Kingdom 26

Issue 26—Summer 2013

$20 where sold

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READE TILLEY

MATTHEW SQUIRE

editor

publisher

PAUL TROW

LEON HARRIS

contributing editor

art director

designers

special thanks / contributors

Mickey Gibbons Graham Taylor

junior designer Kieron Deen Halnan

founding contributor Arnold Palmer

special contributors Cori Britt, Doc Giffin, Donald Trump

contributing photographers Marius Bugge, Monica Donovan, Patrick Drickey /stonehousegolf.com, Harry Frye, Steve Galle, Getty Images, Howdy Giles, Leon Harris, Walter Iooss, Arnold Palmer Picture Library, Meghan Tilley

vp, operations Joe Velotta

head of advertising sales Jon Edwards

advertising sales Andy Fletcher Deric Piper Sam Krume

executive assistant

Sam Abdelnour Lauren Barry William Campbell Richard Connolly Ray Easler & his great team at Bay Hill James Ellis Sheila Feeney Bob Ford Ryan Flynn Kelly Elbin Neil Grant Br. Norman Hipps, O.S.B. Ian Holloway Jack Houvouras Brandon Johnson Kraig Kann Thad Layton Martin Long Don Orlando Filip Przybysz Andrew Ree Chris Rodell Major Dan Rooney Jack Ross Ben Steward USGA Mark Vickery Hines Ward Mike Whan

Advertising Production Florence Samuels

published by

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Kingdom magazine was first available to friends & associates of Arnold Palmer, members & guests of his designed and managed courses, and is now available to distinguished private clubs and discerning golfers everywhere.

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ARNOLD

PA L M E R

FOREWORD

Golf in Good Shape Another thrilling summer is well underway and I’m feeling that things could hardly be more exciting in the world of golf than they are at present.

At the time of writing, we’ve had first-time Major wins for two of my favorite golfers – Adam Scott at the Masters and Justin Rose in the U.S. Open at Merion.

Remarkably, Adam was the first Australian to win at Augusta in nearly 80 years of trying. I for one am certain that while many more Aussies will follow Adam’s lead, the young man himself will claim at least one more Major title before his career is over.

What especially pleased me about Adam’s win, though, was the positive way he bounced back from his disappointment after failing to take advantage of a seemingly invincible lead during the latter part of the final round of last year’s [British] Open at Royal Lytham & St Annes. Not only did he banish those demons, that would have suffocated many lesser men, but I believe he turned them to his advantage.

As for Justin, well who can forget his astonishing arrival on the scene when he tied for 4th as a 17-year-old amateur in the 1998 [British] Open at Royal Birkdale? I know this course on the coast of northwest England very well. As a matter of fact, I won my first Claret Jug there in 1961. But I can tell you that keeping body and soul together that week at the relatively mature age of 31, as I was then, was hard enough. How on earth Justin did what he did as a mere babe in arms back in 1998 is beyond me, but it clearly marked him out as one to watch for the future.

Finally, as always, I would like to thank our intrepid team of reporters and editors here at Kingdom for the extraordinary work they do to produce, again and again, such a fascinating read about the game of golf, my own personal life, and so many other subjects that warrant our attention along the way.

Enjoy the read,

Arnold Palmer

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Loyal Season For the first time in several years I won’t be in attendance at The Open Championship. Across America, the third Major of the calendar year is commonly referred to as the British Open, but as the very first championship “open to all” back in 1860 at Prestwick, Scotland, I can’t blame my countrymen for saying it really does deserve its title as The Open.

In a similar vein, it is particularly pleasing to see that Scotland’s other immortal gift to civilization, malt whisky, has strengthened its relationship with this venerable tournament. In addition to being an official supplier to the Championship, it has also this year assumed the title, “Spirit of The Open.”

Arnold Palmer, of course, was a pioneer of the TV-driven revolution back in the 1960s that saw sports sponsorship become an important component of mainstream marketing. However, in today’s ever-changing advertising environment he also instinctively understands the value of loyalty—and that it is loyalty in sponsorship that brings true value. Naturally, the quality of a product is the ultimate key to its success (or otherwise) but to my mind there is no coincidence that Rolex, one of the oldest partners of both The Open Championship and Arnold Palmer (partnerships that go back unbroken for decades), is also the world’s No.1 luxury brand.

Loyalty is a key component in business; business influences a large part of our individual lives and has an even more profound effect on wider society, but do we always need to take the cheapest, short-term options over solutions that have been established and sustained over a far longer term?

When I see great American and European brands that have built up loyal followings—and loyal, educated employees—close “expensive” plants to seek the minimal wage levels overseas, I can’t help but wonder where the next generations of consumers and skilled employees are going to come from.

That’s why it is reassuring to see strong companies such as Whirlpool (see page 138) maintaining an ethos and committing to manufacturing their appliances largely in the country where they are being sold. Call me old-fashioned, but I like my single malt Scotch whisky to be distilled in the Highlands, my watch to be made in Switzerland and my household appliances to be made in America—and not to break down.

Loyalty is also a two-way street, particularly amongst partners and colleagues, so I am particularly grateful to and proud of the fact that over the last 10 years the key people who put this magazine together are all still working together. It is this loyalty that keeps customers spending and companies going when times get tough, although, at the risk of tempting fate, my sense is that the economy is back on track. Back in 2007, every business sector caught a cold—real estate and golf development in particular took a hammering—so it is particularly pleasing to see Arnold Palmer Design Company with a full whiteboard and golf growing again.

Oh, and why am I not going to The Open? Well, I promised she who is most loyal of all, my wife, a well deserved vacation.

Enjoy the summer,

Matthew Squire—Publisher

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Early to bed...

“But whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun.”

—Thomas Jefferson

I’d just shut off the tractor and was about to climb down, maybe 10 or 11 years old, sunburned and aching, with little scars of dried blood sticking up through the dirt on my arms. It had been a long day working in our groves, climbing through the dense, low trees in the Florida heat as they cut into me with their thorns and broken branches, and I was exhausted. The day had begun in darkness and the sun was near setting, but I was far from done. There were the cattle, and then the damn pigs. Dad was looking up at me not saying anything, but I could tell something was on his mind and so I waited.

Finally, he smiled and said, “You look like a real boy.”

My stepfather didn’t give many compliments, but that day I understood that I’d graduated somehow from whatever he’d found when he met my mother to a boy he recognized, the kind that he himself had been, the kind that understood the definition of a hard day’s work as a farmer understands it.

That kind of understanding can be gained in a number of places, of course, not just on a farm.

Some people in Latrobe know it (p34), as evidenced by the town’s favorite son. Super Bowl MVP Hines Ward found it within himself during a challenging childhood in Georgia (p48). Sam Abdelnour witnesses it every day as a principle at Whirlpool, a company founded on core American values that continues to lead by example (p138). And Maj. Dan Rooney, a former F16 fighter pilot and founder of the Folds of Honor Foundation, honors that understanding by helping and thanking those who are willing to pay the highest price for our country (p94).

I was raised to believe that there are few problems that can’t be solved with hard work, and I still believe it. One place I’ve failed to apply that belief thus far is the golf course, where my game continues to suffer from neglect. I’m working on that this summer, and on other things, including fulfilling my new role as a father. I don’t expect I’ll be putting my new daughter on a tractor anytime soon, but I do plan to teach her the lessons I’ve learned—after she starts sleeping through the night, that is. Though I suppose there’s little cause for concern: judging by the hour at which she currently rises, she should be quite healthy, wealthy and wise.

To everyone working on their games,

Reade Tilley—Editor

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Kingdom magazine Issue 26—Summer 2013

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AP Q&A—The King dispenses wisdom, humor and insights from his office in Latrobe Latrobe—A portrait of Palmer’s hometown in five vignettes Hines Ward—Super Bowl MVP and great guy talks golf and life with Kingdom 18 No.7s—Often regarded as a soft option, some 7th holes are actually full of teeth LPGA CEO—Four years into the job, Mike Whan has transformed the ladies’ tour Bentley—The new Le Mans Limited Edition marks 90 years of the 24-hour race PGA Championship—The only Major Arnold Palmer never won, but boy did he try William Campbell—The last great amateur on life and the state of the game Fred Couples—We profile the laid-back, twice-victorious U.S. Presidents Cup captain Folds of Honor—Maj. Dan Rooney spearheads golf’s support for the military Life in Pictures—Arnold Palmer’s iconic links with his home state of Pennsylvania Sibling Rivalry—In a classic battle of the near-twins, both Carolinas win Charlotte Motor Speedway—One track, one man, and a perfect Southern tale Atlantic Crossing—Scotch whisky isn’t Scotland’s only gift to the world, golf is as well

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Kingdom magazine Issue 26—Summer 2013

130 124 130 134 138 142 146 150 156 163 172 174 180 184 190 194

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Les Bordes—The Loire is the cradle of north European civilization, even for golfers Vintage Golf—People still get a kick out of hickory clubs, plus-fours and featheries Merion—Remembering a fund-raiser involving Mr. Palmer and President Eisenhower Whirlpool—Saluting a company that adheres to its century-old Midwestern ideals Cold Hearted—Glorious scoops of confectionary to thrill the warmest of hearts Drinks—Dudley’s of New York keep our glasses refreshed during an infernal summer Iceland—A long weekend on this moody Atlantic bubble is anything but a lost weekend Fashion—Summer-friendly looks from the top drawer Gift Guide—The sweetest summer luxuries are bringing joy to every discerning golfer Trump—America’s favorite billionaire visualizes a world without restrictions Cinderella Stories—So how did some of the great players get their invites to the ball?

Health—Cleveland Clinic have devised the ideal strategy to keep people fighting fit Instruction—Legendary teaching professional Bob Ford chips confidently at Oakmont APDC Update—The last of three articles about the best-practice tenets of golf design Last page—Mr. Palmer celebrates the centenary of Ouimet’s U.S. Open win in Boston

SUMMER

2013

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Latrobe Liaison It was the Sixth of June, D-Day, when Arnold Palmer sat down with Kingdom correspondent Chris Rodell to discuss an array of topics, including his historic friendship with Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man for whom D-Day held such historic implications 69 years ago. After reviewing hotel records, Palmer was pleased that his now year-old Marriott SpringHill Suites just up the street from his Latrobe office was exceeding occupancy expectations, and eager to answer our questions

Kingdom: Within this issue of Kingdom we interview Pittsburgh Steeler Hines Ward, Superbowl MVP and all-around nice guy who won Dancing With the Stars.

Have you ever met Hines and how do you rate him as a player?

Arnold Palmer: He was one of the great football players of all time, a real hustler and a great guy.

K: How about as a dancer?

AP: Obviously, he’s very good at that. He won.

K: How are you as a dancer?

AP: As a dancer, I play good golf!

K: Tiger Woods had the worst nine holes of his pro career at the Memorial, a tournament he has won five times. Did you also go through any similar experiences on courses where you were normally very comfortable?

AP: From time to time, you’re prone to have a bad round and I have to assume he just got into a bad run and couldn’t pull it out as fast as he wanted to. Golfers everywhere know it can get frustrating trying to overcome a spell like that. Then I think he just got careless and he couldn’t play the way he’s used to. Has that ever happened to me?

Sure. I had a bad shot at Bellerive at the 1965 U.S. Open. I got tired and I couldn’t do anything to turn it around. You do everything you can think of to recover, but sometimes that solution becomes elusive.

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Mr. Palmer catches up with some paperwork in his Latrobe office with the help of his long-serving assistant Doc Giffin

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K: Matt Kuchar seems to have emerged as the steadiest player on the PGA Tour over the past few seasons.

What do you think is the secret to his success?

AP: I think he’s worked hard and been very diligent in improving his game. He got all his ducks in line and seems to be doing very well.

K: This year, we understand that you will once again be Honorary Chairman for the Mylan Classic and also honored at a dinner there on July 30. What is it about this event that entices you to be this involved?

AP: My grandson, Sam Saunders, is a regular participant in that tournament. It’s local and it’s hosted by my friends. That’s part of my incentive, as is the fact that it’s in Pittsburgh and I like to see a good tournament in town.

K: As you know, in the last issue we featured Winston University, a brand new University to qualify students to work in many different aspects of the golf industry. What do you think of this type of specialized curriculum that prepares students for a career in golf?

AP: I’ve read a little bit about Winston University and I think it’s a very good idea. If I get to Europe any time soon, I’ll get over there and have a look at the place.

K: Any plans on getting to Europe anytime soon?

AP: Not right now. Probably not this year. And I’m not making any plans. I’m at the age (83) where it’s unwise to buy green bananas, so don’t try and pin me down!

K: Do you have a favorite track?

AP: I like Indianapolis and the 500. I was grand marshal at Homestead-Miami Speedway. I enjoyed that.

And I like Atlanta Motor Speedway, too.

K: The 2013 Presidents Cup at Muirfield Village is almost upon us. How highly do you regard this event and would you make any changes to its format?

AP: No. I think it’s a great event and helps fill the schedule for international events that people really enjoy.

K: In this issue of Kingdom we have a feature about the round of golf you played with President Eisenhower at Merion. Are there any other rounds you played with Eisenhower that particularly stick in the memory?

AP: The one I played there was a heart benefit and we raised quite a bit of money for the Heart Fund, which was Ike’s favorite charity. And he, (comedian) Ray Bolger and Jimmy Demaret had a real fun deal that day. Ike was great. I have a scorecard on the wall from a round we played at Gettysburg C.C. where I shot a 64 and Ike had an 81.

“We should do all we can to support the survivors of soldiers killed or disabled by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” Eisenhower and Palmer raised a lot of money on the course for the Heart Fund

K: What do you see as the important qualities of the Folds of Honor golf initiative? Is there any place for it at Bay Hill?

AP: We should do all we can to support the survivors of soldiers killed or disabled by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m pleased that Major Dan Rooney, a war veteran fighter pilot who founded the organization, has involved golf in the Folds of Honor fund-raising and awareness programs. Major Rooney is an inspiring man. We will certainly do what we can to help.

K: How would you compare the great golf courses of North Carolina with the resort layouts of South Carolina?

AP: North Carolina is a very active golfing state. They are very excited about golf and tournament golf and all that happens there. They are certainly one of the top locations for avid golfers. South Carolina, on the other hand, is a more resort-oriented golf mecca. And they continue to build golf resorts and solicit more and more events to occupy their courses. I think both will continue to thrive.

K: Have you ever speed-tested or raced cars on a track?

AP: I’ve been grand marshal for a number of NASCAR races and I’m a fan, but I have not personally done any racing.

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Howdy Giles

“George H.W. Bush enjoyed playing golf. He played it very quickly. As a matter of fact, I think he played it too quickly”

Palmer and George H.W. Bush clearly enjoy each other’s company whenever they play together

K: When are you going to share with us your stories of what you and Ike talked about?

AP: Most of them are stories about things he liked to talk about. He was a very ardent golfer and he liked to hear golf stories. He was good at telling a good clean joke and liked ones that had something to do with golf.

He loved hearing my stories about what I played and how I felt when I hit certain shots. And he related some stories to me that I can’t repeat.

K: Those are the ones we all want to hear!

AP: I know. Everybody does! But I won’t repeat them because they are sort of private.

K: Did you talk much history with him?

AP: We talked about the war a little bit. He was particularly fond of Winston Churchill and as a matter of fact, he had some sort of unusual friendship with Josef Stalin. It wasn’t one he talked a lot about, but he did tell me one or two times that he found him to be a very interesting man.

K: Of all the Presidents you have golfed with, which one was the most naturally talented?

AP: George H.W. Bush enjoyed playing golf and he had fun playing the game. He played it very quickly. As a matter of fact, I think he played it too quickly. But

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that’s the way he enjoyed it. He enjoyed getting around the course, making shots and doing things that came naturally for him. My friend Gerry Ford enjoyed the game, but wasn’t gifted at it. He couldn’t play very well at all. I understand Jack Kennedy was a good golfer, but I never had the opportunity to find out.

K: I remember reading some archival material from October 1963 saying Kennedy had someone film him swinging a golf club with the intention of inviting you to the White House to give him some pointers. And the note said he wanted it done as soon as he got back from Dallas. Did you ever get to see that film?

AP: And that’s where history stepped in. We never got together.

K: That’s an incredible story. Golfing with other presidents has certainly enriched your life. Who else was decent?

AP: Bill Clinton could really hit it, but there was no telling which zip code the ball might land in. He was probably next in line as far as natural ability. I’ve played with him a number of times and he can zing it pretty good.

K: Last year you attended the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards and we

27

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Brandon Barrett / replaysports.net Palmer and his grandson Will Wears (centre) are looking forward to playing together again in the PNC Father Son Challenge in Orlando later this year

understand that your speech brought the house down. As an innovator yourself, why do you think entrepreneurship is so important and do you believe it can be taught and encouraged?

AP: Brought down the house? It didn’t seem that way to me. That was in Palm Springs. I told some golf stories.

The narrator was Brandel Chamblee. I like Brandel. As for teaching entrepreneurship, I do believe it can be taught. I think it’s important to the future.

K: What do you think about the possibility of several leading players suing the governing bodies over the outlawing of anchored putting strokes?

AP: I think it’s very short-sighted. I’m disappointed that they would even think about it. You have to have a ruling body and you have to have one set of rules to keep the game in the stature that it’s in and keep the game as great as it’s always been.

K: We had the chance to interview Mike Whan for this issue. He seems to be going great guns at the LPGA. Do you follow events on the LPGA Tour closely? Which of the players do you like to watch and how would you assess the quality of their play?

