November 5, 2025 • 48 mins
PGA Professional John Reger joins Rich to talk about his dad's connection to Wheeling and the NFL, plus how junior college golf shaped his game. John also shares stories of one of his first PGA jobs in Tampa, and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the ritchcom On Golf Show. We are going
to jump right into this this week because I am really, really,
really happy to have John Rieger with us. John is
a PGA professional and there is not one area of
the world of golf that John has not been involved
in is not involved in. And he's just a really,
(00:23):
really really easy guy to talk to. And it's got
some great golf story and a lot of great golf stories.
So John, thanks for joining us this week.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hey, it's an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
That's awesome. Hey. So all right, so as I start
with everybody, so talk to me about how all of
this started for you, even as a youngster, because I
know there's a connection to Wheeling, West Virginia we can
get into. But how did it start for you?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, I guess I was the first person of my
family born outside Wheeling, West Virginia. You go, as some
of your listeners may know, because of my dad, who
played in the NFL twelve years in the NFL's and
All Pro linebacker nine with the Steelers, three at the Redskins.
And so he was born and raised in willing West Virginia,
(01:08):
and he went to Lindsey Military Academy, and it's a
remarkable story. I won't go too far into it, but
when he got a scholarship to go to the University
of Pittsburgh, he played on the freshman team and hurt
his knee after three weeks and he didn't play college
football ever again. He had to wait almost five years
(01:30):
for his class to graduate for him to be able
to have a tryout, and there was really no path
he was on. He wasn't working towards that. My sister
was born already, but they were sitting around one TV
in an apartment complex back in nineteen fifty five, and
his high school coach in Wheeling called up to coach
(01:52):
the Steelers and say, hey, give him a tryout. So
my dad walked on and made it and played twelve years.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
That's that's all most of my timeildhood.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
When yeah, so most my childhood when he played, we
lived in Pittsburgh, which you know, in those days you
didn't have the interstate, so it was a long way away.
Now I think you can probably live in Wheeling and
work in Pittsburgh if you want.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
And that's exactly correct. So when you were when he
was playing for the Steelers, they were not at St.
Vincent's were they They were in South Park for training camp,
weren't they.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, they moved around quite a bit, you know. One
of the places he went to was a rolling Rock
Pennsylvania with the beer yep. And at that time it
was a dry county. And he made a deal. He's
captain of the team at that time, and he made
a deal. They would have training camp and when at
lunch time, they'd all sneak out and go down to
(02:43):
the brewery and sit in the hot sun with in
pictic tables and see how many rolling rocks they could
drink before they got back to the afternoon practice. So
the NFL has changed quite a bit since those.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Days, slightly slightly, so your father would have played in
He would His last year with the Steelers was.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
What year we was in sixty three, It was his
last year. He got traded in sixty four to the Redskins.
In sixty three he had a severe injury where if
there wasn't oxygen in the ambulance, he would have died
because he got hit in the throats. They were playing
the Eagles, And from that game on, all the NFL
(03:24):
teams everywhere have oxygen on the sidelines. But that wasn't
common in those days. They had oxygen in the ambulance.
Was very fortunate. So the next year, Buddy Parker, the
coach got you know, he got teed off at some
of the old guys, my dad, Tom Tracy, and we
call them old guys. You know, they were vettereds nine
ten year veterans, and so they all got traded and
(03:48):
I think my dad in Preston Carper they got traded
to the Redskins. I'm not sure what happened to Tom,
but you know that's what happened. That's why he got traded.
And you know it was night and day two. The
Steelers obviously are such a you know, big time operation.
Now in those days, my dad had to buy his
own cliques. Yeah and uh, but he was part of
the group with Pete Rush laugh from the Philadelphi Eagles.
(04:10):
My dad and he and a few others founded the
NFL Players Association, right because they wanted, ah, they wanted
to have a union in the fact that they just
wanted to build up a pension. Never in his mind
did he imagine did down the road that they have
these collective bargaining to the point that you know that
it's kind of disconnected from where it first started. But
(04:31):
the players today have a pension. Because my dad and
we was playing actively. You know, it wasn't favorable by
the owners, you know, mister Rooney, he didn't want he
didn't want to he didn't want the players to organize.
So my dad and a few others went to Jimmy
Hoffa who was still alive at the time, and he
was running the Teamsters, and and Jimmy offered them to
become part of the Teamsters. And at that point the
(04:52):
owner said, no, we better let him organize the union.
So Burke Bell was a commissioner at that time, and
they they have the Burke Bell Retirement Plan that started.
And that's so I was pretty cool. I have pretty
cool story about my dad and you know what happened
in the NFL in those days.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
That's really cool. And the one of the reasons I
wanted to get the years is because that your father
would have played home games at both Pitts Stadium and
Forbes Field.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Oh absolutely. So the years that he played for the
Steelers was nineteen fifty five to sixty three.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Right, So, so my father, my father had did not
miss a home steer game since nineteen fifty two to
two thousand and four. He remarkable, so he saw him play.
But I also I used to and this was and
my father's passed on, but he used to tell me
the story that every week in the paper, they would
(05:48):
tell you where they were playing, you know, because like
they sometimes they played at Pitts Stadium, sometimes they played
at Forbes Field. And I'm like, well, how do you
know where to go? He goes, because you read the paper.
He's like, you know, like you're being a like read
the paper, you know, like they put in the papers,
so you knew where to go. And it's he was,
and like you said, it was like a different world
because like he said that, my father told me that
(06:10):
they would trade guys and they and the guys they
got back from the other team just wouldn't show up,
Like I'm not coming, So you guys do whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Oh yeah, I'll tell you what. There's there's all kinds
of stories. I remember my mom would steak my sister
and I into training camp wherever they had training camp.
Because you weren't allowed to see your family, you were
you were cordoned off and uh, and so I remember
you know, my mom wanted to visit. Of course, as
a kid, I had no idea what it was. But
(06:38):
it was like being in prison, conjugal visits, you know,
for the wives. And we would literally sneak into some
small college town somewhere where training camp is and and uh,
and my mom says, you can't tell anybody your name,
don't tell them who you are, you know, and uh.
And so I remember my dad was telling me that
sometimes these players, you know, go to training camp and stuff,
(07:00):
and they decided, I don't want to play football anymore.
I'm just We're just going to walk and leave, and
there'll be an assistant coach at the butt station all
night long to grab him and bring them back, you know,
not let him, not let him leave, not let him
quit playing football.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Not getting out man.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, hey, you know in those days too, you didn't
you know, you couldn't make money all the time as
a player. I mean, it wasn't until maybe into the
late sixties or so. You had a lot of players
like my dad. They all all had to own and
operate their own businesses and work in the off season.
And so my dad's first year in fifty five, he
made fifteen hundred dollars and he you know, and mister
(07:39):
Rooney felt sorry for him. And because you know, I
don't think he felt sorry for him, he just didn't
pay him hardly anything. So he'd paid my dad to
go visit boy Scout troops and basements and give and
give a speech. And my dad actually baby sat the
Rooney kids, you know, you know, all the eighty year
old Rooney kids. And that's well, when they were young,
(08:00):
my dad babysat them for extra money. And that's how
my dad got to know Arnold Palmer because Arnold Palmer,
when he first started out on the tour, the PJ
kept your winnings for six months, yes, and so he
had to actually pull a trailer around behind him. So
he and my dad would hit the sports bank with
circuit in western Pennsylvania and they both get paid fifty
(08:21):
bucks to show up and be at that sports banquet
and you know, give a talk and sign some autographs.
And that's how they pay the bills in those days.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
That's crazy, because you know, it's funny you mentioned the
guys would wouldn't show up or would show up like Ernie.
Ernie Stautner owned a movie a drive in movie theater
up in New York where he was from, and he
would just come. He would come into town the first
day of the first exhibition game. He's like, I'll be
there because, like he goes, I have to close. I
have to close the drive in, you know, like they
(08:50):
close the drive in on Labor Day weekend. So I'm
not coming in. I'm not coming in there before that,
because like, this is how I make my money. You know.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I got an Ernie Stautner story for you. So it
involves my dad the and it wasn't about Ernie Stautner.
It's actually about Bobby Lane. And years later, my dad
and I and a few other NFL players we founded
our NFL Alumni chapter in Tampa, the Tampa Bay Buccaneer Chapter.
And we're talking like nineteen eighty eighty one somewhere around there.
(09:20):
And we used to have themes when we first started
the NFL Alumni chapter. So our golf tournament, the theme
was like the great Quarterbacks of the NFL, So on
every team and it's just charity golf tournament and the
scramble you'd have a famous NFL quarterback. And so what
happened was at the time Bobby Lane's autobiography came out,
(09:41):
and so I grabbed it and looked at it. And
you know, when you're a kid, you don't really you know,
you know, I think everybody's dad was a pro football
player when I was growing up, But when you're a kid,
you don't really pay attention to these things. Well, I
don't know if you remember this incident or not. It's
pretty famous in that area. Might still be where Bobby
Lane ran into.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
The street car hit a street car.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
He sure did, but they couldn't find him. They couldn't
find Bobby Lane, and so he revealed years later in
his book that was my dad that went down there
to get him and get him out of there so
he didn't get arrested, and so and so then you know,
I'm looking through this book and my dad's in there
about six or eight times. And so the best thing
about these NFL alumni tournaments is afterwards, you know, all
(10:28):
the old guys that sit around drinking beer and telling
stories and this, that and the other. And I'm sitting there,
you know, and I got the book and hey dad,
you're on page seventy two. Hey Dad, you're on page
one hundred here, you know, and my dad's looking at
me like, you know, and now I'm twenty five years old,
so it's not like, you know, I'm a little kid
or something. But I said, dad, man, you're pretty cool. Man.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
You're the guy. You're the guy, all right, So you
were okay, So let's go. We've got to get back
to let get back to this this world.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
What you do on a golf podcast and we do
this all the time on our radio show in Florida.
You know, let's start. It's a golf broadcast, but sometimes
a football show.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Break, football show breaks out. That's like that's like, that's
like the fight that the hockey game broke out of.
What So, where were you born then? So if you
were you were born you were the first one born
outside of Wheeling, right right?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
So no, I was. In fact, I told you I
was the first person my family born outside Wheeling, West Virginia.
So I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in Allegheny Hospital.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
There you going, and.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
So we used to That's where we lived in a
place called Avalon Kids, a suburb of Pittsburgh. And uh
in my first exposure to golf, Now, I was a toddler.
You know, we moved out of Pittsburgh when I was probably,
you know, seven years old. But I remember my dad's
first golf experience with me. He took me down to
(11:54):
the Highland Country Club, which which is not too far away, right,
And there's a guy named Mark Tuckey who's a peg there.
