When Bloomington’s Jeff Holtz took his young sons to play golf at Lakeside Country Club, he looked into the eyes of Brandon, who was 9, maybe 10, and Brent, who was a year younger, and said, “You’re never, ever going to be a good golfer unless you’re able to hit every single club.”
That started with the driver, even though Lakeside’s tight layout makes it a risky club. Too many passing cars in close proximity, especially along Morrissey Drive. Safer to hit smaller, more manageable clubs on the tee.
Holtz wouldn’t hear of it.
“Dad refused to let us hit irons or 3-woods off the tee,” Brandon said. “At Lakeside, there are cars every shot. Knock on wood, I’ve never hit a car out there, but I’ve definitely hit it in the street. But you know, just growing up with Dad saying, “Hit driver, hit driver,’ you learn to hit it, right? I’ve carried that over and that’s something I’ll continue to do … hit driver.”
Brandon Holtz hits it better than most, calling it, “The strongest club in my bag.” His ability to swing it powered the Bloomington High School graduate and former Illinois State basketball player to the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship last week in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Holtz routinely outdrove his opponents in the match play event, right down to his final hole. He clinched a 36-hole title-match win by driving the green on a 308-yard hole at Troon Country Club, sinking an eagle putt to close out a 3 and 2 victory over Jeg Coughlin III of Dublin, Ohio.
Moments later, he shared a celebratory “bear hug” with his father/caddy. Those risky swings nearly 30 years earlier had paid off.
“When we were playing at Lakeside, he was worried about going out of bounds,” Jeff Holtz said. “I said, ‘Nah, don’t worry about going out of bounds. Just smoke your driver straight.’ So he learned that.
“He did hit it over the road (Morrissey) a lot of times. He would hit it over into the car wash and actually reached the VFW a few times.”
So yes, the risk of an errant shot was there, still is to a degree. Yet, the reward has never been clearer.
The U.S. Mid-Amateur championship earned Holtz an exemption into next year’s U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, New York. The U.S. Mid-Amateur champion also is traditionally awarded a spot in the Masters. Holtz has exemptions into the U.S. Mid-Amateur for 10 years and the U.S. Amateur for the next two years.
It is a lot to digest for Holtz, a Re/Max Rising Realtor in Bloomington who turned 39 on Wednesday. He and his wife, Liz, have joked that their 5-year-old son, Baker, and 2-year-old daughter, Millie, “don’t understand the magnitude of it.”
But then …
“Neither do we, really,” he added. “We’re still trying to figure it out.”
There is no mystery regarding the role of the driver in Holtz’s biggest win. Jeff Holtz said Craig Onsrud, head professional at Ironwood Golf Course in Normal, told his son years ago, “You can afford to make a couple of bogeys with the driver because you make so many birdies with it.”
That mentality never left him. When U.S. Mid-Amateur opponents were hitting 3-woods and 3-irons and hybrids off the tee, “I’m just ripping driver,” Holtz said.
“These guys have 160, 180 (yards) in (to the green) and I have 80 to 100,” he added. “I felt like I was able to put pressure on guys all week.”
‘Locked in’
Holtz qualified for the U.S. Mid-Amateur at Bloomington’s Crestwicke Country Club, where he plays frequently. Once in Arizona, he shot 1-over par 143 in two rounds of qualifying to make the 64-man match play field.
He played one match on Sept. 15, two on the 16th, two on the 17th and the 36-hole final on the 18th.
“It became more endurance than golf at the end of the week,” he said. “Out in the desert hiking mountains and 30,000 steps a day, it was a grind. Mentally, even my wife mentioned that just talking to me after the rounds, I was in a different mindset. I was locked in. I kept telling myself, ‘One shot at a time, one shot at a time, don’t get too far ahead of yourself.’”
On ice
Holtz was able to draw upon his experiences as a Division I athlete. To combat the physical demands of the week, he gave himself “homemade ice baths.” He would buy bags of ice at a gas station and “ice up the tub and hop in there for 10, 15 minutes.”
“The recovery in that … if you’ve never taken an ice bath, I recommend you do it if you’re feeling sore or you’re in some sort of competition,” he said.
Mentally, having played basketball in large arenas helped him manage the nerves. He also used breathing techniques he had learned.
“In your mouth, out your nose, and in your nose, out your mouth,” he said. “I did all these things to settle me down and it worked out. I still don’t remember hitting that last tee shot or making that last putt. I’m all right with it. I’ll watch it, right?”
Amateur status
Holtz was a reserve guard at ISU from 2005 to 2009. After graduating, he played professional golf full-time on a mini-tour from 2010 to 2014.
“I played out of Atlanta, Georgia, for the most part,” he said. “I like to call it my triangle … basically from Illinois to Florida to the Carolinas. That was kind of my territory.”
It was not lucrative.
“If we really want to dig into it, I made no money,” he said. “If anything, I’m still paying off some of that debt I collected over the years.”
Holtz played a small number of pro events from 2015 to 2021 … the Illinois Open every year along with a few events in Iowa. In 2017, a second-place finish in the Illinois Open netted him $14,000, by far his largest payday.
“It got to a point where I got married, had a couple of kids … I just wasn’t playing enough,” Holtz said. “Talking to my buddies, I was like, ‘I’m just going to get my amateur status back.’ It was mainly just to play with them in the city events.”
Holtz applied to the United States Golf Association, paying a $200 fee. He had to submit his schedule/earnings from his pro career.
“I ended up getting my amateur status back in like nine months,” he said.
‘Comedy of errors’
Jeff Holtz has caddied for his son many times. That doesn’t mean he is above committing an occasional caddy gaffe. A couple occurred last week.
“I left his clubs at the bathroom on one of the holes. I had to run back and get them,” he said. “I also did the cardinal sin of parking the clubs on the side of a hill. We’re on the green and they fall over and the clubs fall out.
“It was a comedy of errors, but it kept everything light.”
The plan is if, as expected, Brandon is invited to play in the Masters, Jeff will be his caddy. Brandon Holtz has researched the Masters exemption list and the U.S. Mid-Amateur winner is on it for 2026.
“We’ll just keep our fingers crossed,” he said. “I’m anxiously waiting for that invitation in the mail.”
Hometown support
Holtz has been flooded with congratulatory calls, text messages and emails from folks in Bloomington-Normal.
The support has been overwhelming.
“The outpouring he has received … I listen to people talk to him all week and they’re so genuine,” Jeff Holtz said. “Bloomington-Normal people have been extraordinary. I thank them all. So does he.”
