Chuck Jaquin – Golf Legend
Ever since I was young enough to hold a golf club, there was one member of our extended family who was the gold standard in the game of golf, my cousin Chuck Jaquin. I remember following him around as a youngster at Lakeshore Country Club among the leaders of the Herald Amateur, hearing about his incredible eagle-birdie-eagle finish to shoot 65 at Radisson and his flawless 68 to win the Family Open at Battle Island. These are just a few of the memories I have of the man who so many people have enjoyed playing a round of golf with over the years. His talent, humor, charisma and joyfulness are evident from the moment you plant your tee in the ground on the first hole and it’s always a great day on the course when he’s in your foursome.
So it’s with great honor, love and admiration that I got to sit down at Wegmans over coffee and re-visit many great memories with this golf legend.
DB: Tell us about your younger days and how you got started playing this great game?
CJ: My father was a decent golfer, obviously he had ten kids, but he had back problems, so the doctor said the golf swing isn’t the best for you, so he stopped playing golf. My two older brothers, Bob and Dick, introduced me to the game, who are both decent golfers. We used to go to Brooklawn, that’s where I actually started playing golf. When I was ten years old, buddies of mine, Lannie and Jimmy Pfeifer, Kenny Reschke, all from Mattydale, and myself decided to ride our bikes with our clubs over our shoulder. We parked our bikes in the weeds and we’d sneak on the course. We used to play until we got caught and got kicked off the course. We did this five days a week.
I started caddying when I was twelve years old. The four of us went out to Lakeshore Country Club where we’d hitchhike to the course. The Caddy master was Chuck Jonick, just like on Caddyshack, it was the same thing. He’d be yelling at us, “You’re carrying for so and so today, we’d say we’re not caddying for him. If you don’t carry his bag today then get off this course and never come back.” So I learned a lot there. I caddied for Danny Biasone and a lot of big money matches and the rate was $2.25 per bag, but you’d normally carry doubles so the weight was evenly distributed. “Caddy go into the woods and find my ball…go here, go there, and there’d be cheating all over the place. Don’t say anything Caddy.” So that’s where I started learning a lot about people.
DB: Tell us more about your early successes on the golf course?
CJ: Every Monday at Lakeshore was caddies day, we got to play there for free, but you had to be off the course by Noon, so we’d tee off first thing in the morning. I started playing pretty good and was hitting the ball well and my first success was winning the Caddy tournament with a 74 when I was thirteen years old at Lakeshore. Compare that to when I was in the final group in the Herald Amateur, playing with Mike Naton and Rick Russo, and shot a 90!
So I was playing pretty good and I tried out for the golf team at CBA, and I made it. I was one of four including Teddy Till, one of the best golfers in the city as it turned out, Mike O’Connor, who’s now a priest, and Cal Fallon and we all had some great matches. So I played four years at CBA and then went to LeMoyne and tried out for their team and made it my sophomore year. One of my first matches was against Syracuse University and their golf coach was Jim Boeheim; that’s where I first met him. Since then, while I don’t see him very often, but when I do, he still remembers my name.
DB: In the game of golf, you meet so many different people, tell us about some of the people you’ve met along the way in your working career?
CJ: That’s what I always said about golf, you meet a lot of people and you learn a lot of life lessons. Later on when I started working for the phone company, I had a lot of major accounts, and I started talking golf with some of these clients, in addition to business, next thing you know I’m inviting them out to the course and they’re inviting me to their course. A lot of events that New York Telephone and Verizon had over the years were trips to Florida where you’d invite some of your key customers and they enjoyed playing with you. You learn about people on the golf course, not just the job. Very rarely do you talk about the job when you’re playing golf with them. These guys were the Senior VP’s of Niagara Mohawk, Carrier Corporation, General Electric, people with pretty good ties to the community. A lot of them were members at Onondaga and Calvary Club. You learn about people, but if you’re a decent golfer, it does help. They look to you for help. How’d you do that…how’d you hit that? As a matter of fact I bought a gentleman at Niagara Mohawk the ‘Big Bomber’ driver. He was the decision maker at Niagara Mohawk. After a couple rounds with him, we ended up signing a multi-million dollar contract with Niagara Mohawk up at Nine Mile. Sometimes these relationships you build really add up and they’re rewarding. The bottom line of golf is that you learn life lessons and you do build relationships, not only with fellow members, but also with people in your family. In the Family Opens, you discover common interests; when you’re having conversations, you know what to talk about because they’re interested in it. Talking about family, social issues and sometimes politics, I’ve developed friends for life. So you have work friends, golf friends, school friends and family friends and it does open the door for opportunity. It’s nice to have a lot friends.
