An empty seat signified much at the table of Brent Winston on Nov. 1 as the Sheridan golfer entered the Arkansas Golf Hall of Fame at Chenal Country Club in Little Rock.
Winston’s father and inspiration, W.A. Winston, 77, died June 7 after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. But his son was determined that he be remembered on that special night.
“I had that idea about leaving Dad’s chair open,” Brent Winston said. “I wanted to do it out of respect for him. He was very competitive, extremely smart, and he had a heart of gold.”
During Winston’s speech, he recalled his father’s influence — as his youth baseball coach, hunting partner and companion at the Masters when Brent was 16.
Brent Winston, 46, joined Dawn Darter of Sherwood and Chris Jenkins of Little Rock in the 2018 Hall of Fame class.
“The biggest compliment I got was after we were finished and they were all taking pictures, somebody tapped me on the shoulder, and it was a server who looked at me and said, ‘I don’t know who you are, but that was the best speech I’ve ever heard,’” Winston said. “She said, ‘I’m sorry that your dad wasn’t here.’”
Deborah Winston, Brent’s mother, said she knew it would be an emotional night.
“I promised Brent I wouldn’t cry, but I did,” she said. “It was one of those things you can’t help. It was a bittersweet night, and I was so proud of him the way he stood up there and gave his speech. That’s not his cup of tea.
“I felt like [W.A.] was looking down and was very proud.”
Brent Winston, who has won 15 Arkansas State Golf Association-designated events, was a champion junior golfer on the ASGA circuit before playing collegiately at the University of Arkansas and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He was a two-time all-Sun Belt Conference golfer for the Trojans and won the ASGA Match Play Championship in 1994 and ’95, and the ASGA Stroke Play Championship in ’95 en route to the Player of the Year award before beginning a 15-year professional career.
In 2001 and ’02, he played on what is now the web.com tour. He was a two-time qualifier for the PGA Tour’s St. Jude Classic.
As the story goes, his maternal grandfather, Houston Wilkerson of East End, cut off a club and gave it to Brent when he was about 3. His parents got him started in tournament play — ASGA junior designated and ASGA-PGA Junior Tour — when he was 12 or 13.
The 30-plus years since then have yielded life-long friends — a who’s who of Arkansas golf legends, many of whom preceded Brent Winston into the Hall of Fame. Many were there to see him inducted; many others, no longer living, were remembered.
“The people that you meet and the relationships I’ve built — where would I be without the ASGA and golf?” Winston asked an old friend several months ago upon learning of his selection. “And the influences that the people who have helped with, I guess, raising me throughout my life, and the people I admired growing up — you try to carry on like you think they would want you to.”
That list includes, among others, Wes McNulty, a 2014 Hall of Fame inductee; Glen Talbert; Ross Mote; Ken Duke (’13); Ron Richard (1996); Tracy Harris; Wyn Norwood (’01); Jay Fox (’09); Stan Lee (’99); Louis Lee (’06); Todd Pinneo and Bob Ralston (’04); Steve Ralston (’04); and Joe Ralston — most of whom were in attendance — and the late George McKeown (’02) and Monk Wade (’96).
Talbert and Mote were major influences on Winston at the Sheridan Country Club.
“They played and won everything, and I always looked up to them,” Winston said. “They invited me to play with them when I was really young, and I remember the time I finally beat them in the four-ball out there [with Chuck McCurdy, when he was 16]. I thought I’d really done something.”
When he was 17, Winston finished runner-up for the ASGA’s Junior Player of the Year award to Ron Whittaker of Little Rock.
“It was so close that they invited me to the luncheon,” he remembered.
He played two years at Arkansas before transferring to play for Norwood at UALR.
Norwood remembered that one reason for the transfer was so Winston could hunt.
“He told me that going in,” Norwood said. “I told him that was fine. That was a no-brainer. But one day, he missed a class or did something very insignificant, and I jumped all over him because I thought, ‘Brent’s looked upon as the best player on the team, and I’m going to make an example by chewing him out in front of everybody.’
