News
Check out what has been happening in Utah Golf.
Volunteer of the Year – Jim Kaiserman
If he chose one course to play forever, Jim Kaiserman would pick Wasatch Mountain’s Lake Course, near his home in the Heber Valley.
The Utah Golf Association’s Volunteer of the Year award recognizes someone who has “demonstrated outstanding commitment and contribution to the UGA.”
Nothing in that description calls for performing lifesaving measures, yet Jim Kaiserman’s response was necessary in a team effort that kept Denny Wood alive after a heart attack on a golf course in St. George in November 2021.
Rating golf courses for the UGA rarely involves such drama. Wood is thankful that Kaiserman, who made the 911 call and requested that a defibrillator be brought from the clubhouse to the 18th tee at Sun River GC. Ted McGregor and Wood’s brother Blaine attended to him before paramedics arrived, according to KSL.com.
That episode, fortunately, is memorable for the right reasons as Kaiserman reflects on a dozen years of UGA involvement that led to his 2022 Volunteer of the Year award.
A love of golf that began while Kaiserman was attending Montana State has only grown over the past 60-plus years, resulting in visits to plush, pristine courses from Hawaii to Florida. Such conditioning is quite a leap from the unwatered fairways and oil-covered sand greens of the Elks course that no longer exists in Bozeman, Montana. If he chose one course to play forever, Kaiserman would pick Wasatch Mountain’s Lake Course, near his home in the Heber Valley.
Having joined in about 80 course ratings throughout Utah, Kaiserman is credited with “participating whenever possible, not just at the ‘better’ courses,” UGA board member Tina Mathieu said in nominating him as Volunteer of the Year.
Read more from Fairways Media senior writer Kurt Kragthorpe in the November issue of Fairways magazine.