On a sweltering afternoon last August, Kaye was on the practice green at Oak Hill Country Club, preparing for the 85th PGA Championship. "I'm just trying to fit in, man, and not piss anybody off," he said. He then took aim at a distant cup -- his intended line nearly through the legs of Colin Montgomerie -- swatted his ball and watched it skitter across the grass. "Practicing is overrated," he added, admitting that while he had toured the course, he'd played several holes only once.
There are two types of players on the PGA Tour: Those who conform to its authority and those who soon find themselves fined, suspended or looking for another line of work. One veteran pro, when asked his opinion of the Bell Canadian Open's new host course, replied, "It's nice, especially coming from that Deutsche Bank tournament [at the TPC of Boston]. But don't quote me by name. It would probably be a $5,000 fine for hurting the tournament. It's scary, man. It's almost un-American."
Plenty of players before Kaye have tested the Tour's strict discipline. Mac O'Grady and Ken Green zinged the powers that be -- Green openly enjoyed a beer while playing with Arnold Palmer -- and while O'Grady and Green were fined, they also became fan favorites.
Kaye's most damaging clash with the Tour came at the 2001 Michelob Championship at Kingsmill Golf Club, played less than a month after 9/11. The co-leader after a second-round 67, Kaye was heading to the locker room. As the story goes, a security guard refused him entry without his player ID badge, which Kaye then tracked down and clipped provocatively to the zipper of his pants. The guard took offense, and Finchem slapped Kaye with a two-month suspension.
A confidentiality agreement bars the Tour and Kaye from talking publicly about the incident, but GOLF MAGAZINE has learned that the guard was seen chatting at length with Kaye about his round before he demanded Kaye's badge. Chris DiMarco urged the security guard to admit Kaye, but the answer was still no. Yet the guard did not stop Vijay Singh, who raised his middle finger in lieu of ID on his way into the locker room, according to a player who was standing nearby. (A spokesman for the security firm declined comment.) It was a hard lesson on the star system, but valuable for Kaye.
"The incident was completely blown out of proportion," says agent Schaffer. "But everything happens for a reason, and in the big picture it helped Jonathan mature."
Shoulder surgery had sidelined Kaye for most of the 1996 and '97 seasons, and he sank to 190th on the money list in '98. But a runner-up finish at Q-School that year got him back on Tour, where he has since earned more than $6 million.
And now Kaye is coming off his best year. He won the Buick Classic last June for his first Tour victory, which featured a 254-yard hybrid-iron shot to set up his winning eagle. He played in the final group (without victory or incident) in consecutive weeks at the WGC-NEC Invitational and Deutsche Bank Championship. One of the game's longest hitters and purest ball strikers, the self-taught Kaye finished 16th on the 2003 money list, with more than $2.4 million, and kicked off 2004 with his first start in the winners-only Mercedes Championship.
He was a welcome addition to the field, for the Tour can always use more personality. The public's apathy for players not named Tiger was thrown into high relief last season, when Woods's major-championship bagel coincided with severely depressed TV ratings.
"What's killing the PGA Tour is an epidemic of multiple no-personality disorder," says veteran pro John Maginnes. "The Tour needs guys like Jonathan Kaye. He is a beautiful human being. I enjoy playing with him. I enjoy drinking beer with him. All the guys like him, and when he wins a couple more times -- which he will -- the rest of America will know him."
Longtime Kaye watchers note that he was never the best junior or amateur player but elevated his game at every level, a trait that may portend more victories sooner rather than later. He also plays well on tough, classic courses -- the kind that host major championships. (In addition to his Buick Classic win at Westchester Country Club, Kaye scored top 10s at the U.S. Open at Olympia Fields, the WGC-NEC Invitational at Firestone and the Tour Championship at Champions Golf Club.)
Despite such promising signs, Kaye still has his lapses. He was booed off the 18th green at Pebble Beach in 2001 for directing an obscene gesture at a heckler, but he's not above apologies: "It was a good day that had gone bad.... Obviously I should have been above it, but I wasn't because I was hot."
Off the course, he is hard to dislike. On the way to last year's PGA Championship his flight got stuck on the tarmac at Chicago's O'Hare International for three hours, but Kaye refused to succumb to a bad-air day. He tried to coax Jennifer into pitching him a McDonald's hamburger over several other coach passengers. (She had scored cheap tickets in different rows for a savings of $150.) He chatted up the cattleman in the next seat, and fielded a good-luck wish from a nearby junior golfer with an enthusiastic, "Thanks, man!"
After so many rebellions, Kaye seems unshakably happy. He married Jennifer in Boulder in December 2002, after a 10-year courtship that began with a putting contest at CU's Flatirons Golf Course, where she worked and the golf team practiced. ("I won, as I remember it," she says.) Joel, Ellen and Craig Dean, Ellen's husband of 25 years, walked together at the wedding. "Jonathan says he's feeling more peaceful," Ellen says. "They're a good match, Jon and Jen."
