This page, authored by Kathryn Bencriscutto, is dedicated to sharing stories about her father, Mike, and the world of golf that meant so much to him, to his family, and to all who loved the game of golf.
Story 1
THE LESSON TEE
Through My Father's Teachings (KC)
"You have to teach them how to use their wrists properly! And that's not hard to do if you know how to go about it," Mike Bencriscutto would always tell his students, HIS LIFE IN GOLF.
This quote from His lecture to young pros in a demo clinic after voted 1986 WISCONSIN PGA TEACHER OF THE YEAR.
Awarded multiple times throughout his career for this honor, Mike's devotion to golf's establishment was still on top of the list. It was the last time of his career to receive this award before his spirit fled to higher grounds March 5, 1990.
Dad departed to play some golf and to hear birdies sing inTucson just after the Christmas season to
stay with his youngest daughter Laura, and find advancing medical practices to
beat this thing called cancer.
By mid February I flew out to Laura's with Mom and my brother Matt, as Dad was calling for my help to join MaryAnn and the rest of the family.
I sat by his side realizing it didn't look good for Dad or any of us. I remained there and slept on the floor next to his bed staying on the night shift but not able to step away on the day one. Sometimes I took a break and went for a quick three-mile run outside and quickly showered and changed to be beside him fresh again to continue serving his needs, bringing him a bite of apple pie or take down dictation to send flowers to his sister and brother who were about to pass in his absence.
I held him close for ten more days.
During the last two hours in my embrace, holding him and praying with him, I found myself giving Dad permission to leave for that rainbow-covered golf course in the sky that he would tell me had many more beautiful colors than the rainbow.
Mike didn't want to leave us disappointed, but I saw the image of his spirit transmuting above his crown and knew it was time for the transition and the transformation accompanied for Christ to walk him down the isle.
"They won't let me," he repeated, "they won't let me die."
He was in so much pain. And so we prayed. We prayed just as we prayed in the back vestibule of our St. Edward's church when in my bridal gown Dad lifted my veil to give me a kiss I began to cry. Dabbing my tears with his handkerchief humoring me, saying, "Don't cry! You'll ruin your makeup!"
I gave him a nervous smile hiding my hesitation to marry realizing this too cruel fated stranger was nothing like us. I kept hidden the last brutality of abuse that my fiance had inflicted, occurring just before flying home to Wisconsin from Tucson, to prepare for the wedding a month before the that October morning in front of family entering the sanctuary of our church with Dad.
With the church full of guests I stopped twice turning to Dad telling him with only my eyes that I couldn't marry outside of my faith to a guy I no longer respected whom I really couldn't love. Because I knew what he taught me. I knew what love really was.
It took a year to embrace the truth before returning home in divorce and guilt.
I burdened my Dad enough in this lifetime and wrapped my heart's faith in God strongly after knowing some mistakes I made I could never make it up to him or our family...
This time I was prepared to carry the burden. And so I knew I had to pray with him again and this time not cry at all (while everyone around us couldn't stop crying).
Dad was in pain. Yet still the strong patriarch, Mike, at that moment struggled with leaving all of us and I so understood. So I asked him to just say one word; Jesus. I began pledging that we'd see each other again just as we pledged when Dad walked me to the alter. I was literally praying this promise handing him over to Christ to walk him into his kingdom not of this world but the next.
I remembered before Dad leftRacine
that winter we went church hoping to ask for a cure from the thorn plaguing his
side. I found events in churches all over Racine
promising him a miracle from God. Once, he went with me but said, "Honey,
I just want to Love Him"... kneeling in a church next to Dad all my life was
one of my happiest moments. So I knew I could be strong and this one time in my
life not be a big baby.
I had to let him go with the Holy Spirit inside of his life, a life he entrained to embrace in all his decisions and that led him in good stead all through his life. My mind and heart knew it was a journey someday I'd be on and that he would be waiting there for me with Christ and the words, "Well done my good and faithful servant," were heard in my soul's audio.
As I remember walking with his gallery through aChippewa Falls
Even his own golfing friends complained that he should get out of the car and walk. That was 1966 and he felt so much disappointment when he couldn't compete after Mayo Clinic told him he'd better stop playing golf because of his health. That was 1960 and after two days in 1966 I heard him wake at night with unstoppable leg cramps, Mom attending to him all night long with ointments to massage into his cramping muscles so he could finish the tournament.
His anxiety grew on the second day but he scored well over a disheartening feeling that grew over him of betraying friends whom he trained and brought up to be pros voted him to be disqualified from the tournament unless he walked.
So I decided from then on that I'd walk beside him and stare that ball into that hole in the green. It was a sudden death for him to miss the short putts, and I saw his face drop with the pain pills he started taking with the loss of his his edge. Yet he walked on....
