I wonder now why Kaye Kessler was not pictured in the “Meet the Irish” promotional material?
I went to one of those Masters after hours party in 2012. This one was “Meet the Irish.” I was thinking Padraig Harrington, Graham McDowell, Rory McIlroy and Darren Clarke. You know, those Irishman who have been hogging all the majors. Padraig started it all winning three of eight majors and then the young and the old followed suit giving obsolescence to the term “luck of the Irish.” Well, I did not meet those Irishman that night but I did get to meet another one (at least I think he is Irish), the veteran sportswriter Kaye Kessler. I wasn’t too adept at the art of interviewing back in those days (neither am I now for the record) but came around to cornering Kaye and started asking him a lot of questions and scribbling down his responses in my notebook. Technically scribble is abstract line drawing and in the case of mine that means illegible. This was back before the Diary or even the Journey and I was ill-prepared without an audio recording device or thoughts of asking for a video interview.
With Kaye Kessler, a veteran sportswriter who’s work covers six decades!
Kaye was a delightful older gentleman who immediately took me back with him to Columbus, Ohio where he had covered all 28 seasons of Woody Hayes as the head football coach of The Ohio State University. His recollection of the five-time national champion coach was one of “perfection.” One day Kaye got a call from the head golf professional at Scioto CC who was starting a golf clinic. So he went over and wrote a story about a 10-year old kid who shot a score of 51 when he played his first nine holes. The name of the kid was Jack Nicklaus and Kaye has followed him his whole golfing career.
Incidentally, Jack’s father Charlie and Woody Hayes were born on the same day- Valentine’s Day in 1913. Though Mr. Kessler is known for his joke that “if you live long enough, all good things will fall into your lap,” it is obvious a lot of good things came to him via his talent, personality and work ethic. I am just happy I “fell into his lap” one evening in Augusta and scribbled down as many words as I could. Thanks Kaye Kessler!
