PGA Tour players flock to St. Simons

Matt Kuchar (6)

Brandt Snedeker (6)

Jonathan Byrd (5)

Lucas Glover (3)

Charles Howell III (2)

Brian Bateman (1)

Harris English (1)

Chris Kirk (1)

Brian Harman (0)

Hudson Swafford (0)

You might run into one at the counter of Southern Soul, the purveyor of a fine, peppery barbecue that would make a vegan blush.

One can be often found at the little store he owns in a quaint island shopping district, the store always filled with the melodies of Buffett and Marley. Davis Love III’s Classic Paddle and Putt is the one-stop shop for all your paddle boarding and short-game needs.

And should you be so fortunate as to be chunking, chopping and generally denuding the practice tee at the swank Sea Island Golf Club, you might see one launching perfect rainbows just down the row.

“It’s almost unusual if we don’t see one — that’s more the norm than not, especially this time of year,” said Todd Anderson, director of instruction at the resort’s Golf Learning Center.

They are everywhere, and not just now when the PGA Tour is in town. The tiny twin enclaves of St. Simons and Sea Island are lousy with PGA touring professionals. You can barely throw a Titleist without hitting one.

There is nowhere on earth with a higher per capita of pro golfers in residence — not Orlando, not south Florida, not Scottsdale. Within a population inching toward 15,000, there are a dozen pros. The Golden Isles may be the one place on earth where a PGA Tour card is an accepted form of ID.

One-fourth of the 12-man 2012 U.S. Ryder Cup team consisted of St. Simons/Sea Island folk, with Love, its captain, the most famous resident of all. It can’t hurt the local economy that a few of its homeowners account for 55 PGA Tour titles, and $200 million in winnings. All but two of the St. Simon’s Mafia (or the Golden Isles Gang, whichever of the two loosely applied nicknames you prefer) entered the McGladrey Classic at the Sea Island Golf Club, which wraps up Sunday.

And one of the best things about living here is that when one of them drops in to pick up an order of brisket to go, nobody makes a big deal about any of that. They can come and go pretty much like the regular island folk they desire to be, without needing to rehash what happened the week before at faraway Torrey Pines or Muirfield Village.

“Nobody talks much golf with them when they come in here,” Southern Soul owner Griffin Bufkin said. “We’re more likely to talk about island things, or talk barbecue.”

Case in point, Bufkin couldn’t tell you that Davis Love III ranks sixth in career PGA Tour money winnings. But he does offer this: “A lot of these guys are pretty good cooks themselves. Davis … knows his ’cue.”

“When they come across that causeway to the island, the world just stops,” said Mac Barnhardt, whose St. Simons-based Crown Sports Management represents many of players living in his midst.

“These guys are in big cities all time, travelling around, fighting traffic. They want to be able on their off weeks to come to a place like this that is so relaxing, so beautiful,” Anderson said. “It’s just a nice quaint community. They can go around in jeans and a T-shirt and nobody’s going to mess with them.”

How did this happen?

How did a native Iowan and Masters champ like Zach Johnson light on a Georgia barrier island halfway between Savannah and Jacksonville, Fla.? Why would Matt Kuchar trade a perfectly good suburban Atlanta home for the laid-back pace and twisted oaks of the island nearly four years ago? And Brandt Snedeker, what the heck is the 2012 Tour Championship winner doing here?

It seems that for the professional looking for a break from the 30 weeks or so a year that he labors at the finest golf resorts in the world, the answer is to get away to another one. A very self-contained one, with either an ocean or marsh view.

“It’s easy to be here,” Johnson sums up in the most succinct manner.

“Well, it starts with the people here,” he added. “It starts with Davis, certainly, and Davis’ father before that, and what they laid out here at Sea Island.”

The Love family began the migration long ago, in 1977, when Davis Love Jr. moved his family here from Atlanta in order to teach golf on this frontier. His son, Davis III, a teenager when he was transplanted to the coast, went forth and won PGA Tour events in bulk — including the 1997 PGA Championship — always coming back to Sea Island when he needed to tie himself to somewhere called home.