AP: I am very surprised at the high quality of the very good golfers there are on the LPGA Tour and just what great golfers the tour features. Suzann Pettersen is one of the stars, I think, of the LPGA. And there are so many very good players who are also destined to make their mark. She happens to be a member at Bay Hill and I get to see her hit shots a good bit and she’s just fantastic.

K: You must have been pleased to see the re-emergence of the PNC Father Son Challenge last year. Will you attend again this year and if you play have you thought about who you will play with?

AP: I will, certainly. My partner will likely be my grandson, Will Wears. He’s a very polite young man and a great player. I’m very proud of both him and his cousin, Sam Saunders.

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K: Why do you think the amateur game—as practiced by the likes of Bobby Jones, Bill Campbell and others who were household names—has largely disappeared?

Does it have to do with the money on tour?

AP: The money really has changed that and I’m sorry to see that. That was an era of golf that was really great, starting with Francis Ouimet and through the years there were so many great amateur golfers. Men like Charlie Coe, Dick Chapman, Frank Stranahan and, of course, Bobby Jones. All the money in professional golf has led to the downfall of amateur golf. Playing professionally has become very attractive to today’s amateurs. It seems like so many of them go to college just to sharpen their games up for the professionals.

The money’s just so big.

K: In a way, isn’t that all your fault?

AP: I hope so!

K: The classic amateur game seemed to add a bit of romance to golf. Would it be good for golf if the amateur game was a big deal again—or is it impossible now, with the various tours and money involved?

AP: Yes. I think everything has its cycle. I think there’s a chance we’ll see amateur golf become a bigger part of the game again. As the business world changes, the golf world changes and we’ll see amateur competition evolve, hopefully in a way that increases its importance.

K: When Bill Campbell was president of the USGA, he oversaw construction of a testing facility to evaluate the effects of technology on golf. Today, he still believes the ball goes too far in professional golf. Do you think this perspective—that courses are getting

“She [Suzann Pettersen] happens to be a member at Bay Hill and I get to see her hit shots a good bit. She’s just fantastic”

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too long and that the ball is going too far—is simply a matter of preference with your generation or do you believe that ball technology has severely impacted and changed the game itself?

AP: I don’t think we can control what is happening where technology is concerned. Technology, I’m sure, will continue to enhance the game of golf and enhance the way it is played. Having said that, I suppose we need to slow the ball down. One of the things we should be doing is to make a better ball that doesn’t go as far. The longer ball means newer courses have to get longer to keep up and existing courses have to adapt. That adds extra cost to the game and we need to keep the game affordable to ensure it’s always growing. It’s an expensive proposition.

K: Given the somewhat strong reaction from some players regarding the belly putter ruling, do you think it’s realistic that the USGA could force changes to deal with technology like, perhaps, standardizing the ball used by the pros to limit distance? Or would the blowback from today’s pros, who are accustomed to the long ball, be too much?

AP: As I said previously, one set of rules is absolutely essential to the well-being of golf. We set the rules and we stick with them throughout the game. I think it’s very important that everybody plays by the same rules.

The R&A and the USGA collaborate on the rules, as they should, and I believe they will continue to do so, making rules fair and uniform.

K: You’ve told us that weather—specifically the heat—is a reason you’ve been given as to why the Orlando area hasn’t hosted a Major, but Ohio (like Latrobe or Oakmont, PA) is hardly cool in summer. In fact, it can be miserably hot, as it was at Oakmont in 1994. What are other reasons you think Orlando (and Central Florida) might be missing out, and what can the area do to attract a Major?

From boom to bust and back to boom, Dubai is growing again

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AP: As time goes on I believe we’ll see more Majors go south. Florida and the southern region has so much appeal for golf, as does the Gulf Coast, the Gulf Shores, along with Texas, the Southwest, Arizona. Golf is spreading around the warm climates and people are not objecting to playing in these warmer temperatures. So, yes, I do think it’s possible we’ll see a Major at Bay Hill one of these days.

K: Donald Trump recently purchased land in Dubai that had been meant for a Tiger Woods-designed golf course. Do you see golf growing in that area or do you think the challenges in the Middle East—desert landscapes, economic disparities between rich and poor, relative isolation in terms of tour travel—make golf a tough sell in those regions?

AP: I think it’s always going to be a tough sell, but I see it getting more popular in places where they are using water in the desert. But the game’s bound to grow internationally in places like the Middle East. I believe having golf in the 2016 Olympics in Rio will really help elevate the game around the world.

K: Golf course development is going gangbusters in Cuba with new courses opening and under construction right now, but due to our political relationship with the country Americans aren’t getting in on the action.

Should Americans be building courses in Cuba and helping to shape the country’s golfing future? And if so, how would you suggest we get things started, considering the politics?

AP: I think we will see Americans involved in Cuban golf in years to come and I think Cubans will welcome outside influences to bring golf to the country, whether they are from Canada, Europe or the United States. I see Cuba flourishing in the golf industry in the years to come.

K: That’s all I have. Thank you, as always, Mr. Palmer, for such an engaging conversation. It is much appreciated.

AP: You’re certainly welcome.

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© 2013 Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC. Member SIPC. CRC680282 06/13

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L A t r S

outheast of Pittsburgh in some of the most beautiful country anywhere, its hardworking residents like their sports and they like their history. No matter who you are they will look you in the eye and firmly shake your hand—if you’ve earned it.

Welcoming, accessible and no-nonsense, it’s quintessentially American, it has a heart and a conscience, it’s given more to the world than most can imagine. It’s Arnold Palmer’s hometown. And really, what else do you need to know about Latrobe, Pennsylvania?

Words: Reade Tilley

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r o b e

Patrick Drickey / stonehousegolf.com

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Har ry Frye Photographer

Many of them are just as good as the guys who shoot for the big rags, even if their fields of play are smaller and their celebrities are high school quarterbacks. Sports photographers have always been hero-makers, and none more so than the snappers at any of the numerous local papers across the country who provide parents ample content for family scrapbooks. Occasionally, though, there’s a local boy or girl who really does have the goods, someone who leaves town and goes on to bigger things. This local hero might show up in the bigger papers, then the national sheets. He or she could even end up on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a global celebrity. In these rare cases, the small-town newspaper photographer becomes more than just a recorder of local goings-ons; he becomes a chronicler of history, someone responsible for a valuable archive that documents the beginnings of greatness. And more than just prints for proud parents, his photos are suddenly an important record for all of us, a source of future inspiration.

It’s rare for a photographer to end up in this situation, but it does happen—as it did with Latrobe native Harry Frye.

“I’d be out there at 6:30 or 7 o’clock in the morning, and sometimes he was right there and sometimes I had to wait a few minutes,” says Harry, who often photographed a young Arnold Palmer practicing golf before school in the mornings. “His mother had coffee ready for me; she was a great person.”

Harry was born in Latrobe in 1925, joined the Army right after he turned 18 and returned three years later to work as a photographer for the Latrobe Bulletin. Shooting Arnie was only part of his responsibilities as a sports photog, which also included capturing the Pittsburgh Steelers and Pirates during some of their best years. More than just a man with a camera, Frye’s knack for knowing when to take a picture—over a career that mostly predates autofocus and digital imagery—and his willingness to look for different angles yielded an archive of sports photos that are more than just a record of Arnie’s early life in golf; they’re also a collection of great images. Like most people who are good at their jobs, Harry started young.

“I was always interested in photography, from the time I was a little kid,” he remembers. “I found an old box camera in my grandmother’s attic, an old Brownie box camera, and they let me play with it. I got an old plug off a gooseneck lamp, built a little bracket, taped it on the side, figured out a way to synchronize the flashbulb and made a flash camera.”

A curious kid, Harry joined the Army and worked with radios for the 558 Automatic Weapon Battalion, an anti-aircraft outfit. Three years later, in February of 1946, he returned to Latrobe, bought a camera and started work at the Bulletin, where the sports editor liked a young local golfer named Arnold Palmer.

“Well, everybody liked him,” says Harry. “It was known back then that Arnie was a good golfer. Of course we didn’t know he was going to be the greatest.”

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Because the son of the Bulletin’s owner was a pilot, the paper had its own plane—rare for a small-town paper.

It allowed Harry and other reporters to travel to events like the Masters, which they did regularly to follow Palmer.

“A couple times when we were down at the Masters, there were a couple of golfers that needed a way to get to the next tournament and we flew them there,” he remembers.

More than just transport, the plane also provided a link to darkroom facilities and wire service offices, so that film could be processed and shipped back to Latrobe for publication in the next day’s edition.

“Back then most of our pictures were shot with the Speed Graphic, with 4x5 cameras,” Harry says, explaining that the large cameras used single sheets of film contained in holders that had to be inserted and removed for each shot. The image quality from the large negatives was amazing, but there were obvious drawbacks: “You had to carry dozens of holders, and that was heavy. Then we switched over to film packs: there were 12 sheets of film, you take a picture, pull the tab, and the film that was in the front folded around behind, so you could take 12 pictures before you had to put another one in.

“All that equipment was sort of heavy to carry, and the old Speed Graphic cameras were noisy—you knew doggone well you couldn’t take that picture until after the swing.”

In at least one case, the old cameras were blamed for a bad shot—whether or not they were guilty.

“Sammy Snead came up to me once, stuck his club right in my nose and said ‘You take one more picture like that you’re going to get this club up your %#$,’” remembers Harry, laughing. “I was 25 to 30 yards away from him, and he heard that shutter. I knew he had already swung, and my picture showed that the club had already been around so he couldn’t have heard the camera before he swung. But I guess I shook him up, and he shook me up.”

In schools of journalism, students are taught the difference between art photography and photojournalism.

For Harry, his relationship with the camera was intuitively spot-on for his profession.

“I think it’s more of a tool, for me,” he says. “It’s click!

Getting that moment exactly at the time it happens—and knowing what the moment is. It’s just like football, I think I have a lot of really great football stuff. I have stuff that nobody else can even come close to; because they missed it.

“I can remember one particular picture, [Pittsburgh Steeler QB] Terry Bradshaw threw a pass to [Lynn] Swann, and Bradshaw got knocked out. Everybody’s crowding around Bradshaw. I’m about 30 yards down the field from him and I thought, ‘I’m not going down there; what can you shoot?’ I look across the field and here’s Joe Green carrying Lynn Swann in his arms down the field. Swann had gotten knocked out as well and nobody was looking.

He was in the hospital for about a week to 10 days after that with a concussion, and here Joe Green’s carrying him across the field. Nobody else took that picture.”

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B o B F or d Golf Pro

He started working at Oakmont Country Club near Pittsburgh in 1973 during the U.S. Open. Today he’s the club’s head pro—as well as being the head pro at Seminole Country Club in Florida. It follows that Bob Ford is a very good golfer, but he’s also a tremendous gentleman. This latter fact was on display during a round at Latrobe Country Club in 1999, during which Ford picked up his ball, and raised the bar yet again for all of us.

“It was the Tri-State PGA pros against the West Pennsylvania amateurs: the Palmer Cup matches,” Ford explained, sitting down with Kingdom at Oakmont.

“Arnold was in the first group and I was in the second, right behind.

“Earlier that day, walking through the locker room with all of his memorabilia, I saw the scorecard of 60 on the wall there. I don’t know why, but I happened to see it that day and so I knew the number.”

In September of 1969, in a round that included two bogeys, Palmer carded a 60 and set the course record at Latrobe CC, the course on which he was born and raised. Ford knew this, but it wasn’t the first thing on his mind when he and his partner teed it up against a couple of friends.

“I think I birdied one of the first two holes,” Ford remembers. The third hole Arnold changed to a par 5, and I hit a horrendous second shot up in the trees, trying to hit it on the green. We’re looking and looking and looking, and finally one of the caddies sees it; he finds the ball in the hole. It had hit the trees, run down the hill and went in the hole, so it was a double eagle— which was the first one of my career. All of a sudden after three holes, I’m four under.

“And you know when you get off to a start like that, all of a sudden the hole looks like a bucket—and I filled it up.”

Ford and his partner closed out the opposition on No.13 or 14, Ford says, at which point he was told something he found to be a revelation: “I think I was 9 under at the time, and we closed ’em out and shook hands and I said, ‘Arnold’s in front of us, I think we should go in.’ But they said no, let’s keep playing, you’re going to break the course record.”

Here, some men might have paused and considered the enormity of potentially owning the course record at the King’s home course, but Ford didn’t blink.

“I said Arnold owns the course record—we’re going in, we’re done. I have no desire to do that. Frankly it never crossed my mind, the issue. But obviously people have made a bigger deal out of it than it is.”

As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette concluded of the round, “That’s all anyone needs to know about Bob Ford.”

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Arnold PAlmer’s neighbors

b

enedictine monks from bavaria came to latrobe, Pa., to begin their first educational foundation in the United states in 1846. From humble beginnings, saint Vincent has grown into one of the premier educational institutions in the United states. sponsored by saint Vincent Archabbey, a liberal arts and sciences college offers undergraduate and graduate education of the highest quality and a seminary offers preparation for the priesthood and graduate studies in theology. located adjacent to Arnold Palmer’s latrobe Country Club, Arnold Palmer regional Airport and the springhill suites by marriott, saint Vincent welcomes students and visitors from all over the world to its scenic campus and outstanding educational, cultural and recreational facilities including the Fred m. rogers Center, Winnie Palmer nature reserve, robert s. Carey Performing Arts Center and the sis and herman duprÊ science Pavilion. Plan a campus visit whenever you are in the neighborhood!

archabbey | college | seminary latrobe, Pa., Usa | 724-532-6600 | www.stvincent.edu

est.1920

nestled at the foothills of the allegheny mountains in western pennsylvania lies one of golf’s genuine american treasures.

Latrobe Country Club is much more than 18 wonderful holes of golf...

This is where Arnold Palmer and his love of golf was born.

Stay in one of our guest houses for an experience unlike any other in golf...

Arnold Palmer plays here and you can, too.

(724) 539-8585 | LatrobeCountryClub.com © 2012 Latrobe Country Club All rights reserved. Arnold Palmer® and the “Umbrella” Logo® are registered trademarks owned by Arnold Palmer Enterprises, Inc.

Sai nt V i ncent College

Looking over from the intersection of State Road 981 and Highway 30 in Latrobe, the basilica of Saint Vincent College stands out against the sky, giving one pause. Like a medieval castle overlooking the town, the college is a proper institution in Latrobe. The kind of structure around which a town can rally, and of which it can be proud. Today surrounded by more development and traffic that it might have imagined when it was founded in 1846, the college’s presence may be subtle, but it is profound. Working closely with various councils and associations in the city, the Latrobe Hospital, and the community at large, Saint Vincent College is a vital part of life in Latrobe, enjoying as much support as it gives to its longtime home.

“It wasn’t always so,” says Br. Norman Hipps, O.S.B., President of Saint Vincent College. “Initially the City of Latrobe was largely Presbyterian and we were ‘the Catholics on the hill.’”

Of course it’s different now, he explains. Things began to change in the 1960s when the chair of the religious studies department hired a Presbyterian minister from town as an adjunct faculty member. That, a strong relationship with Latrobe Hospital and a friendship with one of the town’s favorite sons, Fred Rogers, all helped the college and the city grow to be better acquainted, yielding the strong relationship enjoyed today.

Founded in 1846 by Archabbot Wimmer as the Saint Vincent Archabbey and College, the college is solidly rooted in the Bendictine tradition. This strong self-awareness allows it to offer its students a blueprint for living in addition to its rigorous academic curriculum, but it also helps to maintain Saint Vincent as a steadfast pillar of the

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community at large, serving Latrobe by its mere presence in some ways, as a point of reflection not available to towns without a strong, spiritual presence.

“Certainly as a place of worship and a place of spiritual nourishment,” says Br. Hipps. “Whether that’s participating in the parish mass here or coming to a wedding or going to a concert of sacred music, yes, I think we do fulfill part of that.”

Public resources of particular note include the Winnie Palmer Nature Reserve and the Fred Rogers Center. The former is as much a tribute to Mr. Palmer’s late first wife as it is a testament to her love for nature, 50 acres of stunning land with an education center housed in an old barn. The Fred Rogers Center is an archive of the late children’s television presenter’s writings and media works and a learning center that funds studies and work on children’s media.

There are spiritual outreach programs, educational resources and numerous professional associations shared between the college and the City of Latrobe, including with the Kennametal company, which has long been a supporter of Saint Vincent College. The Pittsburgh Steelers practice here, the college’s graduates work and live here, and the top theater program is a source of tremendous entertainment for area residents. If the staff of the college and its attendant abbey were once the “Catholics on the hill,” today they are an integral part of Latrobe, with the college itself a key part of town life.

As Br. Hipps has it, “I think if you talk to the people in Latrobe, even if they’ve not been on campus, they’ve driven by at night and seen the basilica lit, I think that people will talk with pride about the presence of Saint Vincent in their community.”

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Fr ed r oger S Television Host

A father figure and grandfather figure to children everywhere, and perhaps the only one that many of them had, Fred Rogers was the kind face of the man all fathers and grandfathers should aspire to be. Caring, loving and imaginative in the best ways, the Latrobe native celebrated creativity and beauty in life, bringing a cast of vibrant characters and wondrous adventures to his viewers every week on the celebrated Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, which aired from February of 1968 to August of 2001, primarily on PBS. More than just another kids’ show, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood demonstrated that television could be an effective medium for communicating important ideas and information to children, not just a means of entertainment.

In episodes such as The Death of a Pet and Mr. Rogers Talks About Divorce, Rogers never hesitated to tackle the weighty issues with which children must contend, broaching the larger subjects of death and loss in ways to which children could relate. In doing so, he displayed a responsibility to his viewers that underlined the responsibility he felt to the greater world at large. Beyond merely outlining behaviors as “good” or “bad,” Rogers challenged children to look for more from their world, teaching them to think and to reason in ways other children’s programming rarely appraoched. As an example of his perspective: in outlining problems he had with the word “disabilities” Rogers wrote: “it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted.

