ATLANTA – When Billy Andrade made the PGA Tour in 1988, he was greeted by Payne Stewart, who called him “Rook,” and took him under his wing.
“He busted my chops and needled me for three straight years,” Andrade recalled. “His caddie, Mike Hicks, in 1991 finally said, ‘Enough is enough, Payne. You need to leave him alone. Billy’s one of the good guys,’ and after that we became good friends.”
One of the good guys, indeed. On Tuesday evening at the Southern Exchange in downtown, Andrade will be awarded the Payne Stewart Award, which is presented annually by the PGA Tour to a professional golfer who best exemplifies Stewart’s steadfast values of character, charity and sportsmanship. Stewart, an 11-time Tour winner and World Golf Hall of Fame member, died tragically 23 years ago during the week of the Tour Championship.
“It’s the highest golf honor of my life,” Andrade said.
Brad Faxon, the winner of the award in 2005, whose friendship with Andrade dates to their junior golf days growing up in Rhode Island, said Andrade has a bit of Stewart in him.
“If you think about Billy, he’s got a tremendous amount of ball-buster in him,” Faxon said. “He’s just a happy-go-lucky guy.”
Andrade, for one, took Faxon’s words as the highest of compliments and added, “I learned from the best,” a reference to Stewart.
But such high praise of being a needler on the level with Stewart, who was considered to be in a class of his own, demands an example and Davis Love III, winner of the 2008 award, supplied one from the first time they met at the Junior World Championships at Torrey Pines.
“We were 15 or something and I get paired with this kid I never heard of in the last round, Billy Andrade from Rhode Island,” Love recounted. “We get up on the tee and they introduced him with scores of 77-75-76. Then they introduced me with scores of 79-69-81. Billy goes, ‘Pretty F-ing consistent, aren’t you?’ It was the first thing he ever said to me and we’ve been friends ever since.”
Since the earliest days of his burgeoning pro career, Andrade, 58, has used his platform to give back to the game that has given so much to him.
“When you’re a rookie on the Tour you’re just trying to survive,” Andrade said. “But I played in a few pro-ams and experienced the power of the game, the way it can bring people together and raise money and help others in need.”
Andrade remembers playing in the Fred Meyer Challenge in Portland, a charity pro-am hosted by Peter Jacobsen. It made a lasting impression. Andrade also participated in charity fundraisers for the Ronald McDonald House in Cleveland and the Boys and Girls Clubs in Monterey, California. He thought, maybe I could do this in my hometown and adopted hometown of Atlanta.
Andrade combined efforts with Faxon in 1991 to support charities in New England. The Andrade/Faxon Charities for Children has raised more than $25 million in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, supporting more than 60 children’s charities since 2002.
Andrade will never forget how the event got its footing. He tossed out the idea of a golf tournament to Bank of America CEO Terry Murray, who invited him to a luncheon with 25 of the region’s movers and shakers. Andrade pitched the idea and sold all 20 spots in the event for $5,000 per foursome.
The CVS Charity Classic routinely brought some of the sport’s biggest names to the Ocean State from 1999 until 2021. As an Atlanta resident, he started in 2010 another charity tournament with Stewart Cink with proceeds benefiting the East Lake Foundation. East Lake Golf Club will add his name next to the other Payne Stewart Award recipients on a plaque located in the clubhouse’s Great Hall.
“Giving back is good energy,” Andrade said. “It’s been a passion of mine that got contagious.”
“I thought it was just a perfect fit,” Jim Furyk, the 2016 award winner, said of Andrade’s selection. “Billy’s one of those guys that thinks about others first.”
When Love’s wife heard that Andrade had been chosen to win the award, she said, “Finally.”
“People don’t realize that it’s not just Brad Faxon,” Love said of the charity work the duo has done for New England charities. “For some reason, he gets more of the credit, but the two of them did so much for their community.”
Andrade conceded that seeing younger award winners in Zach Johnson and Justin Rose in recent years, led him to believe he had been “aged out” of the award. On the evening of the East Lake Invitational in May, Andrade had played golf all day with donors, and he had 200 people arriving for dinner at the club. The PGA Tour asked him to go upstairs and film an interview about the day’s event and the impact the annual event has made on the community. But it didn’t take long for him to realize something was up. His parents, who hadn’t left their Rhode Island home for two years because of COVID-19, were waiting there, expressionless. So was his wife, Jody, and his children, Cameron and Grace, all full of smiles.
“I thought I was in trouble,” Andrade said. “Like, what’s going on here? Is this an intervention? I felt like I was in grade school again. I just didn’t have a good feeling.”
That feeling soon washed away. His wife pointed to a big screen, and there was Tracey Stewart, the wife of the late Payne Stewart, and their two children.
“I was overwhelmed with emotion,” he said. “To get the call was a shock and I’m just so honored.”