked by two current Colorado Golf Hall of Famers, Kent Moore and the late Jim English.)

Also honored at the May 21 dinner will be three Colorado Golf Hall of Fame award winners: the new Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado, Jennifer Kupcho of Westminster, and Rick Polmear of Greenwood Village. The JGAC will receive the Distinguished Service Award, Kupcho the Golf Person of the Year Award, and Polmear the Lifetime Achievement Award. (See details about those honorees below.)

Mastalir will become the 139th inductee into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame, an organization which honored its first class in 1973, when Babe Zaharias, Dave Hill and Babe Lind were inducted.

Mastalir served on the CGA Board of Governors from 1986 to 2007, including a three-year stint as president starting in 1997. It was in his role as the chairman of an ad-hoc golf course committee that he arguably left his most lasting legacy in golf. With the closing of Lowry Air Force Base in 1994, he met with the Lowry Redevelopment Authority and convinced the rest of the CGA board to compete for the acquisition of the Lowry course. Over a period of years, the CGA and CWGA gained ownership of the course, which was then known as Mira Vista. An entirely new course — the Tom Doak-designed CommonGround layout — was constructed at the site and opened in 2009, with a myriad of CGA community outreach and youth development programs continuing to take root there.

Over a decade-long period, Mastalir estimates he devoted more than 2,000 hours to the CommonGround project that became very close to his heart.

“I was leading the charge, so it’s been very gratifying” watching CommonGround develop, Mastalir said. “They’ve really created a place for programs for people. They’ve done a marvelous job.”

In his early days as a CGA board member, Mastalir was likewise a member of the USGA Executive Committee, a 15-person group of volunteers that makes policy for one of the most powerful golf organizations in the world.

During Mastalir’s time on the Executive Committee (1986-93), the USGA laid the groundwork for the “For the Good of the Game” grant program that promoted projects that helped make golf much more accessible to juniors, minorities, people with disabilities, etc. The USGA also established the P.J. Boatwright Jr., Internship Program, which effectively funded an internship position for state and regional golf associations throughout the country.

Mastalir also served as chairman of the USGA Rules of Golf Committee — a very powerful and influential force in the game — from 1988 to ’93.

In addition to trying to expand and improve the game in Colorado and beyond, Mastalir was a fine golfer in his own right. He played a season of golf at the University of Colorado, where he was sixth man during a season the Buffs (as a five-man team) won the 1968 Big Eight Championship and placed eighth in the NCAA Championships. Mastalir went on to compete in two U.S. Amateurs, the first U.S. Mid-Amateur and two British Amateurs.

Mastalir’s time on the CU golf team came immediately after Hale Irwin’s, but caddying for Irwin as he won the 1964 CGA Amateur at Hyland Hills was the event that sparked Mastalir’s own love for the game. He’s long been a member at both Denver Country Club at the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.

Mastalir retired in 2010 after spending the last 22 years of his career financing golf courses.

Next year will mark just the second time the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame has inducted just one person in a given class, with Paul McMullen in 1985 setting the precedent.

As for the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame award winners, here’s the rundown:

— Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado (Distinguished Service Award): A combined effort of the CGA and the Colorado PGA, with the CWGA serving as a contributing partner, the JGAC proved a big success in its inaugural year. The idea of the alliance is to streamline, improve and expand the junior golf experience in Colorado, and it hit the mark in 2016.

Membership in the JGAC is up about 16 percent from what it was for the CJGA in 2015, and tournament participation jumped 23.5 percent, not counting PGA Junior League Golf and the Drive, Chip & Putt events.

Kids playing in Colorado-based Drive, Chip & Putt competitions increased almost 15 percent from 2015. For the PGA Junior League Golf in Colorado, the number of kids, teams and facilities participating roughly doubled in 2016 compared to 2015. And if fall projections prove accurate, almost 28 percent more kids will be reached this year than last through the Colorado PGA Golf in Schools Program, with the total for 2016 expected to be 10,101.

Even with some spring events canceled due to the weather, there were more than 80 junior tournaments that the JGAC oversaw in 2016, highlighted by the four major championships for both boys and girls.

— Jennifer Kupcho (Golf Person of the Year): The 19-year-old from Westminster, the CWGA Player of the Year in both 2014 and ’15, took another big step in 2016.