But what of people who can’t feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their feelings in constructive ways?

What of people who aren’t able to form close and strong relationships? And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities.”

Rogers discussed difficult issues with his preschool viewers because he knew other adults couldn’t or wouldn’t always do so, and in this he gave many children their first

taste of something they’d never before had from an adult: respect. His show was specifically designed for its preschool audience—it wasn’t as concerned with appealing to parents—and so the “Neighborhood” and the conversations it presented belonged to the children who watched it. In this, it likely provided the most healthy relationship with an adult that many of its viewers had, generating as much love for Rogers as he gave back to the world.

Writer Tom Junod profiled Rogers for Esquire in 1998, and the two ended up becoming friends—not uncommon when it came to Rogers, according to Junod. In a eulogy following Rogers’ death in 2003, the Esquire contributor wrote, “He was not only the kindest man I’d ever met but also one of the most fiercely disciplined, to the degree that he saw nothing but the good in other human beings. When he saw the good in me, he fixed on it, and there was a never a moment in which he didn’t try to make me live up to it, by word, or by example, or, most often, by prayer.”

Rogers reportedly prayed every morning for two hours, asking God to bless and to help the people he loved—which seemed to be everyone. His writings, like his show, reflected his views on universal acceptance and strong moral conviction.

“When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch,” Rogers once wrote.

“That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.”

For those who were fortunate enough to spend part of their childhood in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, Fred Rogers was a good friend you could trust. He was a safe introduction to the “grownup” world, and he had a dramatic impact on the universe of children’s television.

But his greatest gift to all of us transcended the medium and even the message. More than anything, for a half an hour once a week, he brought love.

The wonderful world of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood

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B anana S pli t Dessert In 1904, a soda fountain owner in Boston offered an ice cream sundae with an unpeeled banana on the side. He was on the right track, but the menu item was hardly a “recipe,” really, and it certainly wasn’t a banana split—not unless a bottle of root beer next to a bowl of ice cream is a float. Anyway, that same year, the banana split had already been invented by a 23-year-old Latrobe resident named David Evans Strickler. All of this should be common knowledge to those who care—it certainly is to ice-creamconcerned Latrobe residents—but of course things are rarely that easy. In addition to Boston’s rather feeble claim to being the birthplace of the banana split, Wilmington, Ohio, long ago threw down a spoon, claiming it was their man Ernest Hazard who first bisected the yellow fruit (which can also be argued to be an herb) and covered it with ice cream. After years of frozen debate, clearly it was time for the authorities to weigh in—and so they did.

This April, residents of Latrobe received some sweet news when the Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission backed their claim as the birthplace of the banana split.

For some city officials, it was delicious vindication.

“Wilmington, Ohio, thinks they invented it so vehemently,” Jarod Trunzo told the Pittsburgh PostGazette, following the announcement of Latrobe’s official status. A community engagement and sustainability assistant to Latrobe’s city manager, Trunzo helped Latrobe Mayor Barbara Griffin prepare the 20-page application for official recognition, which was then submitted to the Museum Commission. After reviewing the application and consulting with the National Ice Cream Retailers Association and “other authoritative sources,” the Gazette reported, the state commission approved a historical marker commemorating the banana split’s invention to be placed in Latrobe on the site of the original Tassell Pharmacy at 805 Ligonier Street, where Strickler is said to have first created his masterpiece while working as an apprentice pharmacist. Sold for 10 cents—twice the price of a typical sundae—the banana split nonetheless became a hit with students, specifically those from the town’s Saint Vincent College. That popularity ultimately helped secure Latrobe’s claim to the banana split as mention of the dessert in a 1904 letter from a Saint Vincent student was key to establishing the date of creation as coming three years before Wilmington’s.

For its part, the Ohio city’s concoction was the result of a contest at a restaurant owned by Hazard. Hazard challenged his employees to invent a new treat that would attract students from nearby Wilmington College. When none did, Hazard himself split a banana and the rest, as they say, would have been history—had it not been 1907. “[Wilmington] have a big banana split festival and we shoot emails back and forth with them. It’s a fun, good-natured rivalry, but there’s no question that Latrobe absolutely is the birthplace,” insisted Trunzo. “The research is deductive, not emotional.”

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A historical marker will be placed in Latrobe this summer at the site of the former pharmacy, and there are celebrations planned around the dedication. It’s just one more piece of Latrobe lore, Trunzo said, forgetting at least one other sizeable claim to fame and native son in his comments to the Gazette: “We want to make Latrobe the safest, most walkable family-oriented town in Western Pennsylvania,” he said.

“Talking about our history and getting a marker aligned with that, along with being the birthplace of Fred Rogers and professional football*… makes us a good place for people to visit.” *The football claim is in dispute, and Latrobe is also the birthplace of Arnold Palmer.

Banana Split Split a banana lengthwise in a long dish Add scoops of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice creams Pour on pineapple, chocolate and strawberry syrups Cover the whole thing with whipped cream and chopped nuts... and don’t forget the maraschino cherries

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International Membership at the K Club The K Club in Straffan, Co. Kildare is a truly magnificent retreat. Set in 550 acres of manicured gardens, walks and lush Irish countryside, with the River Liffey running through the grounds. The hotel, Irelands first Five AA Red Star property, is luxurious in its furnishings, meticulous in its decoration. As an international member you will enjoy access to a wide range of first class facilities & many additional privileges.

l Full playing rights on The K Clubs two Arnold Palmer designed championship golf courses. l Up to 3 accompanied or 4 unaccompanied guests per day at members preferred rates.

l Full use of our two practice facilities including driving ranges, chipping areas and putting greens with complimentary range balls. l River and lake fishing within the estate.

Accommodation for 3 nights per annum in the most luxurious of surroundings. l Full use of our state of the art K Spa, complete with swimming pool, gymnasium, sauna, steam room & outdoor hot tub. l

Individual Membership: $25,000 for a 25 year term

The K Club

Straffan, County Kildare, Ireland HHHHH For more information contact our Director of Membership Sales, Sharon Smurfit Telephone: +353 1 6017200

Email: sales@kclub.ie

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clevelandclinic.org/innovations Same-day appointments available.

1.866.668.8571

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It isn’t getting any cooler down there, down in Georgia. Southern summers will make you sweat, no question. But he didn’t care—he probably even liked the sweat. He certainly liked the hard work, no question about that either, the pile of muscle running patterns, swinging a bat, shooting hoops, working hard. African-American kid. Or was he Korean? Or was it both? Doesn’t matter. Didn’t matter to him, didn’t matter to his teammates, especially when they were winning—and if he was playing, they were winning. And if it did matter to a few people back then, back when he was still in school, well, it probably doesn’t matter to them any more—or at least you won’t hear about it, certainly not when he’s around. People tend to shut up in the face of greatness, and when it comes to Hines Ward there’s an awful lot of greatness to behold.

Never mind the fact that the guy could whup your butt.

“Even when I play my son in video games, I try to whup his butt!” says Ward, laughing. “That’s just the kind of competitive I am.”

The kind of competitive he is helped Hines Ward to carve out an unbelievable NFL record over 14 seasons as a wide receiver (and a devastating blocker) with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Selected in the third round of the 1998 NFL Draft, he became the Steelers’ all-time leader in receptions, receiving yardage and touchdown receptions.

From 2001 to 2004, #86 had four consecutive 1,000-yard seasons (the only Steeler ever to do so) and was named to four Pro Bowl teams. Twice a Super Bowl champion, he took MVP honors in 2006’s Super Bowl XL. And on New Year’s Day in 2012, with his last catch ever as a Steeler, Ward became only the eighth player in NFL history to

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reach 1,000 career receptions. The year before, he’d won Season 12 of Dancing With the Stars, scoring the highest marks in the Tango, Salsa and Quickstep dances, among others. Did we mention this guy is competitive?

Since hanging up his cleats in 2012, “The happiest man in football,” as President Barack Obama called him, has taken a few turns in Hollywood, notably in the film The Dark Knight Rises (as a football player) and in the TV show Walking Dead (as a zombie). Ward and his mile-wide, seemingly omnipresent smile also started working as a commentator for NBC on Football Night in America, along with making other appearances. Right now

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he’s training for an Iron Man Triathlon, checking in on his Helping Hands charity and making time for family. One thing he’s not doing a lot of is golfing.

“Oh man, this year I’ve only been out three times maybe,” Ward told us from his home state of Georgia. “I’ve been training for the Iron Man, working with NBC… I really don’t get out that much.”

Still, he likes the game, even if he shares a few of its frustrations with other former NFL stars. When asked if he agreed with Bo Jackson, who told Kingdom that golf was harder than football, Ward didn’t hesitate.

“Oh yeah, golf is more mental than anything. And it hurts as a pro [football] guy, being a running back or a linebacker, because you just have the drive to kill it every time. And that works against people who are strong, guys that have so much testosterone.”

But the dancing helps with the graceful bits, yeah?

“A little bit,” Ward says, laughing again. “It helps more with the footwork; I don’t know about my backswing. I’ve got a bad habit of swinging it like a baseball bat. I’ve been trying to keep my tempo slow, and every now and then I get hold of a great drive and get it out there, but I can’t find that great stroke again to repeat it.”

That’s a common quest for the rest of us as well, but frustration with the game must be an unfamiliar feeling to a guy for whom sports— and especially football—came naturally.

“I always played and loved all the other sports: basketball, baseball, football… All those sports came easy to me,” Ward says, explaining that he was introduced to golf by a friend of his while he attended Forest Park High School, where he excelled in athletics.

“I lo v e challenges, so I picked up a golf club, swung three times, and missed the ball.

I was probably 17.”

If golf didn’t come easy, other sports did. At the end of his senior year, he was drafted by Major League Baseball’s Florida Marlins, who offered him a bonus to sign. With a first love of football, though, Ward elected to head to college and play for his hometown Georgia Bulldogs. There, he earned a pile of awards and accolades as both a receiver and as a starting quarterback, eventually becoming the school’s second all-time receiver with 144 receptions and 3,870 yards (behind Herschel Walker).

Today, so many years later, he’s back to golf (if only a little). There’s the odd game with friends and there have been a number of appearances in charity golf events (like the one hosted by former Steeler Antwaan Randle El), but like many of us Ward finds that his schedule often gets in the way of real success on course.

“One thing about golf is you have to play all the time,” he explains. “My time is very limited, so to be on the golf course is tough.”

One of the things that takes at least some of his time is his charity, the Hines Ward Helping Hands Foundation. The U.S. arm of his Foundation focuses on improving literacy and life skills among children and specifically a d d r e s s e s underprivileged youth in the Pittsburgh and Atlanta areas. As important as that is, the Foundation’s Korean arm is shining a light on something not often discussed, the issue of biracial discrimination, especially as it occurs among the children of Korea.

Ward, who was born in 1976 in Seoul to a Korean mother and an African-American father, knows what he’s talking about. Raised by his mother in the Atlanta area, Hines had to contend with discrimination. Still an area resident, he says it hasn’t disappeared.

“It was something I had to endure,” he says.

“Had to deal with

“YOU JUST HAVE THE DRIVE TO KILL THE GOLF BALL, AND THAT WORKS AGAINST PEOPLE WHO ARE STRONG”

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Ward’s life off the gridiron is rich, with media work and a great charity

An NFL legend, Ward isn’t afraid to have fun—as he showed in winning DWTS

being teased, being an outcast, being bullied because I was different… And bullying is kind of a big thing now, a lot of elementary schools are dealing with it. My son, he’s dealing with it. He’s a multi-racial kid, African-American, Korean and white. I try to instill in him that it’s ok to be different, tell him don’t get caught up in all the teasing.”

Perhaps no one could have anticipated the Korean community’s reaction to Ward’s success, but with his numerous accomplishments, including being the first Korean-American to be named a Super Bowl MVP, he’s now a celebrity and an inspiration among Koreans. In recent years, he’s taken several trips to Korea to speak out against the country’s discriminatory practices and to pledge his time and support to biracial children there. Speaking to kids there, he offered the following words of hope: “If the country can accept me for who I am and accept me for being Korean, I’m pretty sure that this country can change and accept you for who you are.”

Discrimination certainly won’t be the first major fight Ward has taken on, and it’s not the first time he’s demonstrated leadership with those whom others might not consider to be contenders. But his charity may be fighting one of the most important battles he’s faced.

There’s little question the man who set the football world on fire for 14 years, and who’s now really beginning to gain momentum in his life off the gridiron, is going to keep on making a difference. After all, like his smile, winning is just part of who he is.

“I’ve always wanted to win, that’s the competitive nature in me,” Ward says. “As a child in elementary school, I don’t know where it came from, but when we picked teams I tried to pick the guys who weren’t as talented. The kids that usually weren’t picked first, I picked them first.

And as the whole team, we found a way to win.

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“The camaraderie that inspired… Some of the kids who got picked last, you see them being part of the winning team, and you see their confidence grow. I always wanted to be on that team where people say ‘they don’t have a chance to win.’ There’s nothing more gratifying than to prove all the naysayers wrong.”

To find out how you can help the Hines Ward Helping Hands Foundation, visit hinesward.com.

HINES WARD Position: WR Height: 6’ Weight: 205 Born: 03/08/1976 College: Georgia NFL Experience: 14 years • Four-time consecutive NFL Pro Bowl selection (2001-04) • Two-time All-NFL team selections (2002-03) • Super Bowl XL MVP • Two Super Bowl Rings (XL and XLIII) • Four consecutive 1,000-yard seasons (2001-04) • Six 1,000 yard seasons overall (2001-04, 2008-09) • Steelers franchise record holder for receptions (1,000), receiving touchdowns (85), and receiving yardage (12,083) • Ranked 8th all-time in receptions (1,000) and 18th all-time in receiving yards (12,083) among NFL receivers

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e’re a third of the way through our round and by now should have some indication of how well we’re playing. As with the 6th hole, the 7th invariably presents an opportunity to improve one’s score, though this isn’t always guaranteed. Some of the most memorable holes in golf appear as the 7th on the card of their particular course. Continuing our series of fantasy layouts consisting of leading holes of a certain number, Kingdom has put together 18 of the finest 7th holes to be found throughout the game—some extremely familiar, others less so but of undiminished merit

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Patrick Drickey / stonehousegolf.com

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# Par-4, 462 yards

Par-4, 429 yards

TORREY PINES (South), San Diego, California

PINEHURST RESORT (No.2), Pinehurst, North Carolina

Torrey Pines, a 36-hole public facility owned by the city of San Diego that stretches out on coastal cliffs with beguiling views of the Pacific Ocean, has hosted the early-season Farmers Insurance Open on the PGA Tour since the late 1960s. Five years ago, the South Course also staged the U.S. Open that Tiger Woods famously won whilst hobbling around on a broken leg. Both the North and South were designed by William F. Bell, Jr. in 1957, but the South, which is almost 800 yards longer from the back tees, was significantly reshaped by Rees Jones in 2002. This is the ideal way to start our round—a hole that’s not too difficult but should still command the player’s attention. This leftto-right dogleg has bunkers on either side of the fairway at driving distance. The second shot is then played to a diagonal-shaped (front left to back right) green guarded by further traps on both sides.

Pinehurst Resort, founded by soda-fountain manufacturer James Tufts in 1895, is one of American golf’s most refreshing hideaways. The No.2 course, Donald Ross’s pride and joy which opened in 1907, will stage next year’s U.S. Open. It has recently undergone some renovations by Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore, leading to broader fairways, firmer and faster playing surfaces, reshaped bunkers and, most notably, an absence of rough. The 7th is a sharp, leftto-right dogleg. A cluster of bunkers on the right corner, some as far as 275 yards out, can grab tee shots that are pushed or leaking away. Most players will try to find the heart of the fairway beyond those traps, leaving a short-iron into a green sloped from back to front, though longer hitters may be tempted to cut the corner to get closer to the green.

The putting surface is well protected by one deep bunker on the right and two smaller ones on the front left.

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Par-3, 214 yards

NIRWANA BALI, Bali, Indonesia With dramatic ocean views and an undulating, lush landscape, Nirwana Bali offers a spectacular challenge for golfers of all skill levels and a feast of kaleidoscopic opportunities for photographers. Designed by Australia’s two-time [British] Open champion Greg Norman in 1997, it wends through valleys, across rice paddies, over inlets, beside beaches, along cliff tops and past the sacred Hindu temple of Tanah Lot (which can be seen to the left of the green in the picture above). The 7th hole, played across an inlet from a tee box jutting into the ocean to a putting surface mounted on a vine-draped cliff, is similar to the 3rd at Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii, even though the latter was designed by a different architect (Robert Trent Jones, Sr.) in a different era (1964). “While keeping this site’s natural features, we have created some of golf’s most dramatic holes,” Norman explains. “The 7th is especially challenging, requiring the golfer to hit a mid-iron from the cliffside tee across a piece of the ocean to a scenic and wellguarded green.”

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Par-5, 562 yards

HAZELTINE NATIONAL, Chaska, Minnesota Originally designed by Robert Trent Jones, Sr. in 1962, Hazeltine National, an unpopular venue for the 1970 U.S. Open, underwent a considerable facelift at the hands of Jones’ son Rees prior to the 2002 PGA Championship won by Rich Beem.

