Given the array of intriguing July golf tournaments involving elite players – from the Scottish Open to the Open Championship to LPGA majors in France and Wales – it’s understandable that the Willett Cup didn’t command your attention.
But it’s the one, more than all the others, that can tug at your heartstrings.
Surveying the gathering of 40 young golfers at Charles River CC in Newton – some of them unheralded professionals, a few of them quality junior players, the biggest chunk of them collegians – Don Wyse marveled at their enthusiasm to “maintain the mission.”
This mission is to carry on the legacy of Rick Willett, a man whose energy for adventure and quenching his competitive fire was immense. He shared that on the ski slopes with his wife and former ski team teammate at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Beth, and with his children, Conner and Katlyn. He shared it on the golf course with Conner, who inherited his dad’s passion for competition and developed into a quality golfer.
To know that part of the Rick Willett story has a charitable component is to get a clearer picture of what the Willett Cup is all about. Money that is raised for the RW Horizon Fund is then dispersed to the Spaulding Discovery Center. That is the facility that helped Rick Willett recover from a Traumatic Brain Injury when he was injured in a ski accident in 2005.
After he recovered, Rick Willett was committed to advancing brain science and he tackled philanthropic avenues the way he skied and played golf – with relentless passion.
Beth, Conner, and Kaitlyn are determined to keep his spirit alive through the foundation, although Conner knows who the driving force is.
“It’s her Super Bowl,” he said of his mother.
But another huge piece of the Willett Cup involves the 40 young golfers who take part and how many of them grieved alongside Conner when his father died suddenly in July of 2022 after choking during dinner after a round of golf.
Rick was the center of Conner’s universe, yes, but he was also a mentor and pretty much a friend to his son’s colleagues at the Challenge Cup junior golf circuit.
When Rick Willett died three summers ago, Conner Willett had priceless emotional support from his tightest of golf friends, lads named Ethan Whitney, John Broderick, and Weston Jones. That Conner Willett somehow, someway scraped together a stellar golf game and battled through numbness and tears for eight rounds over five days and won the 114th State Amateur still appears to be a Hollywood script.
Only it was real, very real.
“It just goes to show you what the human spirit is capable of,” said Wyse, who still draws inspiration from what he witnessed at Concord CC, even as he was still mourning the loss of his dear friend, whom he met through the WPI ski team.
They were afficionados of that flavor of skiing that is experienced by a small but loyal community. Extreme skiing. “No grooming, no trails. You pick your line and you ski that line,” said Wyse, a small smile breaking out on his face. “When you’re in, you’re in.”
And Rick Willett clearly was sooooo in and he brought that sort of competitive mentality to his golf. “You commit to that shot,” said Wyse, who is not a golfer but spent much time around the Willetts to know that competitive golf has similarities to extreme skiing.
To watch the youngsters go off in four-player teams that were named for mountain ranges favored by skiers (the Chilkats won by one over the Chugachs, with the Sierra Nevadas third) was rewarding to Wyse. So, too, was it engaging to see how so much of the Willett Cup completes these circles.
To wit:
Conner Willett’s foursome included his uncle, Bryan Willett; Brendan Hunter, who won the State Am six years prior to Conner and was Rick’s go-to caddie at Old Sandwich GC; and Wyatt Barlage, Conner’s neighbor and best friend since they met in the third grade.
Four months after Rick Willett died, Jack Gregory Barlage died of acute myeloid leukemia.
Best friends, teenagers, next-door neighbors. Conner Willett and Wyatt Barlage had each other to lean on.
“It was a lot for young kids to absorb. A real lot,” said Beth, who loved it at this year’s Willett Cup when Wyatt Barlage won the most skins.
Oh, and Caleb Manuel, another member of Conner Willett’s circle of golf comrades, is the son of Patrick Manuel, who knew Rick Willett from growing up in Maine and playing baseball.
All of it a circle of young golfers who honed a competitive fire in the confines of Dave Adamonis Jr.’s Challenge Cup and have been represented at the Willett Cup. Such joy for Beth Willett.
“For sure, Conner has a big group of golf friends. He leans on his peers,” she said. The, noting how the Willett Cup could not function as smoothly without the uncanny leadership of Adamonis, the praise flowed.
“He created this environment, this ‘Challenge Cup thing’ which starts when the kids are 11 or 12 and (the camaraderie) will carry on for years and years. It’s very impressive how he has connected to these kids. He’s a huge mentor.”
There is a big picture of the goodness that surrounds the Willett Cup, that being to keep Rick Willett’s foundation in play. As Wyse said, “Maintain the mission.”
But to study what frames the Willett Cup is to marvel at the strength and dignity that Conner Willett has shown in the aftermath of heartache. Rick died in the summer after his son’s freshman year at Georgetown and Conner had an opening to shut down. Only that isn’t what his father would have wanted.
“My father taught me how to work hard,” he said.
So that is what Conner Willett did, graduating in four years from a prestigious university while maintaining his commitment to the golf team. It wasn’t easy and Conner doesn’t deny that his golf game suffered, though credit his maturity for choosing academics.
But now, Conner Willett harkens back to conversations with his dad, when it was agreed that taking a gap year before college didn’t make sense. Go right from Belmont Hill to Georgetown, play four years of golf, graduate, then take a gap year.
That was the plan and good on Conner Willett, he’s doing just that. He’ll give the pro game a shot.
“It’s something we talked about,” he said. “I’m a really good player and I want to give it a shot.”
At Georgetown, Conner Willett said the lack of practice showed in his golf. But he has spent time playing golf and talking with one of his father’s good friends, Jason Greiner, who played on the Hooters Tour, and now he’s working with PGA professional Sean McTernan.
First up, Conner will caddie for Ethan Whitney in the upcoming Colorado Open. He will also sprinkle in some competitive events in the coming weeks (the Rhode Island Open and the Maine Open). The plan, however, is to be ready to chase a Korn Ferry Tour card at Q School in th fall.
A hard road? No question. But consider this: What sort of challenge did he face in the aftermath of his father’s shocking death? And just how did he handle that tumultuous time in his life?
With character and fortitude. So, no question, he deserves this opportunity.
