“It was very unexpected how much attention we got, but she is really cute, so it is not too surprising.”
AKRON, Ohio – Jayni and Ryan Hershberger were “looking for something to do” Sunday afternoon in Akron.
With temperatures in the mid-80s and plenty of sunshine, the couple made the short walk to Firestone Country Club with their five-month old daughter, Marlowe, to watch the final round of the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship.
They also brought a hand-written sign that read “My first golf tournament” to Firestone’s South Course.
Bridgestone Senior Players Champion Jerry Kelly saw the sign and young Marlowe after he compiled a four-day score of 11-under-par 269 and met with the family.
Kelly handed the Hershberger family his hat that he wore Sunday, posed for pictures and even held young Marlowe, who wore a shirt that read “Little Wonder.”
“I got her smiling,” Kelly said. “She is cute.”
Kelly also signed the hat and the sign, which came from the inside of a Pampers box.
When asked when was the last time he held a baby that little, Kelly said with a laugh: “Yeah, that would be 22 years ago, almost 23 years ago, yes. Nieces and nephews, things like that, but no grandkids. “Soon, I hope.”
Ryan Hershberger said the “My first golf tournament” sign idea came from his mother.
“We love the tournament that comes here every year,” Ryan Hershberger said. “We live two blocks away and decided to come over. We are looking forward to the Akron Symphony afterwards as well.”
“I grew up five minutes away and used to come to the golf tournament here all the time with my parents,” Ryan Hershberger said. “Now, we have this one so we wanted to share the tradition with her.
“… This is very memorable for sure, especially getting to meet the one who wins the whole tournament. To have that moment with our daughter is definitely something we can treasure forever.”
“It will be fun to show her things that she didn’t even know she was experiencing,” Jayni Hershberger said. “When she gets older, it will be fun to show her ‘Yeah, you met that guy.'”
Marlowe Hershberger smiled as her parents spoke and fiddled around with her new toy, a signed Jerry Kelly hat.
“It was very unexpected how much attention we got, but she is really cute, so it is not too surprising,” Jayni Hershberger said with a laugh.
Steve Stricker continued his run during the early going on Saturday of the Senior Players but showed signs of loose wheels later on.
AKRON, Ohio — Steve Stricker is either going to join Arnold Palmer and Bernhard Langer as a wire-to-wire winner or author a collapse of unimaginable proportions during Sunday’s final round of the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship at Firestone Country Club.
He showed signs of both on a sunny and windy Saturday.
Stricker continued his assault on the famed South Course during the early going on Saturday but showed signs of loose wheels in the later going and teetered on the brink of a stunning collapse.
A third-round 72 left Stricker still on top of the leaderboard at 7-under 203, but reigning champion Jerry Kelly crawled up Stricker’s back and is just four shots behind.
Only a birdie on the 625-yard 16th stopped the hemorrhaging and might have saved the day – and the tournament — for Stricker.
“It was a tough stretch of holes in there from 12, 13, 14, 15,” Stricker said. “I had a five-shot lead starting the day, I’ve got four now, so all in all I didn’t give away too many. But had an opportunity to kind of distance myself; that was the plan today. Go out, get going, be aggressive and make some birdies and get out ahead. But kind of got sidetracked there in the middle.”
He was able to right the ship with the birdie on 16.
“Yeah, I think so. It was a good drive, a good 4-iron that I hit there and a nice, chip, good putt. I played the hole well, played the next hole well, just got a gust of wind at 17, and played 18 well. I’m fine, I just I wish I didn’t have the little hiccups there in the middle.”
Stricker, 54, opened the third round with a 5-shot lead and birdied the first three holes to eventually make the turn at 2-under 33.
But he made three bogeys and one double-bogey on the back and tumbled back to the pack.
What had been a seemingly insurmountable 9-shot lead dwindled to four by day’s end as Kelly showed some heart with a third-round 2-under 68 to end 54 holes at 3-under 207.
Palmer led from start to finish in winning the 1985 Senior Players at Canterbury Golf Club in Beachwood, and Langer, who has won 41 events on the Tour Champions list, followed suit in winning in 2015 at the Belmont Club outside Boston.
Stricker, 54, suffered his first two bogeys of the tournament on the fourth and 10th holes and stumbled to a double-bogey on the par-3 12th, but his three consecutive opening birdies extended his lead to a whopping nine strokes, seemingly leaving the field in his wake.
Contenders Paul Broadhurst, Ken Duke and Marco Dawson – or anyone else, for that matter – were not able to mount any challenge to the U.S. Ryder Cup captain.
Broadhurst, a two-time Senior major winner who started the day in second place, five shots behind Stricker, bogeyed two holes on the front and fell into a tie for eighth with Dawson at 2 over, nine shots off the lead.
Dawson also bogeyed two holes to start and added another on the 12th.
Duke was the lone contender able to maintain an even level and eventually pulled into sole possession of third place, five shots behind. He made the turn at even-par and added a birdie on the 12th by making a putt from just off the back edge of the green.
Jim Furyk, Ernie Els and David Toms are tied for fourth at even par, seven shots behind Stricker.
Kelly, who won here last with a final score of 3-under 277, began the day eight shots behind Stricker. He bogeyed the first but rebounded with two birdies and eventually to 3-under.
“I enjoy the chase,” Kelly said. “I’d rather be in the lead and stretch it, that’s everybody’s ideal. But, I don’t mind the chase.”