The shortest of the par-5s at Hazeltine, the 7th was lengthened by 24 yards by Rees Jones and its tee was moved to the left to soften the impact of the previously sharp left-to-right dogleg. However, the 7th presents a variety of options. In 2002, most players went for the green in two when the hole played at 543 yards. That is still a dicey strategy since the pond to the front left prevents easy access and the green can be hard to hold if it is downwind. A different course of action was taken

by Justin Leonard: he laid up four times and made four birdies on the strength of his wedge play.

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Par-3, 158 yards

OAK HILL COUNTRY CLUB (East), Rochester, New York

TPC RIVER’S BEND, Maineville, Ohio

In 1926, Donald Ross created a course that has since hosted three U.S. Opens, two PGA Championships and the 1995 Ryder Cup. Oak Hill, venue for this year’s PGA Championship, has many great holes, but few as challenging as the 7th. The recent addition of 30 yards means it is now a brute, with a partly blind tee shot to perhaps the narrowest fairway on the course. A creek runs down the right before crossing the fairway at 350 yards. The point where it crosses can’t be reached, but where it starts to turn from right to left certainly can, so a drawn tee shot is required. A push runs out of room and ends up wet. Also, a huge willow hangs over the creek, blocking any approach shot from too far right.

The green—22 yards deep and sloping from back to front— is a tough target, and a tree front right is also a threat.

Accuracy, thus, is of prime importance.

This Arnold Palmer-designed course, 25 miles northeast of Cincinnati, opened for play in 2001 to universal acclaim. It was the venue for the Kroger Classic on the Champions Tour from 2002-04 and since 2010 it has hosted the Chiquita Classic on the Web.com Tour. Crafted to blend with its surroundings on a hillside overlooking Little Miami River, the course meanders through corridors of mature hardwoods and whispering creeks.

Winding playing routes, picturesque waterfalls and gentle elevation changes create a stunning backdrop for a memorable test of golf. The design of the course preserves natural habitats and serves as a refuge for numerous wildlife species, so it’s no surprise that it’s earned recognition as an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary. Sure to test the mettle of even the most accomplished golfers, this beautiful par-3 features a forced carry over water from an elevated tee. The shallow green is guarded by H2O in front and two raised bunkers at the back.

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Patrick Drickey / stonehousegolf.com

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Par-4, 430 yards

THE K CLUB (Palmer Ryder Cup), Co. Kildare, Ireland The Palmer Course opened in 1991 and was toughened up before the 2006 Ryder Cup. Michael’s Favourite, which presumably meets with the express approval of The K Club’s owner Dr. Michael Smurfit, is its most intimidating hole.

Swirling winds, seemingly ever-present here, mean that avoiding the water flanking both sides of the fairway and virtually surrounding the green is a major challenge. The best advice is to take dead aim and play positively because anything slightly mishit is surely destined for an aquatic grave. Indeed if your mind wanders, all you will see is water. Tom Lehman, the 2006 U.S. Ryder Cup captain, says: “All the trees on the left are now grown up so there’s no way to miss left. There’s also no way to miss right either because of the creek. You have to hit a good drive, a good second, and the green is no piece of cake either with a slope in the middle.”

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Patrick Drickey / stonehousegolf.com

Par-4, 283 yards

Par-5, 623 yards

SAND HILLS, Mullen, Nebraska This remote location—Mullen (population: 497) is five hours’ drive from the nearest major city (Denver, Colorado)—is not an obvious place to build a championship course. But its isolation, combined with wind-tossed dunes, rampant heather and rolling elevation changes, worked in the favor of Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore who identified 130 possible holes when they started working on the site in 1991. The holes they did create, with minimum earth movement, roam across the course, not as an intrusion but almost as if they had been there forever. The 7th, blending superbly into the landscape, is an outstanding short par-4. Big hitters rate their chances from the tee, but the ever-present Nebraska wind tilts the risk-reward ratio distinctly towards disaster. The tiny green is protected at the front on both sides by mounds of heather, thick grass and sand, but the lay-up into the fairway is also fraught with multiple-trap dangers.

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BUTLER NATIONAL, Oakbrook, Illinois

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From 1974-90, the exclusive home of the prestigious Western Open was in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook at Butler National Golf Club, founded by local entrepreneur Paul Butler and designed by George Fazio, along with his nephew Tom. Butler National, which opened for play in the early 1970s, is mostly flat with tree-lined fairways, plenty of water and magnificent scenery, but it doesn’t get any prettier or tougher than at this gigantic par-5. The 7th hole is a severe dogleg right with the Salt Creek running all the way along the right side from the tee to around the back of the green. Both the drive and the second shot should be kept down the left side of the fairway, and the latter needs to avoid the giant willow tree that sits around 130 yards short of the green on the right. The third shot is then played to a green protected by bunkers both right and left. Par here is definitely nothing to be sneezed at.

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Patrick Drickey / stonehousegolf.com

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Par-3, 107 yards

PEBBLE BEACH GOLF LINKS, Monterey, California

One of the shortest holes in golf, the downhill 7th at Pebble Beach is also one of the game’s greatest holes. Viewed annually during the early-season AT&T National Pro-Am, not to mention the five U.S. Opens that have been staged over this enchantingly rugged piece of Californian coastline, it might seem this hole is the ultimate breather for tour pros after the rigors of the long, cliff-top 6th. Nothing could be further from the truth. Standing on the tee, the roar of the pounding surf and crashing waves of Monterey Bay behind and to the right of the tiniest of greens (only 24 feet wide and surrounded by five bunkers) is intimidating to say the least. Club selection is predicated by the strength of the wind so the objective should be to knock down a short-iron and keep the ball from ballooning. The safe play is to aim at the middle of the green, and keep your fingers crossed!

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Par-5, 597 yards

WANNAMOISETT COUNTRY CLUB, Rumford, Rhode Island

EKWANOK COUNTRY CLUB, Manchester, Vermont

In 1916, Donald Ross ushered this rustic parkland layout into the 20th century. “This is the best layout I ever made,” the man who created Seminole and Pinehurst No.2 as well as Oak Hill opined. “A fine course on 100 acres of land— no congestion, fine variety and excellent golf.” The 7th proves that holes needn’t be long to challenge even the best players. Ross skillfully used the spine down a rolling, plateau fairway to enforce a cautious route between six awkward bunkers. A sandy outcome from the tee almost guarantees a bogey, but even a drive that sticks in the short grass is no gimme for par. The green, with traps short right, short left and behind, is deceptively large but actually quite a small target because it falls away both front and back.

This is a classic illustration of why it takes more nerve to attack a hole with danger beyond than going after a pin just over a hazard.

Designed by Walter Travis and opened in 1899, Ekwanok Country Club played host to the 1914 U.S. Amateur Championship when Francis Ouimet beat Jerome D. Travers in the final, 6&5. Recently, the club restored some of the original bunkers and greens that had either eroded or fallen by the wayside. The most famous hole on the course, perhaps throughout the whole of New England, is the three-shot 7th, called ‘Saddleback.’ The teeing area features mist-covered mountains in the background and a rough-covered hill that bisects the fairway 300 yards from the tee and forces even the longer hitters to lay up. Considering the era during which the course was built, this is an extremely long hole, so the second shot is also often a lay-up, avoiding a pair of bunkers to the left of the landing area. The third shot is to a slightly elevated green protected by sand to the left and a thicklywooded slope to the rear and right.

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Patrick Drickey / stonehousegolf.com

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Par-3, 214 yards

WHISTLING STRAITS (Straits), Kohler, Wisconsin Within two years of opening, the Pete Dye-designed Straits Course staged the 2004 PGA Championship, and six years later it was similarly honored by the PGA of America. The year’s fourth Major will again return in 2015, and five years after that the Straits will play host to the Ryder Cup. Named ‘Shipwreck,’ this par-3 hugs the Lake Michigan shoreline to the right, so keeping dry is of paramount importance. There’s no need to try to carry across the water, and a bunker is wedged between the green and the man-made beach to catch anything that drifts slightly astray. Missing the green left means you’re above ground but not necessarily safe. Typically for the Straits, the hillock to the left of the green is layered with bunkers. These leave an awkward splash shot straight down towards the water. Owner Herb Kohler’s ‘smart’ advice is that “laying up short for a chip shot is not a bad play.”

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Par-4, 405 yards

TPC SAWGRASS (Stadium), Ponte Vedra, Florida

ROYAL TROON (Old), Ayrshire, Scotland

Home to the prestigious Players Championship since 1982, the Pete Dye-designed Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass is not long by modern tour standards but its ubiquitous water hazards can be fiendishly threatening, especially if a strong breeze is blowing in off the Atlantic Ocean. The 7th generally plays into the wind and has one of the most difficult greens to hit on the course. The fairway is not much easier to locate either as the tee shot has to cross both the water and waste bunker that continue down the left, while any bail-out to the right brings a cluster of three traps into play. The trees jutting into the elbow of the dogleg right can hinder the line of the approach to a smallish green that runs diagonally from front left to back right and is guarded on either side by yet more water and sand. Recently, the back-right bunker was removed in favor of a chipping area.

The 7th hole on the Old Course, scene of Arnold Palmer’s victory in the 1962 [British] Open, is named Tel-El-Kebir after a battle fought in 1882 between the British and Egyptian armies near the city of Alexandria. The first five holes were laid out by local enthusiasts four years earlier, but the full 18 wasn’t completed until after the battle, which the British won to secure their right of way through the Suez Canal. The 7th must have acquired its name because it’s quite a battle to play. From an elevated tee, it doglegs sharply to the right around a sand hill and bunker set into the angle of the dogleg, though anyone who hooks the ball is likely to find the bunkers along the left side of the fairway.

The second shot, usually with a lofted iron, should carry over a slight gully to a well-trapped green between two imposing sand hills and with a lot of trouble over the back.

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Par-3, 179 yards

EL RINCON, Bogota, Colombia In 1963, a group of eight Colombian businessmen hired Trent Jones, Sr. to build a course in the middle of the Andes to the west of the Bogota River. Half a century later, El Rincon, dotted with spruce and pine trees, eucalyptus groves and numerous water hazards, is a worthy testament to Jones’ design skills. The 7th, which plays shorter than its yardage because the course sits one and a half miles above sea level, is a test of accuracy and precision. A lake stretches all the way from the tee to the green, so a full carry is required to get home. The teeing area is large and, depending on where the boxes are placed, offers several different views of a green which is supported by a brickstone wall and surrounded on its other three sides by bunkers. Following winter floods that damaged the hole in 1980, Jones redesigned it for that year’s World Cup of Golf.

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Par-4, 486 yards

RITZ CARLTON DOVE MOUNTAIN (Saguaro), Tucson, Arizona Jack Nicklaus took advantage of this Sonoran Desert setting just outside Tucson to integrate both strategy and variety into his signature-design course. Nicklaus created 27 holes that blend the noble, indigenous saguaros—eccentriclooking cactus trees that can grow as high as 60 feet—into the backdrop of the surrounding Tortolita Mountains. This luxury resort course, which has elevation levels ranging from 2,300 to 3,200 feet, can challenge even the most seasoned, and fittest, professional. Host to the annual WGCAccenture Match Play Championship each February since 2009, the combined challenge posed by the Saguaro and Tortolita 9-hole loops requires inspired and creative shots, executed with precision. The 7th is a long, uphill, left-toright dogleg with a wide fairway that is guarded on its right corner by a bunker 60 yards long. A deep “Black Hole” bunker fronts the elevated green, which slopes sharply towards the front, from left to right.

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Par-5, 575 yards David Cannon/Getty Images

AA SAINT-OMER (Val), Lumbres, France

Anyone standing in the hilltop clubhouse at this course in northeast France, a few miles inland from Calais and Boulogne, will be immediately impressed by the view across the valley of the Aa River that stretches as far as the eye can see. Designed by the late Dutch course designer Johan Dudok van Heel in 1990, this undulating, 27-hole layout ambles pleasingly through woodland and occasionally breaks out into more open terrain. It also hosts the annual Najeti Hotel & Golf Open on the European Tour each June, an event that often takes place the same week as the U.S. Open. The 7th, the longest hole on the course, runs past undergrowth that in spring is full of the blue, yellow, white and purple of periwinkles, cowslips, violets, anemones and hyacinths, and may even deliver a couple of stags near the green. On its day, this mesmerizing hole is the perfect picture postcard for golf in France—instantly charming but deceptively difficult.

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Patrick Drickey / stonehousegolf.com

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EYES FORWARD When Michael Whan stepped in as commissioner at the LPGA nearly four years ago, the ship needed righting. Now in smoother waters, he tells Kingdom about customer service, the Olympics and why women’s golf has never really been in trouble...

T

he Ladies Professional Golf Association has been many things over its 64 years: a champion for women’s rights, a multinational pioneer, and a source of some excellent, if underappreciated, golf. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing.

When current LPGA Commissioner Michael Whan came aboard in October 2009, the tour was listing due to an imploding economy and questionable leadership. Down from 34 events in 2008, the 2010 schedule showed only 24 official tournaments. Revenues and player morale were dropping fast despite a roster that included a still-active Lorena Ochoa and a cast of newer stars like Paula Creamer, Morgan Pressel and Yani Tseng. Golfweek’s Beth Ann Baldry captured the situation in July 2009 when she called the LPGA “a floundering tour with flourishing talent.”

Whan & Co. seem to be have put those days behind

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them. New media strategies and an emphasis on customer service can be credited for a stronger tour calendar, improved TV ratings and more opportunities for players overall. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the quality of the golf—the one thing Whan didn’t need to fix when he took the job.

“I feel like I knew what I was getting into,” he says, thinking back to 2009. “Whenever they’re hiring a No.1 person at a company that’s not well, it’s always worse than you think. When I walked in I remember thinking there’s a lot of closed doors and a lot of anxiety and everyone’s waiting for the next mistake, everyone’s waiting for the next bad story. You get used to losing, you get used to the media telling you you’re no good and you almost get into playing ‘prevent’ defense, which always means they’re going to score, you know?

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“I remember saying to the board—this is so weird to say now—but I felt like the manager of the Chicago Cubs. You’ve got all this talent, but everybody in the dugout is looking around going, ‘Well, it’s the 7th inning; this is usually when the bad stuff happens…’ And that makes bad stuff happen.

“The players weren’t happy and the board was unhappy… but the brand was fine. I remember saying at my second board meeting, ‘I know there’s a lot of panic, but the house is solid. We’ve got some furniture to rearrange, but don’t act like the ship is going down because it’s not; the basics of the business are solid.”

The basics included the LPGA’s reputation as the country’s longest-running women’s professional sports organization, and the lineup, which some argued had never been better, despite having just lost two big stars.

“No doubt,” he says. “Unfortunately Annika [Sorenstam] and Lorena [Ochoa] had just retired—that didn’t help—but I think the player base has always been good, even in the worst of times. They’re into it, they’re engaging and they try harder.”

They have to, Whan says, “because nobody gives it to them like it happens to their male counterparts. If you’re the top golfer in the world, top basketball player in the world, top baseball player in the world and you’ve made it to that level, I don’t think you have to try that hard to get privileges.”

The talent and hard work were there, but one part of the “privileges” equation missing was increased exposure for players. That goal involves more network television exposure.

But this presents a chicken-and-egg conundrum: you need the network time for a chance at increased popularity and revenue, but you need popularity to get more network time. A long-term deal with the Golf Channel is helping; it began the year Whan stepped in but was negotiated prior to his arrival.

He says early growing pains are largely out of the way and the relationship is going well, with increased viewership leading to better weeks and time slots for the LPGA and its sponsors.

Likewise, on recent work with NBC: “We really got lucky because NBC are storytellers,” he says. “They don’t just show athletics, they introduce you to athletes, and that’s what we need. They’ve been phenomenal at that.”

Still, more network time remains a work in progress: “What happens with NASCAR, the NBA, the PGA Tour, you see them every Saturday and Sunday for a pretty long time.

You’re seeing them in every sports clip on ESPN. Then you think about the LPGA… We’re technically more of a cable niche. We’re UFC, sand volleyball. I hate it, because that’s something we have to break out of.”

The goal is five or six network weekends per year, which would “change the landscape,” help the tour bring in new customers and help the players command more sponsorship dollars for themselves. “My wife is never going to stumble onto Channel 1184,” he says. “But she’ll stumble onto Channel 10 every weekend. I need to have her stumble in while [the LPGA is] there so I can bring her back to 1184. And for the players, for the value on their bags, their hats, their caddies, exposure on network changes what they’re worth times 10… I’d like to be able to get that for them.”

One thing he doesn’t want to deliver is an unrealistic tour calendar, and says he wants no more than 32 events.

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“I’ve said from the beginning to the players: If you’re looking for a commissioner to deliver you 40 events, you’re going to have to fire me at 32 because I’m not going further than that. With 32 you can do three things: have an offseason (all my players want an offseason); take the week off after every Major, because everybody does anyway; and take the weeks off after we go to Asia.

“If I do those three things, I’ve got 32 weeks. The top players for 60 years played about 28, 29 times; that’s all they played. When we had 40 events, Annika played 28 times. That means 12 times you’ve got a customer going, ‘Where’s the top player?’ And I don’t want to be that guy [under-delivering to sponsors]. That formula can win; we’ve just got to get there.”

Part of getting there involves building positive relationships with the tournament sponsors, which begins on the ground at the tournaments themselves.

“At the end of the day [PGA Commissioner Tim] Finchem sells a great media buy with a great golf experience… I don’t. I’m not a great media buy. I’m a good media buy, but my buy only works because our customer experience is better than, I think, anything else in sports. I say no one’s going to get closer to the athletes than you’re going to get at an LPGA event. We sell incredible customer hospitality with some media. He sells incredible media with some customer hospitality.”