She finished sixth individually in the women’s NCAA Championship finals and qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open, arguarbly the top women’s golf tournament in the world. Kupcho also swept the CWGA Match Play and Stroke Play titles, becoming the first player to do so in 12 years. In winning by huge margins in 2016 (12 and 10 in the Match Play final, and by 19 shots in the Stroke Play), she became the first golfer since the 1980s to win three straight CWGA “majors”. And earlier this month, the Wake Forest sophomore won her first individual title at a college tournament, breaking a Demon Deacons’ women’s program record with a 15-under-par 201 total at the Ruth’s Chris Tar Heel Invitational, where she prevailed by six strokes.

— Rick Polmear (Lifetime Achievement Award): Polmear, a University of Michigan Evans Scholar alum who has lived in Colorado since 1981, has long been a tireless supporter of the college scholarship for caddies. But he took that support to a new level as the volunteer project manager for the $6 million University of Colorado Evans Scholars house renovation and expansion project, which was completed early this year.

Polmear estimates he devoted about 1,000 hours to the project over the course of three years. The end result is a house almost totally redone on the inside, the addition of roughly 2,000 square feet of finished space (bringing the total to about 18K), and a nifty new outdoor area behind the house that features a combination lighted basketball/volleyball court and a congregating area with brick pavers that Polmear refers to as a “plaza”. All in all, it’s been a huge upgrade for the 50-plus current CU Evans Scholars.

Polmear has served as a volunteer director for the Western Golf Association — which administers the Evans Scholarship nationwide — since 1990.
 

As one of three lucky winners of $12,000 pro-am spots in the BMW Championship, Pete Knutson was beside himself with joy at the prospect of playing alongside a PGA Tour professional Sept. 3 at Cherry Hills Country Club.

“I’m giddy, just absolutely giddy,” he said. “My mom said I’d never amount to anything by golfing all the time. Look at me now, mom.”

On Saturday evening at CommonGround Golf Course, the pro-am contest winners were announced, as was the CGA’s donation of $51,700 to the Evans Scholars Foundation to help provide scholarships to worthy caddies. CommonGround, which is owned and operated by the CGA and CWGA, is the site of the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy.

George Solich — for whom, with brother Geoff, the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy is named — personally purchased and donated the three spots in the Gardner Heidrick Pro-Am which immediately precedes the BMW Championship. The hope was that the pro-am contest that culminated on Saturday would further incentivize the use of caddies through the Solich Academy, support the Evans Scholarship, and raise awareness about the BMW Championship, which is set for Sept. 1-7 at Cherry Hills. Solich is the general chairman of the tournament and a former Evans Scholar at the University of Colorado. The Evans Scholarship is the sole beneficiary of the BMW Championship.

“We also wanted to see if we can give three guys a chance to play in a (PGA Tour) pro-am that maybe otherwise would have never had the chance,” Solich said Saturday. “So this is really cool. These guys are going to love this pro-am. It’s really considered the best pro-am on the PGA Tour because you’re guaranteed to play with one of the top 70 players in the world and you play as a threesome (of amateurs) with a pro. It’s awesome. (The pro-am contest) is exactly what I hoped for.”

Landing the three BMW Championship pro-am spots through the contest were Mike Stolze, 37, of Greenwood Village; Pete Knutson, 38, of Denver; and Andy Harwood, 45, of Denver. Each will play Cherry Hills as part of 56 groups in the Gardner Heidrick Pro-Am, with each group featuring a PGA Tour professional and three amateurs. And given that only the top 70 Tour players in the FedExCup standings qualify for the BMW Championship, it will be pretty heady company for the participating amateurs. Among the professionals expected to be at Cherry Hills are reigning British Open and PGA Championship winner Rory McIlroy, U.S. Open champ Martin Kaymer, Masters winner Bubba Watson, Phil Mickelson, Rickie Fowler and Adam Scott.

Harwood is a CU Evans Scholar alum who caddied at Cherry Hills in the 1980s, while Stolze and Knutson have never before played the prestigious course. (The three are pictured above, with George Solich. From left: Stolze, Harwood, Knutson and Solich.) All three of the contest winners are solid players, with handicaps between 3.8 (Harwood) and about a 6 (Knutson).

“The fact that I get to play in the pro-am is wildly fun, partly because I did all my caddying at Cherry Hills,” said Harwood, who served as caddiemaster for the Solich Academy in its first year, 2012. “I have a unique knowledge of that golf course, having been around it 300-400 times.”

