Golf can take you here, there or anywhere. In Bill Kerdyk Jr.’s case, he has opted for an unusual “anywhere.”
That would be Japan.
Kerdyk,
some 20 years ago, became the founder of the World Junior Golf Team
Championship tournament in Japan. He was mesmerized at what happened
that first year, and now he’s devoted to what the tournament has become
and what it can be.
Kerdyk is devoted to a lot of things — he’s the father of three, a
Coral Gables commissioner, runs Kerdyk Real Estate and is the chairman
of the Bank of Coral Gables.
A couple of days ago, Kerdyk was on a
plane flying over the Pacific to Nagoya, Japan, to run his junior golf
tournament for this year that will go from June 19 to June 22.
Competitors
of the past? Try Charles Schwartzel, Trevor Immelman, Justin Rose,
Anthony Kim, Hunter Mahan, Camillo Villegas and Louis Oosthuizen.
“This
tournament gives an overview of the world,” Kerdyk, 51, said.
“Ninety-nine percent of the players in it have never been overseas, and
then years later you see the kind of players that come out of it. That’s
rewarding”
Oosthuizen played in it, and 11 years later Kerdyk happened to be walking past him at the Masters.
“He
stopped me,” Kerdyk said, “and he recognized me. Then he started saying
how much he enjoyed the tournament we had put on and what it meant to
him. This was 11 years later and we had never met in between. That made
me think about what we were achieving.”
With all his other duties,
Kerdyk doesn’t play much golf anymore, but he did growing up,
eventually winding up on the Western Carolina team. The Kerdyks are a
well-known and homegrown South Florida family, and athletics was a big
emphasis from the parents.
Bill’s sister, Tracy, was the most successful on the golf circuit, competing on the LPGA Tour for 11 years.
How did Bill perform against his sister? It’s a mixed golf bag of results.
“We
were highly competitive in our family, and she had never beaten me,”
Bill said, “but one day she was ahead of me and I had to shoot a 34 on
the back to beat her.”
He knew it was only a matter of time until a humbling defeat, so he concocted a plan.
“At
that point, I decided I would never play her again — that way she would
never beat me,” he said. “But one weekend, a friend of mine called and
wanted me to play, and I went out there, and at the last minute up trots
Tracy with her bag slung over her shoulder. She beat the heck out of
me. So much for being undefeated against her.”
Tracy went on to her LPGA career, and Bill took a more low-key, behind-the-scenes approach with his Japanese tournament.
“We
model it after the Ryder Cup,” he said of his tournament, sponsored by
Toyota. “We try to bring in developing golf countries, and we are trying
to develop golf worldwide.” This year, the one developing country
chosen for the finals is China.
“We are trying to develop golf
programs around the world,” Kerdyk said, noting that an estimated 65
countries and six continents take place in qualifying and try to make it
to the finals in Japan. “We feel like this has been a success, and we
want to keep it going.”
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