Comedian Tom Dreesen: Golf’s Global Ambassador
Saturday, January 28th, 2012Raised in squalor in Harvey, Ill., Tom Dreesen’s childhood together with shining sneakers in bars, setting pins in bowling alleys and pondering success in life was somehow related to alcohol.
“Both of my dad and mom were alcoholics,” stated the veteran comedian. “Rising up in that setting my dad spent all of his money in a tavern. I all the time thought in the future maybe I might be the owner of a tavern. I believed that will be the epitome of success.”
But when he was eleven, Dreesen started his now more than 50-year relationship with golf when he grew to become a caddie at Ravisloe Country Club in Homewood, Ill. His life modified forever.
“I began caddying for six years earlier than I went into the service,” stated Dreesen, a member of the movie star subject at AT&T Pebble Seashore Nationwide Professional-Am for more than a decade. “The members there all Jewish and the caddies were all gentiles. The members were businessmen and businesswomen and they handled us like men, not like servants.
“They revered us and they made positive all the youngsters (caddies) were fed everyday. They had a banquet at the finish of every year for caddies and so they had a yearly scholarship to ship two children to college.”
A few years into his caddying tenure, Dreesen started to check life past bartending and tavern ownership.
Fast ahead a half century and Dreesen directly relates his enduring career as a nightclub, tv and film performer to the lasting impressions of being a caddie.
“I took awhile but finally I began to suppose perhaps I may very well be more than just a bartender . . . just maybe,” stated Dreesen, 64. That’s why I perceive when I younger black child in the ghetto says, ‘I wish to be a pimp or a dope pusher.’ That is the only sort of profitable man he is seen in that environment. They’ve got automobiles and cash and nice clothes. So as a boy, that (the country membership setting) made sense to me. I may see past my environment.”
In the ensuing many years, Dreesen has realized about life and leisure and golf. And for him, it’s all intertwined.
Dreesen first mixed enterprise and golf in 1977. Bob Hope noticed Dreesen perform one may in Wisconsin and asked the comedian to play in his celebrity event. Dreesen has been a part of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic since. In addition to his lengthy taking part in tenure, Dreesen’s is also now the tournament’s emcee.
In addition to playing in charity events (including his own yearly match) Dreesen is co-founding father of the Superstar Gamers Tour. He additionally maintains a busy performance schedule and is an in-demand company motivational speaker.
Throughout his speeches, Dreesen typically references his much less-than-glorious Chicago childhood. And he additionally periodically returns to Ravisloe Nation Club where more than a half-century ago his unsettled youth was modified through golf.
“They have footage of me there and they treat me like a son coming home,” Dreesen recalled. “If you caddied there and you go back and play, there’s a feeling you get, you understand?”
Dreesen has greater than 500 television appearances in his lengthy career. He was a guest on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson greater than 60 times. As an everyday visitor on Late Night time With David Letterman, Dreesen often talks about his more than a decade tenure as the opening act for Frank Sinatra.
With Letterman and band leader Paul Shaffer, Dreesen carried out for U.S. soldiers in Iraq on Christmas Day, 2004. When he returned, Dreesen started wearing a camouflaged cap during superstar golfing events. The hat was a gift from the soldiers he visited.
“It is an attention-grabbing thing being a poor boy and carrying two baggage a day,” mentioned Dreesen, who carries a 5-handicap and has 5 times shot his career low of 70. “You might say, ‘Oh, poor Tommy.’ However golf has made my life today. Being a poor child, at any time when I give motivational speeches, I say I got here from this poor surroundings and I say to kids that it’s the best factor that ever happened to me as a result of all of life is about perception.”
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