April 2024 - Old (PGA) Friends

Hall of famers Bill Erfurth and Don Wegrzyn epitomize the best of the PGA

Photographs by Charles Cherney

This article appeared in the April 2024 edition of Chicago District Golfer.
To read more Chicago District Golfer stories, head to our article archive.

Bill Erfurth and Don Wegrzyn are both defined by hall-of-fame careers at PGA professionals in Illinois.

The 2024 PGA Championship is coming up May 16-19 at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky, where Brooks Koepka will defend the title for the third time since 2019. The following week the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship will be played, May 23-26, at Harbor Shores Golf Course in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

No two men better epitomize the best of the PGA of America than Bill Erfurth and Don Wegrzyn, who spent much of the 20th century laboring in their love of golf.

Bill was more of a player, Don the ultimate club pro. But both have been deeply involved in consequential charity work revolving around golf. Both are members of the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame.

What better way to honor the PGA Championship and the Senior PGA than to profile two old friends?
—Barry Cronin

Always a Player, Still a Worker
94-year-old pro continues to raise funds for his PGA brethren
By Len Ziehm

Memories. Bill Erfurth has lots of them. That shouldn’t be surprising when you consider this long time Chicago golf professional is a healthy and hardy 94 years old. But, then again, Erfurth retired from his “real job’’ in 1985, at age 55. Since then, Erfurth will tell you, “I’ve been catching up on my loafing.’’

Not hardly.

“I was one of the lucky ones,’’ said Erfurth. “Most golf professionals back then either worked until they were fired or died. I had an investment advisor who took me under his wing. He told me what to do with my money.’’

When, after 20 years at Skokie Country Club in Glencoe, Erfurth started thinking about retirement and decided, “Why not?’’

“I wasn’t good enough for the Senior Tour and I didn’t want to travel,’’ he said, “but I did want to play senior golf.’’

He has certainly done that, and much to the benefit of those who subsequently became senior members of the Illinois PGA. For almost 30 years he has organized a group of players who gather every Thursday.

“When we started years ago there was only one [Illinois PGA] tournament for seniors – the Senior Championship at Crystal Lake every year,’’ said Erfurth. “The seniors needed sponsorship money, and we started a Thursday group. There’s 15-20 of us, and a couple are doctors. We go to private clubs. The players pay $100 and the greens fee and cart fee are comped by the host pro. Then that money goes into our fund.’’

Over the nearly 30-year span, that fundraising effort has yielded nearly $300,000 for the Illinois PGA Senior tournament fund.

Erfurth went further than that. He approached auto dealer Jack Thompson, and it didn’t take long for the Thompson Cup to be on the tournament calendar. Next came the Illinois Senior Open.

While Erfurth was the leader, the sponsorship effort became so successful thanks to the help of fellow pros, particularly Mike Harrigan, Dick Wagley, Doug Bauman, Steve Dunning, Andy Shuman, Jim Sobb and Tim O’Neal.

The senior pros have had trouble securing courses for their outings the last few years, and fundraising has become more difficult.

“We used to raise between $10,000 and $12,000 every summer,’’ said Erfurth. “Now it’s down to $3,000 to $5,000,’’

Still, they’ve kept the program going. Skokie Country Club, where Erfurth spent the bulk of his working years, has hosted an event every year and Biltmore Country Club, in Barrington, and Twin Orchard Country Club, in Long Grove, have also been particularly helpful.

Erfurth, meanwhile, has taken his own game to the public side. The late Carol McCue, following her retirement after a long career with the CDGA, encouraged the just-retired Erfurth to become the playing pro at Mundelein’s Pine Meadow Golf Club, operated by the Jemsek family. Pine Meadow has become the home of the Illinois Super Senior Open.

His fundraising efforts won’t detract from the player Erfurth was in his heyday. A native of San Antonio, Erfurth won the 1952 Texas State Amateur a year after he graduated from Trinity University.

Eventually, he met Illinois Golf Hall of Fame member Errie Ball on the PGA Winter Tour and followed Ball to Oak Park Country Club, in River Grove, as his assistant professional. Erfurth earned his PGA of America membership in 1959 and was named Skokie’s head professional in 1965. Fifteen of his assistants have become head professionals.

Along the way, Erfurth played in four U.S. Amateurs and five U.S. Opens. He won the Illinois Open in 1975 at Northmoor Country Club, in Highland Park, and in 2002 became the first player to shoot his age (he was 73) in that tournament. He was the 1968 Illinois PGA Player of the Year and was its Senior Player of the Year six times. In 2007, he was inducted into the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame.

The Illinois Open win was his best Chicago playing memory. He sealed it with a 40-foot downhill birdie putt on the final green to beat Jim Hardy by three shots.

An even longer putt was Erfurth’s highlight on the national side. It came in the 1973 U.S. Open at Oakmont, in Pennsylvania. The ninth hole and putting green ran together that year, creating what Erfurth believes was “the largest green in the United States.’’

He hit his approach 60 yards past the flagstick, which was embarrassing as the group in front included Jack Nicklaus and Bob Goalby. Their gallery wondered who could have hit a shot so off target. Erfurth regrouped and rolled in the putt that was later measured by a friend at 180 feet.