To achieve a clear understanding of what the sponsor’s goals are, a weekly 90-second “customer profile sheet” video is sent to all players. In it, specific talking points are covered, including who’s writing the check this week; why “brand X” is sponsoring the event; why it’s important to them; and what will brand X’s board talk about when they discuss renewing their event sponsorship.

“It [the video] shows pictures of the key guys, the places on the course where you can really make a difference—if after you’ve finished your scorecard you walked into this building for 30 minutes you could really make a difference… We have a section that says ‘what does [brand X] hope you’ll say when there’s a microphone in your face?’ We have suggested Tweets and Facebook posts. We have pictures of the top execs and the top customers the sponsor is doing the event with and for. I’m pretty sure we’re the only sport where an executive is walking down the 17th fairway and a player will walk over and say, ‘Hi, are you so-and-so?’ and know their name, because we have it happen all the time.”

And the customer service doesn’t stop there: “We have this little thing at the end of the customer profile where it says where to send your ‘thank you’ card,” Whan explains. “It’s never an email address. It’s a real address for one handwritten card, because if a CEO gets 140 ‘thank you’ cards, trust me, when it comes time for renewal, my job’s easier.”

Whan knows what he’s talking about. In addition to working for Wilson, TaylorMade and a hockey equipment company, the Chicago native worked at Proctor & Gamble, with the Crest brand. “Between my days at P&G and my golf days, I’ve written a sponsor’s check to every sport in the world.

I know what it’s like to write a big check, I know what it’s like to try to validate writing a big check in front of my board who didn’t think it was a good idea, I know what it’s like to be in

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the middle of that event where you wrote a big check thinking ‘are we getting our money’s worth?’ And I really know what it’s like to write a big check and have an athlete not care. The work starts the day after we sign an event sponsor.”

These efforts on all fronts seem to be appreciated.

The LPGA launched the Kia Classic in 2010 and, the following year, both the R.R. Donnelley Founders Cup and the CME Group Titleholders. The 2013 season opened with 28 tournaments on the schedule, nearly $49 million in total prize money and more than 300 hours of tournament television coverage on the Golf Channel and other networks scheduled—the most in the LPGA’s history.

This year also saw the launch of the North Texas LPGA Shootout, which, as of press time, still didn’t have a title sponsor. But unlike the bad old days, there’s a lack of anxiety at the LPGA around attracting business. After all, none of the three tourneys mentioned above had title sponsors when they launched, either.

If they’re taking customer service in hand, the LPGA and its players are also seizing their media profiles, creating opportunities for themselves whenever possible. A new push in social media—promoting the players on such services as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms—can be largely credited to Whan’s hiring of Kraig Kann, who specializes in helping athletes negotiate the new media world. “About three years ago, I got interviewed by Kraig on the Golf Channel, and at the end of the interview I saw him go in and start Tweeting, which I really didn’t know much about,” says Whan. Kann had been working extensively with college athletes, helping them to build their images, prepare for interviews and manage crises. “This is a guy who spent his whole life on the other side of the camera, and I’d been looking for somebody,” says Whan. “I called him about a month later and said, ‘I know this sounds crazy but I think it’s time for you to make a career change.’ He’s been very good. Stacy Lewis is a great example, a super-shy kid who’s a world-class golfer. She’s naturally shy, but you’d never know that today. But if you knew her three years ago, you’d think she’s pretty quiet.”

Likewise, “Kraig and our marketing department put Twitter handles on the backs of all the caddie bibs, so for example you don’t just see Creamer; underneath it you see ‘#thepcreamer.’ We want to get people talking to our players—because our players will talk. Paula [Creamer] talks to 600,000 people a day! So it’s great.”

That kind of accessibility has led to a new legion of fans, many of whom are overseas—not surprising, considering the LPGA’s players hail from 25 different countries and play in 13 international locations.

“Most of the money we’ve made is in international TV rights. The more we embrace being a global tour, the more the rest of the world wants to watch us.”

It’s an interesting about-face from a tour that, prior to Whan’s arrival, was seen to be struggling with domestic accessibility—particularly in regards to Asian players.

“I sat down with my team,” Whan says, going back to his first year as commissioner. “They’re saying, ‘what are we going to do about all the Asian influence,’ and ‘everybody doesn’t speak English and what about the proam thing’ and ‘some sponsors aren’t happy…’

“I’m new to this thing, but I said, ‘What if we just flipped it and said this is going to be one of the core elements to our success?’ So in 2010 we trademarked the phrase ‘Golf’s Global Tour.’ Rather than trying to hide from it, we turned it into our focus.”

English language skills among many of the players was seen as a real problem in terms of media interviews, meetings with sponsors and even entertaining. To address this, the LPGA partnered with a language instruction company out of Indianapolis and made English lessons available to players, but Whan asked the players to pay for the instruction themselves.

“If I pay for your language, you’re not really investing in yourself. But we knew our players weren’t going to go home after four weeks of playing and learn a language. So, for the last four years these language training people have gone with us to every event.”

For media interviews and pro-am experiences, the results have been nothing short of spectacular.

“In 2010, I’ll bet you 20 percent of our players really couldn’t have had this conversation, certainly couldn’t do an interview, and as a result we had a pretty bad pro-am experience for people in the U.S.—though a great pro-am experience in their home country. Today I don’t know a player I couldn’t have lunch with, and I certainly don’t know a player I wouldn’t put on a pro-am. All the top players are rock-solid in terms of English [now].”

It’s a big deal, especially when it comes to the dayto-day job of winning fans. With a fan base that is 75/25 percent male-to-female on TV (50/50 at tournaments), basically the Golf Channel audience, the LPGA has fans among men not just because men watch golf, but because the LPGA’s players are relatable.

“They hit it 260 yards; they hit a 7-iron 150, not 190,” says Whan. “There’s just nothing I can learn by watching Webb Simpson, I have zero in common with a guy who can hit it 310 and hits a 4-iron 240. I can’t hit my 3-wood 240!

So I can’t watch him and assimilate. And when I go and play in that pro-am, he walks back there, and he hits it to down there [indicating great distances].

“If you play in our pro-am with Cristie Kerr, you’ll both stand on the tee and you’re going to hit it within 10 yards of her drive. Now, she’ll beat you by 30 strokes, but most players will say ‘I actually played with these players. Same tee, we played the same course, and pretty much hit the same shots.’ I hit the same 7-iron that Azahara Muñoz hits, she just hits it more accurately. I could ask, ‘What club did you hit this hole?’ and her answer would matter to me.

“The more we embrace being a global tour, the more the rest of the world wants to watch us”

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equipment issues—like the belly putter discussion—mostly “‘Also, with the [pro men], even though it’s not their seem to have passed by the LPGA. fault, we feel like we’ve got to get out of the way, we don’t “I responded to the ‘belly putter’ thing,” Whan says. “But want to bother them.’ The women wouldn’t let you feel that my response wasn’t controversial so nobody wrote about it.” way because they want to talk to you, they’re social.”

Basically, with fewer than 10 LPGA players using belly putters, If the LPGA is winning fans one at a time in pro-ams, the tour’s position is that it’s happy to play by the USGA’s rules. the tour is especially excited about the profile-building In just over three years, Whan has overseen a potential of the 2016 Olympics, which will feature golf for the re-stocked tour calendar, a newly implemented social first time in more than a century. media strategy, an increase in television exposure and what “I think it’s 10 times more important for the LPGA could be called a pioneering perspective shift with regard to than it is for the PGA Tour,” Whan says. “Maybe 15 times globalization. Whether the tour’s new (and valid) optimism a year, [the PGA Tour] has the whole world watching: is due to a recovering economy, Whan’s direct influence, or The Masters, the U.S. Open, the Open Championship, the his ability to hire the right people and to let them get on Players Championship… They’ll get 185 countries. But with it, is tough to say without being an LPGA employee. not just 185 countries, they’ll get 40 hours with these But whatever it is, Whan importantly has brought vision— countries, and tons of casual fans [who] get to know he’d like to see an LPGA event at Augusta—and the ability who Phil Mickelson is, for example. We don’t get that. We to give credit where it’s due. For him, ultimately, that means might get it once a year [with] the U.S. Women’s Open, maybe crediting the players themselves with the LPGA’s success: the Evian [Championship], but the Olympics will give us an “I always say that out of all the sports commissioners, opportunity to be exposed to people who really don’t follow it.

I’m the one who spends the least time worrying about “And the cool thing for me is, if you watch the Olympics the athletes. I don’t worry about how they treat other in 2016, there’ll be 60 female participants. I’d be floored if people, I don’t worry about how they treat each other, and 55 of them aren’t LPGA players. So if you watch it and you I don’t worry about how they treat our customers because love Anna Nordqvist, for example, and you want to watch her they do all of that better than the staff. And they’re really, next week, you’re coming to me. If you think Karrie Webb really good.” is cool or Suzann Pettersen or you fall in love with Brittany Lincicome… You’re coming back to Paula Creamer is just one of the LPGA’s amazing stars the LPGA, not going to 50 different tours to find them. It’s a huge exposure opportunity for us, but will it turn into a great boon for the LPGA? I don’t really care because I think it’s good for women’s golf long-term.”

Is the Olympics a big enough deal to coax the likes of Lorena Ochoa out of retirement?

“I don’t think so,” Whan says, chuckling. “One thing about Lorena— and it’s the same with Annika—she doesn’t make half-hearted decisions.

Annika was gone before I got here.

At my third event [as commissioner] Lorena… walked me into a room, sat down and said ‘I think I’m going to leave.’ I thought she was kidding. She was 28 years old and she looked like she could have been my daughter. But as she told me more, it was rational and thought-out and she knew exactly where she was going. I used to send her cards and say, ‘I don’t know if you know who Brett Favre is, but he’s made a few returns and it worked out pretty well for him…’”

If there’s drama in the LPGA, it’s on the course. Globalization is seen as a plus, not a minus. A smaller profile means more accessibility and a strong fan base, not obscurity. Personal upheavals, infighting and even

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brilliantly bentley Bentley’s stunning new Le Mans Limited Edition models celebrate a racing heritage and a legacy of excellence. Drivers: start your engines The crowds loved it, watching the cars shimmy and slide in the dust, the drivers standing on their brakes trying to scrub speed and get the machines under control for that infernal hairpin at Pontlieue. And then the engines, roaring again after the turn, terrifying, exhilarating, as the drivers got on the gas and launched into five glorious miles of uninterrupted straight that ran like a nave through the cathedral of tall trees bordering the road. It was near religion, Le Mans, 24 hours of a holy meditation on speed, the greatest race ever conceived, and one with which Bentley Motors will forever be associated.

Bentley penned much of the early history of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, building both its reputation and that of the race, today the oldest active endurance sports car race in the world. The sole British marque to appear in the inaugural event, Bentley took fourth in 1923 then won the following year with a 3-Litre Sport. In all, with consistently strong showings, Bentley won five of the first 10 races, taking four in a row between 1927 and 1930. And in 2003 it emerged victorious again, with a team that saw Danish driver Tom Kristensen claim his fourth consecutive victory on the Circuit de la Sarthe (he now has nine).

To celebrate the 90th anniversary of the 24 Hours of Le

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To celebrate its rich racing heritage and long relationship with the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Bentley is offering Le Mans Limited Edition specifications of its Continental GT and its Mulsanne

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Mans and the tenth anniversary of the 2003 victory—and to honor its history with the event—Bentley is releasing Le Mans Limited Edition vehicles that are as thrilling and inspired as the races and teams that built the iconic brand.

More than simply releasing a single car with Le Mans badging, Bentley has crafted six unique Mulsanne and Continental specifications inspired by victorious drivers.

Forty-eight examples of each Le Mans Limited Edition model are being produced, each with a unique numbered badge. With Bentley’s impeccable attention to detail and legacy of high standards, these Le Mans Limited Editions are exceptional manifestations of the brand.

The Mulsanne versions feature the stunning flagship in glorious trims. The same 0-60 time of 5.1 seconds and top speed of 184 mph are there, along with the thunderous 505bhp engine and vast interior amenities. But in addition to the definitive luxury that is now considered “standard” on Bentleys, the Le Mans Limited Edition Mulsanne will feature, among other items, diamond-quilted hide seat covering and door panels, Le Mans Edition illuminated treadplates, drilled alloy foot pedals, sports tuned suspension and steering, “Quad” Effect Tailpipe finishers and two-piece, five-spoke dark-tint alloy wheels.

Likewise, the Le Mans Limited Edition Continental GT makes the most of the four-seat sports icon in all of its trims, being offered in both Coupe and Convertible forms, along with an exquisite Continental GT Speed Le Mans Edition Coupe. The last makes 60 from standing in 4.0 seconds and is the fastest production Bentley ever with a top speed of 205 mph.

With six different Le Mans specifications (see sidebar for details) and limited to only 48 examples of each model, these are some of the most breathtaking Bentleys ever produced.

Legacy It’s not as if Bentley hasn’t had practice building fantastic cars. From its very beginnings in 1919, the firm has been remarkably successful in creating stunning automobiles that won races, broke records and impressed everyone.

The 3-Litre that founder W.O. Bentley built from 1921 to 1929 was an incredible—if somewhat terrifyingly fast— performer, but it almost didn’t get its chance to shine at Le Mans. It was a young driver, John Duff, who talked Bentley into entering the new 24 Hours of Le Mans race, which Bentley himself thought was “madness.” But after a car driven by Duff and Frank Clement finished fourth in the inaugural event, the founder was hooked.

And when the same team took the trophy in 1924, Bentley was completely sold.

In the early years, the Le Mans circuit was unpaved, routed through the middle of town and nearly 11 miles long, compared with today’s circuit, which bypasses much of the city and is roughly 8.5 miles in length. Additionally, there were some truly nasty features, including the crowd-favorite Pontlieue hairpin turn at the north end of the circuit in the town square of Le Mans itself, which demanded that cars come to an almost complete stop before abruptly switching back onto the Ligne Droite des

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Hunaudières, more commonly known as the Mulsanne Straight, which was then nearly five miles long.

Before the Pontlieue hairpin was clipped from the layout in 1929, lopping off more than a half mile, Bentley set both the distance record (1,658.6 miles) and the fastest lap time in 1928 (8m 7s, with an average speed of just over 79mph).

With the new layout in ’29, though, came an absolutely epic year for the marque, with Bentley taking first, second, third and fourth places at Le Mans, securing the place of the “Bentley Boys” in racing.

Fast-forward to 2003 and the Mulsanne Straight had been configured to its current length of roughly 3.5 miles with two chicanes (installed in 1990 to keep speeds down). Numerous other changes had been made as well, smoothing turns, adding bits of drama and keeping the course relevant for modern rules and specifications. Cars still reached nearly 200mph through the straight, though, and the chicanes certainly did nothing to slow down the team of Rinaldo Capello, Englishman Guy Smith, and Le Mans legend Tom Kristensen, who took a Bentley Speed 8 to 377 laps and the 2003 victory. Another Speed 8 took second, and the brand had more than a few reasons to celebrate, nearly 73 years to the day after two Speed 6s earned the top spots at Le Mans.

Continuing that celebration are the new Le Mans Limited Edition Bentleys, which are a fitting and true testament to Bentley’s rich racing heritage and legacy of excellence in motoring.

For more information on the Le Mans Limited Edition models, visit www.lemansedition.com

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Above: The Bentley Speed 8 at Le Mans in 2003 Far Left: The winning team of Barnato and Kidston in 1930

Woolf Barnato W.O. Bentley called him “the best driver we ever had” with good reason: Barnato remains the only driver to have won on each occasion of entering the race, recording Le Mans victories in 1928, 1929 and 1930.

Exterior: Granite Interior: Hotspur with Beluga Contrast Stitching Veneer: Carbon Fiber in Continental series Dark Stain Burr Walnut with Dark Aluminum in Mulsanne

Tim Birkin

BENTLEY ICONS The Le Mans Limited Edition Bentleys are offered in six specifications, inspired by some of the Bentley Boys who drove the marque to the top of racing.

A formidable personality, Birkin, an ex-fighter pilot, was renowned for his willingness to be utterly ruthless with his car to achieve a winning result.

Exterior: Glacier White Interior: Beluga with White Contrast Stitching Veneer: Piano Black and Bright Aluminum

Glen Kidston John Duff The first Bentley Boy, and the man who talked W.O. Bentley into competing at the Le Mans 24 Hours. After taking fourth place at the inaugural event in 1923, Duff and co-driver Jack Clement raced to a first place finish the following year, defeating many of the leading sports cars of the day.

Exterior: Moonbeam Interior: Duo-tone Linen and Beluga with Contrast Stitching Veneer: Piano Black and Bright Aluminum

Dudley Benjafield The 1927 Le Mans winner, “Benjy” was a pure driver who loved the thrill of the race.

Exterior: Verdant – the same color as the victorious Bentley Speed 8 in 2003 Interior: Duo-tone Linen and Cumbrian Green with Contrast Stitching Veneer: Dark Stain Burr Walnut and Bright Aluminum

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Tough, sharp and fearless, Kidston took first place at Le Mans in 1930.

Exterior: Dark Sapphire Interior: Duo-tone Newmarket Tan and Imperial Blue with Contrast Stitching Veneer: Dark Stain Burr Walnut and Dark Aluminum Continental GT Convertible models are finished with a Blue hued exterior roof.

Guy Smith Smith was key to Team Bentley’s attack on both the Sebring 12 Hours and the Le Mans 24 Hours, and secured his place in racing legend at the 2003 Le Mans 24 Hours. The only Englishman on the team, he was selected to drive the Bentley Speed 8 across the finish line to mark an emotional sixth Le Mans win for Bentley.