And so I had a little cutoff club and a
putter and you know, of course, you know, the kids
weren't allowed on the golf course at those days, but man,
I wore out that putting green with my putter and
that was my first exposure to golf in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Wow. So then you got older, So where did you play? Because, oh,
you're a good player. I mean, let's just be really honest.
You're a good player. Like how did you develop into
a good Like? What did you do next? I mean,
I realized your little kid around putting green. But then,
you know, I.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Wasn't a junior. I was not a junior golf phenom
at all. I mean what had happened was is my
dad we would live when when you started playing for
the Redskins, we'd live in Miami half the year and
the other half we'd live up in Washington, d C.
And so, you know, we moved around quite a bit.
In fact, in twelve years of public school, I went
(12:52):
to ten different schools in twelve years, and the last
school I went to I went for three three years,
meaning that I you know, the school I graduated from
was the one that I went to the longest. And
so what happened is it helped me be a golfer
because you're always moving all the time and you had
to make new friends right away, and so you know,
(13:14):
so golf was a way to do that. And so
we we eventually ended up in Tampa Bay and my
dad bought a run down restaurant and it was called
the Damn Shanty, Dam Shanty, okay, and it was just
they called it a plush dump. You know, you walk
in this place and you write your name on the wall,
(13:35):
and you know, we had concrete floors, but we had
nice tablecloths and this is like Cheers. And my dad
was the sham character there, the famous athlete tending bar
and cooking. And my mom was the Christie Allity character.
And we had those kind of characters. We didn't have
a norm, but we had a you know, we didn't
have the mailman. But we had the vending machine guy
having a beer every night next to an attorney that
(13:59):
tried cases in front of the Supreme Court. You know,
it's just an eclectic mix of people. And so, you know,
so what happened was is that, you know that we
established ourselves in the Tampa Bay area and so you know,
so I played little high school golf there and and
you know what had happened was we were supposed to
win the state championship, but I wasn't really that good
(14:21):
of a golfer, and because probably of a bad temper
and inexperienced and whatever. You know. You know, I shot
like eighty eight in our regional championship, couldn't go to
you know, and we lost by one shot to go
to the state. So in those days, I used to
have golf writers cover high school golfer newspapers. I mean
(14:42):
we're talking mid seventies, right, and so they put a
big headline in there, you know, riger blows it for
the brand of High Eagle, you know, And I brought that,
I brought that article into my mom and I'm just like, really,
you know, I'm embarrassed, and she goes, oh, this is
the best thing that could ever happen to see it,
and I go, what do you mean, so as long
as they spell your name right, you're good to go.
Well yeah, so sure enough, I was good to go
(15:05):
because a local coach of Hillsboro Community College, a guy
named Bobby Strickland. He was a club pro in town.
He ended up being my mentor in the golf business.
I'll explain that later. But he read that paper and
he goes, this guy can't be that bad because I
saw him hit a golf ball in the tournament. So
he said, Hey, are you interested in trying out for
the Hillsboro Community College golf team? I said sure. You know,
(15:27):
a scholarship was not even in the question. I just
wanted a chance to maybe I could actually play golf,
you know, because I hadn't broken eighty in high school
at all. Okay, so we get the ready to go
play in the state Junior. It's like a month later,
and it's one of those things that just everything clicked.
It all came together for whatever reason. And maybe it
(15:47):
was just because it was a you know, but I
played in the state Junior and I shot sixty eight
seventy two and I lost by one shot, and it's
like overnight it clicked and there was no epiphany. It
was just just maybe I matured that I needed that
one more month of maturity or something to try to
(16:09):
figure out how to play golf. So then, you know,
then I got a golf scholarship for a community college.
You know, but in those days in Florida, I'm not
sure rest of the country, but in Florida you had
like twenty three, twenty four teams in the state and
you had to play in a junior college team to
be able to go on to a four year school.
(16:29):
That's how that was like a feeder system. So for example,
I wanted to go to Florida, and by playing junior
college golf before they played at Florida, it was Mark Calcubecia,
it was you know, Larry Rinker, you know Ken Green.
They all had to play junior college golf. So junior
college golf was extremely competitive, and I just kept getting
(16:50):
a little bit better. I didn't win any college termans,
but I just kept getting better and better. My stroke
average got lower and lower and lower, and and and
so you know, my mark on junior college golf though,
was that uh and it has nothing to do with playing,
but you know how you know, sometimes they set up
rules for people. Uh it was where it's really hot outside.
(17:12):
We're playing this golf course in Melbourne, Florida called Country
and so it's just really hot. Well I worked at
Babe say Harry's golf course while I was going to
Hillsburg Community College and that's where Bobby was the pro,
so you know, and Babe say Harry's golf course was
owned by Babe say Harris herself. There's a different story
on that. So you know what it happened was we
had pool carts, you know, you know, you remember those
(17:35):
three We come in the golf shop and how much
is a pool cart? Well it's a it's another dollar, okay,
here you go, sir boom okay. And you know when
I was you know, I was playing you know, you know,
first started playing college golf. You know, you know, you
picked the bag up and down, you know, and they
and and they didn't have the Jones type bags. You know,
we're in those in those days. You know, they they
(17:58):
were just maybe at the avent. You know. Of course,
our school didn't have any money, so I just had
this old burden, you know, small small bag, but it
was you know, it was heavy. I saw the pool
carts there and I went inside. I said, hey, and
I ran a pool card. They go, yeah, you can
run a pool car. So I ran a pool cart
and I tee off and I'm coming down to the eighteenth pole.
You know, we're playing very well, and you know, the
(18:19):
rules officials coming up to me and goes, what are
you doing? I said, what do you mean, sauce, you
got a pool cart? I said, yeah, I do. And
so Bobby comes over, you know, and then Bobby was
such a great mentor, but he's also a great coach.
Bobby was so energetic. He'd make coffee nervous. Okay. They
actually had to take his golf cart away from him
during the tournament as a coach because he was just
(18:42):
driving everywhere. You know, he was just so excited and
drive right up on the tee and jump down and say, hey, John,
look well over here, don't hit it over there. You
know that kind of stuff. And here comes Bobby. You know,
Bobby doesn't have his golf cart, so he's literally jogging
across the fairway as fast as he can the rules
official because he thinks I'm going to get a penalty
of some sorts for something, and he runs up the
(19:03):
rules official and the rules officials try to explain to
me that he can't have a pool card. Well, Bobby's like,
he has the manual in his hand, the Golf Manual
from the National Junior College Golf Association. Like, Bobby, why
are you carrying that around? And he gives it some
rules officially. He says, prove it proved that you can't
have a pool card in a college tournament. And sure enough,
(19:24):
there was absolutely no rule, so that the next day,
the second round, they banned the banned the cards. They've
banned the pool cards. But you know, you look at
junior golf today or college golf all pool pull carts.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
When we come back from this break, we're going to
talk about where you launched from that junior college. Okay,
all right, this is the Rich Komwoll Golf Show. Welcome
back to the Rich Kombell Golf Show. We're joined this
week by John Rieger. John is a PG professional in
Florida and we were just getting out of his junior
college career. So what's next? Tell me what you do next?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Well, I ended up going to the college at Charleston,
and I didn't even decide to go because it wasn't
until I had a great finish on at my sophomore year,
my second year in Hillsburg Community College, that a college coach,
any other college coach, we even look at me. Okay,
but my stroke average was getting down there about seventy three,
(20:23):
seventy four, you know, so in those days, you know,
there's you know, the Division I schools, how they weren't
looking at me. Buster Bishop was the coach, Anarcy of Florida,
where I really wanted to go, and he goes, hey, listen,
you can. We'll pay for your books and you can
be on the team. But on the team at that
time against Calcovecia, Ben Green, a lot of lot, you know,
(20:43):
like everybody except one guy became a PJ Tour pro,
so I knew I'd never played in the tournament, so
out of blue. A good friend of mine at the
time as a junior golfer named A. J. Duncan was
from Saint Petersburg area and really good golf for and
he played for Saint Pete Junior College, and you know,
he went to the National Junior College Championship. Very gifted,
(21:05):
very talented golfer, big guy at the time. You know,
he could he could hit the ball fifty yards by everybody.
And he got a full ride to the College at Charleston.
And it's in South Carolina, and he'd never been to Charleston.
But he calls me up and he goes, hey, do
you want to do you want to come to College
at Charleston and you get a free full ride. I said,
what do you mean. He says, well, here, just call
the coach, because I guess they were trying to, you know,
(21:26):
build up their team. If I called the coach, I said, yeah,
he says, come on, I've never even been to Charleston,
South Carolina, you know all you know, I went down
to Triple A, got the trip tick, got the tour
guy booked to see what Charleston, South Carolina was about.
When I first got up there, I was a little
shaky because that's for the Civil War, my goodness, for
right over there. Yeah, these people must be crazy up there, right,
(21:50):
So get up there and you know, get checked into
the dorm. In fact, the dormy the school was growing
so fast. The dorm was a Francis hotel across the
street from the campus, and so they put the golf team,
anybody in the golf team or athletes into the end
of the hotel. Was great. You didn't visit, no visitation hours,
(22:11):
didn't have anything to do, you know, yet Ice Service
made service, I mean all kinds of stuff. It was great.
So my first day on the golf course, you know,
right before classes started, we go out and I don't
know if you've experienced or not, but they're no seams
or these little tiny bugs. They're on the coast of
the Carolinas, and they are just they're devastating. Okay, if
(22:34):
they get in, they get into every crevice, every hair, everything.
They are just it's the most agonizing thing that you
could ever endure. And we play eighteen holes for my
new team and everything. And I told the team at
the end of the day, listen, I'm going home. I
quit school right now, haven't you started. I'm not gonna
plan this team. I can't live here. And they all
(22:55):
laughed at me, and they had me a bottle of
Avon skin soosoft. Evidently that's what at that time. That's
that's why I got rid of those stands. And they
you know, they laughed at me, and I looked at it,
I put some on. I'm like, hey, I'm a small
pretty good up here at this place. Yeah, and then
i'm you know, then I'm you know, calling back home, Mom,
can you get me some avon? Skin? So soft? And
(23:15):
she's like, you know, what happened to my boys?
Speaker 1 (23:17):
What happened to you in Charleston? What did they do
to you in Charleston?
Speaker 2 (23:20):
What they do to you? So anyway, so you know,
went ahead and hey, had a great career there and
you know, you know, ended up you know, graduating. Uh.
And what I needed to do was I needed a job,
you know, because I was going to get married. You know,
I met my future wife at that time, and so
I needed a job, and so I decided to go
(23:43):
work at Babes the Harrea's golf course, you know. And
this is this is like nineteen seventy nine. And in
those days, the only people that had a staff bag
were golf pros, right, you know, had your name on it,
because you know, if you had your name on a
golf bag in those days and you were you were
an amateur, you lost your amateur status, right. And so
I remember, so college Charleston has a wonderful graduation ceremony.
