A dozen years ago, on Labor Day weekend at Sonnenalp Golf Club just west of Vail, Craig Stadler was asked if he took more joy in winning himself or seeing son Kevin win.
The 1982 Masters champion didn’t directly answer the question, but his response did give a hint: “This is awesome.”
On that day, “This” was Kevin Stadler winning his professional debut at the Colorado Open in a three-man playoff, with Craig having caddied for his son all four days.
Throughout Kevin’s years playing amateur golf in Colorado and elsewhere, and during his professional career, Craig Stadler has been his son’s biggest champion.
And that will certainly be the case this week, as well, as the two become the first father and son to compete in the same Masters. The first men’s major championship of 2014 begins Thursday (April 10), with Kevin teeing off at 5:56 a.m. MT and Craig beginning play at 6:40.
“It’s emotional in a very, very good way,” Craig Stadler, a longtime Colorado resident, said this week at Augusta National, where he and Kevin were paired for Wednesday’s par-3 contest. “I had envisioned this and knew it would happen some day. I was hoping it would happen some day. I was pretty sure. The rest was up to him.
“But it was very cool on Saturday evening registering and then walking down and (seeing our) two names next to each other on the scoreboard. That got me a little bit. That was very cool. It’s going to be just a wonderful week and I hope he plays really well, and I hope I don’t embarrass myself.”
As a former champion, Craig Stadler receives an invitation to play the Masters as long as he’d like. But while Kevin has played 244 PGA Tour events and earned more than $9 million, it wasn’t until early February that he earned his first competitive invite to Augusta National. That was when he out-dueled former Masters champion Bubba Watson to win the Waste Management Phoenix Open near Stadler’s residence in Scottsdale.
While the Stadlers certainly haven’t been as close as they used to be — Craig and Kevin’s mother, Sue, divorced in 2006, and father and son very rarely had played golf together in recent years before coming to Augusta — Craig couldn’t have been more proud when Kevin scored his first PGA Tour victory. Not only was that important in and of itself, the main reason Craig continued to play the Masters — he’s now 60 years old — was in the hope that Kevin could join him in the field.
“If and when I do bow out, which probably will be this year, I can’t think of a better way to do it than playing with your son in the same tournament,” Craig said. “I mean, it’s awesome.”
As the son of a Masters champion, Kevin Stadler has attended the tournament many times over the years, even as a 2-year-old when his dad won in 1982. But before this year, Kevin had only played Augusta National once — during a winter visit with his dad when Kevin was 18 or 19.
“It was great to be able to tag along and walk around here,” Kevin Stadler said on Monday. “I couldn’t wait for April every year, when I was a kid, to come out here and just run rampant around the golf course and watch him and watch all the kids of other people play. I used to love tagging around at tournaments, watching the golf. It was what I got the most enjoyment out of when I was a kid.”
Obviously, being around all that good golf rubbed off on Kevin Stadler. In 1997 while attending Kent Denver, he won the state high school championship at Collindale Golf Club in Fort Collins. Two years later, at Fort Collins Country Club, Stadler claimed the title at the CGA Match Play. And in 2002, he added a second Match Play crown at the Country Club at Castle Pines, leading to him being named the CGA Les Fowler Player of the Year.
Also in 2002, besides Kevin winning the Colorado Open, he teamed up with Craig to earn the title in the Father/Son Challenge, which features past PGA Tour greats and their sons in a team event.
Two years later, Kevin Stadler won on the Web.com Tour the same week Craig prevailed in a Champions Tour event, making them the first father-son duo to win tour events on the same week since current Colorado resident David Duval and father Bob managed the feat in 1999. The last time Craig and Kevin Stadler have competed together on the PGA Tour was at the 2010 Bob Hope Classic.
This week, the Stadlers are making more father/son history. And Craig is reveling in how Kevin has stepped up his game in recent years. This season, Kevin has made 10 cuts in 11 events — he missed last week in the Shell Houston Open, his first MC since August — and ranks 16th on the PGA Tour money list with more than $1.67 million.
For his part, Craig Stadler has won 13 times on the PGA Tour and nine on the Champions Tour, and his victory last June in the Encompass Championship gave him the tour record for most time between victories (almost nine years).
“I’m so proud of the way he’s played the last three or four years,” Craig said of Kevin. “He’s been close a zillion times and finally got it done. …. He’s become a wonderfully consistent player. … I’m just going to kind of stand on the sidelines and watch, which is all I want to do, and just be supportive and root him on and hope more Phoenixes happen in the future — a lot more.”
For now, Kevin Stadler is looking forward to playing an Augusta National course that is in one way very familiar and in another very new to him.
“It’s going to be really, really fun to be on the inside of the ropes,” the 34-year-old said. “I feel like I know this place pretty well but I’ve never, ever played it (in competition). So it’s going to be a blast. I just don’t really know what I’m getting myself into, but it’s going to be really enjoyable.”
