Teaming Together for ‘Good Eats’

Kuchar-and-KingmadeTwo professional golf tour personalities were spotted recently at Medinah Country Club during the BMW Championship handing out free samples of beef jerky. Jeff King has caddied for more than two decades on the PGA and LPGA tours; Candie Kung enjoyed a successful career on the LPGA Tour through 2018. Therefore the subscript and equation for this article should be King + Kung = Team Kingmade.

Both team members are familiar with Chicago as Jeff grew up in nearby Hammond, IN and has caddied in the BMW Championship at Conway Farms and in previous Western Opens at Cog Hill. Candie won the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links at Kemper Lakes in 2001, was a Chinese Taipei team member for the UL International Crown in 2016 at the Merit Club, and most recently competed in the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship last year at Kemper Lakes.

The timing of the August 2019 BMW Championship in Chicago created the perfect opportunity for Team Kingmade to tout their beef jerky product as just two weeks before this year’s FedEx Cup Playoffs began Kingmade Jerky was named the “Official Jerky and Official Meat Snack of the PGA TOUR.”

The story of Jeff King’s journey as man with the bag (golf) to man behind the bag (beef) started with his love for the game of golf at age 9, then progressed as he began his career as a professional caddie in 1998; he has worked with some of the world’s best players on the greatest stages in golf. Carrying the bag includes toting clubs, balls, tees, extra gloves, umbrellas, and snacks which are a necessity to fuel golfers and their caddies along the way for the four or five hours of competition. Jeff has ‘looped’ for a variety of professional golfers on the LPGA and PGA Tours, including Mi Hyun Kim, Pat Hurst, Cristie Kerr, Candie Kung, Vaughn Taylor, Luke List, Derek Ernst, and James Hahn.

Popular ‘on course’ snacks of professional and amateur golfers are bananas, trail mix, peanut butter sandwiches, and jerky. Having an unrestrained taste for jerky, and knowing that beef provides protein, Jeff ate beef jerky often, all the brands that stores carried. But all these dry, hard, packed-full-of-sodium sticks of meat left Jeff dismayed by the abysmal state of what passed for commercial beef jerky.

In 2012, he began creating jerky recipes in his home kitchen in McKinney, Texas, and within a few weeks, he brought his beef jerky out to the course as a snack for himself. “A couple of players tried it and said it was the best jerky they had ever tasted and a few weeks later, other players were asking for my jerky and started sending me flavor ideas,” King said. “I worked hard to refine the recipes that players had given me to make the healthiest, best-tasting jerky ever. Demand soared and realized I was onto something big.”

Recipe tweaks over the next seven years enabled Kingmade Jerky to gain the official approval of the PGA Tour. Kingmade jerky starts by using premium cuts of grass-fed flank steak, not ground beef; the slow cooked finished meat product is low sugar, low sodium, and gluten free.

Pro golfers who regularly eat and enjoy Kingmade Jerky are Graeme McDowell, Davis Love III, Charley Hoffman, Brandt Snedecker, Patton Kizzire, Ryan Palmer, Billy Horshel, Dustin Johnson, Jason Kokrak, Matt Kuchar, Scott Stallings, Patrick Reed, Jimmy Walker, Ian Poulter, and Lydia Ko. But in addition to the pros, Jeff is pleased to know that his product has won the blessing as an approved snack of many high school and college golf coaches. This snack is truly “Caddie Created, Player Approved!”.

Kingmade Jerky is available in three nutritious flavors — Classic, Buffalo and Sweet Chili, and is sold in a resealable bag. Local courses offering Kingmade Jerky for sale are: Pine Meadow, Stonewall Orchard, White Deer Run, Deerpath, and Schaumburg Golf Club. Grab some of these ‘good eats’ on your next visit there and stock up for upcoming rounds. Kingmade jerky is also available for purchase online at https://kingmadejerky.com/.

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Greg Miles

Greg Miles has been a writer following golf in Chicago since 1990. For the past 30 years he has been a member of the Golf Writers Association of America and currently is classified as a GWAA "Life Member". He played his first round of golf on his 11th birthday, and since then has played more than 7,300 rounds of golf in his lifetime at 517 different courses. He has interviewed more than 280 golfers across all the professional tours along with famous celebrity golfers. Additionally, he is a member of several other competitive and honorary golf associations, as well as the Golf Nut Society.

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