Exterior: Beluga Interior: Beluga with Hotspur Contrast Stitching Veneer: Piano Black and Dark Aluminum

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The only one of golf’s four Major championships to elude Arnold Palmer’s grasp was the PGA Championship, ironically the most controversial inclusion in the Grand Slam he helped to define more than half a century ago. Paul Trow looks back at the King’s slightly equivocal relationship with an undeniably important tournament

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have to admit to succumbing at times to the temptation to share the view held by many—that without the final jewel in my crown, the PGA Championship, my success on the golf course is somehow incomplete. In fact, for years I’ve held in reserve a spot for a PGA medal in a display case that holds awards from my major tournament victories.”

So reflects Arnold Palmer in his autobiography, A Golfer’s Life, and the regret that his record is somehow tarnished as a result of failing to benchpress the gargantuan Wanamaker Trophy at any stage during his long and glorious career is palpable in every word of that paragraph.

The frustration at not achieving his own personal Grand Slam, which he feels acutely to this very day, no doubt springs from how mightily close he came to winning on several occasions.

Three times Palmer finished runner-up in the so-called Cinderella Major during the course of 37 consecutive appearances from 1958 (its first year as a stroke-play event) to 1994. He also had three other top-10s, at least one of which was a genuine victory opportunity, and made the cut 24 times.

Whether he should have won but somehow blew it, or did the best he could only to pull up just short, are moot points that will be settled in the fullness of time by golf historians.

The fact is that Arnold Palmer, the man who did more than anyone to drag golf into the 20th century and popularize the game across the world, never went as the star guest to the ball of the organization of which he has now been a fully paid-up member for nigh on six decades.

The eldest child of Deacon Palmer, head professional and course superintendent at Latrobe Country Club, Pennsylvania, is perhaps the classic example of someone who

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comes from both sides of the tracks.

Brought up in humble circumstances during the immediate post-Depression era, Palmer quickly crossed several social divides courtesy of his playing prowess, first at high school, then at college, later as a Coast Guard and finally as a superstar Tour professional.

The fact that Deacon was only able to join the PGA of America after the abolition of its rule barring ‘cripples’ (he contracted polio as a child) always rankled with his distinguished son.

Other PGA regulations also affected the young Palmer’s attitude, not least the length of time it took for a Tour professional to become eligible to play for either the U.S. Ryder Cup team—he missed the match in 1959 at Eldorado Country Club in Palm Springs, California even though he had easily qualified to play—or in the PGA Championship (he was forced to sit out both the 1956 and 1957 tournaments).

In addition, after turning professional in 1954, Palmer was obliged to serve the arbitrary six-month ‘apprenticeship’ during which Tour rookies were not allowed to receive prize money no matter how high they finished on the leader-board.

By 1965, though, Palmer’s frosty relationship with the PGA had thawed sufficiently for him to help arrange at short notice the staging of that year’s PGA Championship at Laurel Valley Golf Club in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, where he was attached as the Tour professional. The PGA returned the favor a decade later when they took the Ryder Cup to Laurel Valley with Palmer serving as the non-playing captain of a majestic (and victorious) American team.

Nowadays, Palmer is vociferous in his praise and support of the PGA of America, championing the good it has brought to the conduct and image of the game throughout the United

States and beyond its borders over many generations.

He treasures his association with the organization, hence, primarily, his personal annoyance at the absence of his name from its flagship trophy board, especially after a career tally of 92 tournament victories worldwide—61 of them PGA Tour wins (including four at the Masters and the 1960 U.S. Open) and two of them in the [British] Opens of 1961 and 1962.

Palmer’s three nearest misses in the PGA Championship, all ties for second, came in 1964 (at Columbus Country Club, Ohio), 1968 (Pecan Valley Golf Club, San Antonio, Texas) and 1970 (Southern Hills Country Club, Tulsa, Oklahoma).

At Columbus in 1964—a year after he had acted as player-captain of the U.S. Ryder Cup team at East Lake Country Club, Atlanta, Georgia— Palmer tied with defending champion and local hero Jack Nicklaus, three shots behind surprise winner Bobby Nichols.

Sixty-four in ’64 was how Nichols started, opening with the first 64 ever posted in a PGA Championship (a score matched by Nicklaus in the final round). And he continued in that rich vein, winning wire-to-wire with a total of 271—a four-round record that stood for 30 years until Nick Price won with 269 in 1994.

Yet Palmer, who opened with two 68s and a 69, only trailed Nichols by one shot after three rounds and teed up on the final day with high hopes. His rival, infuriatingly, failed to read the script and closed with an impressive 67, replete with miracle recovery shots from seemingly everywhere on the course, to slam the door firmly shut.

Palmer, who at least had the consolation of becoming the first PGA Championship contestant to shoot all four rounds in the sixties, wasn’t to know it, but the last of his seven

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The 94th PGA Championship will take place from August 8-11 over the East Course of Oak Hill Country Club near Rochester, New York. Oak Hill, designed by Donald Ross in 1926, has staged three U.S. Opens—won respectively in 1956, 1968 and 1989 by Cary Middlecoff, Lee Trevino and Curtis Strange— along with the 1995 Ryder Cup and two PGA Championships, won

by Jack Nicklaus in 1980 and the unheralded Shaun Micheel in 2003.

Major victories—that year’s Masters— was already behind him.

In 1968, Palmer had perhaps his best chance of completing his elusive personal Grand Slam at the 50th PGA Championship, but ended up tying for second with New Zealander Bob Charles, one shot behind Julius Boros who, at 48, thus became the oldest man to win a Major.

“I want this title,” Palmer said before the final round got underway.

“I’m not playing for the $25,000 [winner’s check].” A few miles southeast of the Alamo, Pecan Valley that summer was a furnace bordering on an inferno, but the King was in his counting house, happy with the heat and relishing the challenge.

To quote the great Dan Jenkins, writing in Sports Illustrated, the 1968 PGA Championship “was a rousing tournament that had just about everybody in contention at one time or another, except Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and Jack Nicklaus. With nine holes left to play… Boros was one of 10 players all jammed up and sweating and within a single stroke of each other.”

Palmer closed with a 70, missing seven makeable birdie putts, but Boros went one better with a 69. He [Boros] was “the most relaxed swinger on Tour,” noted the late diarist Alistair Cooke in the Guardian newspaper.

“He swept his drives, flicked his irons and smartly stroked his putts…

He putted with the nonchalance of an old gentleman practicing on the

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living-room rug. Whatever nerves were tingling were relieved by frequent cigarettes.”

In the end, having played “probably the finest wood shot of my career”—uphill from 230 yards out in deep Bermuda rough to the left of the 72nd fairway—Palmer missed an 8ft putt on the high side that would have forced a playoff.

“The way you hit the irons, it could have been a 64,” a friend said afterwards. “That’s what it should have been,” came the reply. “That’s right. But they just wouldn’t drop.”

Palmer had history with Boros, playoff history, but never got to set the record straight. Boros also won two U.S. Opens, in 1952 and 1963, the second of which, at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, was also at the expense of Palmer, whom he beat, along with Jacky Cupit, in an 18-hole playoff.

This time, Boros, playing in the final pair immediately behind Palmer, completed the job without the need for extra holes, though only just. Unable to reach the green in two, he pitched superbly to three feet and rolled the putt home for his third Major triumph.

As in 1964, there was a consolation of sorts for Palmer. This time, as a result of his winnings at the tournament, he became the first player in the game to exceed $1 million in prize money.

At the elegant but brutal Southern Hills in 1970, Palmer and a fastfinishing Bob Murphy shared second place, two strokes behind another surprise winner, Dave Stockton. Tulsa was another cauldron that week with temperatures exceeding 100°F, but again Palmer, now approaching his 41st birthday and still seeking fulfillment in middle age, was unruffled. Going into the final round, he trailed Stockton by five shots and defending champion Raymond Floyd by two.

Stockton, who won a second PGA at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland, six years later,

was 28 at the time and certainly not lacking in confidence despite a tee-togreen game that was modest at best.

“Nobody can putt and chip better than I can,” he claimed somewhat immodestly after a third-round 66.

“I just feel like I’m going to win. I’m putting great, and the bad holes aren’t bothering me. I’ve been in the woods and in the bunkers, and I’ve even shanked a shot. But it hasn’t bothered me. I just bounce back.”

Indeed, bounceback-ability could have been Stockton’s middle name that week, certainly during the final round when Arnie’s Army was pulling its hardest for their beloved General.

As Palmer’s birdie putts kept refusing to fall, Stockton rolled in a 30-footer for birdie at the 6th, holed a 120-yard wedge shot for an eagle-2 at the 7th, double-bogeyed the 8th and birdied the 9th from a fairway bunker.

Not surprisingly, Palmer didn’t know whether he was coming or going in the face of such caprice.

Then came the 13th, a 470-yard par-4 with water in front of the green.

Stockton hooked his approach into the lake and Palmer had his usual 25-footer for a birdie.

A Palmer birdie and a Stockton double-bogey would surely have transformed the outcome, but the young upstart calmly pitched to within two feet of the cup for bogey, and Palmer could only manage par.

Again it was a valiant effort, but again there was no cigar.

Palmer’s other significant chance of winning the PGA Championship came in 1960, his annus mirabilis, at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio when, chasing birdies down the stretch, he went for the green at the 625-yard 16th, pushed his second shot and ended up tangling with trees and water en route to carding a triple-bogey eight. His tie for seventh, five back of Jay Hebert, was, as it turned out, a sign of what was to come. The words déjà vu could have been coined with Palmer and the PGA Championship in mind.

‘‘[1968] had just about everybody in contention at one time or another, except Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and Jack Nicklaus”

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Palmer came up one putt short at Pecan Valley in 1968

So when Palmer, serially and systematically deprived of his Holy Grail, won the Senior PGA Championship at his first attempt in 1980—at Turnberry Isle Country Club, North Miami Beach, Florida—his wry, smiling response said it all: “It’s the PGA Championship I never won.” He won the same title again four years later at PGA National Golf Club in Palm Beach Gardens, but that yawning gap in the display case remains.

Tom Watson, of course, is in the same boat. The owner of five [British] Opens, two Masters and one U.S. Open came closest to completing his Grand Slam when he lost to John Mahaffey in a playoff for the 1978 PGA Championship.

Years later, he sat next to Jeff Sluman, 1988 PGA champion, at a dinner.

With tongue in wistful cheek, Sluman said: “I’ll trade you my PGA for two of your Opens.”

If Palmer had been offered the same deal by Nichols, Boros or Stockton, what would have been his reaction? His lifelong, faithful Army would have pounced at the invitation, obviously, but with a heavy heart, Palmer, perennially the epitome of gentlemanly behavior on a sporting field, would inevitably have declined.

Yes, his trophy cabinet is tantalizingly incomplete, but not so his heart. As the man who has almost everything would be the first to acknowledge, you simply can’t have everything.

EndlEss Frustration— Palmer’s PGa ChamPionshiP reCord Year

Venue

Position finished

1958

Llanerch CC, Havertown, Pennsylvania

Tied 40th

1959

Minneapolis GC, Louis Park, Minnesota

Tied 14th

1960

Firestone CC, Akron, Ohio

Tied 7th

1961

Olympia Fields CC, Matteson, Illinois

Tied 5th

1962

Aronimink GC, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania

Tied 17th

1963

Dallas Athletic Club, Texas

Tied 40th

1964

Columbus CC, Ohio

Tied 2nd

1965

Laurel Valley GC, Ligonier, Pennsylvania

Tied 33rd

1966

Firestone CC, Akron, Ohio

Tied 6th

1967

Columbine CC, Denver, Colorado

Tied 14th

1968

Pecan Valley CC, San Antonio, Texas

Tied 2nd

1969

NCR CC, Dayton, Ohio Withdrew after Round 1 (hip injury)

1970

Southern Hills CC, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Tied 2nd

1971

PGA National GC, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

Tied 18th

1972

Oakland Hills CC, Birmingham, Michigan

Tied 16th

1973

Canterbury GC, Cleveland, Ohio

1974

Tanglewood GC, Clemmons, North Carolina

Tied 28th

1975

Firestone CC, Akron, Ohio

Tied 33rd

1976

Congressional CC, Bethesda, Maryland

Tied 15th

1977

Pebble Beach Golf Links, Monterey, California

Tied 19th

1978

Oakmont CC, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Missed Cut

1979

Oakland Hills CC, Birmingham, Michigan

Missed Cut

1980

Oak Hill CC, Rochester, New York

Tied 72nd

1981

Atlanta Athletic Club, Duluth, Georgia

1982

Southern Hills CC, Tulsa, Oklahoma

1983

Riviera CC, Pacific Palisades, California

1984

Shoal Creek CC, Birmingham, Alabama

1985

Cherry Hills CC, Denver, Colorado

1986

Inverness Club, Toledo, Ohio

1987

PGA National GC, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

1988

Oak Tree GC, Edmond, Oklahoma

1989

Kemper Lakes GC, Hawthorn Woods, Illinois

1990

Shoal Creek CC, Birmingham, Alabama

Missed Cut

1991

Crooked Stick GC, Carmel, Indiana

Missed Cut

1992

Bellerive CC, St. Louis, Missouri

Missed Cut

1993

Inverness Club, Toledo, Ohio

Missed Cut

1994

Southern Hills CC, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Missed Cut

Missed Cut

76th Missed Cut Tied 67th Missed Cut Tied 65th Missed Cut Tied 65th Missed Cut Tied 63rd

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The Last Great Amateur

By 1964, Bill Campbell had won nearly every prestigious tournament in amateur golf—with one notable exception.

With a legacy of two World Amateurs, four North-South Amateurs, one Mexican National Amateur and eight Walker Cup appearances without a singles match defeat, it was incredible that Campbell had never

by John H. Houvouras

won the U.S. Amateur Championship. There’s no question that the soft-spoken man who would become the first to head both of golf’s governing bodies, who would build a tournament record as one of the top amateurs of all time, and who would impact the game dramatically at all levels was highly motivated to add the title to his trophy case in 1964—but he was also 41 years old. Nevertheless, that August, Campbell rolled up to the Canterbury Golf Club in Cleveland, Ohio, ready to play.

“Maybe this will be my year,” he told his wife

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n the spring of 1964 Arnold Palmer won his fourth Masters, the last of his seven major titles. That summer, Ken Venturi, Tony Lema and Bobby Nichols won their only majors at the U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship, respectively. And in fall, Campbell, the highly decorated amateur who had toiled away for years in relative obscurity, finally got the title he’d been chasing since 1947. In thrilling fashion, besting longtime rival Ed Tutwiler in a closely fought match, Campbell took the 1964 U.S. Amateur Championship.

Today, at age 90, his tall, athletic frame has rounded a bit and his gait is considerably slower, but Campbell’s mind is still razor sharp and his thoughts are still offered in a deep, reassuring voice. Not surprisingly, some of those thoughts concern golf. “You don’t find lifetime amateurs anymore,” Campbell observes. “Why? Well, it’s easy to understand when you consider the increase in prize money and the corollary money that come with being a touring pro.”

As an example, Campbell points to golf’s King–Arnold Palmer. “I watched Arnie win the 1954 U.S. Amateur at the Country Club of Detroit. He emerged as a rambunctious young player full of fun and muscles. He had huge forearms and thick, blacksmith-type hands. I took note of him. But after winning the tournament he turned pro. That trend would continue in future years.”

Campbell recalls that in the 1940s and 1950s amateur golfers shared a special camaraderie, but ultimately it wasn’t strong enough to keep them from the money that awaited them on the professional tour.

Another change in the game that Campbell notes is the emergence of bigger, stronger athletes and their complex, if sophisticated, training methods.

“Years ago you would see just the player on the practice tee. Now, it may also be the caddy, swing coach, psychologist and trainer. It’s serious business.

The pros today look about 6 feet tall and 185 pounds. They’re strong and

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Still fit and trim, Campbell switched from jogging to walking when he turned 70

sinewy. Amateur golf was different because it was simply an adjunct.”

Accompanying the emergence of super-trained, physical golfers, one of the issues that deeply concerns Campbell is the meteoric rise of high-tech equipment.

“I think the ball goes too far,” he says bluntly. “It’s not necessarily that the ball is being hit harder—it’s a culmination of the ball and the club head. As a result, courses are growing longer and longer.”

Campbell’s perspective on this comes with some weight. Not only did he win the Masters’ Long Drive Contest in 1954 with a 328-yard-bomb, but he served as president of the USGA in both 1982 and 1983. Among his accomplishments there, he oversaw construction of a $10 million facility to study the impact of technology on golf.

He also pushed for the development of drought-resistant grasses and, perhaps most significantly, he was instrumental in merging the rules of the USGA and the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, which then housed Europe’s golf authority (today the R&A). In 1987 he underlined that achievement by becoming captain of the British institution, making him the third American to achieve the position and the first person in history to head both of golf’s governing bodies. (It also put him in the awkward position of representing the R&A at the 1987 Ryder Cup.) Considering his golfing résumé, it might seem a wonder that Campbell didn’t make a pro career out of the game, but he’d had other ideas from the start.

“I never wanted the life of a professional golfer,” Campbell explains, sitting amidst mounds of boxes and papers in his office in downtown Huntington. “It’s so concentric. That’s a hard life. Instead, I’ve enjoyed a variety of pursuits. If you look around these walls, you will see I have many interests, not just golf.”

Still, golf was one of the earliest. Bill Campbell— William Cammack Campbell, born May 5, 1923 in Huntington, W.Va.—was first introduced to the game by

his father at the age of 3. “My mother, father, brother and I began a tradition of playing Sunday afternoons,” Campbell says. “Eventually I got hooked on the game.”

