These Apples Didn't Fall Far from the Tee

These Apples Didn’t Fall Far from the Tee

Father’s Day profiles of four Colorado golf families.

By JON RIZZI

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June 2018 | COLORADO AVIDGOLFER

Jim & Charlotte Hillary

COLORADO AVIDGOLFER | June 2018

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PHOTOGRAPH BY EJ CARR

LIKE A DUCK to water, Charlotte Hillary has taken to the game her father, Jim, has loved since learning it as a teen from his mother on the municipal courses of Monmouth County, New Jersey.

It wasn’t always that way. “I latched onto golf when I was 12,” Charlotte, a Kent Denver sophomore, says. “I’d played before then—if you count going to the range at Cherry Hills and complaining.”

“You didn’t complain about the milkshakes,” Jim replies.

“It was all about the milkshakes,” she concurs. “And the money. You’d give me a dollar if I could make a putt.”

“I think it was a quarter,” Jim demurs.

Their badinage continues, sounding like a couple of golf buddies who have spent plenty of time on the golf course together.

Which they certainly have. Charlotte just turned 16 in May, and in the three years she’s played golf competitively, Jim, a partner in a private-equity firm, has supported her with the same level of enthusiasm he showed his two older children, Peter and Mark, as they respectively pursued tennis and golf.

Now, with both sons having forsaken intercollegiate athletics in favor of academics at the University of Chicago, Jim and wife Anne get to concentrate on their youngest’s golf accomplishments.

There have been many. The AJGA’s top-ranked female player in Colorado, she most recently qualified with partner Hailey Schalk for the match-play round of 32 at the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball in Tarzana, California. The pair lost 1 up.

Within the last year, Charlotte earned medalist honors in the USGA Junior Girls’ Qualifier in Nebraska, finished second in the AJGA El Conquistador in Tucson, fifth at the AJGA Junior in Arkansas and second in the AJGA Hale Irwin. She competed in the prestigious Kathy Whitworth Invitational, IMG Junior Worlds in La Jolla, AJGA Stacey Lewis Invitational in Arkansas, Junior AllStar in Georgia and represented Colorado on the Girls’ Junior America’s Cup Team.

She also won the inaugural Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado (JGAC) Tour Championship on her home course at Cherry Hills Country Club at age 14—only a year after she began playing competitively.

“She started late relative to her top peers across the country,” Jim says. “She’s made up

a lot of ground in a short period of time.”

For this, Jim credits the work of Castle Pines Golf Club’s PGA Director of Instruction Don Hurter and Cherry Hills Head Professional John Ogden, as well as Pebble Beach Golf Academy Director Laird Small and Denver Country Club’s Alexandra Braga, a TPI-Certified PGA Professional.

“It’s now in higher powers,” Jim says. “I just stay out of the way.”

But it’s Jim who shows Charlotte videos on his iPad, watches golf on TV with her, wears matching hats and shirts with her and takes her to out-of-state tournaments, where he never misses the chance to join her for a practice round.

“And he’s trying to beat me!” Charlotte says with mock exasperation. “I’ve never played a practice round with another junior.”

“You can imagine what kind of fun that is,” Jim says, adding that even though she has to give him strokes when they play (he’s currently a 6), he only has a “one in ten chance” of beating her.

“The torch passed about a year ago when Charlotte shot a 64 in a little tournament,” he admits. “At that point, I knew I was history.

I’ve only been in the 60s twice, and now we even hit our drivers about the same distance

from the same tees.”

“When my dad practices with me, I feel more focused and on top of things,” Charlotte says. “My practice is more purposeful because he’s been there and asking me questions and asking me to look at his swing, asking me what drills I’m doing. It’s helpful to have that, especially if you forget or are feeling lazy for some reason. He’s the most passionate person about golf I’ve ever seen. Not more than me, but equal.”

This surprises Jim, who says Charlotte often discourages him from watching her practice.

“I like to have my space sometimes,” Charlotte says. “But I’m just being honest.”

Honesty, perseverance and the other values golf preaches form much of Charlotte’s identity. “Golf is kind of a package,” she says.

“It teaches you a lot of mental life lessons. You can’t fall asleep for a second.”