(24:07):
What you do is you the men wore white tuxes.
The women, you know, they wore white dresses and carry
a dozen roses. And your diploma is, you know, thirty
six by twenty four. At every department head signs that
it's really a cool ceremony. You don't want to miss it. Okay,
well it's it's in June, so school's out. I mean
I graduated early May. I'm done. So I go to
(24:28):
I go take my job at babes Harrea's golf course.
And the head pro at that time, Chuck Winship, had
he got me a McGregor bag and had my name
on it, and he had McGregor clubs, and at that
time he has to stamp your name on the golf clubs. Yep,
if you were if you were pro. So I had
the John Regor Junior stamped on my McGregor woods and
(24:49):
irons and you know, my McGregor bag. And I'm like this,
I'm like, I've achieved everything I wanted to do in
life as a golfer. Now look at what I got here.
I'm getting ready to go back for graduation. And I
go back to the club, picked up my clubs because
I'm going to show all the you know, there's people
on the team I played with, they're just a little
bit younger, and I want to show everybody my bag.
(25:09):
And hey, listen, I'm a pro now. And I got
my name on a bag. I couldn't find my bag.
The pet pro locked it up. He locked my bag
and clubs up, and he says, you get him back
when you come back from graduation. I said, what do
you mean. He goes, If you take that bag in
clubs right now, you're never coming back. I'm pretty sure
of it. So you know you need to. I'm going
(25:30):
to dangle this in front of you. So okay, okay.
So that's how I got my start in the golf career.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
How'd your your newly found equipment hostage?
Speaker 2 (25:39):
And one of my first you know, you know, when
you're a young pro working at a club, whate they do. Well,
you're you're in charge of junior golf. Sure, okay, And
so we had these ponds on the golf course and
one day the head pro goes, hey, there's this kid
fishing balls out of the seventeenth hole. Go get them.
You know, we're going to take him home to his parents,
and so I go get this kid out of the
(26:01):
out of the pond, skinny little kids, built like a string,
being young kid. So I told the head pro, I said, hey,
you know, let's just put him in the junior golf
program this afternoon. I don't want to take him home
to mom and dad. Yeah, really, come on, let's do it.
So we stuck him in the junior golf program and
kid went on to be a pretty good golfer. His
(26:22):
name's Woody Austin.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Known as God. Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
It was like one of my first kids in the
junior golf program.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Wow, that's awesome. That's awesome. That's cool. That's really really cool.
So okay, so then obviously you you are, you're pretty
good at this business. So where do you go next?
Speaker 2 (26:46):
I went to a golf course. We nickname it the
Hall of Shame. So what it is? It was a
Tampa airport resort built by a developer named Jim Walters,
and it was really really next right next door to
one Buck in Your Place, which is now moved differently,
but it was one buccaneer place right next to the airport.
It's called the Hall of Fame Inn and the guy
(27:07):
who bought it in a game named Jim Corbett. He's
They're related to the Harriman family and they owned the
Empire State Building. Well, this is a rundown, dumpy golf course.
But I wanted to keep moving up in the golf
business because there's no chance for me working at the
Aage's the Harry's golf Course to do anything other than
run the cash register. So I had a chance to
where I could go give golf lessons and have some
(27:27):
management stuff and learn merchandising and stuff. But this place
was an absolute dump because the mister Corbett wanted to
build a mall on it, and there's a mall on
it today called the and it's one of the best
malls in the southeast United States. And it's right next
to Tampa Airport there and the mall sitting on where
the golf course was. But so I worked there two
(27:47):
and a half years, did every job, and we have
eleven general managers in two and a half years. Well
month I was the manager on duty was a guy
that had to go make change. You know. We had
a little tennis shop and we had a golf shop,
and we had a cocktail lounge and a restaurant and
hotel and everything's like a motor in and my job
(28:09):
wants a month to be mansar on duty, which you know, okay,
that's great responsibility, but my main job is manture on duty.
Making change was easy, you just had to hunk hang
around and make change. But at two am, usually on
Friday and Saturday mornings, two am, I had to chase
the hookers out of the hallways because they would come
start knocking on people's doors. You know. One day, the
(28:32):
head pro who was running it, you know, way over
his head, he calls me up to day before Christmas
and he goes the owner wants you to fire the
entire maintenance crew, including the superintendent. I'm like, are you
kidding me? And so, you know, I mean obviously I
needed my job, you know, I didn't want I didn't
have the economic means just to go walk off the job.
(28:55):
So I had to do that. And they were all
the people that are all working there, down to the
maintenance credator to work there anymore. Either, They were like, relieve,
thank you for firing us. We got to get the
heck out of here.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
That's fascinating, that's me.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
So we had a lot of great stories. I'll give
you a story. There's a guy named Frank Adamo, and
Frank is a World War II hero. He's the one
that he's a doctor. He saved thousands of gis from
malaria or something in prisons and you know, in Japanese
prisoner war camps. And so at the time, you know,
we're talking like nineteen eighty eighty one, somewhere around there,
(29:30):
eighty two, maybe he was. He and a guy named
Frank Collins. Frank used to be the senior vice president
of a large insurance company in North America. Sow. They're
both about ninety years old, and this place is an
absolute dump, okay, But they would play golf there and
they had little pool carts and they would they would
(29:51):
shuffle along and they'd hit a golf ball twenty thirty
yards and shuffle long, and they played like three holes.
And so the head pro there, since we the maintenance
crew decided, hey, you know, you need to get some
post hole diggers. We gotta we gotta move this fence
over here on this one hole. Go go dig him out.
And we don't have a maintenance crew now with all
the golf froze and the cart guys were all the
(30:12):
maintenance crew. And so I've got a pair of post
hole diggers and I'm riding in the golf cart and
the post hole diggers pop out of the cart that
hits the ground. The post hole digger handle hits me
in the chest, knocks me out of the cart. I
didn't get injured or anything, but the air is at
him a doctor wind out. I mean, I couldn't breathe,
(30:33):
and I'm laying on the ground, you know, and that's
a that's a bad feeling. You're laying on the ground
and you can't breathe any Here comes doctor Adamo and
he shuffling along, He and Frank. He shuffles along, and
I mean he could barely, like, you know, move. He
looks over at me and he says, you'll be right,
(30:55):
and then just shuffles along.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Just leave me.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
That was his diagnosis, because that's all he had. You know,
he's not going to bend down and give me CPR
or anything because he can't. You know, they could even
bend down. They had to get one of those little
rubber suction things to pull the ball out of the
yah you'll be all right. Yeah, you know, he gave
me a diagnosis. But from there, you know, the place
(31:18):
was closed in I needed to be a head pro somewhere.
So there's this place called Northdale where they needed a
head pro. And this is nineteen eighty two and it
was and I got paid ten thousand dollars a year
to be the head pro. And we didn't have a
driving range. So but I needed to be the head pro.
I needed the title. I needed to do it. So
(31:42):
I did it. And little did I know my mentor
live right down the street. He was building the blooming
To Golfers Club where I ended up going sounds like
my on the job interview actually, and we had this
guy named Nick Urbano, and Nick was from Canada, and
his partner was a guy named Dave Creighton, whose son
was a famous NHL player. Well, make a long story
shorts me think when you meet in the golf business.
(32:03):
So you know, I had to get an assistant pro
and pay the assistant pro like minimum wage. In those days,
I could barely have a staff to work in the
golf shop. And I told my you know, but the
assistant process, Hey, I want to play on the space
Coast Golf Tour, Sunday, Monday, Tuesdays off. I go, great, Yeah,
you work, you know, Thursday through Saturday. You know you work,
(32:24):
you know Wednesday through Saturday. You have Sunday, Monday, Tuesdays off.
Go play on the Space Coast. And he was a
good golfer from years, say Tampa, and he gets out
there about seventy thousand dollars later, after a couple of
months on the Space Coast Golf Tour Tour, school's coming up.
I said, you know, you don't need this job, just
go play, and he did and it ended up being
a kid named Brian Claire.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Oh Ryan.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
He was Rookie of the Year. He ended up playing
on the tour fifteen years and Brian, as the Termament
director runs all the Champion Tours events.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
That's awesome. That's awesome. So when we come back from
this commercial, we are going to talk about like what
you're doing now, because obviously, you know you've got some
serious stories and some serious dynamic stuff. But I really
really want to hear about your take on the world
of Golphia going.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
On this and we can have a podcast series. But
because that's the one thing I'm good at is pontificating
and bloviating on the air about stuff that happened in
the past, but certainly we'll focus on what's happening now.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Okay, we'll come right back to the rich Comwoll Golf Show.
Welcome back to the rich Comboll Golf Show. We are
joined by John Rigger Junior, and we were just talking
about the kind of the world of golf and some
different people that John's run into. But I want John,
I want you to tell me what you're doing right,
(33:49):
you know, like what you do every day now, because
this is really kind of fascinating to me. Tell me
how much into media you are.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Well, you know in the on my website at johnregergolf
dot com. The pg of America, now they changed the logo.
I can't believe they did that. You know, you know,
I'm a I'm a life member retired. I don't think
I'm retired, but that's my classification the PJ of America.
But if you go to my website you'll see the
old logo and the east they have this campaign it's
(34:18):
called one Badge, Many Roles, and so you know, I
listed all the different roles that I've had in the
golf business because the best, the best way to explain
it what I'm doing now is I'm going to go
back a little bit. Okay. So I had the opportunity
in my life to participate in the construction, uh and
opening of six golf courses, okay, and so with the
(34:40):
clubhouse the golf course construction, So I got to work
with golf course architects and contractors and we had to
do all the marketing and the hiring and the startup
and everything. So that that to me was probably the
most rewarding thing I've done in my career because it
incorporates if they're going to put you in charge, just
something you know, PJ golf professionals were not normally wired
(35:03):
for that, we're not educated for that, but it's just
a matter of circumstance. And I remember back in the nineties,
golf was expanding so fast that PJ golf professionals, their
roles were expanding so fast that even the PJ of
America I've served two times as president of our PJ section,
they didn't have classifications for half the jobs that PJ
(35:24):
members are doing today right in the golf industry. So
with you know, so tying that all together. I built
the last golf course. It's called a Dina's for a
multi billionaire named Frank Stronik. It's in Ocala, Florida, which
is the Force capital of the world. You know, Frank
owns one hundred thousand acres of land. He had at
that time. He had a thousand thoroughbreds, three different farms
(35:46):
across the United States. It's once in a while he
get a horse in the Kentucky Derby and whatever he owned.