A child prodigy, Campbell’s game flourished even though he never took a lesson. At 15, he became the secondyoungest competitor ever to play in the U.S. Amateur. The youngest, at age 14, was the legendary Bobby Jones. At the tournament Campbell drew the attention of another golf legend, Sam Snead, who took him under his wing and guided him through his formative golfing years. The two remained friends for 65 years, and when Snead passed away in 2002, Campbell was asked to deliver a eulogy.

Campbell enrolled at Princeton University, but his studies were interrupted when he left to serve in the Army during World War II. He emerged from the war a captain after serving in the artillery of the 100th Infantry Division in France and Germany, where he was awarded a Bronze Star for Valor. He ultimately returned to Princeton and earned a degree in history. From there he returned to Huntington to enter the family insurance business, and eventually built one of the most successful agencies in the nation—but the young Campbell was hardly “just” an insurance man.

The self-professed adrenaline junkie was an active jogger and swimmer (until age 70, when he switched to walking) and his passion for aviation, which he shared with his father, saw the two of them winging it to tournaments all over the country. A different kind of adrenaline rush hit him in 1948, when Campbell was appointed to the West Virginia House of Delegates. Politics didn’t exactly favor him, though, and a tough string of political defeats ensued, including a loss in a 1952 Congressional primary that interfered with an invitation to play in the 1952 Masters.

“Those were two of the worst decisions I ever made,” Campbell says now, with a smile.

At the age of 31 and seemingly a confirmed bachelor, he made a decision of a different kind by marrying Joan Dourif, a widow from Huntington with four young children.

The couple added two more of their own and settled into family life, one in which golf was not his first priority.

“I didn’t play weekday or business golf,” Campbell insists. “In planning my career, I wanted business and golf to be separate. I competed in only a handful of tournaments each year.” But oh what tournaments they were, including the aforementioned 1964 U.S. Amateur.

There, Campbell played well in the early rounds, caught a few lucky breaks and ultimately found himself in the final facing Tutwiler. The two had faced off numerous times in the West Virginia State Amateur finals, with the seasoned Tutwiler winning six of their seven encounters (though Campbell ultimately took the tournament 15 times).

“He had my number,” Campbell readily admits.

The two veterans put on a show for the gallery as they battled over 36 holes. Arriving at the 35th hole, a 215-yard par-3, the match was all square. Campbell’s one-iron landed on the berm, short of the green. Tutwiler, in turn, missed the green by 75 feet. Tutwiler then pitched to 15 feet short of the pin before two-putting for bogey.

Campbell chipped up to three feet and rolled in his par

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putt. For the first time in the match, he was 1-up. When both players halved the 36th hole, Campbell had finally realized his dream.

And there were others, of course. Many others.

Over the course of seven decades Campbell won 33 championships, including back-to-back U.S. Senior Amateurs in 1979 and 1980. He’s been honored with a long list of awards, including induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame and the USGA’s highest honor: the Bob Jones Award for Distinguished Sportsmanship in Golf. Not surprisingly, all of these tournaments and awards saw him playing with some of the other all-time greats, including Arnold Palmer.

Though they were never paired together in a major tournament, the two did meet up in 1965 for a special event in Washington, D.C., when “The Big Three”—Palmer, Nicklaus and Gary Player—took on three outstanding amateurs in Campbell, Deane Beman and Dale Morey.

“Arnold wasn’t playing his best, and as we were walking down the fairway he turned to me and said, ‘You know, my father always said to me: He can who thinks he can. Bill, do you believe you can force yourself to do things?’ And I said, ‘Well, Arnold, I can’t argue with that.

You’re pretty strong evidence of it.’”

Campbell notes that despite Palmer’s unorthodox swing, he made it work. That, combined with his tenacious will to win, made him a formidable opponent. “He had his own style based on balance, strength and a wide arc. He wasn’t terribly flexible, but he managed to make a turn and his big muscles would carry him through. It wasn’t a swing taught by plastic teachers. I love the commercial airing now where he says, ‘Swing your swing, not a swing you saw on TV.’ Then you see his huge swing moving all around and he says, ‘I know I did.’ It’s a beautiful ad.”

Campbell says Palmer’s mark on the game was groundbreaking. “Arnold Palmer’s impact was huge. He emerged during the advent of televised golf, and he truly popularized the sport. He was strong, handsome and daring.

He played with great enthusiasm and determination. It was a thrill to watch him. He was a long hitter, and he always made the bold decision. People saw in him something they admired and envied.”

Campbell points out that there was one place where Palmer’s game and personality especially shone.

“Augusta was his big stage. He became the hero of that course.

“He had an ability to create excitement. Huge crowds followed him because they loved his smile, his big laugh and the fact that he was having fun. Arnie has a gift.

People love to be around him. He was everyone’s champion. There’s a reason they call him The King.”

But of all the memories Campbell has of Palmer, there’s one that stands out. “One year I was an official at the seventh green at Augusta. I was

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standing next to two young ladies when Arnie walked off the green, looked over at them and winked. It was vintage Palmer. Then one of the ladies turned to the other and said, ‘I’d give my right arm for 45 minutes with that guy.’”

By the time Campbell retired from competitive golf, he’d amassed one of the greatest amateur résumés in history. If he’s frustrated by some of the changes he’s seen over a lifetime in the game, like the effects of modern technology, he’s also optimistic about the positive changes in golf, including accessibility.

“In my day there was no junior golf,” he says. “If you were younger and wanted to compete, you had to go up against the big boys. In addition, there wasn’t senior golf.

So golf has widened its take, and that’s a good thing.”

Former USGA executive director Frank Hannigan likes to tell this anecdote, which sums up the respect Campbell earned from his peers: “I was talking with Jack Nicklaus about the USGA’s amateur status rules, including a prohibition against accepting free balls or clubs from equipment manufacturers. Nicklaus, who had turned professional by this time, was telling me the rule should be changed. He asserted that the prohibition was unenforceable. ‘Name one top amateur who doesn’t take anything from the manufacturers,’ Nicklaus said. ‘Bill Campbell,’ I replied. Nicklaus paused for a moment. ‘Okay.

You can have Campbell,’ he said. ‘Name another one.’”

Finally, looking back over a lifetime of integrity—in golf and in his numerous other pursuits—the man who is perhaps the last great amateur ever to play the game finds wisdom in golf, and it’s timeless: “Golf is a game of misses and how you react to them.

That applies also to life,” Campbell explains. “We know that bad bounces and bad breaks occur. You don’t always get what you deserve. But we always hold out the hope that from a bad place, we might make a great recovery. Mistakes happen, and people are imperfect; but they can always try.

The beauty of the game is that when you are through with a round, it’s gone, and tomorrow is a new day.”

John H. Houvouras is a freelance writer living in Huntington, W.Va. He is also the publisher and editor of the Huntington Quarterly

Campbell enjoyed universal respect throughout the game, not least from Jack Nicklaus

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Fred Couples

THere’s

oNlY

oNe

The much-loved U.S. captain, a newly-inducted World Golf Hall of Famer no less, is aiming for a hat-trick of Presidents Cup victories at Muirfield Village in October. Unlike most of his recent Ryder Cup counterparts, he seems able to coax the best out of his players in this biennial contest despite the considerable opposition of a feisty International team. How does he do it, and who is he?

H

ow many words do we know that might adequately describe Fred Couples? To many he’s a hero, the coolest of dudes, to others he’s an enigma, a closed book. There’s no doubting he’s a phenomenon, pulsating with charisma while gyrating with achy-shaky back stretches prior to every shot he plays. Yet capturing the essence of his ethos is another thing altogether.

Does he like talking about himself, and a life that’s been blighted by the sad passing of not one but two wives? It seems not. But that hasn’t stopped him from being the golf writers’ favorite go-to man in media centers around the world—for everything from a pithy insight to a philosophical revelation. In a press conference, Fred never lets you down. He always says what he thinks, then leaves you to figure out what he means. He also plays golf the right way—he fights like hell on the course, but he never loses sight of the fact that it’s just a game. And he never loses respect for his opponents or playing partners.

As relaxed, on-course company goes, Fred is right up there with the most laid-back individuals in the game’s history, the stable that at various stages sired the likes of Walter Hagen, Julius Boros, Sandy Lyle and Bruce Lietzke.

And after three decades of winning tournaments and dazzling fans with his audacious shot-making, effortless power and silky-smooth swing, Fred is still box-office.

Since arriving on the Champions Tour in 2010 he has consistently attracted the largest galleries of any player, even Tom Watson, yet the statistics suggest his record is no better than those of many of his lifelong rivals. He won just the one Major, the 1992 Masters. That’s the same as Jeff Sluman, Corey Pavin, Paul Azinger, Mark Calcavecchia, Tom Lehman, Hal Sutton, Larry Mize, Ian Baker-Finch and

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Ian Woosnam; and fewer than the numbers chalked up by Lyle, Sir Nick Faldo, Mark O’Meara, Bernhard Langer, Nick Price, Greg Norman, Seve Ballesteros, Payne Stewart, Lee Janzen and John Daly.

But to judge a player by his Major wins alone is merely scratching at the surface of his inner core. Indeed, in the case of Couples something someone once wrote about books and their covers springs to mind.

His tally of 55 victories around the world (including 15 on the PGA Tour and eight on the Champions Tour) places him in a higher category than many of his generation. He certainly traveled abroad more than most of his American contemporaries. In fact, his playing schedule was more like that of Australian Norman, his opposite number as non-playing captain of the International team in the last two Presidents Cups, and Zimbabwean Price, to whom he will square up at Muirfield Village, Dublin, Ohio, from October 3-6.

Like Norman and Price, Couples is a former world No.1. The first American to scale the game’s ultimate pinnacle, he only stayed there for a paltry 16 weeks— during his annus mirabilis of 1992. He should have spent many more weeks at the summit, of course, but injuries at the wrong time, especially to that fragile lower back, definitely undermined him. His short putting from time to time was also a weakness, one that became more pronounced as he entered his forties and prompted his decision more than a decade ago to switch to a belly putter.

But that was then and this is now, and Couples today is a model of consistency, both through and on the green.

Following his team’s successes at Harding Park (San Francisco) in 2009 and Royal Melbourne in Norman’s back yard two years ago, Couples is heavily favored to become the first captain on either side to complete a hat-trick of

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Presidents Cup victories at Muirfield Village. That is his priority for the year, indeed since his re-appointment was announced well over 12 months ago.

And then what? Well, further success is guaranteed in the senior ranks and at the age of 53 he remains competitive on his rare visits to the regular tour, to which his performances at the last four Masters amply testify.

He already has two senior Majors to his name—last year’s Senior [British] Open at Turnberry on the west coast of Scotland and the 2011 Senior Players Championship at Westchester, Harrison, New York—and there’s every prospect of more along the way. But the Ryder Cup captaincy is still a possibility. A distinctly real one, in fact,

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given the American team’s run of five defeats in the last six contests, and Couples’ continuing familiarity and success with the current top players.

It seems the PGA of America have binned their longestablished policy of handing the skipper’s armband to a fine player in those twilight years between 45 and 50 by charging Watson with the not inconsiderable task of stopping the rot at Gleneagles in the Scottish Highlands in the fall of 2014. By then, the five-time [British] Open champion will be 65 years of age, and comfortably the oldest captain of either side since the whole shooting match was first staged in 1927.

So if Couples, five times a Ryder Cup player and

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Couples enjoys friendly competition with Bernhard Langer (top), who succeeded him as Masters champion in 1993, and Greg Norman (below) at two Presidents Cups

also a vice-captain last year at Medinah under his great friend Davis Love III, does make it to the captaincy, say in 2016 at Hazeltine National, Chaska, Minnesota, he would still be a mere pup by comparison with Watson. Yet there’s no question about the respect he commands and the chemistry he enjoys with the likely core of his team.

Frederick Steven Couples was born on October 3, 1959 in Seattle, Washington to Tom and Violet Couples.

His paternal grandparents came from Italy and changed the family name from “Coppola” to “Couples,” an action that raises the intriguing possibility that he might be distantly related to the film director Francis Ford Coppola and the actor Nicolas Cage. His father was a groundskeeper for the Seattle Parks Department and the family, which included brother Tom, Jr., and sister Cindy, lived in a modest house on Beacon Hill near the city’s Jefferson Park golf course, where young Fred honed his loose, rhythmic swing in order to gain enough distance to keep up with the older children.

Couples graduated from O’Dea High School in Seattle in 1977 and took up a golf scholarship to the University of Houston where he met his first wife Deborah. As a member of the Houston Cougars men’s golf team, he roomed with Blaine McCallister, who also became a PGA Tour player, and future CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz. After turning professional in 1980, he found himself playing full-time on the PGA Tour within a matter of months. He had already tied for third in a Major—the 1982 PGA Championship at Southern Hills, Tulsa, Oklahoma—when his first PGA Tour victory came in the 1983 Kemper Open at Congressional, Bethesda, Maryland, at the second extra hole following a five-way playoff with fellow Americans Scott Simpson, Gil Morgan and Barry Jaeckel, and Taiwan’s T-C Chen.

However, Couples’ next win, in March 1984 in

the prestigious Players Championship at Sawgrass, Ponte Vedra, Florida, regarded at the time as the game’s unofficial fifth Major, was what brought him to lasting prominence. He followed that up with top-10 finishes at the next three Majors—the Masters, U.S. Open and [British] Open—and the rest, so to speak, is history. In addition to claiming the Arnold Palmer Award for topping the PGA Tour money list in 1992, he was voted PGA Tour Player of the Year in both 1991 and 1992, and also scooped the Vardon Trophy for the lowest scoring average in each of those years.

His Masters triumph was a logical fruition of an outstanding career to date and certainly no more than he deserved. But it still came courtesy of a huge slice of good fortune in the final round when his ball seemingly defied gravity by stopping on the bank in front of the 12th green rather than rolling back into Rae’s Creek. In all, he has recorded an impressive 26 top-10 finishes in Majors, and he also claimed a second Players Championship in 1996.

Because of his long driving, Couples, who never wears a glove, was given the nickname “Boom Boom” by fellow Tour pro Gary McCord, now a leading TV commentator. The fact that 1950s and ‘60s rock & roll performer Freddy Cannon had already collared the nickname must have sealed the deal.

He is sometimes also called “Mr. Skins” because of his five Skins Game victories (in 1995, 1996, 1999, 2003 and 2004) and total winnings of $3,515,000 in 11 appearances. Because of this dominance at the Skins Game and other off-season events, like the World Cup of Golf, which he won four times in a row for the U.S. in harness with Love from 1992-95, and the Johnnie Walker World Golf Championship, which he won in 1991 and 1995 at Tryall near Montego Bay, Jamaica, he also enjoys the not entirely complimentary sobriquet, “King of the Silly Season.”

Couples, now a resident of La Quinta, California,

Couples has a plethora of nicknames, including ‘Boom Boom,’ ‘Mr. Skins’ and ‘King of the Silly Season.’

But there’s nothing silly about what he’s won away from the PGA Tour

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made his Champions Tour debut in the 2010 Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai in Hawaii and nearly won the tournament, finishing a close second to Watson. “I had a wonderful time. I think I was 21 under par and didn’t win a tournament. That hasn’t happened too many times,” he said graciously, and before moving up a gear to win on his next three starts. Naturally, he was a shoo-in for Champions Tour Rookie of the Year award at the end of that season.

Couples was sidelined by his back problems once again for most of 2011, but after undergoing some revolutionary treatment in Germany these eased sufficiently for him to resume playing. And in typical showman’s fashion, he promptly won his first senior Major, the Senior Players Championship, on the third hole of a sudden-death playoff against John Cook. Couples currently takes Anatabloc to keep his back in check and is a brand ambassador for the anti-inflammatory supplement, wearing its logo on the left arm of his golf shirts.

Away from playing, he has worked on 15 courseconstruction projects worldwide since 1992 with his design partner Gene Bates. These include several award-winning layouts, including Carolina National (in Bolivia, North Carolina), San Juan Oaks (in San Juan Bautista, California), and Westfields (in Clifton, Virginia) as

well as designs in Japan, China and Canada. Couples is also a good friend of Michael Jordan, who served as one of his vice-captains at the 2009 Presidents Cup, and he is a season-ticket holder for the Charlotte Bobcats where Jordan is the majority owner.

In 2007, he was inducted into the National ItalianAmerican Sports Hall of Fame and in May this year his position in the game’s pantheon was confirmed when he became a World Golf Hall of Famer. Twice he choked up with tears during his acceptance speech when he described how he had gained the motivation to pursue a career in golf while attending a clinic in Seattle at the age of 14. “An unbelievable PGA Tour player was doing the clinic, and I got up front and I was staring at him,” Couples recalled. “I wasn’t really a person who said, ‘That’s what I want to do, I’m going to be a PGA Tour player.’ But I knew I wanted to really, really get involved in golf. And the gentleman’s name was Lee Trevino, who has been a mentor and someone I love.”

The emotion welled up again at the end of his speech. “Thanks for taking a kid from Seattle and putting him into the Hall of Fame,” he told the distinguished gathering of the game’s great and good. “This is the coolest night of my life.” The coolest night in the life of golf’s coolest dude? It must have been some party afterwards.

