While his family was at home in Madison enjoying turkey with all the trimmings, Kelly was standing atop one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces in Baghdad, where he saw smoke from a car bomb.

Kelly and four other PGA Tour members spent eight days in Iraq as part of the USO’s “Operation Links Handshake Tour.” The group was organized by Frank Lickliter II and included Donnie Hammond, Howard Twitty and Corey Pavin, who edged Kelly to win the 2006 U.S. Bank Championship in Milwaukee.

“It was a life-changing experience,” Kelly said in a telephone interview Friday. “It was the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”

The golfers visited 14 bases in Iraq, entertaining the troops with golf exhibitions and swapping stories with soldiers in conversations that stretched into the early morning hours.

“We hit balls off of Saddam’s palace, off the back of a tank, off the wing of an Iraqi MIG fighter,” Kelly said. “We stopped a soccer game in the Kurd region and hit balls off the field into Turkey. We hit balls in Mosul.

“We did a ton of stuff. We wish we could have spent more time with the guys. They were like, ‘Thank you so much.’ We were like, ‘Are you kidding me? We’re the ones who are thankful.’ ”

The group was escorted by soldiers and ferried between bases by Blackhawk helicopters; the golfers had to wear full body armor and helmets, but Kelly said he never feared for his safety.

“We saw the smoke from the mortar rounds but we never felt threatened,” he said. “We knew danger was there but it wasn’t at the bases. These (insurgents) have to run, set up their mortars and run away. They know they’re history if they come near the place.”

The golfers ate in mess halls and bunked with the soldiers in fortified sleeping quarters. They visited a hospital, where Kelly and Lickliter spent 10 minutes talking to a soldier who had been burned. They visited the governor of a province who two days earlier had survived an assassination attempt.

They visited Camp Patriot on the Persian Gulf, where Hussein’s invading army lined up Kuwaitis against a brick wall and gunned them down.

“You could still see the (bullet) pock marks in the wall,” Kelly said.

Kelly has supported the war effort and couldn’t say no when given the opportunity to visit Iraq, even though it meant spending Thanksgiving away from his wife, Carol, and 8-year-old son Cooper.

“If you’re going to talk the talk you better be able to walk the walk,” he said. “Coop has been saying a prayer for the soldiers every single night. It’s part of our lives.”

He came away with a new appreciation for what the soldiers are accomplishing and expressed in strong terms his disdain for how the war was being covered by the American media.

“Our soldiers are so selfless,” he said. “We need to be promoting them and telling people what a great job they’re doing. All they’re hearing is bashing.