His Father’s Son

Joe, Jay Monahan Enjoy Special Week In Pebble Beach
PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA | Joe Monahan, now a 75-year-old lawyer who refuses to retire, remembers putting a golf club in son Jay’s hands for the first time.

Joseph William Monahan IV was three years old in Belmont, Mass., a Boston suburb, and 42 years away from becoming just the fourth commissioner of the PGA Tour.

In a family where hockey and baseball were part of the DNA, golf was part of life.

“Golf is part of our family Rubicon,” said Joe Monahan, father of three.

When Jay Monahan decided to play in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am for the first time this year, he asked his father to be his caddie. That’s a big ask – three, possibly four rounds – lugging a bag around at an age more commonly associated with the early-bird special.

But the scenery, the excitement and the chance to spend all that time together made it a natural decision for the Monahans.

“He's been a really good competitive golfer through the years, so we have always been around him when he's been competing and caddied for him in club championships and state amateurs,” Jay Monahan said Thursday after playing Monterey Peninsula Country Club with his partner, Keith Mitchell.

“But just to have him see the same thing I saw and to have him try and work me through that (first) round, given some of the challenges I was having, was pretty cool.”

Father-son golf stretches through almost the entirety of Jay Monahan’s life.

“Our family trad...