He owned his own racetrack called golf Stream, where you know,
NBC does the million dollar entry fee per horse in
winter take All race every year, all that kind of stuff.
So it was interesting, you know, I learned quite a bit.
Now it's the last project I worked on and so
(36:06):
after that, you know, it's one of those things is
like you get to a certain point. Golf is a
great game in the sense that you can do a
lot of different things in the game of golf, But
just like anything else in society, you get a little
bit older. All of a sudden, there's certain things that
you're just either not wired to do or they're not
going to want you to do because you're maybe overqualified
(36:28):
to do. Okay, you know, and so and I get that,
you know, it happens to everybody. So during the time,
right before I did that last golf course, I worked
with a gentleman named Brad James, a veteran broadcaster, and
we ended up doing a golf show together that grew
into a national golf show on Fox Sports. And it
(36:49):
was kind of cool how we got involved with it.
We were doing a local golf show in the Tampa
Bay area and in the studio it was a Clear
Channel studio at that time. They called it part now obviously,
but it's Clear Channel at that time. And next to
us in the studio, and this'll be like nine o'clock
in the morning on a Saturday show, there's this guy
named Cigar Dave. Well, Cigar Dave actually had the national
(37:10):
Fox Golf show. He loves cigars, and so he started
a cigar show on Fox Sports on the weekends.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Now it's all national feed and stuff, but they in
those days actually had you know, national shows, and his
cigar show took off. He is like, he's made millions
of dollars on his cigar show, and so it started
taking off. He's too busy to do the golf show.
So he gave us a national syndicated golf show on
Fox Sports, just gave it to It's like here, take
it over, wow, So we did. So we did so, Brad,
(37:42):
I both gave it up right when I was building
a you know, just like ten years ago, because as
you know, you know, and our listeners out there, we
don't want to you know, make sure you know, don't
feel sorry for us. But not as much money in
radio that you know, they can think. You know, it's fun,
it's great, you know, but it was you know, but
it's not as much as you thinks. So Brad became
(38:03):
the anchor for Glenn Beck on The Blaze because Glenn
had started The Blaze and Brad was his boss in
Tampa when Glenn was having a lot of troubles and
kind of turned Glenn around and Glenn became a big
and success story and then the multi billionaire. He offered
me a deal I couldn't refuse to go build a
golf course form, so we quit the show. So a
(38:24):
lot a long roundabout answer is that nowadays, what I'm doing,
because it just suits me well, is we have a
golf show called on the t Florida, and we reach
about six and a half million households in the state
of Florida, and we're broadcast, believe it or not. We
have the Slight Shift Studio is AM A twenty in Tampa,
(38:47):
the Big Eight they call it, and they you know,
they're very similar to a lot of the Fox Nations
or stations iHeart you know where they broadcast. You know,
they podcast University of Florida and Florida State and the
Buccaneers and Tampa Bay Rate Baseball and so that's a
flight ship station for our golf show called on the
T Florida and so we do. We have a remote studio.
(39:09):
It's not a production studio, but it's remote in a
place called Ferd Sports Bar. And Ford Sports Bar has
been around thirty years. It's the largest sports bar in
the state of Florida and it's also voted the number
one sports bar in the United States by US State today.
And it's right next to Tropic Cana Field and so
for gets there. This is the craziest sports par you
(39:31):
walk in. So of course you got the food and
the beverages. He used to be an old gas station
and he's added on all kinds of stuff. But you
go down there and you can have a beer, you
can listen to our radio show in the live studio audience,
and if you get tired of that, you can go
pick up an axe and throw it around. And then
they have people bring their dogs out back. He built
a big stage out back and he put a JumboTron
(39:53):
on it, and we watched the preview of the Happy
Gilmour movie back there, and it's just all kinds of
crazy stuff that they do. And obviously the Tampa Bay
Rays drove a lot of their business at that time.
It still will be because they're going to return and
play back in the Tropic Candadfield, even though the dome
got destroyed. So that's what I'm doing today. I'm doing
(40:14):
I'm doing on the t Florida broadcast. We have marquee
guests every week. We had Peter Jacob savon two weeks
ago during the Ryder Cup, you know. So we'll normally
have a famous tour pro and we also have national
golf contributors. Adam Woodards, the editor of the Frida Egg,
Jeremy Friedman, he's a PR director for the Lake Tahoe Tournament.
(40:35):
We've got the Onica locally coming up here at the
LPGA Tour, sketchers coming up with the champions in international
and Europea tours. So so Tampa Bay is a hub
of a major league sports and we're the only golf
show only maybe one of the few golf shows in Florida,
and we're the most successful and largest one in Florida.
And so spinning off of that, I'm also next year
(40:58):
I'll be the chair of the Florida Sportsolo. Same and
so on the sports side of things, I do a
podcast called mic de Up. And what we do is
we have Hall of Fame celebrity athletes that we have
conversations with, and you know, it's on the golf side
of it. You know, We've had Jan Stevenson and Gary Cooke.
We even had uh Don Ray, the president of the PJA,
(41:19):
who's make a lot of headlines lately on our show.
And but now also famous athletes, famous football players. Just
recently we had Mike Alstot going into the Florida Sports
Hall of Fame and Brad the Litna, CoV Rick Berry,
the NBA players just you know, just and it's fun.
So that's what I'm doing. You know, you run out
of things to do in the golf business if you're
(41:40):
confident and so so now I'm just doing broadcasting and podcasting.
I gave up giving golf lessons because if I can't
go give a golf lesson inside on a golf seamer
later in air conditioning comfort, I'm just not going to
go outside and do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
So. So the other thing is that you can just
tell by your by your your excitement and your voice
that it's actually you're getting younger every day you do this.
You can just tell.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
It doesn't equate into physiology, but not only Yeah, I
got you there.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
So you know, just so just a useless trivia. Fred
Blitnikoff is from Erie, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
How about that?
Speaker 1 (42:18):
There you go, So he's from Erie, Pennsylvania. So so
you're just going to keep doing that, and you're just
going to keep I'm assuming growing that right. Let me
ask you this, from from community college through Charleston to
doing all the things you've done in the golf business,
could you have ever imagined as a twenty two year
old kids you'd be doing what you're doing right now,
(42:41):
not at all.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
And I think that and the reason why I say
that now is when I went into the golf business.
You know, I wanted to play on the PJ Tour. Sure,
so I went into the golf business and became a
PJ member. You know, paid my dues. Man, you know
what it's like. You know, it's seventy hour weeks and
you know it's I've worked like twelve thirteen years straight
(43:04):
on Christmas Day. I mean those kind of things, you know.
But I'm not complaining because hey, it didn't make much money,
you know, coming up, especially getting involved in golf business.
But it wasn't about the money. It was about, man,
I could be a PG member, and I got my
PG membership, and then I went out and played on
the every Monday qualifier you could play, and in those
(43:24):
days you had Monday qualifiers every tournament, right, And so
then they the year of the year I did that,
they came up with an all exempt tour.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
The next year, Gary McCord came up with that one.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Gary mccorty, absolutely I played in. I played in some
events and stuff like if the I think they used
to call it the TPS Tour. It's like the version
of the corn Ferry today. You know, they had like
twelve tournaments and they weren't like satellite tournaments, but they
it was like you know, but it was just like
a very scaled down version before they invented the Ben
Hogan Tour. Now they called the corn Ferry Tour. And
(43:59):
I remember, you know, and so I'm still trying to
work as a club pro and you know, and get
I'm getting I'm getting ready to sprink my first head
pro job. And you know that's my that's my clock
going off in the back. So it's not like I'm
at a big bend in London here. And so we're
you know, so I won like thirty five thousand dollars
(44:19):
playing golf that year in just various tournaments. You know,
we're talking pro ams, chapter stuff next and stuff, you know,
a couple of TPS things. You know, uh, any open
tournament I could play in, you go to the Dakota's
and whatever. And I thought, hey, that was pretty good
in nineteen eighty three. And my wife looked at me
and goes, get a job. I said, what do you mean.
(44:41):
She goes, you know, you spent ninety thousand dollars this
year and she and she goes, you really know, you know,
you're probably not going to make a career of it.
I go, Yeah, all I wanted to do is just
prove that I belonged, even for a moment. So then
after that, and then it changed my out look to
going into the business side of golf. And I think
(45:04):
probably my claim to fame as a golf professional in
the early days as being the director of golf at
the Blooming Dooe Golfers Club, a unique place where we
had all these PGA Tour, Champion Tour, LPGA Tour players
and you know, they were all young at the time.
Nobody knew about them, and a lot of them went
on to become major championship winners and Hall of famers themselves.
(45:24):
And we were a club. We were building it in bankruptcy,
so we couldn't afford tennis, we couldn't afford a swimming pool,
so we called it a golfers club and our motto
was eat, sleep, and drink the game of golf. And man,
we had a lot of fun in those days at
that club. And even you know, it's been gosh, we
opened it forty some years ago. You know, it's been
(45:45):
sold several times off and on, but people still talk
about that in the Tampa Bay area when they think back,
what a special place that was.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Yeah, that's what you know. It's funny you say, give
the golf business. Be a PGA member, you know, and
and nobody never made any money and all that stuff.
It's amazing to me that I have kids now that
are starting their career and you know, married and all
that fun stuff. And I never ever, ever, ever ever
(46:15):
heard them talk about money. But they always talked about
what they like to do. And they and they said,
you know, like my son's in finance, and my daughter's
a speech pathologist, and she always and she especially said
to me, you know what, if if I'm really good
at my job, they'll pay me money. But that's not
really why I do that job. It's to help that
kid speak a little bit better. And my son's just
(46:37):
trying to do finance because that's what he likes to do,
and they pay him. And I think that's where truly
passionate people get along, because like, you like what you do,
I like what I do. You like what you do
so that they pay us some money for it, great,
But if we didn't like we did, they could pay
us anything, and we'd be like, oh my God, this
(46:59):
is awful.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Well, you know that's true, and I think if I
had to do it all again, I would do the
same thing. I would go to college, I would get
my four year business degree. I would become a PG
member right out of college and go right into work.
But there's a danger. A lot of our younger pros
are coming to those programs, which are just wonderful, but
their expectations in the golf industry is different. You know,
(47:22):
they're going to the best, the best, the best places
you could go to train to be a PG golf
professional in their internships all over the world. You know,
I really appreciate the fact that I had to work
at a golf course that they would call the Hall
of Shame with eleven and a half different general managers
in two years. So it's not a silver spoon existence.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Well, I'll tell you what, John, this has been awesome.
I can tell you how much how much I appreciate
you jumping on here with me. And in the spring
I will have you when I start what will be
my fourth season of this, I will have you back
on and we'll tell us some more really cool stories.
