Writing from Chicago
Tuesday, May 2, 2023
Lance Ten Broeck was one of the most complicated figures in the history of golf in Chicago.
A product of Chicago’s south side and Beverly Country Club, Ten Broeck was immensely talented. Yet he won only once on the PGA Tour – the 1984 Magnolia Classic, an alternate-field tournament played the same week as the Masters.
That could have been a springboard. But Ten Broeck never got the bounce.
Ten Broeck, 67, died Sunday of organ failure in West Palm Beach, Fla. His son Jonathan confirmed the news to Craig Dolch of the Palm Beach Post. He had dealt with growing health problems the last two years.
Lance Ten Broeck was as good a caddie as he was a player, working for Jesper Parnevik when his PGA Tour eligibility was all but gone, and eventually caddieing for Ernie Els on the Champions Tour.
“We lost a great friend of the game of golf yesterday, Lance Ten Broeck,” Els tweeted on Monday. “Lance spent his whole life around our great game as a player, a caddy, and a coach, for that matter. A True legend and most of the stories are true! Loved that man - RIP brother!”
The stories being true are why Ten Broeck didn’t fulfill the expectations friends and observers had for him after he graduated from Texas in 1977. The “Last Call Lance” nickname was hung on him in 1980 when he had to wait for a bartender to end his shift to get a ride back to his hotel during the Pensacola Open, but even before that, he burned the midnight oil at American Tour stops when it was barely midnight on Guam.
Ten Broeck made $790,347 in his PGA Tour career, finishing in the top 10 11 times. He made the cut 162 times in 355 starts, the most famous being the 2009 Texas Open. He was Parnevik’s caddie, but also entered to play under the provision of having more at least 150 cuts on the Tour, as he did every week Parnevik played.
As always he was well down the alternate list, but this time everyone above him either got in or was unavailable. He found out he could play after Parnevik putted out on Thursday morning, and within an hour, Ten Broeck had arranged to borrow spare clubs, a putter and balls, plus went down the street to a department store to buy a pair of slacks. As a caddie, he wore shorts.
Ten Broeck shot 71, then went out the next morning, shot 73, and jumped back on Parnevik’s bag for the last 13 holes of his round. Both missed the cut, but Ten Broeck beat his boss by two strokes.
“I guarantee you that will never happen again on the PGA Tour,” Parnevik told Dolch. “Nobody will ever caddie and play in the same event.”
When he was motivated, Ten Broeck could play amazing golf. At 56, he led the 2012 U.S. Senior Open at the halfway point, landing in an eventual tie for ninth place. Five years later, chasing a berth on the senior circuit, he fired a 62 in qualifying, missing matching his age by a year.
All of which drove Ten Broeck fans up the wall. If he could do things like that, plus take money from the pockets of peers in friendly games, why couldn’t he do it more often?
Said Ten Broeck in 2019, “I probably didn’t have enough confidence, but it’s hard to have confidence when you’re not playing well. And when I played badly, I didn’t want to play.”
With the family growing up in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood – he was the youngest of eight children – Lance Ten Broeck starred at Brother Rice – though unknown to many in the state because the Catholic League wasn’t in the IHSA at the time. He then earned all-America honors at Texas, and came home to win the 1984 Illinois Open by three strokes at Flossmoor. He thus joined his older brother Rick, who had won it in 1973 and 1981, on the trophy.
Rick Ten Broeck is among a large number of surviving family members, along with Lance’s son Jonathan.
His friends on the circuit remembered him fondly.
“How I remember Lance,” tweeted Rick Fehr. “…he was kind and cared about everyone equally. Best epitaph, IMO. The world needs more peeps like him. Love to all his family.”
Bob Estes, another contemporary, added on Twitter, “I always enjoyed talking to him about golf, life or @TexasLonghorns sports. We’re gonna miss him on the @ChampionsTour."
A celebration of Lance Ten Broeck’s life will be held in mid-May, Jonathan Ten Broeck said.
– Tim Cronin