DB: Tell us about some of your memories at Radisson?
CJ: I joined in the late 70’s. Radisson was a great course, owned by New York State at that time, it was in meticulous shape and they had a huge budget (circa late 1970’s–1980’s). It was just in perfect shape. I started playing in the member-members and then we started playing in the member-guests. It was a big event out there. They’d put the sign up sheet out and they’d fill up with 64 teams in the matter of a day. There was big money in it and we, Charlie French and myself were fortunate enough to make the finals of the championship flight. Charlie played at Cortland CC and we were in the finals in ’88, ’89, ’90, ’91, ’92 and ’93. We won it in 1988, 1989, were co-champs in 1991 because the final round was rained out, and won it again in ’93. That was a pretty good streak for Charlie and me. We loved Radisson but then the state sold it to a group out of Connecticut, and they flew in for a big meeting, and they told us everything they were going to do. They were going to put in all new cart paths, improve this, improve that, but they didn’t do anything, and the course fell apart as far as maintenance, so I don’t know what happened to the budget. It was around ’97 or ’98, there were around twenty of us that decided to leave and go to Beaver Meadows.
DB: You obviously had a lot of success at Radisson, take us through some of your other achievements on the course.
CJ: Well, it kind of ties it all together. I used to enter the Herald Amateur, which is now the AIM Championship, and it was big news…it was front page of the newspaper…it was on the local news. I played the nicest courses around: The Calvary Club, Lafayette, Lakeshore, Bellevue, so I was fortunate enough to make the ‘final 32’ four times. I was leading the tournament after fourteen holes at Skaneateles and then hit two balls out of bounds, took an eight and that was the end of that tournament. So many memories of the Herald Am, various member guests and the Oldsmobile Scramble.
DB: I remember I was very young, but the entire family was so excited that you made it down to Florida for the Oldsmobile Scramble finals…tell us about that experience.
CJ: The Oldsmobile Scramble was a national tournament that had been running for twenty years plus. First you had to qualify at your home course (Radisson), then if you won at your course, you’d advance to the regional qualifier. That year was at the Links at Hiawatha Landing. The team was Mike Griffin, Mike Connoly, Bob Snyder from the Herald Journal and myself. We won the tournament by three strokes after eagling the 18th hole and the celebration was on. We flew down to Florida, stayed at Disney World, and played the four courses down at Disney. After the first round we were 16 under par, but the leaders were 24 under, so we didn’t cash in, but it was a tremendous experience.
DB: Take us through more of your favorite tournaments, and memories from The Family Open, The Penn Masters, etc.
CJ: The Family Open started in 1959, where I caddied for my father, and was attended by my grandfather, my Uncle Don, Jack Tickner, Jackie O’Hern, my brothers, Bob and Dick, and Fuzzy Kunzelman. I think there were 12 originals. ’59 started it off and it’s still going on today. So you took it over after a brief lapse in the mid 1980’s, but it’s tremendous, a lot of people have played in it through the years and a lot of people have won it. I think I’ve won it four times, but it’s just a great time. Everybody looks forward to it and I get to play with all my brothers, cousins and friends; it’s just a wonderful thing. Playing with you Don, your brother Eddie, an all-time winner in The Penn Masters, but you wouldn’t know if he won fifteen tournaments or if he never won at all, and your Dad, Don Brown Sr., tremendous man, so much fun to play golf with. I tell both you and Ed all the time if you can just emulate your father, you’ll be very successful.
