Jim Burnett was revisiting a kaleidoscope of memories from the inaugural Tommy Keane Invitational when he offhandedly mentioned the green jackets.
Wait. What?
It was 1975. Burnett and Jerry Daly had just won the first TK, established that summer to honor Tommy Keane, who served as Hanover Country Club pro and Dartmouth coach from 1922-66.
The honoree’s son Tommy, the driving force behind the tournament, had a arranged a special presentation for the winners. He’d donated green blazers from his Lebanon shop to be awarded to the winning team.
Beyond the homage to the Masters, the green jackets were fitting awards for the winners. Burnett had grown up on the Dartmouth golf course, he explained, “as sort of an adopted member of the Keane family.” And Daly was on his way to becoming a three-time All-American for the Big Green.
“They put the jackets on us, and they were way too big,” Burnett remembered with a laugh. “Tommy eventually got us ones that fit.”
No one will be pulling on green blazers when the 50th renewal of the venerable tournament concludes late Sunday afternoon. While the prizes from a half century ago were long since lost to time and Hanover Country Club has regrettably closed, the Tommy Keane lives on at The Quechee Club.
“TK borrowed the idea of the tournament from others like the Pierce over in Rutland,” Burnett explained. “There would be qualifying, a nice dinner under a tent, and then matches. Because I was always around, I knew about it right away.”
It was Daly who approached Burnett to see if they could team up for the four-ball tournament.
“He asked me if I wanted to partner with him,” said Burnett. “He knew that I had also worked on the course, mowing greens and stuff like that. So maybe he figured I knew the greens better than anybody.
“I don’t know about that, but Jerry was a fantastic golfer and I was very happy to pair with him. We became close friends after that.”
The eventual champions signaled their dominance when they qualified as medalists on Friday. With talented teams from the Upper Valley joined by twosomes coming over from the Pierce and up from Manchester, they knew they would have to play well to advance, and they did.
“We didn’t blow everyone away,” Burnett said. “But we didn’t have to go extra holes with anybody and ended up winning fairly comfortably.”
With Burnett moving to Florida where he and his wife had taken teaching positions, Daly won the TK for the second time in 1976 with Jay Leonard as his partner, and in 1982 teaming up with Tom Mullany.
Daly passed away in 2002, but not before introducing his son Jeremiah to the tournament held on his old college course.
“I grew up coming to the TK,” said Jeremiah, who like his father would go on to twice captain the Dartmouth golf team. “I was born in 1981 so I wasn’t there for the first one but the tournament was always part of my life because when I got older I would caddy for my dad.”
Although he will miss this year’s tournament because of a prior commitment, the TK holds special meaning for Daly.
“You had to be 18 or older to play in the tournament, and when I was 17 my dad wrote to Seaver Peters who was the tournament director to see if I would be able to play with him and they allowed it,” he said. “We shot a 60 gross in the qualifying in Hanover.
“I can still remember that day pretty vividly. That was really the last time I ever got to play a tournament with my dad, because he got sick after that. So that has a really special place in my heart.”
For the son, it wasn’t about the score. “It was just so neat for me to get to know my dad’s friends, and see him in that environment.”
Like Daly, Burnett has his own father-son memories from the tournament.
“After my son got into golf, he and I played together in 1994, I think it was,” Burnett said. “We qualified for the first flight and ended up winning it, which was special.”
Fathers and sons, brothers playing with brothers, and new friends becoming old friends are all part of the tapestry of the Tommy Keane.
“It’s like a family reunion for sure,” said Burnett. “It’s overlapping generations through the years. I played with my son one year when Tommy the third was playing with his son. I got to know Jeremiah through Jerry and am still in touch with him.”
That family aspect is the event’s emotional center for Daly and so many others who return year after year.
“Each time I come back I see people I’ve known for a long time, and who knew my father, and it’s all through golf,” said Daly. “It’s the John Donnelly’s. It’s the Scott Peters. It’s Jimmy Jankowski and many others.”
Daly will be in England when this year’s champions are crowned, but when he gets back to the States, he’s going to dig out scrapbooks his grandmother kept of his father’s golf career. He has a vague memory of an old photo of his father and Burnett celebrating that first Tommy Keane Invitational in 1975.
And maybe, just maybe, in those faded pages they’ll be wearing oversized green jackets.
