An Odd Travelers Wednesday For Former Enfield Mayor

ENFIELD, CT — At the crack of 5 a.m. Wednesday, former Enfield mayor Scott Kaupin got out of bed, hit the treadmill, then prepared for an ordinary workday of conference calls and other duties in his role as a logistics manager for Brooks Brothers, where he has been employed since 1989. Ordinary other than the fact that he is now working from his home, as are millions of other Americans since the advent of the coronavirus pandemic.

This was not just an ordinary day, however. For the past three decades, this day would have normally been spent 31 miles from his home, on the lush grounds of the TPC River Highlands in Cromwell at the Travelers Championship Celebrity Pro-Am, where he introduces all the players at the first tee to a throng of thousands of excited fans.

Announcing duties are performed by past tournament chairpersons, and Kaupin earned that distinction by chairing the unforgettable 2002 event, the final year of the name Canon-Greater Hartford Open.

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Due to the pandemic, this year's tournament is a television-only event, with fans prohibited from attending. As a consequence, for the first time in memory, the Celebrity Pro-Am did not take place Wednesday.

Kaupin said he would most miss the gathering of colleagues he usually sees just once a year.

"It's always a time to meet up with people who've been involved with the tournament for years," he said in a phone interview Wednesday. "The past chairmen's dinner, volunteering with the same people at the starter's tent, spending the day catching up with them."

He started volunteering at the tournament, commonly known as the GHO for many years, in the late 1980s alongside a group of fellow members of the Enfield Jaycees, who aided the Greater Hartford Jaycees in running the event. He became a member of the executive committee in 1999 as the junior golf chair, then became sponsors chair in 2000 and assistant tournament chairman the following year.

Moving up to chairman in 2002, Kaupin presided over what the Travelers Championship website calls "arguably the best PGA Tour field in the history of the GHO that included the likes of Phil Mickelson, Davis Love, Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia, Greg Norman and Vijay Singh." Always one of the top draws on tour, attendance ballooned that year to a record 323,000 spectators.

"We were the beneficiary of the U.S. Open being at Bethpage (on Long Island) the week before, so we got a very strong field of top players," Kaupin said.

Mickelson had won the championship in 2001, and a birdie on the final hole a year later made him the only back-to-back winner since the tournament debuted as the Insurance City Open in 1952. Kaupin claims some of the credit for the legendary lefthander's success.

"I chalk it up to playing with him in the Celebrity Pro-Am that Wednesday," he laughed. "I was able to give him a couple of pointers."

Kaupin's tenure as chair started a three-year string of tournament chairs residing in Enfield, though each year, the tournament sported a different name. Following Canon's departure after 2002, Cindy Demma was chair during the "bridge year" of 2003, when the event was called simply the Greater Hartford Open. Buick signed on as title sponsor in 2004, and John LeDoux, a classmate of Kaupin from Enrico Fermi High School, was chair of the initial Buick Championship.

As older past chairs began to move away or cease volunteering, Kaupin received the opportunity to begin announcing at the pro-am about 10 years ago. He said it felt odd to not be headed to Cromwell this year.

"[Yesterday] I should have been driving down to do the Celebrity Pro-Am. It just doesn't feel like tournament week, and I'm sure that's the same feeling for a lot of people," he said.

Watching the tournament on television will provide golf fans the opportunity to see something they've never seen before, Kaupin said.

"It will be interesting to see the golf course in tournament condition, but without all of the amenities like the skyboxes in corporate row to the Fun Zone," he said. "All of that infrastructure that gets put in place transforms a beautiful golf course into a PGA Tour event. It will be interesting to watch how different it is for the players. Jordan Spieth said he walked up to the 15th tee and could actually see the clubhouse.

"I will also miss walking around, looking to see what has changed from last year. There's always something new and different and better."

Television coverage for the 2020 Travelers Championships is as follows:

Round 1: Thursday, Golf Channel, 3-6 p.m.
Round 2: Friday, Golf Channel, 3-6 p.m.
Round 3: Saturday, Golf Channel, 1-3 p.m.; CBS, 3-6 p.m.
Round 4: Sunday, Golf Channel, 1-3 p.m.; CBS, 3-6 p.m.