Knutson earned his pro-am spot by utilizing Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy caddies more than anyone else in 2013 and ’14 combined (48 times as of when the contest ended). Harwood won a lottery drawing limited to the players other than Knutson who used Solich Academy caddies for at least five 18-hole rounds in 2013 and ’14. Stolze won a raffle in which each ticket ran $100, with all the proceeds going to the Evans Scholars.

Stolze bought “a handful” of raffle tickets, notably from Geoff (Duffy) Solich, with whom he works.

“He was soliciting contributions from those of us who play golf in the office,” Stolze said. “It’s a big deal for him (as an Evans Scholar alum), so I obviously wanted to support the cause. I didn’t have any inclination I’d actually win something. But hey, what do you know?

“Geoff called me on Wednesday or Thursday and I thought he was just kidding me. He said, ‘I think you won the prize.’ Finally, one of the ladies from the Colorado Golf Association called (and notified him). I thought, ‘Maybe he’s not kidding.’ It’s fantastic. I’m super excited about it.”

With 517 raffle tickets sold, $51,700 was raised for the Evans Scholars program, which has about 840 students currently on full-tuition and housing scholarships nationwide, including close to 50 at CU. A check for that amount was presented to Western Golf Association directors Solich, Kevin Laura and Rick Polmear on Saturday. (Pictured at left are CGA executive director Ed Mate, Solich, Laura and Polmear.) The WGA administers the Evans Scholarship and runs the BMW Championship.

“Tonight was the culmination of a two-year-long effort,” noted Mate, himself also a CU Evans Scholar alum. “Like everything George does, he seems to have a Midas Touch. We raised $50,000-plus for the Evans Scholars and we generated a tremendous amount of interest in the caddie program here. It’s just been a home run. Fantastic.

“The best thing we did is put the charge on the WGA directors from Colorado. Every WGA director was given 20 tickets and it was just, ‘Go sell them.’ You’re not going to sell those through the internet; it takes a personal tough to get somebody to plunk down $100, even though a $12,000 prize is a big deal.”

The Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy, now in its third year at CommonGround, provides incentives to take caddies by paying all of their base fees. Some of the best Solich Academy caddies go on to work at other caddie programs in Colorado, and some have been and will be candidates for the Evans Scholarship.

“Taking a caddie is the way to golf,” Knutson said. “It’s so pleasant. These kids are great. I’ve really enjoyed it.

“I love these kids (from the Solich Academy). At first I thought it was just somebody to carry my bag. But you come out here and they give you a high-five every time. They’re excited about your golf. You hear about their life and what they want to do and their dreams. My caddie today wants to be a world-class pianist. My best friend’s mom teaches at CU. I’m trying to hook them up together. If I can influence one or two kids, that’s a bonus on top of getting to play a lot of golf.”

Besides getting to playing alongside a PGA Tour player, each Gardner Heidrick Pro-Am participant receives four weekly badges for the BMW Championship, a commemorative picture plaque of his pro-am group, and two invitations to the Sept. 2 pro-am draw party and two to the Sept. 3 awards reception.
 As for which Tour players the pro-am contest winners will be paired with come Sept. 3, that will be decided at the private pairings party held Sept. 2. Some of the Tour players even show up for that event.

“It’s essentially a raffle,” explained Solich, who personally is going to be caddying for John Elway on Sept. 3. “You put all the numbers in the pot, No. 1 through 56, and when your number come up, you get to pick the pro (although the sponsor reserves some rights). It’s like a draft. It’s really fun.”

Stolze, for one, is going to savor this whole BMW Championship pro-am experience.

“We’re playing a nice course the day before the tournament opens and I’ll enjoy watching somebody that’s fantastic at their craft playing alongside me,” he said.

Many of the pro-am competitors are likely to have some butterflies playing with PGA Tour professionals and in front of galleries. And Knutson may encounter an additional obstacle.

“I have a bunch of friends who are going to be out there and they said they’re going to harass me,” he said with a smile. “But I’m just beyond belief excited. As a kid it’s a dream to play on the PGA Tour. I know I don’t have the game, but this is as close as I’ll ever get.”

“Game of a Lifetime Statue” Unveiled: Besides lending his name and providing significant financial support for the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy, George Solich recently donated a statue (left) that was unveiled Saturday near the practice putting green at CommonGround.

The statue is titled “The Game of a Lifetime”. A young boy, with his feet in adult golf shoes, is toting a golf bag, with an accompanying plaque reading: “Inspiring future generations to discover the passion, honor the tradition, and fully embrace this amazing game and all it has to offer.”