Our Big Day: Jim Kelly Celebrity Golf Classic

For one delightful, delirious and rather draining Monday every August, Terry Hills Golf Course feels about as close to a Bills Mafia tailgate as any golf club can.

Which is appropriate, because that day is the Jim Kelly Celebrity Golf Classic.

Now in its 18th year at Terry Hills, a 27-hole public facility in Batavia, New York, the Classic is an annual bash that pairs a memorable round with catered restaurant food, at least one DJ for every Super Bowl the Buffalo Bills have played in, a live band on the course, and familiar names like NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, longtime ESPN anchor Chris Berman, Shooter McGavin himself Christopher McDonald, and the Hall of Fame quarterback Kelly — to raise funds for the Kelly for Kids Foundation, which provides grants to disadvantaged and disabled youth around western New York.

“It’s actually a little more understated now than it was 15 years ago,” says superintendent Thad Thompson, who joined the fun starting with the 2008 Classic. “Everybody’s getting a little older.”

The Classic is a highlight on the Terry Hills calendar. For Thompson, it also provides a chance to showcase how he and his maintenance team maintain turf every day throughout the season. He starts planning months in advance with general manager Danielle Rotondo and golf professional Casey Brown, as well as a trio of Kelly’s assistants — Tricia Cavalier, Dennis Stupski and Ashley Lantz — and he relishes in managing every detail. “You have to,” he says. “There’s so much that leads up to it.”

During his early Classics, Thompson says he “had notes upon notes upon notes — and I still have them all. That’s why we have a wrap-up meeting and why we start so early with our meetings: We don’t ever want to forget anything. Now it’s down to the little things, like do the Stoli girls check in as volunteers or vendors? We’re having discussions about that instead of, Why are these people here?”

Thompson is responsible for “making sure all the tents get set up, all the porta-johns are where they need to be, all the tables and chairs are where they need to be — on top of getting the course prepared.” Final maintenance starts at 5:30 the Sunday afternoon before Kelly and friends roll in. That shift lasts about four hours, and includes mowing fairways and posting more than 200 signs that Thompson keeps under protective plastic in a backroom of the old barn that serves as the maintenance facility.

The next morning, the team is at the course around 4:30 and starting by 5. Vendors arrive by 9 and the shotgun start begins at 10. “We check in every vendor,” Thompson says. “They have to fill out forms for insurance and we physically lead them out to where they need to be. We don’t leave anything to chance.”

On Classic Day, 58 fivesomes will fill the course, with a celebrity in every group, along with about 50 vendors and 30 volunteers. Thompson’s brothers Drew, the superintendent and general manager at nearby East Aurora Country Club (see page 26), and Stacey, a former turf pro himself, are among them.

And for as wild as the day might become — and it is a party — there is one big difference between the Classic and a regular Bills Mafia get-together: At least so far, no golfer has ever gone through a table.

— Matt LaWell