Former WGA director earns lifetime achievement award

Thomas P. Kearney, a former director of the Western Golf Association based in Glenview, earned a lifetime achievement award during the WGA's annual meeting Aug. 2 at Olympia Fields Country Club.

Kearney joined two other directors to receive the Donald D. Johnson Lifetime Achievement Award: R.E. "Buffy" Mayerstein of West Lafayette, Indiana, and Ede Rice of Edina, Minnesota. The award was established in 2009 to recognize Johnson's 22 years of WGA leadership. The association conducts championships for professional and amateur golfers, promotes the use of caddies and oversees the Evans Scholars Foundation, which awards college scholarships to caddies of limited financial means.

Kearney, of Lake Forest, became a WGA director in 1990 and served as chairman of the scholarship committee from 2007-13. A former Evans Scholar himself who graduated from the University of Illinois, he caddied at The Beverly Country Club.

Kearney also worked as a volunteer director nearly 30 years at the WGA's Western Junior and Western Open tournaments.

He is a member of the Exmoor Country Club in Highland Park, Old Collier Golf Club in Florida, the Burning Tree Club in Maryland, and the Ballybunion Golf Club in Ireland.

At the awards presentation, WGA Chairman Kevin Buggy said Kearney had helped select more than 1,000 applicants for the Evans Scholarship.

"When people ask me about the Evans Scholarship," Kearney said in a news release, "I tell them it has given me a family, it has given me my first job, and it has given me a career - and for all that, I'm so thankful. Outside of my family, earning the scholarship is the best thing that's ever happened to me, and this recognition is the best I could ever hope for."