Links Magazine | The Best Of Golf | A Trip of a Lifetime

MBA or PGA
This is not the first time Ernest W. Kuehne III has made a surprising decision. An outstanding athlete, Trip was undefeated in the quarter mile and won the MVP award at every soccer tournament. Some people thought he could have been the best quarterback to come out of Dallas’ Highland Park High, which counts Pro Football Hall of Fame members Bobby Layne and Doak Walker among its alums.

So it was no surprise that Trip was stamped for success on tour from the time he first picked up a club. Under the tutelage of Hank Haney, Kuehne won back-to-back Texas high school championships, a feat he shares with Justin Leonard, Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite.

After injuring his shoulder at Arizona State, Kuehne transferred to golf powerhouse Oklahoma State, where he was an All-American, helped the Cowboys win a national championship, and won the Ben Hogan Award, golf’s version of the Heisman. And in the summer of 1994, between his sophomore and junior years, Kuehne was the U.S. Amateur runner-up to a Stanford-bound phenom named Tiger Woods.

Any player with those credentials—not to mention a lucrative endorsement deal on the table—would have turned professional before his cap hit the ground at graduation. But few of those players would have earned both a bachelor’s and MBA during their college careers, as Kuehne did when he graduated in 1996.

“All those kids I grew up playing with—Phil and Charles, Justin and [David] Duval—to a man they always dreamed of playing professional golf on the tour,” he says. “I never did.”

Twenty-five years ago the Kuehnes took a trip to New York City. Two sights blew 10-year-old Trip’s mind: the Statue of Liberty and the New York Stock Exchange. Kelli recalls her brother’s eyes growing “as big and round as flying saucers” as he watched the trading-floor tumult. Not long afterward, his fourth grade class held a stock-picking contest, which he won. He was hooked.

So Kuehne turned down the chance to chase millions at Pebble Beach and Doral to earn it in the financial markets. After stints as an analyst at White Rock Capital and as head of institutional equity sales in Legg Mason’s Dallas office, he founded Double Eagle in 2005, seeking not so much more money but the intellectual challenge of running his own business. Double Eagle is a “fund of funds,” although Kuehne prefers to describe it as a “portfolio of elite hedge fund managers.”

So while Mickelson, Leonard and Duval played on the PGA Tour, Kuehne pursued his other passion full-time, playing in amateur events like the Porter Cup and the USGA championships and teeing it up with his former rivals occasionally when he would qualify for the U.S. Open.

For more than 10 years, juggling a successful business
career, family and top-level golf has required every bit of Kuehne’s considerable gifts of focus, discipline and talent. Unlike the gregarious Hank, who delights in entertaining admirers of his John Daly-esque drives on the range during his practice sessions but will lose interest quickly and quit when they move on, Trip always has adhered to a tight, focused schedule. While restricting his practice to an hour and a half or so between leaving the office and getting home by 6:30 for dinner, Trip has qualified for four U.S. Opens and has played in three Walker Cups. (He was the oldest member of the 2007 team by 12 years.)

“Trip has chosen the path less traveled,” says Buddy Marucci, last year’s Walker Cup captain. “There aren’t many who have had his game and have chosen to stay amateur. Whether he will be the last, I don’t know.”