That focus has led to great success at Kent, where she carries an unweighted 3.93 GPA. It’s also translated into self-confidence and self-reliance. “In golf, unlike team sports, you don’t have to depend on someone else,” she says. “If you miss the putt, it’s your fault.”

“Or Grandma’s,” Jim teases.

He’s referring to the time, during

Charlotte’s first-ever competition, that his mother—77-year-old Toni Hillary, the woman who introduced him to the game the same way he introduced it to his children, the same woman he moved to Colorado, the same woman who plays in a golf league at Meridian—showed up as Charlotte carded a triple-bogey.

“Get grandma off the course!” Charlotte remembers ordering her mother. “Poor grandma had to hide in the bushes. I banned her for about a month. It was so ridiculous. I still feel bad about it.”

Toni now goes “everywhere” to see her granddaughter play, and the two plan to team up in the Meridian member-guest.

Charlotte still burns with the same competitive fire as her favorite player, Jon Rahm, but she expresses it appropriately, having matured as player and as a person.

“Charlotte is wonderful on the course, a great competitor,” Jim says. “She’s humble in both victory and defeat. I think one of the proudest moments a parent can have is when their kid starts to exceed them in whatever they’re doing. It happened with my son and now my daughter. They took something I really enjoyed and have become great ambassadors of the game.“

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June 2018 | COLORADO AVIDGOLFER

Keith & Drew Schneider

COLORADO AVIDGOLFER | June 2018

Keith says, pointing across the table at the 27-year-old version of Drew. “He’s got his keys on this side of the belt, and the golf shop radio squawking. I walk up. He can’t see me and I motion to Mr. Vickers, ‘Do I need to intercede here?’ He looks at me and says, ‘Drew’s got it under control.’ The conversation went on for about 15 or 20 minutes.”

Later, Keith saw his wife, Beth, the club’s buyer, in the golf shop, “I have some good news and some bad news,” he said with a mixture of pride and resignation. “Our son is going to run this club some day.”

That day hasn’t yet arrived, but as of February, Drew Schneider has become

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assistant general manager at Castle Pines, the club at which he literally grew up, working 10 seasons in the bag room, lesson tee and golf shop before leaving for Texas Christian University. After graduating in 2014 with a major in communications and minor in business, he worked for Chairman George Solich during the 2014 BMW Championship at Cherry Hills, and spent six months working in food and beverage at Jack Nicklaus’s Bear’s Club in Jupiter, Florida.

Drew then spent the last three years at Muirfield Village in Ohio, the last two as assistant manager. Home of the annual Memorial tournament, the Jack Nicklausowned club also gave Keith his start. coloradoavidgolfer.com

PHOTOGRAPH BY EJ CARR

THE 21-YEAR RUN of The International at Castle Pines Golf Club created no shortage of memorable moments. For General Manager Keith Schneider, the most personally significant one came in 2002, and it didn’t involve Steve Lowery, double-eagles or the PGA Tour. It concerned his son, Drew, who was 10 and working in the merchandise tent.

From his office, Schneider could see into the tent, where two “green jackets”— club founder and president Jack Vickers and Valderamma Golf Club chairman Jamie Ortiz-Petiño—were intently staring down at something.

“I can’t see what they’re looking at so I go out there—and this one is holding court,”

Muirfield provided Drew with enough operational and managerial experience to warrant a return to where his love for golf began. Before that could happen, however, Keith made sure Nicklaus (who’d “loaned” him to Jack Vickers 37 years ago) was comfortable with letting another Schneider head west.

“Jack thought it was outstanding,” Keith remembers. “His comment was that we both have approached this business the same way, by learning it in the trenches.”

“That’s the best way to learn,” Drew says.

“There’s only so much a PGM (PGA Golf Management) or a hospitality management degree can do for you. At a place like Castle Pines or Muirfield or the Bear’s Club, it’s just a whole different level.” A member of the Club Managers Association of America, Drew will also go through the process of becoming a PGA Professional. “Being a golf club, that’s very important,” he says.

