Appalachian Figures
On summer evenings at Middlesboro Country Club, regulars still point toward certain fairways and talk about the scores that once came off that nine hole layout. For more than forty years, the course record on this little crater rim track belonged to one of their own, a Bell County kid named George Ancil Cadle. Born in Middlesboro in 1948 and buried just across the state line at Shoffner Cemetery in Harrogate, Tennessee, Cadle carried the story of an Appalachian hometown onto the PGA Tour for nearly two decades.
This is the story of how a boy who learned the game on America’s oldest continuously played nine hole golf course became “Cuddles,” a fixture on the national tour, and why his memory still matters in the Cumberland Gap region.
The Crater City Course Where It Began
Middlesboro, Kentucky, sits in a rare geological bowl, a town built inside what geologists now identify as a meteor impact crater in the Cumberland Mountains. At the center of that bowl lies Middlesboro Country Club, founded in 1889 as part of British entrepreneur Alexander Arthur’s grand development scheme. Modern historical markers and tourism guides describe the club as the oldest continuously played golf course in the United States and emphasize its compact nine hole routing tucked between ridges and town streets.
By the mid twentieth century, Middlesboro Country Club had become a community institution. Local histories note that it once hosted the Kentucky State Amateur Championship in the 1920s and that its unusual setting, with holes laid out across the crater floor, gave everyday golfers a taste of a links course surrounded by Appalachian hills.
Into this landscape stepped young George Cadle. He grew up in a town where a nine hole course was not a luxury for distant elites but a visible part of daily life. The clubhouse, driving range, and fairways were close enough that a determined teenager could finish homework, grab his clubs, and walk to the first tee before dark.
Growing Up Cadle in Bell County
Primary local sources place George Ancil Cadle’s birth in Middlesboro on 9 May 1948. He was the son of Ancil Henry Cadle and Shereriva Gider Cadle, a family firmly rooted in Bell County and nearby Claiborne County, Tennessee. His father died suddenly in 1950, leaving Shereriva to raise George and his siblings in a town still rebuilding after earlier economic booms and busts. Contemporary obituaries from the Middlesboro Daily News describe Ancil Henry as a Middlesboro resident whose accidental death left several young children.
George came of age during the 1950s and 1960s, years when the city’s population hovered around ten thousand and local identity was tightly tied to school sports and civic clubs. He graduated from Middlesboro High School, where local newspaper columns and later obituaries recall his growing reputation on the golf team.
Family obituaries and cemetery records trace a dense Cadle kin network across the region. Multiple Cadle graves in Bell County and nearby Tennessee cemeteries, including those of his parents, help situate George in a multigenerational Appalachian family rooted along the Kentucky Tennessee border. Both he and his mother Shereriva are buried at Shoffner Cemetery in Harrogate, a small hillside burial ground overlooking the valley they called home.
Three Time Kentucky Amateur Champion
By his late teens, Cadle had become one of Kentucky’s most promising young golfers. The official Kentucky Golf Association championship history lists “George Cadle, Middlesboro Country Club” as the winner of the Kentucky State Amateur in 1966, 1967, and 1969. He won on three different courses: Audubon Country Club in Louisville in 1966 with a total of 290, Bowling Green Country Club in 1967 with 289, and Hunting Creek Country Club in 1969 with 294.
Sportswriter Dave Kindred of the Louisville Courier Journal covered Cadle’s 1966 breakthrough, writing about a teenager who matched a playful streak with fierce competitive focus. Although the full article survives behind paywalls, later summaries and citations in golf histories preserve its central point. Cadle had the game to overpower college players and seasoned amateurs while still a high school student.
In 2010, when Cadle entered the Kentucky Golf Hall of Fame, Golf House Kentucky’s official biography pointed back to this run of state amateur titles as the foundation for his career. The Hall described him as a Middlesboro native whose amateur achievements, anchored by three state championships, made him one of the most decorated amateurs the commonwealth had produced.
Tennessee Volunteer on the Rise
After high school, Cadle headed south to Knoxville to play for the University of Tennessee. The men’s golf record book produced by UT’s athletics department lists him on the 1970 71 roster and records a significant milestone. During that season, Cadle earned Honorable Mention All America recognition, placing him among the best collegiate golfers in the country.
Those years with the Volunteers sharpened his game against Southeastern Conference competition and national fields. At a time when collegiate golf was becoming a pipeline to the professional tour, Cadle proved he could travel far from the crater fairways of Middlesboro and still post numbers that attracted attention.