Thanks again, I do appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Well, thank you good luck with your show. I really
appreciate being on and say all loader the folks and
wheeling West Virginia.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
I certainly will. This is the Rich Comwell Golf Show.
Welcome to the ritchcom On Golf Show. We are going
to jump right into this this week because I am really, really,
really happy to have John Rieger with us. John is
a PGA professional and there is not one area of
the world of golf that John has not been involved
in is not involved in. And he's just a really,
(00:23):
really really easy guy to talk to. And it's got
some great golf story and a lot of great golf stories.
So John, thanks for joining us this week.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hey, it's an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
That's awesome. Hey. So all right, so as I start
with everybody, so talk to me about how all of
this started for you, even as a youngster, because I
know there's a connection to Wheeling, West Virginia we can
get into. But how did it start for you?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, I guess I was the first person of my
family born outside Wheeling, West Virginia. You go, as some
of your listeners may know, because of my dad, who
played in the NFL twelve years in the NFL's and
All Pro linebacker nine with the Steelers, three at the Redskins.
And so he was born and raised in willing West Virginia,
(01:08):
and he went to Lindsey Military Academy, and it's a
remarkable story. I won't go too far into it, but
when he got a scholarship to go to the University
of Pittsburgh, he played on the freshman team and hurt
his knee after three weeks and he didn't play college
football ever again. He had to wait almost five years
(01:30):
for his class to graduate for him to be able
to have a tryout, and there was really no path
he was on. He wasn't working towards that. My sister
was born already, but they were sitting around one TV
in an apartment complex back in nineteen fifty five, and
his high school coach in Wheeling called up to coach
(01:52):
the Steelers and say, hey, give him a tryout. So
my dad walked on and made it and played twelve years.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
That's that's all most of my timeildhood.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
When yeah, so most my childhood when he played, we
lived in Pittsburgh, which you know, in those days you
didn't have the interstate, so it was a long way away.
Now I think you can probably live in Wheeling and
work in Pittsburgh if you want.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
And that's exactly correct. So when you were when he
was playing for the Steelers, they were not at St.
Vincent's were they They were in South Park for training camp,
weren't they.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, they moved around quite a bit, you know. One
of the places he went to was a rolling Rock
Pennsylvania with the beer yep. And at that time it
was a dry county. And he made a deal. He's
captain of the team at that time, and he made
a deal. They would have training camp and when at
lunch time, they'd all sneak out and go down to
(02:43):
the brewery and sit in the hot sun with in
pictic tables and see how many rolling rocks they could
drink before they got back to the afternoon practice. So
the NFL has changed quite a bit since those.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Days, slightly slightly, so your father would have played in
He would His last year with the Steelers was.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
What year we was in sixty three, It was his
last year. He got traded in sixty four to the Redskins.
In sixty three he had a severe injury where if
there wasn't oxygen in the ambulance, he would have died
because he got hit in the throats. They were playing
the Eagles, And from that game on, all the NFL
(03:24):
teams everywhere have oxygen on the sidelines. But that wasn't
common in those days. They had oxygen in the ambulance.
Was very fortunate. So the next year, Buddy Parker, the
coach got you know, he got teed off at some
of the old guys, my dad, Tom Tracy, and we
call them old guys. You know, they were vettereds nine
ten year veterans, and so they all got traded and
(03:48):
I think my dad in Preston Carper they got traded
to the Redskins. I'm not sure what happened to Tom,
but you know that's what happened. That's why he got traded.
And you know it was night and day two. The
Steelers obviously are such a you know, big time operation.
Now in those days, my dad had to buy his
own cliques. Yeah and uh, but he was part of
the group with Pete Rush laugh from the Philadelphi Eagles.
(04:10):
My dad and he and a few others founded the
NFL Players Association, right because they wanted, ah, they wanted
to have a union in the fact that they just
wanted to build up a pension. Never in his mind
did he imagine did down the road that they have
these collective bargaining to the point that you know that
it's kind of disconnected from where it first started. But
(04:31):
the players today have a pension. Because my dad and
we was playing actively. You know, it wasn't favorable by
the owners, you know, mister Rooney, he didn't want he
didn't want to he didn't want the players to organize.
So my dad and a few others went to Jimmy
Hoffa who was still alive at the time, and he
was running the Teamsters, and and Jimmy offered them to
become part of the Teamsters. And at that point the
(04:52):
owner said, no, we better let him organize the union.
So Burke Bell was a commissioner at that time, and
they they have the Burke Bell Retirement Plan that started.
And that's so I was pretty cool. I have pretty
cool story about my dad and you know what happened
in the NFL in those days.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
That's really cool. And the one of the reasons I
wanted to get the years is because that your father
would have played home games at both Pitts Stadium and
Forbes Field.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Oh absolutely. So the years that he played for the
Steelers was nineteen fifty five to sixty three.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Right, So, so my father, my father had did not
miss a home steer game since nineteen fifty two to
two thousand and four. He remarkable, so he saw him play.
But I also I used to and this was and
my father's passed on, but he used to tell me
the story that every week in the paper, they would
(05:48):
tell you where they were playing, you know, because like
they sometimes they played at Pitts Stadium, sometimes they played
at Forbes Field. And I'm like, well, how do you
know where to go? He goes, because you read the paper.
He's like, you know, like you're being a like read
the paper, you know, like they put in the papers,
so you knew where to go. And it's he was,
and like you said, it was like a different world
because like he said that, my father told me that
(06:10):
they would trade guys and they and the guys they
got back from the other team just wouldn't show up,
Like I'm not coming, So you guys do whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Oh yeah, I'll tell you what. There's there's all kinds
of stories. I remember my mom would steak my sister
and I into training camp wherever they had training camp.
Because you weren't allowed to see your family, you were
you were cordoned off and uh, and so I remember
you know, my mom wanted to visit. Of course, as
a kid, I had no idea what it was. But
(06:38):
it was like being in prison, conjugal visits, you know,
for the wives. And we would literally sneak into some
small college town somewhere where training camp is and and uh,
and my mom says, you can't tell anybody your name,
don't tell them who you are, you know, and uh.
And so I remember my dad was telling me that
sometimes these players, you know, go to training camp and stuff,
(07:00):
and they decided, I don't want to play football anymore.
I'm just We're just going to walk and leave, and
there'll be an assistant coach at the butt station all
night long to grab him and bring them back, you know,
not let him, not let him leave, not let him
quit playing football.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Not getting out man.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, hey, you know in those days too, you didn't
you know, you couldn't make money all the time as
a player. I mean, it wasn't until maybe into the
late sixties or so. You had a lot of players
like my dad. They all all had to own and
operate their own businesses and work in the off season.
And so my dad's first year in fifty five, he
made fifteen hundred dollars and he you know, and mister
(07:39):
Rooney felt sorry for him. And because you know, I
don't think he felt sorry for him, he just didn't
pay him hardly anything. So he'd paid my dad to
go visit boy Scout troops and basements and give and
give a speech. And my dad actually baby sat the
Rooney kids, you know, you know, all the eighty year
old Rooney kids. And that's well, when they were young,
(08:00):
my dad babysat them for extra money. And that's how
my dad got to know Arnold Palmer because Arnold Palmer,
when he first started out on the tour, the PJ
kept your winnings for six months, yes, and so he
had to actually pull a trailer around behind him. So
he and my dad would hit the sports bank with
circuit in western Pennsylvania and they both get paid fifty
(08:21):
bucks to show up and be at that sports banquet
and you know, give a talk and sign some autographs.
And that's how they pay the bills in those days.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
That's crazy, because you know, it's funny you mentioned the
guys would wouldn't show up or would show up like Ernie.
Ernie Stautner owned a movie a drive in movie theater
up in New York where he was from, and he
would just come. He would come into town the first
day of the first exhibition game. He's like, I'll be
there because, like he goes, I have to close. I
have to close the drive in, you know, like they
(08:50):
close the drive in on Labor Day weekend. So I'm
not coming in. I'm not coming in there before that,
because like, this is how I make my money. You know.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I got an Ernie Stautner story for you. So it
involves my dad the and it wasn't about Ernie Stautner.
It's actually about Bobby Lane. And years later, my dad
and I and a few other NFL players we founded
our NFL Alumni chapter in Tampa, the Tampa Bay Buccaneer Chapter.
And we're talking like nineteen eighty eighty one somewhere around there.
(09:20):
And we used to have themes when we first started
the NFL Alumni chapter. So our golf tournament, the theme
was like the great Quarterbacks of the NFL, So on
every team and it's just charity golf tournament and the
scramble you'd have a famous NFL quarterback. And so what
happened was at the time Bobby Lane's autobiography came out,
(09:41):
and so I grabbed it and looked at it. And
you know, when you're a kid, you don't really you know,
you know, I think everybody's dad was a pro football
player when I was growing up, But when you're a kid,
you don't really pay attention to these things. Well, I
don't know if you remember this incident or not. It's
pretty famous in that area. Might still be where Bobby
Lane ran into.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
The street car hit a street car.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
He sure did, but they couldn't find him. They couldn't
find Bobby Lane, and so he revealed years later in
his book that was my dad that went down there
to get him and get him out of there so
he didn't get arrested, and so and so then you know,
I'm looking through this book and my dad's in there
about six or eight times. And so the best thing
about these NFL alumni tournaments is afterwards, you know, all
(10:28):
the old guys that sit around drinking beer and telling
stories and this, that and the other. And I'm sitting there,
you know, and I got the book and hey dad,
you're on page seventy two. Hey Dad, you're on page
one hundred here, you know, and my dad's looking at
me like, you know, and now I'm twenty five years old,
so it's not like, you know, I'm a little kid
or something. But I said, dad, man, you're pretty cool. Man.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
You're the guy. You're the guy, all right, So you
were okay, So let's go. We've got to get back
to let get back to this this world.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
What you do on a golf podcast and we do
this all the time on our radio show in Florida.
You know, let's start. It's a golf broadcast, but sometimes
a football show.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Break, football show breaks out. That's like that's like, that's
like the fight that the hockey game broke out of.
What So, where were you born then? So if you
were you were born you were the first one born
outside of Wheeling, right right?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
So no, I was. In fact, I told you I
was the first person my family born outside Wheeling, West Virginia.
So I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in Allegheny Hospital.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
There you going, and.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
So we used to That's where we lived in a
place called Avalon Kids, a suburb of Pittsburgh. And uh
in my first exposure to golf, Now, I was a toddler.
You know, we moved out of Pittsburgh when I was probably,
you know, seven years old. But I remember my dad's
first golf experience with me. He took me down to
(11:54):
the Highland Country Club, which which is not too far away, right,
And there's a guy named Mark Tuckey who's a peg there.