“He took it, and the next day he came to my office and said, ‘Coach, I deserved everything I got, but I want to ask you a favor. Next time I do something wrong, pull me aside and do it privately.’
“I made the biggest mistake, and I never let that happen again in all my years of coaching. I didn’t ever run another player down in front of the others.”
Norwood said Winston had “the simplest golf swing” he’d ever seen.
“It worked to perfection. He was as good a ball-striker as I’ve ever coached or really ever watched play. He was very consistent because he had all that,” Norwood said.
“The one thing I could not do for Brent was make him understand how good he was, to make him believe how good he was. I could never get it across. I knew how good he was, but Brent wouldn’t believe in himself like I believed in him,” the coach said.
“He would still be playing golf today if I could’ve gotten him to believe he was as good as he was,” Norwood said. “Brent had a bit of humbleness to him, and to succeed in sports at the highest level, you’ve got to have a little bit of cockiness. Brent was just too humble and cared about too many others.
“I wish he would’ve believed more in himself, and we would still be watching him. He was that good.”
In college, Winston studied business. He said he always knew he was either going to play golf or join the family business, Pulpwood Producers, a timber-buying and timber-harvesting company. W.A. Winston had gone to work there in 1962 and eventually bought the business.
Brent Winston turned professional after the ASGA Match Play Championship in 1995. A seven-time runner-up on the Hooters Tour, he was the Michelob Tour of America’s Player of the Year in 1998 and qualified for the PGA Tour’s St. Jude Classic in ’98 and 2000.
“That was a dream you always had,” Winston said of his professional days. “It always seemed like I made enough money to keep going.”
McNulty told an old friend that playing ability alone was enough to make Winston a Hall of Famer.
“In the middle- and late ’90s, Brent was a shot or two away from being on the PGA Tour,” McNulty said. “He was just a putt or two away from us watching him on Sundays. But Brent has far stronger qualities off the golf course. He works as hard as anybody at his business, his faith, his family.”
Winston met the former Heather Cass, who had grown up in North Little Rock, when she worked in the foundation at Arkansas Children’s Hospital and the timber community was raising money for ACH.
“A friend of mine told me, ‘That’s a pretty good-looking girl,’ and likewise, his wife had said something to her about me,” Winston remembered. “Out of the blue, I decided I’d call her.”
The couple were married in 2008, about the time Winston decided to come home and help his father with the family business.
“My dad’s health was starting to slip, and I could tell I needed to move on and try to help out with the business,” he said.
He eventually regained his amateur status but said that with two young children — Cooper, 6; and Claire, 5 — he hasn’t had a lot of time to play.
“But if Cooper gets into it like I think he’s going to, I’ll probably play a little more,” Winston said.
His father was William Andrew. He is William Brent. His son is William Cooper.
“Dad was so happy about that,” Winston said. “He’d say, ‘We’ve got a W.A., a W.B. and a W.C.’”
Even at Pulpwood Producers, Winston has used his experiences with the sport.
“It taught me that it’s you hitting that golf ball, and if you hit it behind the trees, it’s your own fault,” he said. “Golf taught me not to make excuses in life. There’s a funny story with some of the guys I work with every day — they make so many excuses. I was standing there in the road one day and told them, ‘You know what we’re going to do tomorrow? We’re all going to play golf.’ They looked at me funny. I said, ‘You’re going to learn that if you hit that ball over there, it’s your own fault.’”
His Hall of Fame induction meant a mix of emotions — gratification, pride, excitement, nervousness, sadness.
He shared the news of his selection with his father during the winter.
“He still knew me,” Winston said. “I think he understood, but I’m not real sure if he grasped it. I was hoping he would make it to the induction, but he was struggling so bad. You hated for him to go, but you know he is much better off.”
During his speech, Winston referred to Proverbs 27:17 and how that message had affected his life.
“I’ve been thinking about that for a long time,” he said. “I was at church when I heard that verse: ‘As iron sharpens iron, so one sharpens another.’”
With at least a couple of hundred people — including many who had helped sharpen him over the years — at Chenal for the induction dinner, it was a fitting verse for the newest Hall of Famer and W.A.’s son.