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Hank has always been the Kuehne's lone free spirit, and whether he will ever be focused enough and healthy enough to be an on-course force again is an open question. Trip has a fatalistic view.
"The game owes you nothing," he says. "We all know that."
And so Trip is the only Kuehne who has made an uneasy peace with golf. All he had to do was decide to leave the game behind.
For Trip Kuehne, the road to the 2008 Masters began last January at the National Senior-Junior Team Championship, in Jupiter, Fla., where he began his metamorphosis from a part-time golfer to a Masters competitor.
Kuehne's rust was obvious throughout the round at host venue The Dye Preserve, but so too was his talent.
"Trip's ballstriking has been the quality of a top touring professional since he was in high school," says his boyhood instructor, Hank Haney, who now tends to Tiger Woods.
On the 17th hole, a 240-yard par-3 playing into a stiff wind, Trip pulled out his 2-iron — an anachronism in this era of hybrids — and produced a strike so pure you didn't have to see the shot to know it would be good.
"It's a different sound, isn't it?" said Kuehne's friend Barry Van Gerbig, the former president of Seminole Golf Club who was monitoring the action from a cart. "When he's playing a decent amount Trip is by far the best amateur in the world."
"The best" is an epithet that Kuehne has long been accustomed to. A five-time AJGA All-American, Kuehne won two Texas state championships as the top player on a powerhouse Highland Park High School team that included future Tour player Harrison Frazar, and in 1995 he led Oklahoma State to the national championship and won the Ben Hogan Award ("the Heisman of college golf," he says).
But there has always been more to his world than golf. As an undergrad he maintained a 3.87 GPA while also courting and marrying Dusti Stuart, a vivacious blonde who played on the Oklahoma State women's basketball team.
"Being a Tour pro was never my dream," says Trip, which is short for Triple, which is short for Ernest William Kuehne III. "I wanted to win tournaments, yes, but I had other priorities too: doing well in school, relationships, other sports. Guys who were my contemporaries — Phil, Justin, David Duval — being on Tour was what they wanted. If you take two guys of equal ability and one is living his dream and the other isn't, there's not much doubt about who will be successful."
After earning his MBA, in 1997, Kuehne eschewed a life of hotels, airports and driving ranges in favor of settling in Dallas as a hedge-fund analyst. The game was not his priority, especially after Will was born in 2000.
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