Again, feeling his disappointment to forfeit his life, this was the first time in all those years we had to swallow a bitter pill. I knew what I had to do from then on, as he fell asleep those last two hours in my lap resting his head back on my shoulder. He laid down his cross for Christ to bear for him to rest in peace while I had to softly leave him propped with feathered pillows and an electric warming blanket while I could hear doves coo outside the windowsill.
I had to brush from my mind the vision of defeat swarming in. With Dad, I never knew defeat. So I picked up my little freight train of faith to leave the room and walk the hallway where I had heavily carried him one morning and felt his spirit come with me as his body slept with Mother kneeling beside him yet breathing still back in the bedroom.
Something told me to sweep the kitchen floor and there was a knocking at the patio's glass doors. It was MaryAnn calling me to come outside.
"Not now MaryAnn, I have to keep sweeping this floor." I answered through the glass, but she kept insisting.
Outside in the air was such comfort. "Look," MaryAnn said, pointing to a storm coming from far away out in the desert and asking me, "What is it?" "It's a desert rainstorm coming, blowing dust and sand headed this way," I replied. "BUT what does it look like?" She insisted and I found it difficult to speak of what it looked like.
"ITS A CHARIOT WITH SIX BLACK HORSES!" I blurted.
"Yes," she said. Doesn't it look like it? That's what I thought," she said.
And the wind coming up blew it closer. MaryAnn instinctively began to have me help her tuck the chairs under Laura's patio glass table so the wind wouldn't toss them through the beautiful wall of sliding glass doors alongside her kitchen and living room view.
"Dad always instructed me to do this in case there was a storm," she said, as we went to work at it collecting all the chairs.
"Oh MaryAnn I miss him already! (she threw her arms around my neck and we hugged) How will we cope without Dad's instructions about everything, telling us what to do?".
We stood there holding on to each other as the wind came up upon us.
MaryAnn whispered to my ear, "Dad just told me to hang on to you because I'm all you've got."
With no husband and two little children I thought...she's right...and Dad will still be instructing and holding us through the storms... if I know Him.
And to those he loved he'll saying,
"Don't forget to raise your right heel..."
THE LESSON TEE
Through My Father's Teachings (KC)
"You have to teach them how to use their wrists properly! And that's not hard to do if you know how to go about it," Mike Bencriscutto would always tell his students, HIS LIFE IN GOLF.
This quote from His lecture to young pros in a demo clinic after voted 1986 WISCONSIN PGA TEACHER OF THE YEAR.
Awarded multiple times throughout his career for this honor, Mike's devotion to golf's establishment was still on top of the list. It was the last time of his career to receive this award before his spirit fled to higher grounds March 5, 1990.
Dad departed to play some golf and to hear birdies sing in
By mid February I flew out to Laura's with Mom and my brother Matt, as Dad was calling for my help to join MaryAnn and the rest of the family.
I sat by his side realizing it didn't look good for Dad or any of us. I remained there and slept on the floor next to his bed staying on the night shift but not able to step away on the day one. Sometimes I took a break and went for a quick three-mile run outside and quickly showered and changed to be beside him fresh again to continue serving his needs, bringing him a bite of apple pie or take down dictation to send flowers to his sister and brother who were about to pass in his absence.
I held him close for ten more days.
During the last two hours in my embrace, holding him and praying with him, I found myself giving Dad permission to leave for that rainbow-covered golf course in the sky that he would tell me had many more beautiful colors than the rainbow.
Mike didn't want to leave us disappointed, but I saw the image of his spirit transmuting above his crown and knew it was time for the transition and the transformation accompanied for Christ to walk him down the isle.
"They won't let me," he repeated, "they won't let me die."
He was in so much pain. And so we prayed. We prayed just as we prayed in the back vestibule of our St. Edward's church when in my bridal gown Dad lifted my veil to give me a kiss I began to cry. Dabbing my tears with his handkerchief humoring me, saying, "Don't cry! You'll ruin your makeup!"
I gave him a nervous smile hiding my hesitation to marry realizing this too cruel fated stranger was nothing like us. I kept hidden the last brutality of abuse that my fiance had inflicted, occurring just before flying home to Wisconsin from Tucson, to prepare for the wedding a month before the that October morning in front of family entering the sanctuary of our church with Dad.
With the church full of guests I stopped twice turning to Dad telling him with only my eyes that I couldn't marry outside of my faith to a guy I no longer respected whom I really couldn't love. Because I knew what he taught me. I knew what love really was.
It took a year to embrace the truth before returning home in divorce and guilt.
I burdened my Dad enough in this lifetime and wrapped my heart's faith in God strongly after knowing some mistakes I made I could never make it up to him or our family...
