Friends and family come out in force for Brad Sawyer Memorial Golf Tournament

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

CHARLES CITY — Brad Sawyer loved golf.

Wildwood Municipal Golf Course was where he loved to play it.

“This was his most favorite place in the world,” Brad’s mother Annie said. “He was always here. He practically lived out here during the summer.”

Though he loved golf and loved playing it at Wildwood, Brad probably wasn’t a big fan of crowded tee times. So the immense turnouts that his namesake memorial tournament continually attracts may have overwhelmed him.

“This has been our biggest tournament of the year for some time,” Wildwood superintendent Joel Bruner said of the Brad Sawyer Memorial Tournament, which held its 17th annual event on Saturday.

Foursomes on each hole?

Not even close. Each of the nine hole assignments for the double-circuit 18-hole tournament were just a couple of players short of forming full football teams on one side of the ball.

“It fills up pretty quickly every year,” Annie said. “We have nine players on each hole … three, 3-person teams. Twenty-seven teams overall.

“One year we tried to do 30 teams to make extra room. But 27 is probably the highest manageable number.”

Brad played golf for Charles City High School in the mid-1990s and continued to be an enthusiast after graduation. On Oct. 13, 1999, Brad died in an automobile accident.

“For the following spring, his father (Scott Sawyer) decided to hold a golf tournament in Brad’s honor,” Annie said. “They both loved golf, and they often golfed here together.”

Scott died in 2010, but Annie, her daughter Tara — a golf enthusiast herself who also played for Charles City — and a bevy of family and friends have managed to keep the memorial tournament going strong.

“And Joel (Bruner) has been wonderful,” Annie said. “He’s been very helpful in keeping this going.”

The format of the tournament was three-man, best-ball. The team of Bruner, Keith Stough and Ryan Kayle won the championship flight division with a 12-under 60 score.

“Yeah, we won this before but it’s been awhile since we won the last one,” Bruner said of his team that normally plays the tournament together.

Bruner remembers Sawyer as a regular Wildwood patron. Stough, like many of the tournament participants, was a former classmate of Sawyer’s at CCHS.

“We were two grades apart, but we played a lot of golf together,” said Stough, who has managed to play in every tournament even after relocating to Cedar Falls.

“Brad and his family had a lot of good friends,” Stough said. “We have people coming in from all over the place … Des Moines … Minnesota …

“It’s a great opportunity to get together and catch up on things. For many of us, this is the only time of the year we get to see each other. It’s like an annual reunion.”

Proceeds from the event went to cash prizes and for continual upgrades to the Wildwood course.

This year, the “Longest Putt” cash prize was donated in memory of Mark Hruska by his family. A former classmate of Brad’s, Hruska died in 2015.

Annie has played in the tournament herself.

“But with Tara and her husband also playing, I often have to watch over the grandchildren,” Annie said … though the grandchildren dilemma was rectified for this tourney when someone offered to entertain them away from the golf course.

Still, Annie wanted to be available to help wherever needed and to make sure her son’s tournament runs as smooth as possible.

“I get so worried about it raining,” she said.

Unlike the inclement weather that plagued the PGA Championships in New Jersey this past weekend, conditions — as usual — were ideal for the Brad Sawyer Memorial Tournament.

“We haven’t had one of these rained out yet, but when I was looking at the forecast earlier this week, I thought our luck may have finally run out,” Annie said. “But knowing these guys, they would have probably played in the rain.”