Tales and tributes for the PGA Tour's 'greatest luxury' — the courtesy car | Giannotto

Taylor Montgomery had been waiting to tell his best courtesy car story for months, so much so that he was skeptical as to why, of the 70 golfers in Memphis this week for the FedEx St. Jude Championship, he was being approached now.

“Did someone tell you to ask me,” the PGA Tour rookie wondered outside the TPC Southwind clubhouse Wednesday.

They had not.

That was good enough for him to begin explaining how he blew out the tires on a brand new Genesis SUV earlier this year.

Montgomery had missed the cut at the Genesis Invitational in Los Angeles in February – yes, the same tournament in which, two years earlier, Tiger Woods infamously crashed his courtesy car. Montgomery and his girlfriend decided to drive back to his hometown of Las Vegas. But they couldn’t drive off in the courtesy car provided by the tournament. So off they went to an Avis Rental Car at LAX Airport to get a new car and drop off the Genesis they had been driving about 500 yards away.

The plan was for Montgomery to drive off the lot with the rental car, while his girlfriend followed behind in the courtesy car. But she took this too literally. Montgomery drove through the lowered spike strips with his rental car, and she attempted to do the same without allowing the spikes to reset.

The front tires of the Genesis made it over fine. The back tires were destroyed.

“They instantly went flat. Instantly. I get out of the car and I just hear air going,” Montgomery said. “Girlfriend gets out of the car, hears it and starts freaking out. As soon as the tires started going flat, I knew we had to get it there quick. We barely got it there. Drove really slowly.”

There are many perks to being on the PGA Tour, but the courtesy car is “our greatest luxury out here,” Max Homa declared.

At each tournament, a car dealership is enlisted to provide vehicles for the participating golfers and certain PGA Tour staff while they’re in town. It’s a weekly reminder they’ve reached the pinnacle of their sport and yet another way in which these events wouldn’t be possible without the help of an entire community.

This is the 16th year in a row in which Landers Ford in Collierville has provided courtesy cars for the annual Memphis PGA Tour stop, which began first-round action on Thursday. There are 125 Ford Expeditions, Explorers and F-150s with FedEx St. Jude Championship decals on the doors driving around this week, the fewest number of cars Landers has provided during that time since the FedEx St. Jude Championship features a limited field due to its status as a FedEx Cup playoff event.

The process is more involved than you might think.

Kent Richey, the president of Landers Auto Group, said he starts ordering the cars used for the tournament in January. They start arriving in April and May. It’s an up front cost of about $7 million this year for Landers. Though he’ll eventually sell all of these cars – the car Phil Mickelson drove was asked for most frequently when he played here – the risk Richey takes on also illustrates how this particular golf tournament brings together the best of Memphis.

Richey only got involved in 2007 because the event was in a bind. The financial crisis had hit and car manufacturers were pulling their sponsorship dollars. But the tournament still needed cars.

“So we scratched and clawed and got enough cars to get it done,” he said. "It’s supporting St. Jude. It’s supporting FedEx, who supports us all. It was such a big hit we just went back to them and said, ‘If you let us do this, we’ll do it on our own,’ ”

These cars, in some ways, become almost a rite of passage for professional golfers. They aren’t provided on the lesser Korn Ferry Tour. Usually, that means standing in line at a rental car counter.

“I got a paid test drive of every low-end, medium-sized vehicle you can find,” Cameron Young joked. “My knowledge of Mitsubishi Outlanders is way higher than it should be.”

Young then sheepishly admitted, “once or twice,” when he’s been late for a flight on the PGA Tour, he simply parked his courtesy car in short term parking and sent a picture to Tour officials with a note saying, “Sorry.”

LIVE UPDATES: Follow along with the action during the FedEx St. Jude Championship first round

Homa volunteered that Scottie Scheffler’s wife crashed a courtesy car at the U.S. Open once. Denny McCarthy liked the BMW X5 he drove at several tournaments so much, he bought one of his own. Davis Riley called himself “spoiled” because in Memphis, for instance, he was greeted by tournament volunteers at baggage claim and led directly to a waiting Ford Explorer.

“It’s just a miracle we get them,” Homa said.

Richey considers Landers to be lucky, thus far, that the most damage done to one of its cars over 15 years was a fender scrape. He said accidents, like the one Montgomery experienced, are a “courtesy car provider’s nightmare.”

So as tournament volunteers drove away with the rows and rows of cars in his lot last week, Richey winced when one ran over a concrete cinder block.

You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter: @mgiannotto

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Tales and tributes for PGA Tour's 'greatest luxury' — the courtesy car