This time I was prepared to carry the burden. And so I knew I had to pray with him again and this time not cry at all (while everyone around us couldn't stop crying).
Dad was in pain. Yet still the strong patriarch, Mike, at that moment struggled with leaving all of us and I so understood. So I asked him to just say one word; Jesus. I began pledging that we'd see each other again just as we pledged when Dad walked me to the alter. I was literally praying this promise handing him over to Christ to walk him into his kingdom not of this world but the next.
I remembered before Dad left
I had to let him go with the Holy Spirit inside of his life, a life he entrained to embrace in all his decisions and that led him in good stead all through his life. My mind and heart knew it was a journey someday I'd be on and that he would be waiting there for me with Christ and the words, "Well done my good and faithful servant," were heard in my soul's audio.
As I remember walking with his gallery through a
Even his own golfing friends complained that he should get out of the car and walk. That was 1966 and he felt so much disappointment when he couldn't compete after Mayo Clinic told him he'd better stop playing golf because of his health. That was 1960 and after two days in 1966 I heard him wake at night with unstoppable leg cramps, Mom attending to him all night long with ointments to massage into his cramping muscles so he could finish the tournament.
His anxiety grew on the second day but he scored well over a disheartening feeling that grew over him of betraying friends whom he trained and brought up to be pros voted him to be disqualified from the tournament unless he walked.
So I decided from then on that I'd walk beside him and stare that ball into that hole in the green. It was a sudden death for him to miss the short putts, and I saw his face drop with the pain pills he started taking with the loss of his his edge. Yet he walked on....
Again, feeling his disappointment to forfeit his life, this was the first time in all those years we had to swallow a bitter pill. I knew what I had to do from then on, as he fell asleep those last two hours in my lap resting his head back on my shoulder. He laid down his cross for Christ to bear for him to rest in peace while I had to softly leave him propped with feathered pillows and an electric warming blanket while I could hear doves coo outside the windowsill.
I had to brush from my mind the vision of defeat swarming in. With Dad, I never knew defeat. So I picked up my little freight train of faith to leave the room and walk the hallway where I had heavily carried him one morning and felt his spirit come with me as his body slept with Mother kneeling beside him yet breathing still back in the bedroom.
Something told me to sweep the kitchen floor and there was a knocking at the patio's glass doors. It was MaryAnn calling me to come outside.
"Not now MaryAnn, I have to keep sweeping this floor." I answered through the glass, but she kept insisting.
Outside in the air was such comfort. "Look," MaryAnn said, pointing to a storm coming from far away out in the desert and asking me, "What is it?" "It's a desert rainstorm coming, blowing dust and sand headed this way," I replied. "BUT what does it look like?" She insisted and I found it difficult to speak of what it looked like.
"ITS A CHARIOT WITH SIX BLACK HORSES!" I blurted.
"Yes," she said. Doesn't it look like it? That's what I thought," she said.
And the wind coming up blew it closer. MaryAnn instinctively began to have me help her tuck the chairs under Laura's patio glass table so the wind wouldn't toss them through the beautiful wall of sliding glass doors alongside her kitchen and living room view.
"Dad always instructed me to do this in case there was a storm," she said, as we went to work at it collecting all the chairs.
"Oh MaryAnn I miss him already! (she threw her arms around my neck and we hugged) How will we cope without Dad's instructions about everything, telling us what to do?".
We stood there holding on to each other as the wind came up upon us.
MaryAnn whispered to my ear, "Dad just told me to hang on to you because I'm all you've got."
With no husband and two little children I thought...she's right...and Dad will still be instructing and holding us through the storms... if I know Him.
And to those he loved he'll saying,
"Don't forget to raise your right heel..."
Mike with Touring pro, Johnny Miller who gave Mike credit for helping his swing.
I was there to see this!
Story #2
Not just his swing... Not Just his strategy... but his ability to control
his mind, his will, his self control through his Spirit....
The quote under the picture with Johnny Miller was, "Thanks Mike For
The Fishing Day...It Worked I shot a 62!”
What you may not know is that on the eve of the Tucson
This was the strategy Dad chose to teach this person he himself chose out of
the field of professional golfers with promise that year, out of all those guys
willing to learn what Mike had already learned, and by sharing his wisdom to
help this young upstart become a master at his craft.
I also learned much from the whole episode…years after March 5, 1990 when I was helping Dad pass on...
I was in an emergency room myself having 11 stitches in my face for flipping
a bicycle over and landing on it while flying down Grand View Drive Ashland , Oregon
I was on a strict schedule of macrobiotic diet and dance classes. I
also was seeking spiritual enlightenment through my own mentorship and
inquiring mindfulness...from a volume of books I'd read while in Wisconsin, I
set out on my way not knowing what My journey would show me.