“It must have been the longest putt ever in the U.S. Open,’’ he said.

Erfurth and his wife Mary Lou have lived in the same house in Northbook for 55 years. They have sons living in Florida and Texas and two grandchildren. He credits his longevity to good genes. Both his parents lived into their early 90s and his brother Bob is 98 and can still shoot his age.

“I try to play a couple times a week,’’ said Bill. “I’ve had back problems, but I can still shoot my age, which is my objective now.’’ l

Len Ziehm, a member of the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame, has covered golf for 56 years, 41 of them with the Chicago Sun-Times and the last 15 for the Daily Herald as well as other publications and websites.

No Job Too Minor - Or Major
Old Elm pro helped bring PGA Championship to Kemper Lakes
By Tim Cronin

It was within hours of being hired by Old Elm Club in 1952 that 14-year-old Don Wegrzyn [Weg-er-zin] was introduced to one of his main duties.

Taking care of the club parrot, a bird that had been around since the 1920s.

“I was told, you’ll take the bags to the locker room, you’ll bus dishes and you’ll be responsible for keeping the parrot cage in the corner of the dining room clean,” said Wegrzyn, who is now 86. “And you’ll take him to the tree every day and bring him back in before you leave.”

The parrot wasn’t happy one day when Don left him out by the 18th green as a thunderstorm approached, but after following then-general manager Joe Reynolds’ advice and putting a bit of rum in the bird’s dining cup, Wegrzyn had a new feathered friend.

Of such duties was built the foundation of a Hall of Fame career.

“I tried to do the best I could at whatever I did and leave more than I found when I got to the spot,” he said before last fall’s induction into the PGA of America Hall of Fame.

Wegrzyn parked members’ cars – including a Rolls Royce – as the door boy and parrot wrangler, but was quickly moved into the pro shop, parrot duties continuing, when it was discovered manual transmissions were an adventure. The Rolls, thankfully, was an automatic.

As were 46 years at Old Elm.

Along the way, Wegrzyn became an expert on the rules, on running a club – he began 27 years as the self-titled “interim general manager” in 1970 – picked up a master's degree from Northern Illinois (where he was the first Huskie to win the Mid-American Conference title as a sophomore and go to the NCAA Championships) after a half-dozen years of part-time study, and finally a PGA master professional in golf operations in 1994.

Oh, and taught and coached at Warren Township High School for nearly two decades until Old Elm’s members twisted his arm to take the GM position.

“I didn’t have a lot of days off,” Weg rzyn said. “I gave up competitive golf when I got out of college.”

Nonetheless, he once held course records at both Old Elm and Shoreacres, a similarly secluded club where members are as likely to take a snooze in a comfortable chair as take on the course on a warm afternoon.

When he arrived at Old Elm, a 6,000- round year was a busy summer. There are more members now and over 8,000 rounds are played annually, but even before he retired from Old Elm, the luxury of having a bit of time to spare allowed him to serve golf beyond the comfortable confines of the club.

He found himself in Illinois PGA governance, with 16 years on the board and a term as president. The hallmark of his stint was helping land the 1989 PGA Championship at Kemper Lakes, then a public course.

“I asked Jim Kemper at the 1983 Ryder Cup,” Wegrzyn recalled. “I knew the PGA wanted to come to Illinois.”

Kemper bought in, the PGA bought in and a force of 2,700 volunteers put on the show that was captured by Payne Stewart, dressed in Bears colors, on a dramatic Sunday.

“It’s my No. 1 accomplishment,” Weg rzyn said. “It was the biggest social thing we ever did.”

It, along with three Horton Smith Awards for boosting professional development, helped earn Don membership in the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame in 1999.

But wait, there’s more. His rules ex pertise found him wearing the armband at a pair of Ryder Cups and three PGA Championships. His operational wizardry brought him into the planning and operation of two clubs elsewhere. His sales acumen found him organizing a multi-club merchandise sale at Old Elm at the end of each season, one so successful fellow pro Pat Kenny nicknamed him “five-star,” as in general.

One thing, he couldn’t fix.

“At Old Elm, our biggest problem was slow play,” he said. “Our guys wouldn’t play in less than four hours unless you beat ’em.”

Which is difficult to do with captains of industry who like the great outdoors. Just how do you tell a Cabinet Secretary to speed up?

Don fancied youth golf – one reason caddies could play Old Elm on late afternoons when members were off the course – and made the First Tee branch at nearby Foss Park Golf Course come alive.

“I recruited people to get players and their parents interested,” Wegryzn said. “I did all the stuff to get the chapter, and then we took it into the junior highs and high schools. The members at Old Elm were extra generous in donating.”

Over his seven years at that helm, some 6,000 children were introduced to the game and the standards it promotes.

These days, he plays golf, a perfect capstone to a career spanning 70 years – and one rum-loving parrot that went from pesky to pal. l

Tim Cronin is the author of 11 books on golf, an expert on golf history and a frequent contributor to Chicago District Golfer.