Seventeen Years on the PGA Tour
Cadle turned professional in the mid 1970s. PGA Tour media guides from that era list his full name as George Ancil Cadle, give his height and weight, and identify him variously as a native of Middlesboro or Pineville, Kentucky. They also document the bare bones of his career: he joined the tour full time in 1975, played in more than 150 events, and established himself as a regular presence through the late 1970s and 1980s.
The Middlesboro obituary published in March 2015 fills in the local side of that story. It notes that he joined the PGA Tour in 1974, completed seventeen years on tour, and recorded nineteen top ten finishes in official events.
Some of those finishes still show up in modern tournament media guides. At the 1979 Sammy Davis Jr Greater Hartford Open, Cadle opened with a nine under par 62 at Wethersfield Country Club, taking a three shot first round lead. A contemporary Travelers Championship media guide notes that his 62 stood as a low round and that the margin tied the largest 18 hole lead in tournament history, a mark later shared with players like Corey Pavin and Mackenzie Hughes.
His most dramatic near miss came at the 1983 Greater Milwaukee Open. According to later summaries, Cadle closed with an eight under 64 at Tuckaway Country Club, birdieing four of his last six holes to force a playoff with Morris Hatalsky. Hatalsky finally edged him with a par on the second extra hole, leaving Cadle with his lone playoff loss on tour and the best finish of his professional career.
In 1990, as the PGA Tour launched the developmental Ben Hogan Tour, Cadle played in eleven events. Record books state that his best finish there was an eleventh place at the New Haven Open, and that he made his final PGA Tour appearance the following year.
“Cuddles” at the Bing Crosby Pro Am
Professional golf is rich in nicknames, and Cadle carried one of the more memorable. Both contemporary golf writers and later compilations recall that his tour nickname was “Cuddles,” a label preserved in a widely cited Sports Illustrated tournament note and in Golf Digest’s roundup of famous golf nicknames.
That nickname often appeared in stories about his success at the Bing Crosby National Pro Am, now known as the AT and T Pebble Beach Pro Am. Official tournament media guides and historical summaries list “George Cadle and Wheeler Farish” as back to back winners of the pro am team competition in 1980 and 1981. Farish, a Pan American World Airways executive and prominent amateur, described in a company newsletter the thrill of winning the pro am division twice with Cadle as his professional partner.
The Middlesboro obituary echoes these records from afar, noting with pride that Cadle “won the Bing Crosby Pro Am in 1980 and 81” during his seventeen year run on the PGA Tour.
A Hall of Fame Career Rooted in Middlesboro
For all his travel, Cadle never became a stranger to his home course. Golf House Kentucky’s Hall of Fame profile notes that he held the course record at Middlesboro Country Club for more than four decades, a feat that appears again in local obituaries, Facebook tributes, and club social media posts.
In 2010, he was inducted into the Kentucky Golf Hall of Fame. The official induction text emphasizes both his three Kentucky State Amateur titles and his long professional career, highlighting his appearance in the final group of the 1977 PGA Championship at Pebble Beach as one of his signature moments.
Two obituaries published in Middlesboro in 2015, one for George in March and another for his mother Shereriva in August, highlight the family’s enduring commitment to local golf. Both notices ask that memorial donations be directed to the Middlesboro High School golf team rather than flowers, keeping the focus on the next generation of Bell County golfers.
Memory in Museums and Display Cases
In the years after his passing, community institutions stepped in to preserve Cadle’s material legacy. Posts from the Bell County Historical Society describe a display of his PGA Tour trophies and memorabilia, noting that his niece Tiffany Strunk and sister Shereriva “Sissy” Cadle Strunk loaned many of the items.
Middlesboro Main Street and the Alexander Arthur Museum have encouraged visitors to stop by and view that collection, framed as a tribute to “our Middlesboro PGA George Cadle.” The exhibit places his scorecards, trophies, and photographs alongside other artifacts of local history, turning a golf career into a community story.
Even casual mentions in local “This week in history” columns keep his name in circulation. A 2019 Bell County Historical Society feature in the Middlesboro News recounts one of his earlier victories, a reminder that long after the last putt dropped in competition, his scores still show up in the county’s collective memory.
Homegoing at Shoffner Cemetery
When Cadle died on 15 March 2015 at age sixty six, his funeral arrangements brought his story full circle. Obituary notices report that he died at his home in Middlesboro, that services were held locally, and that he was laid to rest at Shoffner Cemetery near Shawnee in Claiborne County, Tennessee. Cemetery indexes confirm his burial there alongside his mother, with his gravestone marking him as “George Ancil Cadle” and noting his years.