And teaching a movement class for the area's Conversations With God (CWG)
Center, working for the author, Neale Donald Walsh, who along with Jackson Hot
Springs clinic my 30th year as an American Red Cross WSI trainer, I was hired
there to be the Aquatics and Fitness Director.
Both appointments helped sponsor
my trip. Know that Mike bought me a swimming instruction business with 3,000
students in Wisconsin to transition my Synchronized Swim Coach position at the Tucson
City Recreation Program right out of another position at University of Arizona
Sunfish Competitive and Synchronized Swim Teams, competitor, and WilCat's Golf
Team and Double Major in Physical Education Department and Dance through the
Dramatic Arts Department where I was running on either end of the Campus with a
tennis court I couldn't resist in between.
Dad lured me home to Wisconsin again with a swim school he bough for me in
the cold and damp DeKoven Foundation’s pool from sunny Arizona. After two years I upgraded it to teach from the UW/Parkside Campus, t I
wanted to study Shakespeare again so after Mike passed I went to Southern
Oregon University where my Uncle Frank Bencriscutto often taught during the
summers. This University was special as was Ashland
If you remember THE SPRINGS was the name of the 18-hole National Golf
Course, designed by Robert Trent Jones, but completed by my father, Mike, riding
on a tractor himself with the crew he brought from Racine
I was given the title as Assistant Pro that year with one other of Dad's
touring pro students...where I helped Mike carve out his first tournament that
is still currently running.
I suggested that it was only right that we should create a foundation, an
Invitational Tournament for the public golfers who play in Spring Green’s
downtown 9-hole course located in the Village of Spring Green
HAVING ATTENDED my senior year there, transferring out of
So we had the tournament and Mike designated me to run the putting tournament
event. And I did! So you can understand how closely I always worked with my
father...and there is much more to tell about the surrounding spiritual aspects
of his transition from this world into his next.
But upon my return to my profession years later in Oregon when the head
doctor from the Springs met me at the doors of the Ashland Hospital’s ER right
after hiring me to be voted unanimously by his board as the new Aquatics/Fitness
Director at THE SPRINGS of Jackson Hot Springs, Poor Dr. Luerberger, who
had selected me to bring before the board just two weeks earlier, greeted me
with the look of shocked surprise as I was escorted by angelic beings who found
me on Grand View Drive...and brought me through with bleeding facial cuts and
contusions and a broken collarbone as I was walked through his emergency room
doors.
HE WAS my distinguished friend whom I had told all about Mike Bencriscutto
in the interview when he hired me, and I say friend because I begged off
aspirin or painkilling drugs as my dance training was already on a higher
purification level and he understood and defended my position as he prepared to
stitch my face back together with only some topical numbing solution.
Here’s where what one important quality Dad imparted personally to me kept
me calmer than the doctor himself as Dr. Luerberger had informed me as the
first few of the 11 stitches began. What he didn’t know was that when the
doctor approached me and stood over me to begin the procedure, Mike’s Spirit
came to me to revisit the morning of the day he died that afternoon.
Dad had just woken up where I had been dozing off-and-on with him through
the night on the floor beside his bed. And knowing we were losing points as he liked to refer to it, with his attempted
survival methods, he became annoyed. I could understand that as I had the same
temperament come over me while giving birth.
By about noon I was giving him his last drinks of water. Dad was growing
thirstier and thirstier. And on the last occasion when lifting the cup to his
face Mike got frustrated and said, "Give me that!" So letting him, he
took the cup from me for his last drink placing both hands on the sides of his
cup, lifted his head from the pillow and with composed concentration, staring,
as if standing at a very climax of a put where the rest of the world fell
away, put his lips up to that cup to take his last sips of water himself.
That moment froze in time for me for 11 years until the moment when Dr. Luerburger
was stitching my face. He didn’t know I was encapsulated in this vision of me
kneeling at Mike’s side with my hands ready to catch his cup of water, but
caught up in his concerted effort to focus on this last earthly task he chose
to do for himself—to simply bring his will and power to focus for the last time
on taking a drink of water.
I was caught up in that vision of my courageous, willful father and his
determined face taking his last drink of water from my vantage point that 1990
March 5 day, Dad’s powerfully strong force of will to overcome most anything came over
me. Dr. Luerburger remarked on the second stitch... "You are more steady
than I am!" I replied, "I was taught by My Father, Mike...the Pro.”
Getting back to Johnny, it was the first big win for touring pro, Johnny
Miller, but he wasn't the first golfer Mike chose to teach this game of golf to from his sea of other
players who would have been so thankful to have been mentored by Mike.
We'll continue His Life in Golf
with a story, NEVER ENOUGH, about Mike Bencriscutto and George Madson.
"Hey, Fuzznuts!”
It was 1954....
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