Following approval by Castle Pines’ executive committee, Drew joined his father in February as the club’s assistant general manager. Far from a sinecure, the position calls for Drew to handle much of the dayto-day operation on the management side, working with all the department heads

to assist them. He’s also joined Keith and CFO Mike McAdams in overseeing the remodeling of the property’s cottages (where national members stay) and planning out the update and expansion of the 37-yearold clubhouse.

“Drew has given us a lot of good ideas,” Keith says. “He’s part of the team that’s working on the new infrastructure of the clubhouse. He’s been critical on that team.

We’re doing it all together.” Keith, who will introduce the plans to the members this month, intends to begin construction when the club closes for the season in October.

This could put Drew, who looks and sounds just like his father, in position to take Keith’s job when the time comes. “My last name has opened the door and a lot of great doors,” he says. “But me, Drew Schneider, still has to walk through that door and perform and meet those expectations. At the end of the day, it still is a place of business.

And if I’m not meeting those expectations, I wouldn’t want to be kept around.“ But Drew’s first-hand knowledge of the Castle Pines culture, as envisaged by Jack and Callie Vickers and adopted and built upon by Keith and the members of the longtenured staff, will serve him in good stead.

BEER HALL

He personally knows most of the members and their children. “Treat the members like family and treat their guests like members,” Drew says. “That seems to have been a pretty successful model since day one.”

And since day one, family has been part of the fabric at Castle Pines Golf Club.

In addition to his mother, Drew’s stepsister Lindsey and stepbrother Tommy both worked there, as did Lindsey’s husband, Jarrod. Drew and Keith can both cite numerous anecdotes of Mr. V joining them for dinner or watching Rockies games in the locker room.

“Mr. and Mrs. Vickers passed on their vision to a couple of key staff members and let them build that vision,” Drew says. “I want to continue that vision. It’s what makes Castle Pines so special. What motivates me is to not tarnish what my dad and others have built and to continue the momentum of the Vickers vision.”

“If we came in and we worked hard and we adopted Jack and Callie’s vision, we became family,” Keith reflects. “I’ve told him this already, but my last words to Jack Vickers will be, ‘Thanks for letting me include the family as part of Castle Pines.’

That is probably the greatest thing Jack Vickers has done for me.”

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June 2018 | COLORADO AVIDGOLFER

Matt, Davis & Emma Bryant

COLORADO AVIDGOLFER | June 2018

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PHOTOGRAPH BY EJ CARR

WHEN IT COMES TO GOLF, Davis and Emma Bryant are to the manner born. After all, the siblings, now 18 and 15, grew up at Green Valley Ranch Golf Club, where their father, Matt, works as the PGA general manager and director of golf, and their mother, Julie, directs operations for The First Tee of Green Valley Ranch.

“After school, they’d always be at work with us,” says Matt, who has been at the club since 2006, when his children were aged six and three. “When you have parents who work at the golf course, the overall accessibility is easier. You can store your clubs in dad’s office. You can take a nap or take your lunch to Dad’s office. It’s made it easier over the years.”

It didn’t start out easy for Davis or Emma, who both arrived in this world on the same January date three years apart, and did so prematurely—Davis by three months, Emma by seven weeks. They both share the same fighting spirit that helped them beat the odds and thrive.

Early on, they channeled that spirit into golf, with Matt as their teacher. Davis first cottoned to the game as a three-year-old at Matt’s previous job in North Dakota. Once at Green Valley Ranch, Davis gravitated to its practice areas and par-3 course, while Emma says she “used to go out and do whatever Davis did.”

Having the Colorado Open Championships at his home course inspired Davis—and still does. “From age 6 to 10 years old, just watching the tournament, at first it was like, ‘Wow these guys are really good,’” he says. “Then it was like, ‘this is something I really want to do in the future, where I eventually need to get to.’”

So he observed how they played their games, managed their emotions and went about their business on the golf course. “It’s also fun to watch the Senior Open,” he says.

“It shows there are so many ways to play.

These days, in my generation, we don’t hit a bump-and-run. That’s just not a shot we use.

But these guys are so good at it. Comparing them to the young professionals, and their different games, is really cool.”