Shoffner lies only a short drive from Middlesboro Country Club. It is easy to imagine local golfers passing the cemetery on their way to the course, a quiet reminder that one of the people who made their little nine hole layout famous around the golf world now rests on the hillside above the valley where he learned the game.
Why George Cadle’s Story Matters
In the wider history of professional golf, George “Cuddles” Cadle was never a major champion. He did not collect piles of trophies or headlining endorsement deals. His record shows solid play, a handful of close calls, and back to back celebrity pro am victories that briefly put him in the national spotlight.
From an Appalachian perspective, however, his life looks different. Cadle represents the way small town courses and public school programs can produce world class talent. His career ties together a crater city in Bell County, a nine hole course that claims to be the oldest continuously played in the United States, a major state university, and some of the PGA Tour’s most storied events.
He also models a particular kind of success story. Cadle left Middlesboro often, but he never left it behind. He returned to live in the community, supported the high school golf team through family memorials, lent his trophies to the local historical society, and accepted a place in the Kentucky Golf Hall of Fame not as an abstract honor but as a recognition that a kid from the crater city had made it onto the same roll of names as other Kentucky legends.
For Appalachian historians, his story invites questions about class, leisure, and place. How did a working and middle class town maintain a golf course that could launch a player onto the national tour for almost twenty years? What did it mean for Bell County residents to see their neighbor battling down the stretch on national television, then turning up again at Krystal or the clubhouse back home? In telling Cadle’s story, we see one more way Appalachian communities have interacted with national culture, not only as consumers but as producers of talent.
Sources & Further Reading
Middlesboro Daily News, “George Cadle Obituary,” March 2015, accessed via Legacy.com. Legacy+1
Middlesboro Daily News, obituary of Ancil Henry Cadle, 1950, as summarized in Find a Grave entry for Ancil H. Cadle. Find a Grave
Middlesboro Daily News, “Shereriva Gider Cadle Tribell Obituary,” August 2015, accessed via Legacy.com. Legacy
Find a Grave memorials for George Ancil Cadle and Shereriva Gider Tribell. Find a Grave+2Find a Grave+2
PeopleLegacy, Shoffner Cemetery index, Harrogate, Tennessee. PeopleLegacy
Kentucky Golf Association, “Kentucky State Amateur Championship History,” media guides and championship lists. Golf House Kentucky+1
Golf House Kentucky, “George Cadle 2010” Kentucky Golf Hall of Fame biography. Golf House Kentucky+1
University of Tennessee Athletics, Tennessee Men’s Golf Record Book (2025 26), All America honors and 1970 71 season roster. University of Tennessee Athletics+1
PGA Tour media guides and TOUR BOOKs, late 1970s and early 1980s editions, player bios and statistical summaries for George Cadle. PGA Tour Media+2PGA Tour Media+2
Travelers Championship media guide, history of the Greater Hartford Open, including 1979 first round scoring records. Travelers Championship+1
AT and T Pebble Beach Pro Am media guides and PGA Tour notes listing George Cadle and Wheeler Farish as pro am team winners in 1980 and 1981. PGA Tour Media+2PGA Tour Media+2
Pan Am internal newsletter, Pan Am Clipper, March 1981, reporting on Wheeler Farish and George Cadle’s second consecutive Bing Crosby Pro Am victory. Digital Collections
Where2Golf and similar results compilations detailing the 1983 Greater Milwaukee Open playoff between Morris Hatalsky and George Cadle. Where2Golf
Bell County Historical Society and Museum Facebook posts regarding the loan and display of George Cadle’s trophies and memorabilia. Facebook+2Facebook+2
Middlesboro Main Street and Alexander Arthur Museum social media posts promoting a display honoring “Middlesboro PGA George Cadle.” Facebook
“George Cadle,” Wikipedia, summary of amateur and professional career and references to primary sources. Wikipedia+1
Cliff Schrock, “Nicknames of the Game,” Golf Digest (2010), which includes “Cuddles” among notable golf nicknames. Golf Digest
Middlesboro Country Club website and tourism listings describing the course as the oldest continuously played golf course in the United States. Wanderlog+3Middlesboro Country Club+3Kentucky Wildlands+3
Historical Marker Database entries for Middlesboro Country Club and related sites in Bell County. HMDB+2HMDB+2
Articles on the geology and history of Middlesboro and its meteor crater setting, including features in Kentucky Living and regional tourism guides. Kentucky Living+2Ky Adventures+2