This Greller Playing, Not Looping, in U.S. Senior Open

Michael Greller has been on the winning bag for three major championships, a combined nine Ryder and Presidents Cups and a USGA amateur title. Yet the longtime caddie for PGA Tour star Jordan Spieth says the family’s greatest athletic achievement doesn’t involve a Green Jacket, hoisting the Claret Jug or the U.S. Open Trophy.

That, says the 48-year-old, belongs to a sibling five years his senior.

When Tom Greller earned his way into this week’s 45th U.S. Senior Open Championship at The Broadmoor’s East Course via two stages of qualifying, Michael was as giddy as when Spieth won the 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers Bay, a course where he had gotten married two years earlier and got his start carrying bags.

“I’m calling it the greatest [sports] accomplishment in the Greller family,” said Michael, whose younger sister, Katie, was an All-American Division III basketball player at George Fox University in Oregon. “I’m just watching golf. I don’t hit any of the shots.”

For more than 20 years, Tom Greller had been trying to play his way into USGA championships. He’d attended a few, including the 2011 U.S. Junior Amateur at Gold Mountain, in Bremerton, Wash., when Spieth, with Michael on the bag for the first time, claimed his second title, and the 2015 U.S. Open.

Since moving to Oregon in 1999 and reintroducing himself to competitive golf, Tom always dreamed of competing at the highest levels of the game. It didn’t matter if it was the U.S. Amateur, U.S. Mid-Amateur, U.S. Amateur Four-Ball or the U.S. Senior Open. Seeing guys who he frequently competes against – and occasionally beats – qualify for the U.S. Senior Open gave him confidence that he could do it too.

The USGA adding two stages of qualifying this year threw an additional obstacle into that goal.

Tom survived the first 18-hole qualifier on April 7 at Arrowhead Golf Club, in Molalla, Ore., in a 4-for-3 playoff that included a bogey on the first playoff hole. Five weeks later in windy conditions at Bend (Ore.) Golf Club, drama once again encompassed Greller.

Nearly 1,900 miles away in Fort Worth, Texas, Michael Greller was with Spieth and Rickie Fowler during a Monday practice round for the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club. While all three were focused on preparing for the PGA Tour event, phones were in hand as they constantly refreshed the scoring page on the Oregon Golf Association’s website to follow Tom’s exploits. An opening bogey left Michael wondering if the “fun run” was dead.

Birdies on 4 and 5 provided new hope. Michael, a veteran of 19 USGA championships as a caddie, took a screen shot of his brother’s position atop the leader board, thinking “this is as close as he’s going to get to the U.S. Senior Open.” A double at 6 halted that momentum. Two more birdies, including a chip-in, had Tom at even par going into the last two holes. He made a 10-footer for par on 17 and had a stress-free 4 on the closing hole.

“When golf is played in a dome (nice weather) and guys are shooting 67, that’s not good for me,” said Tom. “I need it to be nasty. Both of those [qualifying] rounds were on courses I am familiar with and like. [We played final qualifying] in hurricane conditions with borderline illegal [hole locations]. Everyone was forced to miss greens, scramble and play recovery shots, which is my game. I’m not good at shooting 66, but [I’m] good at shooting 70 to 72 in really bad conditions.”

When asked why, “Probably because I have been playing out of trouble my whole life.”

Forty-five minutes before the results were official, Michael already had booked an AirBnB in Colorado Springs. This was going to be a family reunion unlike any other.

Michael, his wife of 12 years, Ellie, and two kids, Barrett, 7, and Greta, 5, were coming. So was his sister and three of her four children. Uncle Jake Kasmersky, one of the two individuals responsible for getting Tom and Michael hooked on golf (the other was their late grandfather Chet Kamersky), was also flying to Colorado.

Tom’s 20-year-old son, Ray, a rising sophomore on the Northwestern College (Orange City, Iowa) men’s golf team, is serving as his caddie. His 17-year-old son, Luke, a rising high school senior who is being recruited to play football, will also make the trek, along with wife, Tabitha. Tom met Tabitha when she was playing on the George Fox basketball team with Katie. He’d flown from Nebraska with Michael to watch Katie play and was introduced to the woman seven years his junior. She still had two years of college eligibility remaining when they tied the knot.

“It’s pretty surreal,” said Tom. “Pretty cool.”

Growing up in Grand Haven, Mich., a city on the shores of Lake Michigan about 40 miles west of Grand Rapids, Tom and Michael Greller often made trips south to Columbus, Ohio to visit his mom’s family. Grandpa Chet was a very fine golfer, having won the club championship at Scioto Country Club, site of next year’s U.S. Senior Open and the course that legend Jack Nicklaus learned the game. So was Uncle Jake.

