Some 50 years ago, the golf career of Kirk Triplett began in Pullman, Wash., over a conversation at the family dinner table.

Contemplating taking up golf or skiing as a recreational activity, his family chose the former, making way for Triplett’s decades-long attachment to the game – an attachment that includes 800 starts in PGA Tour-sanctioned events, 17 professional wins, 40 Major Championship berths and membership on a winning Presidents Cup team.

Triplett, 63, now tees it up full-time on the PGA Tour Champions, where he’s notched nine of his wins since turning 50 in 2012. Original intentions with the game weren’t always to make the levels he has.

“I didn’t set out to be a tour player in any way, shape or form,” Triplett said of his first swings. “I was just playing because my family and I had a good time, it was competitive, and we wanted to beat each other.”

Without many goals early on, Triplett and his family began their journey at the WSU Golf Course in Pullman, a 9-holer on the edge of the university’s campus long before the days of Palouse Ridge Golf Club, the vaunted championship course that opened in 2008.

A natural athlete, Kirk picked up the game quickly and competed regularly in the Washington Junior Golf Association schedule of tournaments, as well as on the Pullman High School golf team.

In the sports-minded Triplett family, Kirk’s younger sister Shelly also took up golf, finishing runner-up at the 1987 PNGA Junior Girls’ Amateur, and earning a scholarship to play four years on the University of Kansas women’s team.

Kirk was selected for Team Washington in the 1979 Junior Americas Cup and received a golf scholarship from the University of Nevada-Reno, where he played all four years on their men’s golf team (and in 2000 was inducted into the University of Nevada Athletics Hall of Fame). After graduating with a degree in civil engineering in 1985, he turned down a job offer from Boeing to instead turn professional.

Early in his pro career, Triplett traveled throughout Canada, Asia and Australia competing in every tournament he could. He finally earned his PGA Tour card through qualifying school in December 1989, with 1990 being his rookie year on the big tour. He picked up his first win on the PGA Tour in 2000, taking home the Nissan Open (now Genesis Invitational) at the famed Riviera Country Club. That same year he qualified for the winning U.S. President’s Cup team. His second and third PGA Tour wins came in 2003 and 2006, respectively.

Living in Phoenix now and looking back on his relationship with the game over decades of professional play, Triplett perceives it positively to be a constant puzzle.

“Yes, it’s my job,” he said, providing examples of how he’d casually practice his game at TPC Scottsdale without much other responsibility. “But it’s also where my happy place is. It’s what I enjoy doing…You have to keep working at it and keep trying different things.”

Having accumulated his championship experience, he admitted winning again now is a primary goal, maybe even more than winning for the first time was.

His most recent Champions triumph came in 2019, and he’s looking to connect his puzzle pieces six years on.

“You have all these little steps that you want to take, and you know you need to take, and I want the payout one more time,” he said, referring to prizes beyond money. “Holding the trophy…You get a whole bunch of text messages and emails from people you haven’t heard from in a long time. I would love to have that one more time.”

One of the annual stops in his search for that victory is the Boeing Classic, hosted by the Club at Snoqualmie Ridge in Snoqualmie, Wash. Triplett’s ties with the tournament are both geographical and familial.

His father, Robert, served as executive secretary for the Western Washington Golf Course Superintendents Association (WWGCSA). In that role, Kirk’s dad was excited to show him around Snoqualmie Ridge shortly after it opened in 1999.

“Every time I go there, I think about that time with him,” Triplett said.

Triplett maintains other connections to the state, too. His son attends Seattle University, and he has other relatives who have stayed. Reflecting on eastern Washington and his upbringing there, he called it a “great environment.”

“The [Pullman] community always knew what was important,” he said. “Just sort of a no-nonsense way to live that sometimes gets glossed over. It was just a great, great atmosphere.”

The career Triplett made from that atmosphere has provided special memories. The timing of it all allowed him to interact and play with prominent players, which proved to be a source of inspiration.

“The day-in, day-out ability, year after year to be able to perform at that level,” he said of his high-achieving colleagues. “Just is so inspiring and really cool to be part of. When you’re outside of it you don’t necessarily understand the energy and the effort that really went into what you just watched.”

Triplett certainly still competes among some of those highly regarded names. After all, the tour he plays on has “Champions” in its name.