Tom Creavy Sr. was born 10 years after his grandfather, William Creavy, passed, so there are no recollections. “But I know this about him – he was a builder. He did things with a hammer.”

He does have fond remembrances of his father and his three uncles, however, and can offer this: “None of my grandfather’s four boys could drive a nail straight with a hammer, nor did they try,” he laughed.

That’s because Joe Creavy, Tom’s father and the second of William’s four sons, was much like his brothers – William Jr., Tom, and Jack. They could drive golf balls straight with a driver. Nice, all these homes that William Creavy Sr., helped build in New York’s Westchester County. But what captivated his sons Bill, Joe, Tom and Jack were other creations near their home in Eastchester; they were smitten with Siawony, Mt. Vernon, Leewood, and Oak Ridge, four golf courses that enticed the boys with a radiance they could never resist.

Oh, what must have been in the New York waters back then to produce such an array of golf-happy brothers. But against the backdrop of the seven Turnesa brothers from Elmsford and the five Strafaci brothers from Brooklyn, the four Creavy chaps born between 1897 and 1916 in Eastchester didn’t have to take a back seat.

Indeed, from playing prowess to teaching genes to administrative and marketing aptitude, these sons of a humble home builder poured an extraordinary foundation on which a family’s golf heritage can stand and be a beacon of pride.

And should you have any doubt that such pride exists, Tom Creavy Sr. can join his son, Tom Jr., and grandsons Tyler and Patrick for a round of golf to confirm that three generations of Creavy lads cherish the passion that blazed a trail before them and have enabled them to carry on the legacy.

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"Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die we can't remember who we are or why we're here." -- Author Sue Monk Kidd

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Arguably, it is Thomas Daniel Creavy’s story that resonates loudest, given that it came in a major championship.

But what often gets overlooked bout the 20-year-old’s 1931 PGA Championship win at Wannamoisett CC in Rumford, R.I., is that his semifinal and final wins were over mights named Gene Sarazen (5 and 3) and Denny Shute (2 and 1). In front of a referee named Bobby Jones, oh by the way.

Three years prior, Tom Creavy at 17 had defeated U.S. Open champion Johnny Farrell in the Met Section PGA, also a match play event, so the Wannamoisett win was no fluke. “My uncle was a prodigy. He was very good,” said Tom Creavy Sr., who was named after his uncle.

“Back then they called Eastchester the ‘Cradle of Golf’ because you had four major winners who lived there (1925 U.S. Open winner Willie MacFarlane; 1926 British Am champ Jesse Sweetser; Farrell; and Tom Creavy).”

If there was a starting point for the Creavy boys it was living just a half-mile from Siwanoy, where they caddied, or in close proximity to Oak Ridge, where Macfarlane was the golf professional.

“My father Joe and his brother Tom worked in his shop. Macfarlane developed their games,” said Creavy, who has lived on Cape Cod for years and plays his golf at the Hyannisport Club.

“Dad could talk all day about the uncles,” said Tom Creavy Jr., who has forged his own path in golf as a premier instructor/teacher, most notably with Se Ri Pak, winner of 25 LPGA tournaments, five of them majors. “But not in a pompous way. He’s just proud of what they accomplished.”

Rightfully so, for if you widen the lens, each of these Creavy lads offers a story that is worth a fond remembrance.

* William V. Creavy Jr. was just 20 when he left Eastchester to carve out a career as a club professional. from Kansas City to Oklahoma City to California. He lost to Farrell, 3 and 2, in his only PGA Championship (1925) and played in the 1929 and 1934 U.S. Opens. He eventually settled in California where he died in 1969.

* Joseph Edward Creavy – father to Tom Creavy Sr. and grandfather to Tom Creavy Jr. – was a lifelong club professional. His friendships with master promoter Fred Corcoran and Alvin Handmacher, co-founder of a company that was the biggest manufacturer of a line of women’s suits called “The Weathervane,” ignited a brainstorm. Handmacher in 1950 backed the “Weathervane Transcontinental,” a series of four 36-hole tournaments that went from Pebble Beach to Chicago to Cleveland to New York and the idea morphed into what is now the LPGA.

“My dad traveled the first three years to kick-start the LPGA,” said Tom Creavy Sr. “When Mr. Handmacher died, he willed the original LPGA trophy to my father and I’ve still got it.”

Tom Creavy at the 1931 PGA Championship.

* Thomas Daniel Creavy followed up his PGA win in ’31 with two very good runs – the semifinals in ’32 and quarter-finals in ’33. There was a second PGA Tour win at the San Francisco match play in 1934, the year he played in the very first Masters, but back woes slowed his career and then he battled spinal meningitis “at a time when people were dying of that,” said his nephew Tom. He settled in as a well-respected head professional at Albany CC and got credit for developing the game of 1973 Masters champ Tommy Aaron.

* John “Jack” Creavy, born in 1916, the youngest of four boys and seven children, never turned professional though he piled up plenty of amateur victories in the Met Section. Most notably, he won the New York Boys’ Junior in 1935, beat Doug Ford in the Westchester County Amateur in ’41, and took the title at the New York Senior Amateur in 1976.

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Tom Creavy Sr. sells himself exceedingly short when he suggests “I was the only one who couldn’t play golf.” Though he didn’t take the game into a competitive area like his father and three uncles, Joe Creavy’s only child plays beautifully, adhering to a style that served generations of golfers quite adequately.

“Waggle the club, feel in in the hands, then go out and hit a ball,” he said.

When he was a young boy, Tom Creavy Jr., was blessed to be around his grandfather and great-uncles Tom and Jack. (And his dad’s three aunts, too – Winifred, Frances, and Grace, a club champ at Leewood GC.) There were days on the golf course, but never any extravagant dives into the family scrapbook.

“My dad never really wanted to pressure me to live up to expectations,” said Tom Jr. “But I was aware of their accomplishments and think it was pretty cool.”

Like his grandfather and great-uncles, Tom Jr. blazed his own trail. From winning the NEPGA Junior Championship, being low am in a Mass. Open, going deep in a State Am, qualifying for a U.S. Junior Am and a U.S. Amateur, and, oh, beating Tiger Woods en route to a triumph in the Monroe Invitational in 1993, the young man from Nauset Regional High School on Cape Cod acquitted himself nicely on the competitive front.

Following a solid career at Stetson, Tom Creavy Jr. gave pro golf a try, but after falling short at the second stage of PGA Tour Q School “I just knew the lifestyle didn’t match up with what I wanted.”

In line with his great uncles, all of whom were heralded teachers, Tom Creavy Jr., went that route, working first as David Leadbetter’s top assistant, then breaking off on his own.

With a calm demeanor, a great eye for detail, and an understanding off what it takes to play great golf, Tom Jr. is at peace with his position in the golf world and more than capable of adding to the rich family legacy.