And so I had a little cutoff club and a
putter and you know, of course, you know, the kids
weren't allowed on the golf course at those days, but man,
I wore out that putting green with my putter and
that was my first exposure to golf in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Wow. So then you got older, So where did you play? Because, oh,
you're a good player. I mean, let's just be really honest.
You're a good player. Like how did you develop into
a good Like? What did you do next? I mean,
I realized your little kid around putting green. But then,
you know, I.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Wasn't a junior. I was not a junior golf phenom
at all. I mean what had happened was is my
dad we would live when when you started playing for
the Redskins, we'd live in Miami half the year and
the other half we'd live up in Washington, d C.
And so, you know, we moved around quite a bit.
In fact, in twelve years of public school, I went
(12:52):
to ten different schools in twelve years, and the last
school I went to I went for three three years,
meaning that I you know, the school I graduated from
was the one that I went to the longest. And
so what happened is it helped me be a golfer
because you're always moving all the time and you had
to make new friends right away, and so you know,
(13:14):
so golf was a way to do that. And so
we we eventually ended up in Tampa Bay and my
dad bought a run down restaurant and it was called
the Damn Shanty, Dam Shanty, okay, and it was just
they called it a plush dump. You know, you walk
in this place and you write your name on the wall,
(13:35):
and you know, we had concrete floors, but we had
nice tablecloths and this is like Cheers. And my dad
was the sham character there, the famous athlete tending bar
and cooking. And my mom was the Christie Allity character.
And we had those kind of characters. We didn't have
a norm, but we had a you know, we didn't
have the mailman. But we had the vending machine guy
having a beer every night next to an attorney that
(13:59):
tried cases in front of the Supreme Court. You know,
it's just an eclectic mix of people. And so, you know,
so what happened was is that, you know that we
established ourselves in the Tampa Bay area and so you know,
so I played little high school golf there and and
you know what had happened was we were supposed to
win the state championship, but I wasn't really that good
(14:21):
of a golfer, and because probably of a bad temper
and inexperienced and whatever. You know. You know, I shot
like eighty eight in our regional championship, couldn't go to
you know, and we lost by one shot to go
to the state. So in those days, I used to
have golf writers cover high school golfer newspapers. I mean
(14:42):
we're talking mid seventies, right, and so they put a
big headline in there, you know, riger blows it for
the brand of High Eagle, you know, And I brought that,
I brought that article into my mom and I'm just like, really,
you know, I'm embarrassed, and she goes, oh, this is
the best thing that could ever happen to see it,
and I go, what do you mean, so as long
as they spell your name right, you're good to go.
Well yeah, so sure enough, I was good to go
(15:05):
because a local coach of Hillsboro Community College, a guy
named Bobby Strickland. He was a club pro in town.
He ended up being my mentor in the golf business.
I'll explain that later. But he read that paper and
he goes, this guy can't be that bad because I
saw him hit a golf ball in the tournament. So
he said, Hey, are you interested in trying out for
the Hillsboro Community College golf team? I said sure. You know,
(15:27):
a scholarship was not even in the question. I just
wanted a chance to maybe I could actually play golf,
you know, because I hadn't broken eighty in high school
at all. Okay, so we get the ready to go
play in the state Junior. It's like a month later,
and it's one of those things that just everything clicked.
It all came together for whatever reason. And maybe it
(15:47):
was just because it was a you know, but I
played in the state Junior and I shot sixty eight
seventy two and I lost by one shot, and it's
like overnight it clicked and there was no epiphany. It
was just just maybe I matured that I needed that
one more month of maturity or something to try to
(16:09):
figure out how to play golf. So then, you know,
then I got a golf scholarship for a community college.
You know, but in those days in Florida, I'm not
sure rest of the country, but in Florida you had
like twenty three, twenty four teams in the state and
you had to play in a junior college team to
be able to go on to a four year school.
(16:29):
That's how that was like a feeder system. So for example,
I wanted to go to Florida, and by playing junior
college golf before they played at Florida, it was Mark Calcubecia,
it was you know, Larry Rinker, you know Ken Green.
They all had to play junior college golf. So junior
college golf was extremely competitive, and I just kept getting
(16:50):
a little bit better. I didn't win any college termans,
but I just kept getting better and better. My stroke
average got lower and lower and lower, and and and
so you know, my mark on junior college golf though,
was that uh and it has nothing to do with playing,
but you know how you know, sometimes they set up
rules for people. Uh it was where it's really hot outside.
(17:12):
We're playing this golf course in Melbourne, Florida called Country
and so it's just really hot. Well I worked at
Babe say Harry's golf course while I was going to
Hillsburg Community College and that's where Bobby was the pro,
so you know, and Babe say Harry's golf course was
owned by Babe say Harris herself. There's a different story
on that. So you know what it happened was we
had pool carts, you know, you know, you remember those
(17:35):
three We come in the golf shop and how much
is a pool cart? Well it's a it's another dollar, okay,
here you go, sir boom okay. And you know when
I was you know, I was playing you know, you know,
first started playing college golf. You know, you know, you
picked the bag up and down, you know, and they
and and they didn't have the Jones type bags. You know,
we're in those in those days. You know, they they
(17:58):
were just maybe at the avent. You know. Of course,
our school didn't have any money, so I just had
this old burden, you know, small small bag, but it
was you know, it was heavy. I saw the pool
carts there and I went inside. I said, hey, and
I ran a pool card. They go, yeah, you can
run a pool car. So I ran a pool cart
and I tee off and I'm coming down to the eighteenth pole.
You know, we're playing very well, and you know, the
(18:19):
rules officials coming up to me and goes, what are
you doing? I said, what do you mean, sauce, you
got a pool cart? I said, yeah, I do. And
so Bobby comes over, you know, and then Bobby was
such a great mentor, but he's also a great coach.
Bobby was so energetic. He'd make coffee nervous. Okay. They
actually had to take his golf cart away from him
during the tournament as a coach because he was just
(18:42):
driving everywhere. You know, he was just so excited and
drive right up on the tee and jump down and say, hey, John,
look well over here, don't hit it over there. You
know that kind of stuff. And here comes Bobby. You know,
Bobby doesn't have his golf cart, so he's literally jogging
across the fairway as fast as he can the rules
official because he thinks I'm going to get a penalty
of some sorts for something, and he runs up the
(19:03):
rules official and the rules officials try to explain to
me that he can't have a pool card. Well, Bobby's like,
he has the manual in his hand, the Golf Manual
from the National Junior College Golf Association. Like, Bobby, why
are you carrying that around? And he gives it some
rules officially. He says, prove it proved that you can't
have a pool card in a college tournament. And sure enough,
(19:24):
there was absolutely no rule, so that the next day,
the second round, they banned the banned the cards. They've
banned the pool cards. But you know, you look at
junior golf today or college golf all pool pull carts.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
When we come back from this break, we're going to
talk about where you launched from that junior college. Okay,
all right, this is the Rich Komwoll Golf Show. Welcome
back to the Rich Kombell Golf Show. We're joined this
week by John Rieger. John is a PG professional in
Florida and we were just getting out of his junior
college career. So what's next? Tell me what you do next?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Well, I ended up going to the college at Charleston,
and I didn't even decide to go because it wasn't
until I had a great finish on at my sophomore year,
my second year in Hillsburg Community College, that a college coach,
any other college coach, we even look at me. Okay,
but my stroke average was getting down there about seventy three,
(20:23):
seventy four, you know, so in those days, you know,
there's you know, the Division I schools, how they weren't
looking at me. Buster Bishop was the coach, Anarcy of Florida,
where I really wanted to go, and he goes, hey, listen,
you can. We'll pay for your books and you can
be on the team. But on the team at that
time against Calcovecia, Ben Green, a lot of lot, you know,
(20:43):
like everybody except one guy became a PJ Tour pro,
so I knew I'd never played in the tournament, so
out of blue. A good friend of mine at the
time as a junior golfer named A. J. Duncan was
from Saint Petersburg area and really good golf for and
he played for Saint Pete Junior College, and you know,
he went to the National Junior College Championship. Very gifted,
(21:05):
very talented golfer, big guy at the time. You know,
he could he could hit the ball fifty yards by everybody.
And he got a full ride to the College at Charleston.
And it's in South Carolina, and he'd never been to Charleston.
But he calls me up and he goes, hey, do
you want to do you want to come to College
at Charleston and you get a free full ride. I said,
what do you mean. He says, well, here, just call
the coach, because I guess they were trying to, you know,
(21:26):
build up their team. If I called the coach, I said, yeah,
he says, come on, I've never even been to Charleston,
South Carolina, you know all you know, I went down
to Triple A, got the trip tick, got the tour
guy booked to see what Charleston, South Carolina was about.
When I first got up there, I was a little
shaky because that's for the Civil War, my goodness, for
right over there. Yeah, these people must be crazy up there, right,
(21:50):
So get up there and you know, get checked into
the dorm. In fact, the dormy the school was growing
so fast. The dorm was a Francis hotel across the
street from the campus, and so they put the golf team,
anybody in the golf team or athletes into the end
of the hotel. Was great. You didn't visit, no visitation hours,
(22:11):
didn't have anything to do, you know, yet Ice Service
made service, I mean all kinds of stuff. It was great.
So my first day on the golf course, you know,
right before classes started, we go out and I don't
know if you've experienced or not, but they're no seams
or these little tiny bugs. They're on the coast of
the Carolinas, and they are just they're devastating. Okay, if
(22:34):
they get in, they get into every crevice, every hair, everything.
They are just it's the most agonizing thing that you
could ever endure. And we play eighteen holes for my
new team and everything. And I told the team at
the end of the day, listen, I'm going home. I
quit school right now, haven't you started. I'm not gonna
plan this team. I can't live here. And they all
(22:55):
laughed at me, and they had me a bottle of
Avon skin soosoft. Evidently that's what at that time. That's
that's why I got rid of those stands. And they
you know, they laughed at me, and I looked at it,
I put some on. I'm like, hey, I'm a small
pretty good up here at this place. Yeah, and then
i'm you know, then I'm you know, calling back home, Mom,
can you get me some avon? Skin? So soft? And
(23:15):
she's like, you know, what happened to my boys?
Speaker 1 (23:17):
What happened to you in Charleston? What did they do
to you in Charleston?
Speaker 2 (23:20):
What they do to you? So anyway, so you know,
went ahead and hey, had a great career there and
you know, you know, ended up you know, graduating. Uh.
And what I needed to do was I needed a job,
you know, because I was going to get married. You know,
I met my future wife at that time, and so
I needed a job, and so I decided to go
(23:43):
work at Babes the Harrea's golf course, you know. And
this is this is like nineteen seventy nine. And in
those days, the only people that had a staff bag
were golf pros, right, you know, had your name on it,
because you know, if you had your name on a
golf bag in those days and you were you were
an amateur, you lost your amateur status, right. And so
I remember, so college Charleston has a wonderful graduation ceremony.
