Jeff Kiddie offers congratulations to a young participant in a PGA Works Clinic held earlier this year.
In many ways, Jeff Kiddie was destined to live a life in golf.
His father, Dave, was in the business, first as an assistant professional in upstate New York and later as a sales representative for several apparel companies. And Kiddie’s maternal grandmother, Dottie Boehm, not only gave him his first set of clubs but also took the youngster out for his first rounds of golf.
The oldest of two children, Kiddie also grew up an easy bike ride away from a nine-hole course in New York farm country just southeast of Rochester, where the two-lane blacktops were lined with cornfields and apple orchards. At age 13, he went to work at that course, Victor Hills, washing golf carts, selling hot dogs, watering the fairways and greens and playing golf when he was not on the clock.
So, no one was very surprised to see Kiddie play golf in high school for four straight years and later compete for the Gannon University Golden Knights in Erie, Pennsylva...