COAL VALLEY, Ill. — Golfer and future TPC Deere Run Course Creator D.A. Weibring was looking at one man during the Pro-Am of the 1987 Hardee's Golf Classic at the Oakwood Country Club.
"Mothers, hold onto your children. Fathers, round up your daughters because I don't know where this ball's going to go," basketball legend Julius Erving said before he played in the event in July of that year.
"He spent time with the people," Weibring said that day. "He laughed with himself when he hit bad shots, and he enjoyed the good shots."
Julius Erving, or Dr. J, won the NBA's Most Valuable Player Award in 1981. Six years later, he was here for the Hardee's Golf Classic. Former News 8 Sports Director Jim Albracht was on the course that day.
"Julius Erving is standing like five feet from me," Albracht recalled in an interview Tuesday, June 22nd. "When I was like ten years old, I was like, 'You know, I don't know who God is, but that might be the dude.' I mean he was that good."
Albracht gives a lot of credit to the organizers of the the tournament, who were able to bring in stars like Dr. J. Albracht says at the time, the Hardee's Golf Classic was the lowest on the totem pole on the PGA Tour, but the Pro-Am portion, made it very popular.
"Everybody who was anybody or who just loved being in a crowd of people [went to the tournament]. People were slugging beers at noon and laughing, and it was kind of like Woodstock on Golf. That's what I would've called it," he said during our interview in June.
Albracht said the committee for the tournament worked hard throughout the year to get title sponsors like Hardee's. He says them securing companies like that was very important until John Deere came in in 1999.
"I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes in the background," he said about the challenges the tournament was facing. "It kind of took some hindsight to figure it out, but they're the ones that did it and obviously the fans who keep coming and coming, and now it's like, it's a big deal in the Quad Cities," he said.
Erving's final game in the NBA was in May of 1987, and just two months later, he'd be playing in the Hardee's Golf Classic.