(24:07):
What you do is you the men wore white tuxes.
The women, you know, they wore white dresses and carry
a dozen roses. And your diploma is, you know, thirty
six by twenty four. At every department head signs that
it's really a cool ceremony. You don't want to miss it. Okay,
well it's it's in June, so school's out. I mean
I graduated early May. I'm done. So I go to
(24:28):
I go take my job at babes Harrea's golf course.
And the head pro at that time, Chuck Winship, had
he got me a McGregor bag and had my name
on it, and he had McGregor clubs, and at that
time he has to stamp your name on the golf clubs. Yep,
if you were if you were pro. So I had
the John Regor Junior stamped on my McGregor woods and
(24:49):
irons and you know, my McGregor bag. And I'm like this,
I'm like, I've achieved everything I wanted to do in
life as a golfer. Now look at what I got here.
I'm getting ready to go back for graduation. And I
go back to the club, picked up my clubs because
I'm going to show all the you know, there's people
on the team I played with, they're just a little
bit younger, and I want to show everybody my bag.
(25:09):
And hey, listen, I'm a pro now. And I got
my name on a bag. I couldn't find my bag.
The pet pro locked it up. He locked my bag
and clubs up, and he says, you get him back
when you come back from graduation. I said, what do
you mean. He goes, If you take that bag in
clubs right now, you're never coming back. I'm pretty sure
of it. So you know you need to. I'm going
(25:30):
to dangle this in front of you. So okay, okay.
So that's how I got my start in the golf career.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
How'd your your newly found equipment hostage?
Speaker 2 (25:39):
And one of my first you know, you know, when
you're a young pro working at a club, whate they do. Well,
you're you're in charge of junior golf. Sure, okay, And
so we had these ponds on the golf course and
one day the head pro goes, hey, there's this kid
fishing balls out of the seventeenth hole. Go get them.
You know, we're going to take him home to his parents,
and so I go get this kid out of the
(26:01):
out of the pond, skinny little kids, built like a string,
being young kid. So I told the head pro, I said, hey,
you know, let's just put him in the junior golf
program this afternoon. I don't want to take him home
to mom and dad. Yeah, really, come on, let's do it.
So we stuck him in the junior golf program and
kid went on to be a pretty good golfer. His
(26:22):
name's Woody Austin.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Known as God. Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
It was like one of my first kids in the
junior golf program.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Wow, that's awesome. That's awesome. That's cool. That's really really cool.
So okay, so then obviously you you are, you're pretty
good at this business. So where do you go next?
Speaker 2 (26:46):
I went to a golf course. We nickname it the
Hall of Shame. So what it is? It was a
Tampa airport resort built by a developer named Jim Walters,
and it was really really next right next door to
one Buck in Your Place, which is now moved differently,
but it was one buccaneer place right next to the airport.
It's called the Hall of Fame Inn and the guy
(27:07):
who bought it in a game named Jim Corbett. He's
They're related to the Harriman family and they owned the
Empire State Building. Well, this is a rundown, dumpy golf course.
But I wanted to keep moving up in the golf
business because there's no chance for me working at the
Aage's the Harry's golf Course to do anything other than
run the cash register. So I had a chance to
where I could go give golf lessons and have some
(27:27):
management stuff and learn merchandising and stuff. But this place
was an absolute dump because the mister Corbett wanted to
build a mall on it, and there's a mall on
it today called the and it's one of the best
malls in the southeast United States. And it's right next
to Tampa Airport there and the mall sitting on where
the golf course was. But so I worked there two
(27:47):
and a half years, did every job, and we have
eleven general managers in two and a half years. Well
month I was the manager on duty was a guy
that had to go make change. You know. We had
a little tennis shop and we had a golf shop,
and we had a cocktail lounge and a restaurant and
hotel and everything's like a motor in and my job
(28:09):
wants a month to be mansar on duty, which you know, okay,
that's great responsibility, but my main job is manture on duty.
Making change was easy, you just had to hunk hang
around and make change. But at two am, usually on
Friday and Saturday mornings, two am, I had to chase
the hookers out of the hallways because they would come
start knocking on people's doors. You know. One day, the
(28:32):
head pro who was running it, you know, way over
his head, he calls me up to day before Christmas
and he goes the owner wants you to fire the
entire maintenance crew, including the superintendent. I'm like, are you
kidding me? And so, you know, I mean obviously I
needed my job, you know, I didn't want I didn't
have the economic means just to go walk off the job.
(28:55):
So I had to do that. And they were all
the people that are all working there, down to the
maintenance credator to work there anymore. Either, They were like, relieve,
thank you for firing us. We got to get the
heck out of here.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
That's fascinating, that's me.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
So we had a lot of great stories. I'll give
you a story. There's a guy named Frank Adamo, and
Frank is a World War II hero. He's the one
that he's a doctor. He saved thousands of gis from
malaria or something in prisons and you know, in Japanese
prisoner war camps. And so at the time, you know,
we're talking like nineteen eighty eighty one, somewhere around there,
(29:30):
eighty two, maybe he was. He and a guy named
Frank Collins. Frank used to be the senior vice president
of a large insurance company in North America. Sow. They're
both about ninety years old, and this place is an
absolute dump, okay, But they would play golf there and
they had little pool carts and they would they would
(29:51):
shuffle along and they'd hit a golf ball twenty thirty
yards and shuffle long, and they played like three holes.
And so the head pro there, since we the maintenance
crew decided, hey, you know, you need to get some
post hole diggers. We gotta we gotta move this fence
over here on this one hole. Go go dig him out.
And we don't have a maintenance crew now with all
the golf froze and the cart guys were all the
(30:12):
maintenance crew. And so I've got a pair of post
hole diggers and I'm riding in the golf cart and
the post hole diggers pop out of the cart that
hits the ground. The post hole digger handle hits me
in the chest, knocks me out of the cart. I
didn't get injured or anything, but the air is at
him a doctor wind out. I mean, I couldn't breathe,
(30:33):
and I'm laying on the ground, you know, and that's
a that's a bad feeling. You're laying on the ground
and you can't breathe any Here comes doctor Adamo and
he shuffling along, He and Frank. He shuffles along, and
I mean he could barely, like, you know, move. He
looks over at me and he says, you'll be right,
(30:55):
and then just shuffles along.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Just leave me.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
That was his diagnosis, because that's all he had. You know,
he's not going to bend down and give me CPR
or anything because he can't. You know, they could even
bend down. They had to get one of those little
rubber suction things to pull the ball out of the
yah you'll be all right. Yeah, you know, he gave
me a diagnosis. But from there, you know, the place
(31:18):
was closed in I needed to be a head pro somewhere.
So there's this place called Northdale where they needed a
head pro. And this is nineteen eighty two and it
was and I got paid ten thousand dollars a year
to be the head pro. And we didn't have a
driving range. So but I needed to be the head pro.
I needed the title. I needed to do it. So
(31:42):
I did it. And little did I know my mentor
live right down the street. He was building the blooming
To Golfers Club where I ended up going sounds like
my on the job interview actually, and we had this
guy named Nick Urbano, and Nick was from Canada, and
his partner was a guy named Dave Creighton, whose son
was a famous NHL player. Well, make a long story
shorts me think when you meet in the golf business.
(32:03):
So you know, I had to get an assistant pro
and pay the assistant pro like minimum wage. In those days,
I could barely have a staff to work in the
golf shop. And I told my you know, but the
assistant process, Hey, I want to play on the space
Coast Golf Tour, Sunday, Monday, Tuesdays off. I go, great, Yeah,
you work, you know, Thursday through Saturday. You know you work,
(32:24):
you know Wednesday through Saturday. You have Sunday, Monday, Tuesdays off.
Go play on the Space Coast. And he was a
good golfer from years, say Tampa, and he gets out
there about seventy thousand dollars later, after a couple of
months on the Space Coast Golf Tour Tour, school's coming up.
I said, you know, you don't need this job, just
go play, and he did and it ended up being
a kid named Brian Claire.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Oh Ryan.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
He was Rookie of the Year. He ended up playing
on the tour fifteen years and Brian, as the Termament
director runs all the Champion Tours events.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
That's awesome. That's awesome. So when we come back from
this commercial, we are going to talk about like what
you're doing now, because obviously, you know you've got some
serious stories and some serious dynamic stuff. But I really
really want to hear about your take on the world
of Golphia going.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
On this and we can have a podcast series. But
because that's the one thing I'm good at is pontificating
and bloviating on the air about stuff that happened in
the past, but certainly we'll focus on what's happening now.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Okay, we'll come right back to the rich Comwoll Golf Show.
Welcome back to the rich Comboll Golf Show. We are
joined by John Rigger Junior, and we were just talking
about the kind of the world of golf and some
different people that John's run into. But I want John,
I want you to tell me what you're doing right,
(33:49):
you know, like what you do every day now, because
this is really kind of fascinating to me. Tell me
how much into media you are.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Well, you know in the on my website at johnregergolf
dot com. The pg of America, now they changed the logo.
I can't believe they did that. You know, you know,
I'm a I'm a life member retired. I don't think
I'm retired, but that's my classification the PJ of America.
But if you go to my website you'll see the
old logo and the east they have this campaign it's
(34:18):
called one Badge, Many Roles, and so you know, I
listed all the different roles that I've had in the
golf business because the best, the best way to explain
it what I'm doing now is I'm going to go
back a little bit. Okay. So I had the opportunity
in my life to participate in the construction, uh and
opening of six golf courses, okay, and so with the
(34:40):
clubhouse the golf course construction, So I got to work
with golf course architects and contractors and we had to
do all the marketing and the hiring and the startup
and everything. So that that to me was probably the
most rewarding thing I've done in my career because it
incorporates if they're going to put you in charge, just
something you know, PJ golf professionals were not normally wired
(35:03):
for that, we're not educated for that, but it's just
a matter of circumstance. And I remember back in the nineties,
golf was expanding so fast that PJ golf professionals, their
roles were expanding so fast that even the PJ of
America I've served two times as president of our PJ section,
they didn't have classifications for half the jobs that PJ
(35:24):
members are doing today right in the golf industry. So
with you know, so tying that all together. I built
the last golf course. It's called a Dina's for a
multi billionaire named Frank Stronik. It's in Ocala, Florida, which
is the Force capital of the world. You know, Frank
owns one hundred thousand acres of land. He had at
that time. He had a thousand thoroughbreds, three different farms
(35:46):
across the United States. It's once in a while he
get a horse in the Kentucky Derby and whatever he owned.
He owned his own racetrack called golf Stream, where you know,
NBC does the million dollar entry fee per horse in
winter take All race every year, all that kind of stuff.
