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MARCH/APRIL 2007
Jim Milward was the quintessential, old-fashioned Wisconsin golf pro. During a lifetime that consumed most of the 20th century, Milward held down club professional jobs in Wisconsin during the northern golf season, then went south to play against the likes of Byron Nelson and Sam Snead on the old winter golf circuit which in later years would become the PGA Tour. Milward knew his employers – the members at the private clubs where he worked – by their first names. He taught them to play, and he played with them often. And afterward, he drank, smoked and swapped tales with them. Milward is remembered as one of the finest Wisconsin players of his, or any other, generation. In winning the Wisconsin State Amateur Championship and later four Wisconsin State Open titles (he’s one of three four-time winners; four others have won it five times) Milward carved out a niche for himself in the pantheon of Wisconsin golf. His contribution to the game here was officially recognized in 1977 with his induction into the Wisconsin State Golf Association Hall of Fame. Jim Milward was born in Madison in 1912 to University of Wisconsin professor James Milward and his wife, Goldie. Siblings David, Helen, Barbara and Bill soon followed. The Milwards lived in Madison’s Nakoma neighborhood during the 1920s and were early members of Nakoma CC (today’s Nakoma GC). Although James never played the game himself, he encouraged his children to pursue lessons at the club. Jim wasn’t the only accomplished player in the Milward family. Brother Bill, who also became a golf professional, won the 1941 WSGA Junior Champion-ship and the 1951 State Open, and David and Helen also played competitively. “My dad and mother never played,” Jim’s sister, Helen Holt-Baillies said recently from her home in Clermont, Fla. “My dad was a great fan of Jim’s, and he loved the game, but he never played it.” An important early influence in Jim Milward’s life was Carl “Kully” Schlicht, the head pro at Nakoma in the years 1933-38. Schlicht was Milward’s mentor – he taught several of the Milward children to play the game – then a friend, fellow competitor and contemporary as a golf pro. Milward learned his lessons well from Schlicht and became a powerful ball-striker. Many who saw him play the game still marvel at his uncanny ability to square the clubface at impact and hit the ball long and true. His weakness, if he had one, was a streaky short game which occasionally resulted in three-putts at the least opportune moments. Milward won the Wisconsin State Amateur Championship in 1935 at Sheboygan Pine Hills CC, and two years later, in 1937, he became the second amateur to win the Wisconsin State Open. He turned pro in 1938 and repeated as State Open champion. He returned after serving in the military during World War II to win back-to-back State Opens again in 1946-47 and the Wisconsin PGA Championship in 1956. Milward was the head pro at Madison’s Blackhawk CC from 1938 until 1942, when he was drafted into the Air Force at age 30. He served until 1945 as a flight engineer on a B-17 crew and advanced to the rank of corporal. But he never saw combat, according to his wife, 90-year-old Irma Milward, currently a resident in a retirement center in DeLand, Fla. “He was never sent overseas,” said Irma Milward, who married Jim in 1936. “He thought they kept him here because he was a little too old for the Air Force. And he wasn’t that old.” Milward made a memorable visit home in 1945. According to Madison’s Capital Times, Milward came home on furlough that summer and during a round of golf at Nakoma shot a course-record, 8-under-par 63 (the course was later redesigned and par changed to 70). The previous course record of 65 had been shared by Milward and two others. In an episode reminiscent of the movie “Caddyshack,” the newspaper account said “he finished his round in the tremendous rain and lightning storm which caught up with Jim on the 14th hole. With a record in sight, he continued and finished his par-shattering round despite the handicap of the elements.” Milward returned to Wisconsin after the war, but by then his friend Kully Schlicht had assumed his old head pro job at Blackhawk CC. Holt-Baillies recalled that Milward likely could have gotten his job back, but his loyalty to Schlicht, who had a young family at the time, sent him looking elsewhere for employment. So he worked at a Madison driving range owned by Schlicht for a couple of years, then landed the head pro job at Oneida G&CC in Green Bay in 1948. Milward still holds the Oneida course record of 64, which he accomplished twice. He stayed at Oneida until 1955, when he moved to North Hills CC in Menomonee Falls, his final position as a golf