By high school, he was soliciting advice from those young professionals. After enjoying some success as an underclassman and competing in The First Tee Open at Pebble Beach, Davis put it all together

between his junior and senior years, winning three of the four Junior Golf Alliance of Colorado majors. He captured the 5A high school title, finished ninth individually at the Junior America’s Cup, 14th at the national Boys Junior PGA and advanced to the match play round of 64 at your second U.S. Junior Amateur Championship.

Not to be outdone, and in a show of sibling solidary, 14-year-old Emma won the girls version of the only JGAC major her brother didn’t win—the Colorado Junior Match Play, which Davis missed because he was competing in the national Boys Junior PGA Championship.

An Eaglecrest freshman, Emma won the Class 5A Northern Regional girls golf tournament at Collindale Golf Course to earn a spot in the Class 5A state championship.

She also told Matt that her first season of high-school golf has left her more prepared than ever for the summer golf season. “I was floored when she said that,” he says. “At this point we’re still working on her swing mechanics; with Davis it’s all about the mental side of the game.”

Matt has served as his children’s only golf instructor. “I’d give them different things to think about as far as how to make

their golf practice productive and fun at the same time,” he says. “I’ve always preached quality not quantity to the kids. I’d tell them, It’s not about going out and hitting 100 balls.

I’d rather see you hit 50 balls really well, with a purpose.”

Emma and Davis practice purposefully, and they play different games. “We like to challenge each other in chipping and putting, and on the range,” Emma says. “We also get out on the course and play music.

But there are things you have to work on, too. There’s a balance.”

For balance, both kids have made a point of competing in other sports. Davis, who just graduated from Eaglecrest, played varsity baseball; Emma, an incoming sophomore, plays volleyball.

“Doing two sports helps the kids take a break from golf and have some balance in their lives,” Matt says. “They have a good overall feel for life in general.”

Much of that feel stems from going through The First Tee curriculum from the age of six. Emma, now at Eagle level, relishes mentoring the younger participants. “It’s building a relationship with them because they might not have the best relationship at home,” she says. “I help them with whatever

they need. I’ve met a lot of cool kids, kids I wouldn’t normally hang out with at school.

It expands your horizons. It’s taught me a lot about golf and about life.”

Davis puts an exclamation point on that last sentiment: “It teaches you how to do life the right way.” To him that means showing integrity and honesty when no one is watching, carrying yourself in a positive manner no matter how things are going and showing judgment and responsibility to avoid bad decisions.

For all of his kids’ success on the course, nothing makes Matt prouder than seeing the adults they’re becoming. “It’s great when you hear from people on the course that your son was so well-behaved, your daughter was a pleasure to play with,” he says. “Those are the proud moments that show they understand the scope—it’s not just about golf, it’s about everything that goes along with it, things like being a brother and sister.”

Come August, the brother and sister will be separated when Davis heads to college at Colorado State. “It gets closer every day,” Matt says about Davis’s pending departure. His eyes well up. “But it’s all good.

Like Davis said, he knows how to do life the right way. They both do.”

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The Kupcho Family

COLORADO AVIDGOLFER | June 2018

Open and runner-up in the NCAA Division I Championship (she qualified with her team for this year’s DI championship, which took place after this issue went to press, by winning the Regional with a school-recordtying 15-under 201). Jennifer will represent the U.S. this month in the Curtis Cup at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in New York and in July’s Palmer Cup in Evian-les-Bains, France.

Although the family played golf together on weekends and vacations, Mike and Janet encouraged the kids to play other sports—mostly hockey and basketball.

“I can promise you Jennifer hits the ball the way she does—the way her hips clear—because she played hockey as a young girl,” says Steven, who gravitated towards basketball and concedes his sister “has a lot more natural talent than I do.”

Still, Steven thought golf, not hoops,

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could be his ticket to college. “I’d just finished eighth grade and I’d been telling everybody that I was going to get a golf scholarship,” he remembers. “We were on vacation in Myrtle Beach, and I’d just shot 101. I lost to my little sister, a fourth grader, by 15 shots. She was talking smack and I was making excuses. My dad just looked at me and said, ‘the reason why she beat you is that she’s taking it seriously and you’re not.’”

