Tighe keeps close ties to West Bend CC and its Evans Scholars efforts
f you talk golf with Kelly Tighe for any length of time,
So it went recently in an interview with Tighe, vice pres-
ident in charge of sales at West Bend Mutual Insurance
Co. Tighe, 48, is a native of West Bend, played on the
golf team at West Bend West High School and is a long-
time member of West Bend CC, where he currently has a
handicap index of 2. 4.
Under his dad’s tutelage, Tighe got bit by the golf bug
early in life, and he hasn’t strayed far from the game as
an adult. Tighe said he started playing golf when he was
about 5.
“What makes (golf) really special for me is knowing that
I’ve done this with my dad for 40-plus years,” Tighe said.
“He got me interested in it, and he keeps me interested
in it. It’s cool to have a father-son thing going like that.”
Tighe participated in junior programs, and he played a
lot of golf when he was a little kid at Hon-E-Kor CC in Ke-
waskum, where his family had a membership before mov-
ing to West Bend CC in 1979. Still, he traces his interest
in the game back to the days when he would tag along
with his dad’s buddies, pulling his father’s pull cart and
occasionally being allowed to chip and putt if the course
wasn’t busy.
“Every Saturday morning, rain or shine, cold or warm, I
would go out with him and his buddies,” Tighe said of his
I
dad, who also worked at West Bend Mutual. “And that’s
how I learned a passion for the game.”
Tighe has worked at West Bend Mutual – a new addi-
tion to the Wisconsin State Golf Association corporate
partners program – for 13 years. As vice president over-
seeing sales, Tighe said his primary task is encouraging
West Bend Mutual agents, who are independent, to sell
more of the company’s products.
West Bend Mutual is a regional mutual insurance com-
pany, which means it operates in the upper Midwest and
is owned by its policyholders.
Although Tighe graduated from UW-Oshkosh and
didn’t participate in the program himself, he has become
a staunch supporter of the Evans Scholars Program –
again, through West Bend CC. Tighe said he caddied at
the club back in the day, and, after joining the club on his
own in 1990, he became more involved the program over
time. He became a Western Golf Association director in
2010, and he now heads the Evans Scholars committee at
the club.
The West Bend membership has reason to be proud, as
the club has sent 34 former caddies to college over the
years and raised more than $1.1 million through an an-
nual one-day fundraiser.
Tighe doesn’t just support caddies; he employs them
when he plays, in part because he hates golf carts.
“There’s no better way to play golf than with a caddie,
whether you’re at your own club or a high-end facility like
Erin Hills or Whistling Straits,” he said. “To have a caddie
Kelly Tighe, right, and Kevin Steiner, president and CEO of West
Bend Mutual Inurance Co., got a chance to hold the Ryder Cup a
couple years ago while visiting England.
there with you is a special relationship.”
Tighe admits he was involved in setting up the WSGA
sponsorship deal, and that, too, goes back to West Bend
and its small-town values and relationships. Tighe said he
and company president and CEO Kevin Steiner have
known WSGA executive director Rob Jansen, another
West Bend native, for many years.
“We’re big supporters of Wisconsin golf,” Tighe said
of West Bend Mutual. “We need golf to be healthy in
Wisconsin because it’s a way to attract people to our
state. For West Bend Mutual and other businesses, it’s a
quality-of-life thing, and it helps attract good employees
to Wisconsin.” ;;
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Zoom level
fit page
fit width
A
A
fullscreen
share
print
clip
SlideShow
fullscreen
Open Article
article text for page
< previous story
|
next story >
add comment
|
read comments
Share this page with a friend
Save to “My Stuff”
Subscribe to this magazine
Search
Help
