Brannen Veal switches from baseball to golf
The PGA tour’s fall schedule continues this week with a stopover at the McGladrey Classic at the Sea Island Resort down on the Georgia coast.
Macon’s Russell Henley will be in the field, and another local native, Brannen Veal, will play a role in the event.
Veal is the director of golf for the Sea Island Club, overseeing activities at the resort’s Seaside, Plantation and Retreat courses, as well as their members-only club, Ocean Forest. He has worked with McGladrey host Davis Love III and his organization in putting on the tournament since it started five years ago.
Working with tour professionals is nothing new for Veal. Currently, there are 11 PGA touring professionals living in the Sea Island area and playing the club’s courses, including the likes of Matt Kuchar, Zach Johnson and Love, among others.
Back in his formative years, the thought of a baseball career would have been much more plausible for Veal than golf because he grew up on the diamond.
He had no choice.
His father, Inman “Coot” Veal, was a standout at Lanier, Auburn and Mercer before spending six years in the major leagues with Detroit, Washington and Pittsburgh. His older brother, Rick, played at Lanier and at Gulf Coast Community College in Panama City, Florida.
Brother number two, Barry, starred at both FPD and Mercer before going on to a hall-of-fame career at Jones County as the Greyhounds’ baseball head coach. Last summer, he stepped down after 21 seasons to become the school’s athletics director. Brannen’s sister, Barbie, was also involved in athletics as a football trainer when she was in high school at Mount de Sales.
Brannen, the youngest of the three Veal brothers, played high school baseball at Tattnall Square. He went on to play at Middle Georgia College for two years and finished out his playing career at Auburn.
“One of the most important things for me is the fact that both my name and my father’s names are forever etched in Auburn baseball history, side by side as Auburn baseball players and lettermen,” Brannen Veal said.
Veal, who graduated from Auburn with a degree in exercise science, had the opportunity to play professional baseball after being drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers, but he decided it was time to get a real job and began working in real estate, buying and selling large tracts of land.
He said he got into the golf business by being in the right place at the right time. His wife, a Georgia Tech graduate, was waiting to get into medical school and during the interim took a job as a beverage cart driver at the Robert Trent Jones Grand National Course in Opelika, Alabama. As would be expected, Veal spent a lot of time at the course and got to know the staff. When a job came open there, in outside services, he took it.
That led to him becoming an assistant golf professional there for nearly three years. The retail buyer at Grand National was hired for the same position at Sea Island. When Sea Island needed to fill the job, Veal got the recommendation.
He was six months shy of his PGA certification at the time, but he was offered a co-head professional position by Sea Island Director of Golf Scott Davenport. When Davenport left in 1999 to take the head pro job at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, North Carolina, Veal took over as head golf professional at the Lodge, overseeing the Plantation and Seaside courses. He became the Director of Golf at Sea Island in 2005 and in 2011 became director of golf for the company, with responsibilities for the golf operations and maintenance for all four facilities.
“I get to wake up each day and go to work at one of the most beautiful places in the world,” Veal said. “I also get to work with and serve great people from all over the world. I have been blessed to be at Sea Island for 18 years and hope to end my career here.”
As a youth, Veal played golf at what was then known as Riverside Country Club when Ray Cutright was the head professional. Cutright went on to serve as director of golf for the Sea Island Company from 1990 to 1993, the same position Veal now holds.
Like Veal, Cutright is also an Auburn graduate. Before accepting the job at Sea Island, Veal called Cutright just to make sure he should take the job.
Cutright told him to hurry up and take if before they gave it to someone else, which was “some of the best advice I ever received,” Veal said.
He and his wife Catherine have four children: Hollis (16). Harrison (14), Gracie (12) and Mary Helen (10).
Contact Bobby Pope at bobbypope428@gmail.com.
This story was originally published October 20, 2014 at 9:17 PM with the headline "Brannen Veal switches from baseball to golf ."