The Penn Masters is just a wonderful tournament. There were sixteen people who played in the first Penn Masters back in ’97 and now it’s over 120 golfers, so it’s grown quite a bit. It’s a tremendous event, everybody looks forward to it all winter, we count the days until the tournament arrives each May. It’s run very professionally, the food, the hospitality, the hotel, the great courses, it’s just fabulous. Again, you meet a lot of people. I’ve developed friendships with a lot of them and it’s amazing the number of people you meet. I did win one time, back in 2005…very proud. I did get beat on the final hole to my nephew, Brian McLauchlan, back in 2007. You can’t really explain the Penn Masters unless you’re there, and what it means to all of us.
DB: You’ve talked a lot about friendships forged over the years of playing this great game. Which ones stand out?
CJ: Where do I start? Charlie French…I met Charlie the first day I started working at the phone company in 1970. He had just gotten back from Vietnam and had graduated from Syracuse University. He was a very avid golfer and lived in Truxton, NY. We were going to an initial sales meeting together and just introduced ourselves. We just hit it off and we started playing golf together. He joined Cortland and he started playing the Cortland member-guest and I had him up to the Radisson and Beaver Meadows member-guests. To this day, we still play together in great events like the Collins Cup, which is a big tournament that Charlie runs. It’s always a stacked field with 72 teams. So Charlie is my best friend.
Another great friend was Mike Griffin, who I met actually through my brother Tommy. Tommy always said I was a ‘pal poacher’ because I stole his friend from him. Mike was a big Syracuse fan and we met at the Big East Tournament and we just hit it off. We had a lot in common. Mike was an avid golfer and sport’s fan. He joined Beaver Meadows even though he was working in Philadelphia. He’d come up every Thursday to play golf. He and I played in many member-member tournaments for years, so many great memories there. Then Mike started playing in The Penn Masters, with his son Josh. He’d take lessons from his other son, Andrew, who’s a golf pro. He was one of my best friends. It’s very sad that he died back in October of 2020. Just so many great memories and I miss him to this day.
DB: You come from a very large family…just an incredible family. What does family mean to you?
CJ: Do you have about an hour and a half? (chuckles) All ten of my mother’s kids were born in St. Mary’s hospital on Court Street, five boys and five girls. We moved to Mattydale when I was one year old. Bobby is the oldest, then Dick, then Kathy, then myself. I don’t think Mary Lou was born yet, when we moved into a brand new home in Mattydale. The cost was nearly $7,500 for a four bedroom cape. There we stayed, all those years where my parents raised ten kids, with one bathroom. That’s quite a trick. I went to St. Margaret’s grammar school when it opened. Then I went to CBA for high school. Some of my brothers and sisters went to Assumption, other siblings went to St. John the Baptist and some went to Bishop Grimes. As people got older, Dick moved out, Kathy was out in California as a nurse, the majority of the time there was at least eight of us kids home. The way it was situated, downstairs was my parents room, to the right was the baby’s room. There was always a baby. Upstairs, take a left, all the boys slept there, take a right, all the girls slept there.
Then I went to LeMoyne as a day-hop and lived home. There weren’t too many of us day-hops because most everyone lived in the dorms. Again, all the people I met, especially from New York City, I’m still friends with those guys and girls today. I started dating my wife as a junior. She would follow me all around, the dance place at Suburban Park, she would be there and eventually we started dating. I graduated in ’69 and then joined the reserves, because the draft was still in effect then. I went to basic training in Fort Polk, Louisiana. In the meantime Eileen and I were engaged. Eileen O’Neil from Mattydale. We were going to get married in September, but we just couldn’t wait, so we got married in May. Don’t worry, Kristen wasn’t born for another four years. So we got married May 9th of 1970. Still married after 54 years and have two wonderful daughters, Kristen and Lauren. Kristen married Dan McSherry and they have two children, Emmy who’s a freshman at CBA and Nathan who is going into 7th grade at CBA. They live local. My other daughter, Lauren, she graduated from St. Lawrence University and we’re still paying for her tuition bill ( laughs). She got out of college, moved to Boston with a couple of friends, and then met a wonderful guy, Brendan, got married and they have two beautiful children. Caroline is five and Catherine is three. I’m very blessed to have come from and to have such an incredible family.
