Tom Gillis’ first day in Conway to play on the Coastal Carolina University men’s golf team was quite eventful.
Several years before Gillis played for eight years on the PGA Tour, he was recruited to play at CCU from a Michigan junior college by then coach Billy Bernier.
A few hours after his arrival on a Saturday in 1988, Gillis was at a party near campus when police officers came to break it up.
In protest, he snuck around a police car and proceeded to let the air out of a tire. For that, he was arrested.
“I was going to let some air out of the guy’s tire to let my presence be known, and the next thing I know I was in the Horry County jail,” Gillis recalled. “That was my first night in town. So I got my phone call, and I was pretty scared in there being a kid from the north. I had no shoes on, surf shorts on and a shirt that said ‘Surf Naked’ on it, and I had a northern accent.”
With his one phone call from jail, he called Bernier.
“I thought I’d probably never tee it up for Coastal but I wanted to get out of there, I was a little afraid for my life,” Gillis said.
Meanwhile, his fellow team members from the party scoured Conway the next morning trying to cash checks to cover his $218 bail. Current Prestwick Country Club general manager Jay Smith recalls coming up with the money after some effort and doubt.
“It was me and a couple other guys. We had to ride around Conway trying to find money, trying to get a check cashed on a Sunday,” Smith said. “I mean, back in 1988 in Conway on a Sunday, nothing was open until like 1 o’clock.
“I think we ended up going to a McDonald’s and one guy had a bunch of traveler’s checks, and they felt so bad for us they cashed them.”
Team member Kent Fukushima, a Canadian, had the traveler’s checks.
“Three or four teammates showed up and bailed me out for $218 and I never had a problem with the law ever again there,” Gillis said.
That was one of the many stories reminisced about last week when members of the CCU golf teams from 1988-1992 reunited for the first time at a large home in Garden City for a few days.
“It was a lot of fun. A lot of laughs,” Gillis said. “We consumed several beverages, there’s no doubt about that. It was like going back 35 years ago. Nobody really changed. It was the same conversations, the same banter, a lot of laughing. It made me realize how much fun we had at Coastal. We were all kind of sad for [the reunion] to end.”
Decades have passed
Smith and former teammate Tad Pierson, the Mizuno Golf sales representative for the western Carolinas, invited the attendees and Smith booked the house and a few days of golf.
“We’ve just been talking, every time we’d see each other at the PGA Show, that we need to get everybody together,” Smith said of he and Pierson. “Because we hadn’t done it since ’92, since we graduated. So we just decided to do it and it worked out.”
The attendees included Gillis, Smith, Trevor Gliwski, Tres Kirkland, Marty Carmichael, Denny Daniels, Fukushima, Jeff Rashar and Tad Pierson.
Fukushima, who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and also spends time in Arizona, came the longest distance. He now maps golf courses for GPS purposes.
Matt McCarley, the head pro at Prestwick Country Club during the late 1980s and early 1990s who knew several team members, took part in some rounds and festivities, and Whispering Pines operator and CCU alum Chip Smith cooked a couple meals of steaks and chicken bog for the group at the house.
Two wives who lived in the same Crossroads Apartments as many of the players near campus and met their husbands while they were playing at Coastal spent some time in the house, as well.
“It was incredible to see those guys, it had been so long,” said Kirkland, a Georgetown native who lives in Ocean Isle Beach, N.C., and has landscaping and charter fishing businesses. “We changed up partners [in golf] and played with different people, so we got to hang out with everybody for a little while. It was real neat.”
Gillis would occasionally see some former teammates at his PGA Tour events, though he hadn’t seen Kirkland since his time in Conway.
Some or all of the group played the Grande Dunes Resort Course, where Gillis shot a smooth 7-under-par 65, Prestwick, Wachesaw Plantation, Caledonia Golf & Fish Club, and The Dunes Golf and Beach Club.
“It was a really good stretch,” said Gillis, who saw the Murrells Inlet Marshwalk for the first time. “We ate a lot of good food and got to see how much Myrtle and Murrells Inlet has changed over time.
“It was special. It really was. I loved every minute of it. I’ve always loved South Carolina so it was nice to get back and see where it all started.”
Jogging the memory
The group recalled many shenanigans during their time at CCU.
Gillis remembered some team members hitting golf balls at night at the Crossroads Apartments toward a nearby gas station, and one team member who didn’t make the reunion was caught by police, who took his clubs.
“So he couldn’t qualify on Monday for the next event,” Gillis said. “That was a top story we talked about.”
Some of the hijinks took place on road trips, including a team pillow fight.
“I think we were playing at Duke and there was nothing else to do,” Kirkland said. “I came up across a bed and Tom just nailed me with a pillow. It was a damn pillow but he about killed me. He was like, ‘Man, I thought I put you in the hospital.’ ”
The former teammates also reminisced about the differences between Bernier, who they considered a lenient coach, with their second coach, Tom Brennan, who was more of a taskmaster and went on to coach at CCU for a decade.
“Once Tom came in there we showed up in August and he goes, ‘OK, qualifying, you’re going to be wearing pants, no shorts,’ and we were like, ‘Whoa, where’s coach Bernier?’ It was a tough adjustment.
“I butted heads with coach Brennan all the time and that was a topic of conversation. I was team captain so I fought for our guys a lot.”
Gillis recalled one occasion when the team played poorly on the road including 36 holes on the final day, and Brennan, who died at the age of 90 two years ago, wasn’t going to stop for food on the way home. The team van stopped for gas along the way.
“I was 21, so I walked in there and bought two cases of beer and a bunch of Doritos, and came back in the van and I said, ‘Well, if we’re not going to eat our dinner we’ll drink it.’ . . . That was back then, we’d never do that now. It was a different time.”
Gillis stands out
Prior to Dustin Johnson, who was the No. 1 golfer in the world for a total of 135 weeks and has won 24 PGA Tour events, including two majors, Gillis carried the CCU torch at golf’s highest level.
Gillis, Carmichael and Rachar were all recruited from Oakland Community College in Michigan by Bernier.
“He asked me if I was interested and I said, ‘Yeah, and I’ve got two other guys that might be able to play for you as well,” recalled Gillis, who was a two-time junior college All-American.
Gillis had to sit out a year to gain eligibility and only played one season in 1989-90, though he was on the team two years.
“I didn’t have much desire for school, and back then in my mind my plan was just to be a really good club pro in the state of Michigan,” Gillis said. “I didn’t have tour desires or anything like that.
“I saw the head pro at the private country club that I worked at, and he played golf three times a week, he played tournaments, he was a good player, he had a good looking wife, drove a nice car and had winters off. I’m like, ‘What else does a guy need? I don’t even need a college degree for that.’ That was my dream.”
Gillis improved enough just before and during his time at CCU to give touring a shot.
After leaving CCU, Gillis lived in Murrells Inlet for a few years with McCarley while trying to make a living on mini tours in the region.
That was the genesis of eight years on the PGA Tour, five on the European Tour and six on the PGA Tour Champions.
Gillis, 57, a resident of Jupiter, Florida, said he plans to move in the near future to the Murrells Inlet area, possibly the Wachesaw Plantation community.
The plan moving forward is for the group to gather every three to five years in the Myrtle Beach area.
“We’ll definitely do it again. It was a lot of fun,” Smith said.
The group planned to play cards in the house last week, but never did.
“We had so much to talk about and enjoyed each other’s company so much, we never played cards,” Gillis said.
Maybe next reunion.