The Kayes are renovating the kitchen in their Phoenix home, where Jonathan does the cooking. They plan to put in a garden, where they may sow the special crop that grew around their old place and accounted for Kaye's unusual hobby in the Tour media guide: jalapeNo farming. The Kayes live well, but they can't resist a bargain, whether it's cheap airline seats or cheap eats. Still, Kaye insists he has nothing against golf's upper-crusty tendencies. He has even joined a country club, Silver Leaf in North Scottsdale, but says his life hasn't changed much since he broke through at Westchester.
While he has a few buddies on Tour, Kaye tends to stick close to his family and a few friends. Circle Kaye includes caddie Rick Caniglia, a grade-school pal who knew nothing of golf when Kaye hired him in 1998. Their antics are well known -- including the time they couldn't find a motel room and crashed at the TPC at Avenel locker room until the cleaning crew ratted them out at 2:30 a.m. Caniglia, his wife and 4-year-old daughter are an extended part of Kaye's family, in and out of each other's houses unannounced. Kaye is rarely seen without Jennifer, who quit caddying because of a sore back and a nervous stomach. A former Futures Tour player, she plays matches with Jonathan at the TPC of Scottsdale -- Jennifer gets five a side, loser does the dishes -- where Brisket, their schipperke-Pomeranian, runs off his leash.
"Jonathan wouldn't be playing as well as he's played if he hadn't grown up a lot," says Pate, who pulled then-Tour commissioner Deane Beman into the water with him after winning the 1982 Players Championship, inspiring Kaye's Finchem fantasy. "If that 'manhole cover' thing had happened 15 years earlier I might have threatened him, but I saw a kid who was immature, with a lot of talent, who needed someone to calm him down. I keep telling him, 'Put all that other stuff behind you, because it's yesterday's newspaper. Do your thing and be less quick to judge. You're going to be a world beater.' "
"I think some of Jonathan's anger was from the divorce, although he'd never admit that," says Joel Kaye, now a pediatrician in Boulder. "Some of it was immaturity, and a lot of us have been waiting for that to go away. Now it's happening. The suspension was probably good for him. It woke him up."
As Kaye says of his past indiscretions, "I was never really angry at anybody but myself -- just being a perfectionist. I had my moments when I was younger, when I was crazy and did crazy things. It was all in good fun. I never meant to hurt anybody."
Back in Denver, the display case at City Park will soon hold a new curio: Kaye's Buick Classic trophy. The former Rocky Mountain rebel is now a hero here, and at 33 he is playing for far more than the title of his car. Which invites the question: If Kaye could reach the Tour with the whole world in his face, how great might he be if his only enemy is par?
There are two types of players on the PGA Tour: Those who conform to its authority and those who soon find themselves fined, suspended or looking for another line of work. One veteran pro, when asked his opinion of the Bell Canadian Open's new host course, replied, "It's nice, especially coming from that Deutsche Bank tournament [at the TPC of Boston]. But don't quote me by name. It would probably be a $5,000 fine for hurting the tournament. It's scary, man. It's almost un-American."
Plenty of players before Kaye have tested the Tour's strict discipline. Mac O'Grady and Ken Green zinged the powers that be -- Green openly enjoyed a beer while playing with Arnold Palmer -- and while O'Grady and Green were fined, they also became fan favorites.
Kaye's most damaging clash with the Tour came at the 2001 Michelob Championship at Kingsmill Golf Club, played less than a month after 9/11. The co-leader after a second-round 67, Kaye was heading to the locker room. As the story goes, a security guard refused him entry without his player ID badge, which Kaye then tracked down and clipped provocatively to the zipper of his pants. The guard took offense, and Finchem slapped Kaye with a two-month suspension.
A confidentiality agreement bars the Tour and Kaye from talking publicly about the incident, but GOLF MAGAZINE has learned that the guard was seen chatting at length with Kaye about his round before he demanded Kaye's badge. Chris DiMarco urged the security guard to admit Kaye, but the answer was still no. Yet the guard did not stop Vijay Singh, who raised his middle finger in lieu of ID on his way into the locker room, according to a player who was standing nearby. (A spokesman for the security firm declined comment.) It was a hard lesson on the star system, but valuable for Kaye.
"The incident was completely blown out of proportion," says agent Schaffer. "But everything happens for a reason, and in the big picture it helped Jonathan mature."
Shoulder surgery had sidelined Kaye for most of the 1996 and '97 seasons, and he sank to 190th on the money list in '98. But a runner-up finish at Q-School that year got him back on Tour, where he has since earned more than $6 million.
And now Kaye is coming off his best year. He won the Buick Classic last June for his first Tour victory, which featured a 254-yard hybrid-iron shot to set up his winning eagle. He played in the final group (without victory or incident) in consecutive weeks at the WGC-NEC Invitational and Deutsche Bank Championship. One of the game's longest hitters and purest ball strikers, the self-taught Kaye finished 16th on the 2003 money list, with more than $2.4 million, and kicked off 2004 with his first start in the winners-only Mercedes Championship.
