How the Wichita Open is using golf tournament to honor local military veterans
Honoring the military will be the theme of the week in tournament director Roy Turner’s final go-around hosting the Wichita Open.
There will be at least 75 military veterans hosted in the 18th green hospitality tent by a different local military non-profit group each day of the tournament with food and beverage provided by The Belmont.
The American flag will serve as the flag stick on No. 18 with an active duty member holding when the Korn Ferry Tour event begins Thursday at Crestview Country Club. There will also be a playing of “Retreat” at the end of each day, the same way the military ends each duty day.
“One of our ambassadors asked me if this was possible and I thought it was well overdue to thank our veterans,” said Turner, who is retiring following his 23rd year in charge of the golf tournament. “It’s an honor to do this and we’re very proud of ourselves for the elaborate plan we’ve come up with. We’re going to do a first-class job for these people and when they get to the course, they won’t feel like anything other than first-class citizens.”
Turner doesn’t plan on the impact ending when the tournament concludes on Sunday. Seeing the impact of PGA HOPE, which stands for Helping Our Patriots Everywhere, Turner wants to create a similar program in Wichita to introduce veterans with disabilities to the game of golf to “enhance their physical, mental, social and emotional well-being.”
“We want to show our veterans that they will be taken care of and we’re trying to build a program here in Wichita,” Turner said. “We’ve seen it work in other cities where it’s almost therapeutic for them to get involved in golf. And that’s our goal with this tournament is to get a group set up in this community to start teaching veterans golf.”
Hearing everything Wichita was doing to honor the military for this week’s event made it even more special to golfer Tom Whitney, a 2010 graduate of the United States Air Force Academy.
Whitney also was excited about being paired with three combat veterans in the pro-am event on Wednesday.
“I love it anytime a tournament involves the local active veteran community and just makes them feel loved,” Whitney said. “I always love chatting with veterans and telling them about my journey and hearing about theirs. I think it’s special for them to meet one of the players who has military experience because we can connect on a deeper level than just saying, ‘Hi’ and ‘thanks.’ I can’t wait for it.”
Whitney was a standout golfer at Air Force from 2006-10, but paused his golf career to work in his career field as a nuclear missile operator in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
“We would work 24-hour shifts with another crew partner and we would go down about 100 feet in this hardened silo and we were directly in charge of our nation’s missiles,” Whitney said. “Our primary mission was to launch, but really the day-to-day of it looked mostly like being in charge of maintenance, security responses, executing tests and exercises.”
After finishing his commitment to the Air Force in 2014, Whitney decided to pursue a professional golf career. He started in PGA Tour Latinoamerica in 2016, then graduated and played on the Web.com Tour in 2017 and 2018 before returning to the PGA Tour Latinoamerica in 2019.
He has been playing in the Korn Ferry Tour this season, where he has already registered three top-15 finishes. He hopes the Wichita Open is next.
“I think I’ve come here every year since 2013 and I love it here,” Whitney said. “(The 17th hole) is always fun because you can hear the buzz when you’re on the tee box. We don’t always get that every venue and I know this is one of the more fun spectator venues out on the tour and I’m excited to play here.”
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