Now that he is in the hunt, Kelly showed some renewed vigor.
“It feels great,” he said in answering a question as to how it felt to be in the hunt. “I feel the swing is getting better and better each day. I still feel good putting and the short game. I mean, I’ve just got to go out and play. These conditions are tough. It’s going to be even tougher tomorrow. Yeah, it’s going to be a dogfight.”
John Daly will launch a new foundation with an undisclosed partner. The 501C3 charity will serve children and veterans.
For years, the lure of John Daly has been his party-boy persona and his belief in living life to the fullest.
He was identified by his penchant for cigarettes, Diet Cokes and his annual fan get-together in the parking lot at Hooters during Masters week.
All that created a caricature of Daly that gave little hint of the man inside the brightly-colored pants. Now 54, Daly is ready to add another, more impactful chapter to his legacy, putting his “Heart of a Lion” mantra on full display.
Later this month, Daly will launch a new foundation with an undisclosed partner. The 501C3 charity will serve children and veterans, with some of the initiatives to benefit cities where Daly schedules golf appearances.
Its first major donation will be the construction of a new Boys & Girls Club in Dardanelle, Arkansas, where Daly lives and holds his annual golf tournament in support of that club. The new group is also building a home for a veteran in Oklahoma.
John Daly places his broken putter in the back of his cart after finishing with a quadruple bogey on hole sixteen during the third round of the 2020 Bridgestone Senior Players Championship at Firestone Country Club, Saturday, Aug. 15, 2020, in Akron, Ohio. [Photo by Jeff Lange/Beacon Journal]“He’s just a guy who wants to leave a legacy and he loves these kids and he loves these vets,” said Rick Leslie, a director and chairman of Daly’s new foundation. “If he had all his winnings from back in the day, he wouldn’t use it to do anything else but helping people. I’m not sure when he came to that epiphany, but now that’s all we talk about.”
The date of that awakening for the winner of nearly $12 million in his PGA and Champions Tour careers remains unknown. Daly declined to comment after carding an 82 Saturday in the third round of the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship at Firestone Country Club during which he broke his putter after carding a 9 on the 16th hole (his seventh). The foundation’s announcement and kickoff is slated for Aug. 26-28.
Daly has another foundation, but it has languished in recent years. Leslie met Daly through the unnamed partner, a close friend of Daly’s. Leslie believes they found each other at the right time about three or four months ago.
Leslie, 50, of Manhattan Beach, California, calls himself an entrepreneur. He owns a CBD company and a printing business. He says he attended “the college of hard knocks,” to which down-to-earth Daly can relate. Leslie had served on boards of other charities and volunteered his help in a new endeavor.
“I said, ‘I have an accounting firm, I have a law firm, I have graphic designers, I have everything in house to do this,’” Leslie said in a Friday phone interview. “Oddly enough, it just clicked like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Leslie said he plays golf, though not well, and had the same impression of Daly as most of the sport’s fans.
“From the outside watching golf and watching John, I didn’t realize what a good man he actually is,” Leslie said. “The media portray him as a party boy. He does have some of that, but that’s OK because that’s him.
“In the short time I’ve known him, he’s one of my favorite people on earth. He’s a great golfer and I’m not sure if he even understands his star status. There’s not one time he hasn’t answered my phone call or text. It’s always, ‘What’s up, brother? You know I love you, man.’ How can you not love somebody who says that to you? That’s him in a nutshell. He loves life, loves people and he loves his family.”
Daly has three children — Shynah, 28, Sierra, 25, and John II, 17, a promising junior golfer.
Leslie said he’s already spoken to about 30 potential donors, all friends of Daly’s. Leslie said the new foundation’s goal is to return 85 to 90 percent of the money raised to charity.
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“He goes, ‘We haven’t started yet, brother,’” Leslie said of Daly. “He was in a car with a large music star the other day and all of a sudden this musician goes, ‘Hey, Rick, I heard about you.’
“These are people who would do whatever John wanted, just because of John’s heart. They’re like, ‘[If it’s] set up properly, we’re in. What do you need?’ I’ve never had that, ever.’ When you raise money for 501C3 companies, it’s a struggle. You get 100 or 200 people, it’s a good showing. We’ve already spoken to that many people and 30-plus have been stars.”
Leslie called the new organization “a foundation of foundations.” He said it will partner with other charities and said Gary Sinise’s will be one of them. The actor best known for his role as Lt. Dan Taylor in “Forrest Gump” is dedicated to helping veterans, first responders and their families. If Daly is playing in Memphis, Tennessee, Leslie said it will be St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Two affiliations in Florida are also being lined up.
“Not everybody is as lucky as who we have and what we have, resources-wise and star power. And not just John,” Leslie said.
Daly will always be a larger-than-life figure. It may not be possible for him to eclipse his missteps, his excesses, the outrageousness that made him a cult hero. But Leslie believes he can help Daly use all that for a greater purpose.
“Honestly, he has the biggest heart of anybody I know,” Leslie said. “This is his legacy. It’s an opportunity for him to help the public have a different perception of him.”
John Daly follows his shot out of the bunker for birdie on hole twelve during the third round of the 2020 Bridgestone Senior Players Championship at Firestone Country Club, Saturday, Aug. 15, 2020, in Akron, Ohio. [Jeff Lange/Beacon Journal]