He was a welcome addition to the field, for the Tour can always use more personality. The public's apathy for players not named Tiger was thrown into high relief last season, when Woods's major-championship bagel coincided with severely depressed TV ratings.
"What's killing the PGA Tour is an epidemic of multiple no-personality disorder," says veteran pro John Maginnes. "The Tour needs guys like Jonathan Kaye. He is a beautiful human being. I enjoy playing with him. I enjoy drinking beer with him. All the guys like him, and when he wins a couple more times -- which he will -- the rest of America will know him."
Longtime Kaye watchers note that he was never the best junior or amateur player but elevated his game at every level, a trait that may portend more victories sooner rather than later. He also plays well on tough, classic courses -- the kind that host major championships. (In addition to his Buick Classic win at Westchester Country Club, Kaye scored top 10s at the U.S. Open at Olympia Fields, the WGC-NEC Invitational at Firestone and the Tour Championship at Champions Golf Club.)
Despite such promising signs, Kaye still has his lapses. He was booed off the 18th green at Pebble Beach in 2001 for directing an obscene gesture at a heckler, but he's not above apologies: "It was a good day that had gone bad.... Obviously I should have been above it, but I wasn't because I was hot."
Off the course, he is hard to dislike. On the way to last year's PGA Championship his flight got stuck on the tarmac at Chicago's O'Hare International for three hours, but Kaye refused to succumb to a bad-air day. He tried to coax Jennifer into pitching him a McDonald's hamburger over several other coach passengers. (She had scored cheap tickets in different rows for a savings of $150.) He chatted up the cattleman in the next seat, and fielded a good-luck wish from a nearby junior golfer with an enthusiastic, "Thanks, man!"
After so many rebellions, Kaye seems unshakably happy. He married Jennifer in Boulder in December 2002, after a 10-year courtship that began with a putting contest at CU's Flatirons Golf Course, where she worked and the golf team practiced. ("I won, as I remember it," she says.) Joel, Ellen and Craig Dean, Ellen's husband of 25 years, walked together at the wedding. "Jonathan says he's feeling more peaceful," Ellen says. "They're a good match, Jon and Jen."
The Kayes are renovating the kitchen in their Phoenix home, where Jonathan does the cooking. They plan to put in a garden, where they may sow the special crop that grew around their old place and accounted for Kaye's unusual hobby in the Tour media guide: jalapeNo farming. The Kayes live well, but they can't resist a bargain, whether it's cheap airline seats or cheap eats. Still, Kaye insists he has nothing against golf's upper-crusty tendencies. He has even joined a country club, Silver Leaf in North Scottsdale, but says his life hasn't changed much since he broke through at Westchester.
While he has a few buddies on Tour, Kaye tends to stick close to his family and a few friends. Circle Kaye includes caddie Rick Caniglia, a grade-school pal who knew nothing of golf when Kaye hired him in 1998. Their antics are well known -- including the time they couldn't find a motel room and crashed at the TPC at Avenel locker room until the cleaning crew ratted them out at 2:30 a.m. Caniglia, his wife and 4-year-old daughter are an extended part of Kaye's family, in and out of each other's houses unannounced. Kaye is rarely seen without Jennifer, who quit caddying because of a sore back and a nervous stomach. A former Futures Tour player, she plays matches with Jonathan at the TPC of Scottsdale -- Jennifer gets five a side, loser does the dishes -- where Brisket, their schipperke-Pomeranian, runs off his leash.
"Jonathan wouldn't be playing as well as he's played if he hadn't grown up a lot," says Pate, who pulled then-Tour commissioner Deane Beman into the water with him after winning the 1982 Players Championship, inspiring Kaye's Finchem fantasy. "If that 'manhole cover' thing had happened 15 years earlier I might have threatened him, but I saw a kid who was immature, with a lot of talent, who needed someone to calm him down. I keep telling him, 'Put all that other stuff behind you, because it's yesterday's newspaper. Do your thing and be less quick to judge. You're going to be a world beater.' "
"I think some of Jonathan's anger was from the divorce, although he'd never admit that," says Joel Kaye, now a pediatrician in Boulder. "Some of it was immaturity, and a lot of us have been waiting for that to go away. Now it's happening. The suspension was probably good for him. It woke him up."
As Kaye says of his past indiscretions, "I was never really angry at anybody but myself -- just being a perfectionist. I had my moments when I was younger, when I was crazy and did crazy things. It was all in good fun. I never meant to hurt anybody."
Back in Denver, the display case at City Park will soon hold a new curio: Kaye's Buick Classic trophy. The former Rocky Mountain rebel is now a hero here, and at 33 he is playing for far more than the title of his car. Which invites the question: If Kaye could reach the Tour with the whole world in his face, how great might he be if his only enemy is par?