professional. Irma Milward suggested that he should have kept the Oneida job longer. “He always said he should have stayed in Green Bay, but he was offered the job at North Hills and decided to take that,” she said. “And we enjoyed it there, too, as far as that goes, but Jim had a fondness for Green Bay.” It was during Milward’s time at North Hills that he experienced the biggest tragedy of his life, when, in the late 1960s, his teenage son, Steven, died in a car accident. Steven was Jim and Irma Milward’s only child. By most accounts, Milward was a popular figure at the clubs where he worked. “He always had a smile on his face,” said longtime North Hills member Ted Levenhagen. “(He was) very easygoing. In a country club, 10 percent of the members you don’t get along with. And I think he got along with everybody. He had a lot of personality.” Another North Hills member, George Miley, said Milward had a way of being brutally honest without offending, which endeared him to many at the club. To prove the point, Miley recalled with a laugh the time he took a lesson with Milward soon after joining the club. Milward apparently thought Miley’s feet where a little too active during the golf swing and eventually became so exasperated with his student that he barked, “Stop your (expletive) dancing.” Like many professionals of his generation, Milward juggled club pro duties and the nomadic life of a touring professional. According to information provided by the PGA Tour, Milward participated in 58 sanctioned events between 1938 and 1956, earning $5,770 in official money. Milward had his best years in the late 1940s. In 1947, he earned $1,783, and had a career-best finish of third in a tournament, while playing in just five events. In 1948, he set career highs in earnings ($1,836) and starts (16). At his WSGA Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 1977, Milward – always the raconteur – reportedly told a story about his early days on tour in which he and Ben Hogan pooled their money and traveled together to make ends meet. When Irma Milward was asked about that story recently, she gave a direct answer: “Nope. I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen.” The Milwards and the Hogans knew each other and were on friendly terms, she said, but they didn’t spend much time together away from the golf course. “I wouldn’t say they were close,” Irma Milward said of her husband and Hogan. “They were paired together quite often. Ben was an awfully nice man, but a very quiet person. I knew his wife, Valerie, very well, but Ben was a very private person. He just concentrated on his game and I don’t think he and his wife had many close friends. I don’t think he had too many buddies.” When Milward retired from North Hills CC following the 1973 season, the club presented him with a new boat so he could pursue one of his other passions, fishing. The Milwards relocated to Clermont, Fla., a city surrounded by lakes where Milward put his parting gift to good use. He fell into a routine of playing golf every morning and fishing each afternoon. Eventually, however, he grew restless.
“He came home one day and said, ‘You know, I’ve discovered something. It’s only fun to play golf and go fishing when you’re supposed to be working. I’m getting bored with this,’” Irma Milward said with a laugh.
So Milward rekindled an interest in architecture which extended back to the 1930s when he apprenticed under Madison architect Louis W. Claude. Obviously a quick study, Milward graduated high school at age 16, then earned his license to work as an architect in Wisconsin while learning at the feet of Claude. Irma Milward said her husband was always proud to have accomplished that feat without attending college. He designed some homes in the Milwaukee area while at North Hills, then, after moving to Florida, Milward designed a new home for himself and Irma. Upon hiring a contractor to build the home, the contractor was so impressed with the plans that he offered Milward a job. He accepted and the duo eventually created a couple of housing developments in central Florida. Milward finally retired at age 81, Irma said, when his health began to deteriorate and his hands got too shaky to do the work. He suffered from emphysema and had other complications in his final years which required him to be hooked up to an oxygen tank. He had been a heavy smoker his entire adult life, and, as Holt-Baillies pointed out, “he also liked his cocktails.” Milward died on Oct. 12, 1997 in DeLand, Fla., at the age of 85. According to an obituary published in the Wisconsin State Journal a few days later, the Milwards asked that memorials be sent to the Evans Scholars Foundation. A golfer to the very end.
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