Roy Schultheiss started in golf following his grandfather around Port Huron Golf Club. He lived a driver and 3-iron from the club and became, in his words, a course rat.
Competing as a junior golfer, he found he liked to practice. At Port Huron Northern High, he won a conference title, an MHSAA regional title and finished sixth in the state.
With his eyes on a business degree from a top-ranked business school he headed to Southern Methodist University (SMU) and once there decided to try and make the golf team.
“I tell people that at SMU I wanted to see how good I am, and I found out how good I wasn’t,” he said.
He kept working on his game though, won local tournaments and the club championship at Bay City Country Club (now Saginaw Valley Public) a record 12 times.
He made noise at the state level, too, starting in the 1974 GAM Championship, then stroke play and match play in format. He was 19, was stroke play medalist by several shots and rolled to the final. He played Tom Draper, a Michigan Golf Hall of Famer and U.S. Senior Amateur champion who was then 60-years-old.
“I had heard the name, and then he showed me why I had heard his name,” he said. “I learned some humility.”
The lessons continued, especially in the Michigan Amateur Championship. One year he beat legend Glenn Johnson only to run into another Hall of Famer, Bud Stevens. He reached the quarterfinals and then the semifinals and finally the finals in 1984 at Belvedere Golf Club.
He won a second-round match with the help of a hole-in-one at No. 17 when a pushed tee shot bounced left off a mound right of the green and found the hole. He won in the quarterfinals when his opponent led 1-up with two holes to play and then made consecutive bogeys.
He played Doug Cummings in the semifinals and was 3-down early. He rallied though, chipping in for an eagle on No. 9, in fact chipping in three times in the last 10 holes to tie the match. He won in three extra holes.
He considers the final the best match he has ever played. Mary Timyan and Schultheiss battled 19 holes and made 11 birdies between them. Timyan missed a final four-foot par putt on the first extra hole.
Schultheiss is owner of an in-home senior care franchise and father of three with his retired school-teacher wife Karen.
When inducted in 2021 Roy and his friend, Hall of Famer Randy Lewis, had claimed two GAM Four-Ball titles and he was part of three total. He was also playing well as a senior on the USGA level.
A member at Apple Mountain Golf Club, and remains forever thankful to his grandfather, long-time Port Huron pro Bill Netter and his buddies at Bay City CC.
“Bill made sure I started with the fundamentals and for 20 years the guys at Bay City were trying to grab my five bucks every Saturday morning,” he said.
Collectively Roy was the Michigan Amateur Champion in 1984, the GAM Champion in 1990 and ’95 and the 1991 GAM Mid-Amateur champion.
When inducted in 2021 he had qualified for match play 17 times in the Michigan Amateur over the years and was GAM Player of the Year in 1984.
His track record was exceptional on the national level, too, were he had competed in five USGA national championships, including the U.S. Amateur three times in 1980, ’90 and ’91. He also had played in two U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship and made it through to match play each time. He won two rounds of matches in 1991.
Year inducted: 2021
| Last Name | Schultheiss |