Now 49, Love is the island elder. The younger players in residence call him Uncle Davis — “Usually when they need something,” he hastened to add. He is the one most intimately linked to the community, as much a symbol of this place as the Spanish moss dripping from the trees. Love hosts the four-year-old McGladrey tournament, a modest gathering now part of the FedEx Cup points circuit. It has designs on doing for the St. Simons profile what the Heritage Classic did for the Hilton Head, S.C. area.

Love also has served as the unofficial Pied Piper of Sea Island, luring other pros to follow him to an address that is increasingly showing up in PGA Tour media guide bios.

He seems to relish the role of recruiter.

“When I was kid growing up and when I was first on Tour, I had to go find good greens somewhere else to practice my putting on. Now people are coming here because we have world-class facilities and world-class teachers. They see the practice facilities, see how nice it is. Then they might come over to my house for barbecue and then they kind of think: I could live here, too.

“You know, there are a couple players this week looking at condos. So, we’re sucking them in.”

Jonathan Byrd was on a St. Simons stopover visiting with his agent Barnhardt during a quite eventful 2002. He looked around and so loved what he saw that he decided to stay. In one year, he got married, won the PGA Tour Rookie of the Year Award and moved to the Georgia coast.

“I love where I live. I tell people about it all the time. It’s a great community. It’s a beautiful place to live, but the people are even better,” said Byrd. Who needs a Chamber of Commerce with unprompted endorsements like that?

They come for the golf. Face it, a Tour player is not going anywhere that the only facility requires you to putt through the clown’s mouth and between the dinosaur’s legs.

There are four first-class courses within easy reach. At the Sea Island Learning Center, a player can get tuned up from his brain to his toes, with a noted sports psychologist, a flock of swing gurus and an equipment tailor on staff.

“I came up here to practice, and I’m thinking, ‘Man, I could live here,’” said Johnson, who began doing just that in 2008. “We were in Orlando then and there were a lot of positives there, too. But we wanted someplace different. I brought my wife up here thinking there’s no way (she’d like the area). But she fell in love with it immediately.”

They stay for a lifestyle that seems to suit the peculiar demands of the golf professional.

Rather than do battle on the Atlanta roadways to experience a variety of practice facilities, Kuchar can get from his home here to any one of a handful of training sites in less than 15 minutes. Said his wife, Sybi, who grew up on St Simons: “Matt loves Atlanta, but here he can do so much more without fighting traffic. He can focus on being with his family. He can go putt for 30 minutes and then meet us for lunch or at the tennis courts. It is so easy living here.”

They can have a touch of normalcy when needed: Last Saturday wrapped up another summer youth soccer season on the island, and the golfers were all out enduring the gnat-like swarming around the ball just like anyone else.

“I guess we’re athletes, but, you know, I don’t have to worry about where I go here, I’m just a part of the community like everybody else. And so are my kids,” Johnson said.

And they can enjoy the special perks that come with being very successful at something and having a community completely geared toward feeding that success: The Kuchars will leave this week for an extended working trip to Australia. Going with them will be a tutor who’ll work with the couple’s two pre-schoolers and report back to their private school in St. Simons, keeping the kids on track with the rest of the class.

There is a small airport on the island that can cater to players who might take a private jet together to some event, or otherwise have a working arrangement with a jet-sharing company. Airports in nearby Brunswick and Jacksonville also connect them to the outside world.

And there is on hand a five-star resort — The Cloister and The Lodge at Sea Island — that just loves having them around. They are a boon for a property under new management since filing for bankruptcy three years ago.

“It’s great to have these guys around; it really helps support what we’re trying to do from the Learning Center perspective and the experience perspective,” Sea Island President Scott Steilen said.

“The community as a whole is very, very supportive of these guys and respectful of how they’ve done,” Steilen added. “You can hear islanders talk about how our guys are doing. They’ve really adopted them as their own.”

The common belief is that the influx of pros to St. Simons/Sea Island will continue despite one limitation — “It’s not the best singles’ scene; so for a young new guy on Tour, I don’t know if this is quite the spot,” Byrd said.

“Who knows to what extent (other pros will come)?” said Mark Love, Davis’ brother. “I still hear people, as they get exposed to it, saying, ‘You know, I see why everybody’s here. It makes sense.’”

Shhhhh. Maybe they should just keep it to themselves.

For if the place is overrun by these clean-cut pro golfers, where will the revelers of Georgia-Florida game week go to drink?