So it was interesting, you know, I learned quite a bit.
Now it's the last project I worked on and so
(36:06):
after that, you know, it's one of those things is
like you get to a certain point. Golf is a
great game in the sense that you can do a
lot of different things in the game of golf, But
just like anything else in society, you get a little
bit older. All of a sudden, there's certain things that
you're just either not wired to do or they're not
going to want you to do because you're maybe overqualified
(36:28):
to do. Okay, you know, and so and I get that,
you know, it happens to everybody. So during the time,
right before I did that last golf course, I worked
with a gentleman named Brad James, a veteran broadcaster, and
we ended up doing a golf show together that grew
into a national golf show on Fox Sports. And it
(36:49):
was kind of cool how we got involved with it.
We were doing a local golf show in the Tampa
Bay area and in the studio it was a Clear
Channel studio at that time. They called it part now obviously,
but it's Clear Channel at that time. And next to
us in the studio, and this'll be like nine o'clock
in the morning on a Saturday show, there's this guy
named Cigar Dave. Well, Cigar Dave actually had the national
(37:10):
Fox Golf show. He loves cigars, and so he started
a cigar show on Fox Sports on the weekends.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Now it's all national feed and stuff, but they in
those days actually had you know, national shows, and his
cigar show took off. He is like, he's made millions
of dollars on his cigar show, and so it started
taking off. He's too busy to do the golf show.
So he gave us a national syndicated golf show on
Fox Sports, just gave it to It's like here, take
it over, wow, So we did. So we did so, Brad,
(37:42):
I both gave it up right when I was building
a you know, just like ten years ago, because as
you know, you know, and our listeners out there, we
don't want to you know, make sure you know, don't
feel sorry for us. But not as much money in
radio that you know, they can think. You know, it's fun,
it's great, you know, but it was you know, but
it's not as much as you thinks. So Brad became
(38:03):
the anchor for Glenn Beck on The Blaze because Glenn
had started The Blaze and Brad was his boss in
Tampa when Glenn was having a lot of troubles and
kind of turned Glenn around and Glenn became a big
and success story and then the multi billionaire. He offered
me a deal I couldn't refuse to go build a
golf course form, so we quit the show. So a
(38:24):
lot a long roundabout answer is that nowadays, what I'm doing,
because it just suits me well, is we have a
golf show called on the t Florida, and we reach
about six and a half million households in the state
of Florida, and we're broadcast, believe it or not. We
have the Slight Shift Studio is AM A twenty in Tampa,
(38:47):
the Big Eight they call it, and they you know,
they're very similar to a lot of the Fox Nations
or stations iHeart you know where they broadcast. You know,
they podcast University of Florida and Florida State and the
Buccaneers and Tampa Bay Rate Baseball and so that's a
flight ship station for our golf show called on the
T Florida and so we do. We have a remote studio.
(39:09):
It's not a production studio, but it's remote in a
place called Ferd Sports Bar. And Ford Sports Bar has
been around thirty years. It's the largest sports bar in
the state of Florida and it's also voted the number
one sports bar in the United States by US State today.
And it's right next to Tropic Cana Field and so
for gets there. This is the craziest sports par you
(39:31):
walk in. So of course you got the food and
the beverages. He used to be an old gas station
and he's added on all kinds of stuff. But you
go down there and you can have a beer, you
can listen to our radio show in the live studio audience,
and if you get tired of that, you can go
pick up an axe and throw it around. And then
they have people bring their dogs out back. He built
a big stage out back and he put a JumboTron
(39:53):
on it, and we watched the preview of the Happy
Gilmour movie back there, and it's just all kinds of
crazy stuff that they do. And obviously the Tampa Bay
Rays drove a lot of their business at that time.
It still will be because they're going to return and
play back in the Tropic Candadfield, even though the dome
got destroyed. So that's what I'm doing today. I'm doing
(40:14):
I'm doing on the t Florida broadcast. We have marquee
guests every week. We had Peter Jacob savon two weeks
ago during the Ryder Cup, you know. So we'll normally
have a famous tour pro and we also have national
golf contributors. Adam Woodards, the editor of the Frida Egg,
Jeremy Friedman, he's a PR director for the Lake Tahoe Tournament.
(40:35):
We've got the Onica locally coming up here at the
LPGA Tour, sketchers coming up with the champions in international
and Europea tours. So so Tampa Bay is a hub
of a major league sports and we're the only golf
show only maybe one of the few golf shows in Florida,
and we're the most successful and largest one in Florida.
And so spinning off of that, I'm also next year
(40:58):
I'll be the chair of the Florida Sportsolo. Same and
so on the sports side of things, I do a
podcast called mic de Up. And what we do is
we have Hall of Fame celebrity athletes that we have
conversations with, and you know, it's on the golf side
of it. You know, We've had Jan Stevenson and Gary Cooke.
We even had uh Don Ray, the president of the PJA,
(41:19):
who's make a lot of headlines lately on our show.
And but now also famous athletes, famous football players. Just
recently we had Mike Alstot going into the Florida Sports
Hall of Fame and Brad the Litna, CoV Rick Berry,
the NBA players just you know, just and it's fun.
So that's what I'm doing. You know, you run out
of things to do in the golf business if you're
(41:40):
confident and so so now I'm just doing broadcasting and podcasting.
I gave up giving golf lessons because if I can't
go give a golf lesson inside on a golf seamer
later in air conditioning comfort, I'm just not going to
go outside and do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
So. So the other thing is that you can just
tell by your by your your excitement and your voice
that it's actually you're getting younger every day you do this.
You can just tell.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
It doesn't equate into physiology, but not only Yeah, I
got you there.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
So you know, just so just a useless trivia. Fred
Blitnikoff is from Erie, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
How about that?
Speaker 1 (42:18):
There you go, So he's from Erie, Pennsylvania. So so
you're just going to keep doing that, and you're just
going to keep I'm assuming growing that right. Let me
ask you this, from from community college through Charleston to
doing all the things you've done in the golf business,
could you have ever imagined as a twenty two year
old kids you'd be doing what you're doing right now,
(42:41):
not at all.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
And I think that and the reason why I say
that now is when I went into the golf business.
You know, I wanted to play on the PJ Tour. Sure,
so I went into the golf business and became a
PJ member. You know, paid my dues. Man, you know
what it's like. You know, it's seventy hour weeks and
you know it's I've worked like twelve thirteen years straight
(43:04):
on Christmas Day. I mean those kind of things, you know.
But I'm not complaining because hey, it didn't make much money,
you know, coming up, especially getting involved in golf business.
But it wasn't about the money. It was about, man,
I could be a PG member, and I got my
PG membership, and then I went out and played on
the every Monday qualifier you could play, and in those
(43:24):
days you had Monday qualifiers every tournament, right, And so
then they the year of the year I did that,
they came up with an all exempt tour.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
The next year, Gary McCord came up with that one.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Gary mccorty, absolutely I played in. I played in some
events and stuff like if the I think they used
to call it the TPS Tour. It's like the version
of the corn Ferry today. You know, they had like
twelve tournaments and they weren't like satellite tournaments, but they
it was like you know, but it was just like
a very scaled down version before they invented the Ben
Hogan Tour. Now they called the corn Ferry Tour. And
(43:59):
I remember, you know, and so I'm still trying to
work as a club pro and you know, and get
I'm getting I'm getting ready to sprink my first head
pro job. And you know that's my that's my clock
going off in the back. So it's not like I'm
at a big bend in London here. And so we're
you know, so I won like thirty five thousand dollars
(44:19):
playing golf that year in just various tournaments. You know,
we're talking pro ams, chapter stuff next and stuff, you know,
a couple of TPS things. You know, uh, any open
tournament I could play in, you go to the Dakota's
and whatever. And I thought, hey, that was pretty good
in nineteen eighty three. And my wife looked at me
and goes, get a job. I said, what do you mean.
(44:41):
She goes, you know, you spent ninety thousand dollars this
year and she and she goes, you really know, you know,
you're probably not going to make a career of it.
I go, Yeah, all I wanted to do is just
prove that I belonged, even for a moment. So then
after that, and then it changed my out look to
going into the business side of golf. And I think
(45:04):
probably my claim to fame as a golf professional in
the early days as being the director of golf at
the Blooming Dooe Golfers Club, a unique place where we
had all these PGA Tour, Champion Tour, LPGA Tour players
and you know, they were all young at the time.
Nobody knew about them, and a lot of them went
on to become major championship winners and Hall of famers themselves.
(45:24):
And we were a club. We were building it in bankruptcy,
so we couldn't afford tennis, we couldn't afford a swimming pool,
so we called it a golfers club and our motto
was eat, sleep, and drink the game of golf. And man,
we had a lot of fun in those days at
that club. And even you know, it's been gosh, we
opened it forty some years ago. You know, it's been
(45:45):
sold several times off and on, but people still talk
about that in the Tampa Bay area when they think back,
what a special place that was.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Yeah, that's what you know. It's funny you say, give
the golf business. Be a PGA member, you know, and
and nobody never made any money and all that stuff.
It's amazing to me that I have kids now that
are starting their career and you know, married and all
that fun stuff. And I never ever, ever, ever ever
(46:15):
heard them talk about money. But they always talked about
what they like to do. And they and they said,
you know, like my son's in finance, and my daughter's
a speech pathologist, and she always and she especially said
to me, you know what, if if I'm really good
at my job, they'll pay me money. But that's not
really why I do that job. It's to help that
kid speak a little bit better. And my son's just
(46:37):
trying to do finance because that's what he likes to do,
and they pay him. And I think that's where truly
passionate people get along, because like, you like what you do,
I like what I do. You like what you do
so that they pay us some money for it, great,
But if we didn't like we did, they could pay
us anything, and we'd be like, oh my God, this
(46:59):
is awful.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Well, you know that's true, and I think if I
had to do it all again, I would do the
same thing. I would go to college, I would get
my four year business degree. I would become a PG
member right out of college and go right into work.
But there's a danger. A lot of our younger pros
are coming to those programs, which are just wonderful, but
their expectations in the golf industry is different. You know,
(47:22):
they're going to the best, the best, the best places
you could go to train to be a PG golf
professional in their internships all over the world. You know,
I really appreciate the fact that I had to work
at a golf course that they would call the Hall
of Shame with eleven and a half different general managers
in two years. So it's not a silver spoon existence.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Well, I'll tell you what, John, this has been awesome.
I can tell you how much how much I appreciate
you jumping on here with me. And in the spring
I will have you when I start what will be
my fourth season of this, I will have you back
on and we'll tell us some more really cool stories.
Thanks again, I do appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Well, thank you good luck with your show. I really
appreciate being on and say all loader the folks and
wheeling West Virginia.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
I certainly will. This is the Rich Comwell Golf Show.
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