Steven got serious, taking lessons (as did Jennifer) from PGA Master Professional Ed Oldham at The Ranch Country Club while the Kupcho family joined Omni Interlocken Golf Club. Mike became the Jefferson Academy golf coach in Steven’s senior year and served as the girls coach all four years Jennifer was at JA. Careful planning enabled Mike to retire ten years ago from his CFO job at coloradoavidgolfer.com

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE KUPCHO FAMILY

MIKE KUPCHO didn’t catch the golf bug until he took it as a PE class at Metro State.

But once infected, his enthusiasm became contagious. It afflicted his wife, Janet, and, later, their children, Steven and Jennifer, who would join them on the range and then on the course once they were old enough.

The siblings as many know, have gone on to become the most decorated brothersister combination in Colorado golf history.

Among myriad highlights, Steven, now 25 and an aspiring tour player in Arizona, was the Colorado Golf Association’s 2011 Junior Player of the Year and its 2012 Les Fowler Player of the Year. Jennifer, 21, who just finished her junior year at Wake Forest University, won the Colorado Women’s Golf Association’s versions of the above awards two and three times respectively. Last year, she finished 21st in her second U.S. Women’s

Front Range Community College. Janet did the same from her full-time PE teaching position. The goal was to “be able to see and experience the things Steven and Jennifer were doing … We’ve been super-fortunate to see everything they’ve done. When the college schedules come out, we immediately start planning our trips.”

One thing Janet saw and Mike didn’t was Steven’s “horrible” performance in the first two rounds of the 2012 CGA Stroke Play (now known as the CGA Amateur) at Fort Collins Country Club. He’d just finished his freshman year at the University of Colorado.

She was caddying for him while Mike was at another event with Jennifer.

“I hit a ball in the water, got pissed and broke a club,” Steven recalls. “I was a knucklehead. My mom wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of the day.“ That night, however, Mike gave him a stern talk—“he used logic, not anger, and asked how I wanted people to perceive me”—and took over the caddying chores the following day. “Somehow with the help of pops,” Steven shot a 69. “I went into the final round nine shots behind. We talked about how we were going to play ourselves back in it. With Dad on the bag, I shot a 66, and it

was enough to win.”

Winning became motivation for Jennifer ever since an early tournament in which she didn’t receive a trophy just for participating. Her natural, powerful swing and precise short game—coupled with what Oldham calls her “bulletproof ” mentality— has made her the most successful Coloradoborn female player since Jill McGill.

“He would always be on my bag,” Jennifer remembers about Mike. “Sometimes we’d have conflicts on the course but we’d work it out after. When we got into arguments, I always knew it was out of love.

I just had to remember that. He wanted so badly for me to do well.”

When the competition wasn’t strong in high school, he’d motivate her by telling her to play against the course rating.

“Looking back, it was really helpful to have him pushing me,” Jennifer reflects, adding that she loves having her parents travel to tournaments to support her.

She was especially appreciative of it after last year’s NCAA Division I Championship, where a triple-bogey on the penultimate hole cost her a two-shot lead and the title.

“It doesn’t matter; you did a good job,” Jennifer remembers her father telling her

after that gut-wrenching finish. “He said, ‘Just focus on the next tournament.’ That helped a lot. He’s always taught me to forget—forget about the last shot and focus on the next one.”

Jennifer did forget. The next tournament came two days later in Colorado, when Jennifer, with Mike on her bag, won the U.S. Women’s Open qualifier at Riverdale Dunes with a 6-under-par 138. He would also caddie for her at the championship, where she shot even-par to finish as the secondlowest amateur at Trump National.

“At this point I know she has the talent to compete,” Mike says, “It’s all about the mental aspect, making the right choices.”

One choice Jennifer won’t have to make is whether to leave school early if she qualifies for the LPGA Tour during October’s Q-Series. As of this year, college players who qualify can play out their spring seasons and then join the LPGA on July 1st.

For all the support Mike and Janet have shown their kids, one of the things for which Steven is most thankful is their unique surname. “It’s not very popular,” he says. “So being around people who know golf, when they hear ‘Kupcho,’ the next question is, ‘Are you related to Jennifer?’”

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