Honoring Dave Hallenbeck: A career in golf and charity
LAKE GENEVA, Wis. (BVM) – Dave Hallenbeck, 67, has been using golf as a charitable tool for over four decades but never intended to help others in this way when he was just a college kid.
“I wanted to be a clinical psychologist and I wanted to try to save one person at a time,” Hallenbeck said. “And all of a sudden I was able to hit a golf ball straight, got a dream job and my goal was to help raise $1 million over my career no matter how long it was.”
The longtime director of golf at the Grand Geneva Resort, and current golf ambassador as the 48-year veteran prepares for retirement, has well shattered that goal of his. By 2021, Hallenbeck had helped raise $35 million through the 50 charity events he’s worked with during his time as a golf professional in Wisconsin.
His charitable resume features numerous organizations, to name a few: Variety Children’s Charity of Wisconsin, Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association (MLBPAA), Marcus United Way and Make-A-Wish Wisconsin. But there’s one that stands out in particular – it was his first charity event at what was then the Lake Geneva Playboy Club – that he’s been on their committee for the past 44 years and a board member for the last 10, the National Italian Invitational (NII).
“We’ve raised money for scholarships, for food banks, we help out with Ronald McDonald House, we have sent money to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Italy, it goes on and on and on and on,” Hallenbeck said of the charitable contributions of the NII.
As the NII prepares for their annual outing, August 5-7 at the Grand Geneva, Hallenbeck will be recognized as an Honoree of the NII for Charities. Previous honorees include celebrities and athletes such as Frank Sinatra, Paul Sorvino, Joe Mantegna, Joe DiMaggio, Ron Santo (a boyhood idol of Hallenbeck’s) and Ken Venturi, among many other notable names. In recent years, the NII has presented this distinction to individuals in business that really focus on helping various charities and providing community service.
“To be recognized like this I kind of took a double take,” Hallenbeck said. “I said, ‘Are you sure you have the right Dave Hallenbeck here?’ But it’s a true honor. … It kind of caps my career, to be honest with you, because as much as I’ve done this is pretty special.”
Hallenbeck has been part of three different ownership groups at the Grand Geneva – Playboy Enterprises, Americana Hotels and now the Marcus Corporation. In the 1980s, he’d travel an hour north to Oconomowoc to be the golf director and head pro at the Olympia Resort. But it wouldn’t take long to return home and continue where it all started in Lake Geneva.
“I just learned that you just work as hard as you can to prove yourself every day,” Hallenbeck said. “I wasn’t the best golfer. I wasn’t the most talented golf professional by any means. But, if you have a good work ethic and you prove yourself every day you just keep kind of surviving and that’s kind of my career in a nutshell I guess.”
Hallenbeck estimates during his time as a golf pro he’s had just shy of 300 famous encounters, not all at the Grand Geneva. Although the golf resort that features 36 holes between The Brute and The Highlands is considered one of Wisconsin’s best places to play and a popular choice in the Midwest. He played a group in front of a very young Annika Sörenstam during her first trip to the U.S. at an event through Easter Seals of Chicago. Hallenbeck has brushed shoulders with some NFL legends like Packers quarterback Bart Starr and Bears running backs Gale Sayers and Walter Payton. “Sweetness” was one of Hallenbeck’s favorites. His team actually won Payton’s celebrity pro-am once at the Oak Brook Country Club in Illinois.
One group that Hallenbeck was quite close with was the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers. The only team in franchise history to have won a pennant.
“Played a lot of golf with (Robin) Yount and (Paul) Molitor and Rollie Fingers and Jimmy Slaton, you know the whole crew,” Hallenbeck said. “Gorman Thomas and I are good friends and (Jim) Gantner, the whole bunch. That was one of my really most memorable times with celebrities. We played on almost every off day. Tom Trebelhorn and I were good friends… Great bunch of guys. We had a lot of good times.”
It has been an incredible journey for a Lake Geneva native that actually started out as the head lifeguard at the old Playboy Club the summer after graduating from Northwestern Military Academy. He’s earned lifetime achievement awards for his work both as a golf pro and his charitable service as a volunteer. Hallenbeck says the Honoree of the NII for Charities recognition will solidify his whole career in one weekend.
“I look back at it and I was just going to be a golf professional for a couple years to pay for graduate school,” Hallenbeck said. “That was my whole idea…
“It’s an amazing career, not from the standpoint that I was a golf pro, but that I was a golf pro that could help out with all these other charities and I wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