“My first golf rounds were in sixth and seventh grade, ripping around Scioto,” remembered Tom.

Tom later tried to make the golf team at Furman University, in Greenville, S.C., but when he got cut, he became an intramural star. In fact, the school named him its best male athlete for his class (1994) yet he never played a varsity sport. Besides golf, Tom excelled in volleyball, particularly the beach variety. When he moved to Charleston, S.C., after graduation, he played professionally up and down the East Coast for a year while going door to door selling cemetery plots/headstones.

His pitch? Providing free wills and then asking if they had made final arrangements.  

He relocated to Omaha, Neb., in 1996, to play on the Midwest Pro Beach Volleyball Association circuit. Greller traveled on weekends to places like Kansas City, Milwaukee and Chicago for tournaments, while continuing to serve up sales pitches.

Sweating under searing heat wearing sunglasses and zinc oxide in a sand pit might sound exciting, but it wasn’t lucrative, at least for Greller.

“When people asked, I said I was good enough to win [the equivalent of] a Korn Ferry [Tour] event,” said Tom. “I made some money. It was about a quarter of my yearly salary. It was not sustainable.

“I had this great liberal arts degree to go be a beach bum and very quickly, [I realized] I had to pay bills.”

Through a friend, Greller transitioned to pharmaceutical sales. But when he married Tabitha, a native of Boise, Idaho, and relocated to Newberg, Ore., a town 40 miles southwest of Portland in the state’s wine country, he dropped everything for this life-altering moment.

“It all happened so quickly,” said Tom, who has resided in Oregon the past 26 years.

Greller found his calling in medical device sales. Eight months ago, Greller landed a regional sales job with a company revolutionizing a product to help stroke victims. Dallas-based MicroTransponder got FDA approval in 2021 for an implant that is changing lives. The device works like a pacemaker and victims who couldn’t move their arms or hands are suddenly capable of doing so.

“Patient stories are bordering on the unbelievable,” he said.

Things have been so hectic for Greller over the last five weeks that he received a text from his bosses to remind him to formally put in for PTO (paid time off) to play in this week’s championship. So before his 1:22 p.m. MDT practice round on Monday, Greller dug out his laptop.

Such is life with a full-time job and a family. Tom can’t fathom what older brother Michael does on a weekly basis. Being away from his family for just three days makes him “grumpy.” Michael can often be on the road for a month, depending on Spieth’s schedule.

“Obviously, Michael has had a great run with Jordan,” said Tom. “But it’s a grind. Being on the road like that and away from your family and lugging that bag, there is zero percent chance I could do it.”

But while Michael won’t be on the bag at The Broadmoor, he is playing a role during practice rounds, helping with strategy and course management. It also doesn’t hurt that Michael has connections to a few PGA Tour Champions stars. Tom went from playing solo on Saturday to playing with fellow Furman graduate/two-time USGA champion Todd White on Sunday , to walking alongside Hall of Famers Ernie Els and Bernhard Langer on Monday afternoon.

When he qualified for the Senior Open, Fowler and Spieth sent video messages, the former jokingly saying “we’ll see you at Shinnecock Hills next year.” The U.S. Senior Open champion receives an exemption into the following year’s U.S. Open. Daniel Berger also sent a message. The two had played in the 3M Open pro-am two years ago.

Greller has no delusions of grandeur. He wants to enjoy every moment, from walking inside the ropes with his eldest son, to hitting balls on the range with the game’s best senior golfers. What is different is being the guy doling out the tickets and parking passes as opposed to the one making the requests.

Instead of watching Michael inside the ropes with Spieth, the script has been reversed. Michael will now be the one observing from the gallery.

Being around Spieth and other PGA Tour stars has made Tom comfortable around legendary players. Trying to navigate The Broadmoor’s East Course is another matter.

Forget the high altitude (6,400 feet) that forces players to adjust their distances. The thick rough and some of the game’s most challenging greens will be a major challenge.

“It’s simple: hit the fairway and you can hit the green,” said Greller. “If you don’t hit the fairway, you won’t be hitting the green.

“Nicklaus said these greens are the only ones more diabolical than Augusta [National]. Having played Augusta a couple of times, I would 100 percent agree. I have had my back to the hole so many times, it’s absurd. I just hope to play reasonably respectable.”

David Shefter is a senior staff writer at the USGA. Email him at dshefter@usga.org.