Longtime Ann Arbor amateur golfer Jim Briegel stands on the U-M Golf Course, where he works as a ranger and starter. Briegel is being inducted, at age 85, into the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame on May 15.

Angela J. Cesere | AnnArbor.com

Like many good golfers, Jim Briegel is itching to fine-tune some things this summer.

“I’m not playing to what I think my ability is. I still can shoot par once in a while, but I shoot more 78s and 79s than I do par,” he says. “I play 15 good holes and wonder what happened on the other three.”

It’s a common refrain on golf courses around the area, but Briegel is anything but a common story.

The 85-year-old, who will be inducted into the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame on May 15, wants to turn the clock all the way back to the era that saw him shoot a 71 at Dunham Hills Golf Club in Hartland. At age 82.

“It’s part of my ego, I guess. Now that I’m being inducted into this hall of fame, I’m saying well, ‘Let’s get your game back,’” Briegel said during a recent conversation at the University of Michigan Golf Course, where he was introduced to the game 70 years ago and still works part-time as a ranger and starter.

A WORKING MAN’S GAME

Briegel was one of five children raised in a two-bedroom house on Rose Avenue, just across State Street from the Michigan athletic campus. At age 12, he started caddying at the U-M Golf Course, where he’d get tossed a quarter for his efforts.

That started a working man’s relationship with a game more often mastered by the country club set. As a senior at Ann Arbor High School, Briegel was working a full shift in the print room at Edwards Brothers after school, but arranged to have time off so he and his mismatched bag of hickory- and metal-shafted clubs could play high school golf matches.

Briegel was married at age 19 to Gerry, his wife of 67 years -- “my sweetheart, the only girl I ever dated,” Briegel says -- and they had three of their five children in relatively short order.

From there, golf was squeezed in between raising a family and a steadily-ascending career at Braun-Brumfield (which later merged with BookCrafters to form Sheridan Books, Inc.). Hired as a press operator in 1951, Briegel was a press room foreman, production manager and vice president of manufacturing before becoming president in 1989. He retired in 1992.

In the process, Briegel discovered the Michigan Publinx Golf Association where courses sponsored teams. The result was free golf.

“I’ve always played public golf. I’ve never belonged to a club,” says Briegel. “I was raising a family - five kids - and in that process, there wasn’t money to afford to play golf. I found a way to be able to play and not feel that I’m taking food off the table.”

Briegel says he was playing his best golf when he “could least afford to.”

“I would say when I was in my early 30s, I probably played as well as I had the possibility of playing,” he said. “It was not uncommon for me to shoot under par, I would consistently shoot 32 or 33 in nine-hole league play. In Publinx, I would consistently shoot 69s, all on different golf courses.”

Practice, also, was free.

Briegel never took a formal lesson but would take his sons, David and Dutch, to shag his hundreds of practice shots.

“My kids tell the story of me trying to kill them,” Briegel says with his infectious laugh. “I’d put them out there on the driving range with their ball mitts. They had a rule though, it had to bounce once. You don’t catch it on the fly.”

Briegel would start with his 9-iron. When dad bent over to grab a new club, David and Dutch took 10 steps back.

“I did more practicing than playing, again for the financial reasons,” he says. “That’s what I did for a lot of years, and it paid off. I didn’t have to play a lot because I was practicing. Now I don’t even go out and hit warmup balls.”

SUCCESS ON THE LINKS

When Briegel did get on the course, the results were typically good. Very good.

He’s the only person in Ann Arbor city tournament history to win the junior (1944), men’s (1955, 57, 63, 66) and senior (1994, 98) titles.

Per tradition, the travelling trophy for the men’s city championship was retired to Briegel after he won for the third time in 1963. As he and Gerry de-clutter their home in Redford in preparation for a return to Ann Arbor - the town he’s always called home - that’s the one out of hundreds of trophies he says he’ll keep.

He’s already purged the trophy he earned for winning the 70-plus age division at the British Senior Open-Amateur played at Blairgowrie Golf Club in 1996.

He also played in four U.S. Amateur Public Links Championships, two U.S. Senior Amateurs, the U.S. Senior Open and won three Michigan Publinx Seniors Golf Association Open amateur championships.

Briegel co-founded the Michigan Publinx Senior Golf Association and served as president for four years. In his honor, any member who shoots his age earns the Briegel Cup.

Until last year, he was the only member to pull off the feat - but he’s not eligible to win his own cup.

“I still have pretty good health and for a guy 85 years old, I’m still very flexible,” Briegel says. “I was almost double-jointed as a wrestler in high school. You could twist me up like a pretzel and it’s kind of maintained over the years.

“I have more aches and pains, but once I limber up - a few practice swings and a couple stretches - I can play.”

Back when he retired in 1992, Briegel says he “sat around the house for a couple years, getting addicted to the O.J. Simpson trial in the process.” That’s what drove him to visit the U-M Golf Course, which he calls his all-time favorite course, and ask manager Charlie Green for a job.

Before his shift, he’ll play a couple holes or chip and putt for practice.

“The putting is still with me, but the chipping left me about 10 years ago,” he admits. “Primarily because I don’t play as much and I’m not under the pressure. The pressure makes you a good player.”

That’s why, he says, he’ll get back after it a bit little this summer.

HALL OF FAME

Briegel is one of four people who will be inducted into the hall of fame, run by the Michigan Golf Foundation, in ceromonies at Indianwood Golf & Country Club in Lake Orion.

Other inductees include:

Terry Moore of Grand Rapids, co-founder of Michigan Golfer Magazine, founder of the West Michigan Golf Show and former school administrator turned journalist. Moore, a former Egypt Valley Country Club member, served 10 years on the club's media committee when it hosted the Senior PGA Tour/Champions Tour, and he was instrumental in the club's bid to host the 2010 U.S. Junior Boys Championship, the first United States Golf Association national championship ever in the Grand Rapids area. Currently, he writes for the Michigan Golfer online, as well as for other golf Internet outlets.

Noted international golf course designer Arthur Hills. Once a captain of the Michigan State University golf team, Hills has designed 225 golf courses across the world, including 16 in Michigan. He designed two 18-hole layouts at Egypt Valley Country Club in Ada, and also the Hawkshead Golf Club near South Haven. He also has renovated more than 125 courses, including work at U.S. Open sites such as Oakland Hills Country Club in suburban Detroit.

Don Perne, the co-founder of the PGA of America's Professional Golf Management program at Ferris State and once a golf teammate of Hills at MSU. He has been a golf professional, first at St. Clair River Country Club, and then at several stops in Ohio, New Jersey and Delaware. He was one of the first six PGA professionals ever designated as PGA Master Professional and is in the Northern Ohio PGA Hall of Fame. He considers co-founding the groundbreaking PGM program at Ferris State as his top achievement.