“An unbelievable PGA Tour player was doing the clinic... the gentleman’s name was Lee Trevino, who has been a mentor and someone I love”

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The Patriot Cup offers great golf, top players and celebrities and plenty of fun—but its most important mission is reminding us all that freedom comes with a price Aside from vArious fundrAising events, there are few notable competitions in any sport staged with a purpose beyond that of their own existence—most often to showcase top talent and establish a victor at the end of the contest. But The Patriot Cup is a different sort of event, a tournament that functions as a kind of monument in action, celebrating and thanking those who have put their lives on the line for our country, and solemnly honoring those who have paid the ultimate price. How fitting that it comes in golf, a game in which players are trusted to officiate

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themselves and in which the words of the noted Roman statesman Cicero are so apt: “Ability without honor is useless.” For honor is at the heart of the game, and honor is certainly at the heart of The Patriot Cup. “The impetus is revitalizing the meaning of Memorial Day,” says Maj. Dan Rooney, Patriot Cup creator and founder of the Folds of Honor Foundation, a group that helps families of veterans. “It’s just such a special moment in our country that has been relegated to ‘the day the pool opens’ or ‘the family BBQ,’ and that’s not what it’s about.”

The Patriot Cup golf tournament is held at The Patriot Golf Course in Owasso, OK, which also serves as the Foundation’s headquarters. Over Memorial Day weekend, both the Patriot Cup Invitational and The Patriot Cup are staged, showcasing patriotism, camaraderie and the epic golf course. For the first event, a PGA professional joins two military golfers and two Folds of Honor guests for a full day of golf. For The Patriot Cup itself, three-person teams consisting of a tour player and/or celebrity, a military golfer and one Folds of Honor guest compete in a three-person scramble. The “Flyboys” (pilots) face off against the “Groundpounders” (boots-on-the-ground and Naval forces) in a tough, televised competition before enjoying a black tie gala and concert. While the day is full of fun, the importance of it as a memorial to those who serve sits behind every smile.

If millions of Americans have come to see Memorial Day as just another day off work, an excuse to watch sports, grill burgers and open a few beers with friends, there are millions of others for whom the occasion is a painful milepost on the calendar. “ M o s t of the country

member wakes up and they’re going to hang out,” explains Rooney.

“The realities are, if you’ve been there and you’ve seen firsthand the price of freedom and the fact that it’s not free, if your loved one has lost a brother, a child or a parent, it’s a really tough day, and that is the spirit in which we come together.”

And what a gathering it is. Celebrities like actor Craig T. Nelson, country music legend Vince Gill and NFL quarterback Brandon Weeden are just a few of the wide variety of notables who’ve shown up to play in The Patriot Cup. On the pro side it’s a formidable list as well, with the likes of Zach Johnson, recent Travelers winner Ken Duke (who has FHF on his bag), Craig Stadler, Bo Van Pelt and Rickie Fowler showing up this year, among many others.

Rooney was in a group with Fowler, playing against Corporal Chad Pfeifer, a scratch golfer and single amputee (leg) and Zach Johnson.

“They beat us, and Ricky’s really good,” says Rooney, himself a PGA Club Professional. “I’m pretty good, but they just flat out-golfed us.”

This year the Groundpounders took the cup from the Flyboys, who’d won it last year. The competition was followed by a gala, with MC duties going to David Feherty, and then a concert from country artist Dierks Bentley.

In addition to showcasing some great golf and good times, The Patriot Cup raises money for the Folds of Honor Foundation. But the importance of the tournament goes far beyond that. For many, it is becoming a ritual of sorts in which the meaning and substance of Memorial Day are validated and honored, not casually dismissed.

In this, it provides a proud environment in which to celebrate—and to grieve—within a brotherhood of people who understand the meaning of the word “sacrifice.”

“All the Flyboys play against the Groundpounders, Army, Navy and Marines,” says Rooney. “It’s the greatest team on Earth, the U.S. military. We go to combat together and morph and become one. But outside of that, it’s a friendly rivalry. People that would never get to experience that get to be part of this band of brothers for the day.”

And for those who have experienced it in the field of battle, the day is even more important.

“There was a Veteran, he asked to be

anonymous, he told me a story this year that captured it best,” says Rooney. “He told me, ‘Memorial Day was the worst day of my life; I’ve left my best friends on the battlefields of Iraq and I used to wake up and basically crack the top on the whiskey and drink until it was Tuesday. I’ve been at the Patriot Cup the last two years and it’s brought this ray of hope.’”

That ray of hope shines beyond the military personnel to include their families, for the Folds of Honor Foundation—named for the 13 folds it takes to get the American flag to its triangle shape—is all about helping veterans and their survivors, as well as reminding us all of their service.

Through scholarships and other assistance, the Foundation gives back to the spouses and children of soldiers killed or disabled in service to America.

Rooney himself is a former F-16 pilot, a Major in the Air National Guard and a decorated military aviator who served three combat tours in Iraq.

Returning from his second tour, he saw an irreverence toward U.S. service men and women that was unacceptable, and decided he wanted to dedicate his time to honoring those

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“It’s an unbelievable run of emotion; you laugh, you cry, you party and you celebrate that you are free, but you understand that freedom comes with a real price”

willing to pay the ultimate price. It wasn’t long before he identified a need in support for education. Many veterans’ dependents do not qualify for federal scholarship assistance and, despite some support from the federal government, many could miss out on the American dream for which their loved ones had fought so bravely. So, Rooney created the Folds of Honor Foundation in 2007 to assist the more than 1 million dependents of soldiers killed or disabled in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Soon, the Foundation will have handed out more than 5,000 scholarships, helping the children of those killed or disabled in combat to pursue education and to achieve their dreams.

The Foundation’s Children’s Scholarship Fund seeks to provide scholarships for Primary and Secondary Education (K through 12) while the Post-Secondary scholarships help children attend college and take advantage of the opportunities available to all in the United States, thanks to the service of a few.

With the tournament and all of the events surrounding it, “it’s an unbelievable run of emotion,” says Rooney. “You laugh, you cry, and you party and you celebrate that you are free, but you understand that freedom comes with a real price, with a reverence, if you will…

“In my humble opinion, for the folks that come to this event, there’s no place in America to be on Memorial Day other than at The Patriot Cup.”

The PaTrioT Golf Club

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Set amidst the rolling countryside of northeastern

oklahoma, the Patriot Golf Club, 20 minutes from tulsa

in owasso, is a special place indeed. Headquarters to the Folds of Honor Foundation, which helps the families of

veterans killed or disabled in service to their country, the club also offers an award-winning golf experience and a proud community. the golf course is a robert trent

Jones, Jr., design that makes epic use of the area’s lowland marsh, heavy woodlands, high prairie and dramatic

limestone cliffs. For a world-class facility such as this,

membership initiation is a reasonable $10,000, half of

which immediately goes to fund a scholarship for the child of a veteran killed or disabled in service to the country. “there’s no golf course like it in the world,” says

maj. Dan rooney, a former F-16 pilot and major in the

oklahoma Air National Guard who served three combat tours in Iraq and who founded the Folds of Honor

Foundation. “It has truly great golf, and a greater purpose.”

A tribute to America’s heroes, the spirit of patriotism,

golf’s greatest traditions and home to the Folds of Honor Foundation, the Patriot Golf Club isn’t just a top club destination, it’s a living and active monument to this country’s best and brightest.

To learn more about membership, Patriot Golf Club and

how you can help support those who serve so that all of us

To find out how you can help Maj. Dan Rooney and the Folds of Honor Foundation achieve their important mission, please visit foldsofhonor.org.

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might live free, visit thepatriotgolfclub.com for more information.

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For all those moments you missed to serve us, it’s our turn to serve you.

In honor of our troops and their families, Homewood Suites is introducing 15% off leisure stays for all active and retired military. You’ve given so much for us, the least we could do is return the favor.

BOOK NOW AT HOMEWOODSUITES.COM

Be at home.

Subject to availability at participating Homewood Suites hotels. Valid only for guests with valid military ID including active duty, reserve, and retired service members and their spouses and families. Enter promotion code ”MFR” at time of booking. Must present your current and valid military identification card at check-in. Tuesday night arrivals must book a minimum of 3 nights. Wednesday night arrivals must book a minimum of 2 nights. The discount rate relates to the hotel’s Best Available Rate which is a specific rate type that varies depending on time of purchase, is unrestricted, non-qualified, and excludes discount rates. Rate valid for leisure stays only and not official government or military travel. Additional restrictions may apply. © 2013 Hilton Worldwide.

VISIT OUR WELCOME HOME HEADQUARTERS ON FACEBOOK.COM/HOMEWOODSUITES AND CELEBRATE BEING AT HOME

LIFE IN LIFE IN PICTURES PICTURES Harry Frye shot more than 300 Sports Illustrated covers and took picturesand of Arnold With Latrobe beinginnumerable both his birthplace summer Palmer over thethis yeaXXXXX xXXX are justata Merion, few of home, and with year’s U.S. Open back them, from book Palmer we thought nowthe was the The timeClassic to highlight Arnie in his home state of Pennsylvania.

P AP RA TR T X X2 6V

Arnold, son of greenskeeper Deacon, operating the tractor at Latrobe [Left] Taking a break mid-round during the U.S. Open at Oakmont in June 1962 [Right] Arnold Palmer at home at Latrobe in 1960 with wife Winnie and daughters Peggy and Amy [Below]

Posing with Winnie in front of their plane at Latrobe airport in the mid-1960s [Right] A pensive Arnie lines up a putt during the 1962 U.S. Open at Oakmont [Left] Arnie with Mark McCormack, his agent, business partner and friend, and founder of International Management Group (IMG), at Laurel Valley Country Club in Ligonier, PA [Below]

The congregation look on as Palmer plays out of the infamous Church Pews at Oakmont during the 1983 U.S. Open

Talking majors, the King and Tiger catch up before the start of this year’s U.S. Open at Merion

Designed by ARNOLD PALMER. Defined by the LEGENDS who’ve played here.

It’s no coincidence that five of our past Invitational winners reside in the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Our Arnold Palmer Signature ORLANDO, FL course is widely known as one of the most challenging on the PGA TOUR. Now, you can follow the footsteps of legends with your own legendary vacation at Bay Hill. Experience all the benefits this world-renown private club and resort has to offer. Call 1.888.422.9445 or visit www.bayhill.com to book your stay today.

North vs.

South Sibling rivalries are as old as the hills, and at more than 1 billion years of age, the hills in North and South Carolina are pretty darn old. The two Carolinas and the Blue Ridge Mountains that run through them were part of the same “Province of Carolina” until 1729, when political divisions began to form and the territories split. Today the two states enjoy the kind of relationship that twins might: identical to outsiders, vastly different to in-the-know family members. Take their golf games, for example. One might be said to favor resort-style golf opportunities while the other could be seen as preferring private club-style experiences. Of course there are examples of both in both states. Whichever you choose for your game, we say follow the same rules as with BBQ: You’re going to enjoy it no matter which state you’re in, just don’t mention how good it is next door.

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NORTH CAROLINA Scotch Hall Preserve Windsor, NC Commanding the high bluffs overlooking North Carolina’s Albemarle Sound, Scotch Hall Preserve is a place of striking natural beauty and profound historical and archeological significance. Historians say it was here Sir Walter Raleigh planned to place the first English settlement in America. Even earlier, Native Americans roamed the land, leaving behind a rich collection of artifacts, now preserved in a waterfront memorial donated by Rial Corporation, community developer. “We take our stewardship seriously,” says General Manager Dutch Remkes. “Preserve is more than just part of our name, but a vital part of our mission.” Scotch Hall Preserve features one of The King’s greatest works— recently named as one of the state’s Most Scenic Courses—along with a resortstyle swim pavilion and full-service marina. Homesites on the Sound and in park-like settings start under $100,000. If you’re looking to create your own special history, you’re invited to explore Scotch Hall Preserve.

ScotchHallPreserve.com

Patrick Drickey / stonehousegolf.com

Pinehurst Pinehurst, NC Head two hours due east of Charlotte and into the footsteps of golf legends.

With its first course laid out in 1898, Pinehurst has gone on to host more championships than any other course in the country—including the upcoming U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open Championships in 2014.

With eight spectacular courses, it is also America’s largest golf resort. After thoroughly exhausting yourself on course, make your way over to the grand Carolina Hotel, dubbed “Queen of the South,” and enjoy a mint julep on the verandah before dining at the Four Diamond, 1895 Grille situated in their charming boutique hotel offering, The Holly Inn. If Pinehurst isn’t on your “must visit” list, it should be.

Pinehurst.com

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Bald Head Island Bald Head Island, NC No worries, no stress, and no cars. Golf carts are the preferred conveyance here, which keeps everyone in a golfing frame of mind all day long. East of the Cape Fear River, Bald Head Island is a stunningly beautiful getaway—or a full-time residence, as it is for many. It’s a 20-minute ferry from the mainland, but it’s a world away. Sitting in the northernmost subtropical region, you’ll find as many piña colada-worthy palm trees as you will moonlit clouded nights over the island’s 14 miles of beaches. Golf is a way of life here, with a top-rated course that plays along the water. Other activities, such as shopping or dining at a top restaurant, are available once you’ve had your fill of sunshine and relaxation. Consider purchasing a home, renting a home or just dropping by for a visit. Whichever you choose, Bald Head Island is the perfect blend of the refined golfing lifestyle and a laid-back, lifelong summer vacation.

Baldheadisland.com

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Cullasaja Club Highlands, NC If you get to Western North Carolina, there’s only one place to stay: the Old Edwards Inn & Spa. What started as a boarding house in 1860 is today one of the finest inns in the South, with an amazing spa, fantastically inspired dining and its own top golf course. [Editor’s note: I’ve visited here many times, and it’s a worthwhile place with a top-drawer staff. A must-stay if you’re in the area.]

Once you’ve settled in, call the Cullasaja Club and arrange a tee time, because the Arnold Palmer-designed course here is one of those hidden gems that will absolutely blow you away. Granite cliffs, the Cullasaja River and a stunning forest landscape all set the scene for one of the most dramatic and beautiful courses you’ll ever play. A true surprise, and one well worth discovering.

Cullasajaclub.org

Quail Hollow Charlotte, NC The course is worthy of hosting major championships, the club celebrates the eloquently tenacious spirit of the game and the King himself is a member—what more could you ask for? Not only is Mr. Palmer on the members’ list, but in 1986 he also modified some of the holes. More recently, rookie and fourth alternate Derek Ernst won the eleventh annual Wells Fargo Championship and his first PGA TOUR victory here, beating out David Lynn and Phil Mickelson in a sudden death playoff. His win moved him from 196th to 32nd in the standings—proving that the property offers great possibilities. If you manage to beat Ernst’s finalround score of 70 on course, you can treat your fellow club members to a round of drinks in the classically beautiful clubhouse.

Quailhollowclub.com

TPC at Piper Glen Charlotte, NC An Arnold Palmer-designed course anchors the Tournament Players Club at Piper Glen, but it’s not the only thing you’ll want to take advantage of while on property. TPC properties are built to host PGA TOUR tournaments and events, so you know that as a member, you’re getting professional level quality in every aspect of the property—from the course to the tennis courts to the cocktails. At TPC at Piper Glen, it’s all first-class.

Tpcpiperglengc.com

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SOuTH CAROLINA Old Tabby Links Spring Island, SC The pristine heart-shaped 3,000 acres that make up Spring Island are evidence of humans living in perfect, elegant harmony with the land. A residential community within a nature preserve, this idyllic enclave is also home to one of the southeast’s most beautiful golf courses. Opened in 1992, the Arnold Palmer designed Old Tabby Links golf course was hailed as not only a magnificent course, but also an emblem of environmental stewardship. Renovated in 2012 by the Arnold Palmer Design Company, the course has been refreshed to showcase the diversity and dynamism of each hole. Played through the live oak ‘cathedrals’ of the front nine before opening onto the verdant meadows of the homeward half, this stunning course is sure to leave you breathless and begging for more.

Springisland.com

Musgrove Mill Clinton, SC The Arnold Palmer Signature Course at Musgrove Mill seems to rise naturally out of the surrounding woodlands. As with all Arnold Palmer designed courses, it was built with a deep respect and consideration for the land’s natural form.

At Musgrove Mill, this means the frequent changes in elevation make the course versatile, interesting and an absolute pleasure to play. As Palmer himself has it, “The formation of the Musgrove Mill Golf Club was based on a love of the game of golf and the members’ desire for selective privacy.” A special place, indeed.

Musgrovemill.com

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Legends Myrtle Beach, SC Safely under the umbrella of Arnold Palmer Golf Management, the five courses at Legends offer players an all-inclusive dive into all South Carolina’s coast has to offer. The Heathland course pays tribute to pure links style golfing; low vegetation lets you see the full expanse of a hole, but the lovely Southern breeze may keep you from getting there. Whereas the Heritage Plantation course weaves its way through 600 acres of giant magnolias and 300-year-old Live Oaks. The lakes and marshes of this former rice plantation have been re-designed as some of the most beautiful golfing on the coast.

Legendsgolf.com

Dataw Island Dataw Island, SC Discovered by the Spanish in 1514, Dataw Island was desired and fought over by the Spanish, English and French 200 years before the Revolutionary War. Today, the only battles you’ll see will be on course. In the 18th century, dikes were built to expand the island’s land for planting cotton fields.

These fields have given way to greens on the Cotton Dike golf course, which follows Jenkins Creek through this lush land. The Morgan River course offers up its own personality in the way of water challenges beautifully landscaped with aquatic plants that attract wildlife to the ponds. If you miss birdie because you were looking at a Tundra Swan, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Dataw.org

Kiawah Island Kiawah Island, SC Less than an hour south of Charleston, renowned Kiawah Island feels worlds away from any city. Kiawah Island may seem laid back, but it is home to some of the most challenging golf on the Southeastern coast. With more seaside holes than any other course in the Northern Hemisphere, unpredictable coastal winds and a history of championship play, the Ocean Course has earned its reputation as one of the country’s great, yet formidable, tracks. After you’ve played the Ocean Course and the four other amazing courses that make up the resort, schedule an athletic recovery massage at the Forbes Five Star-awarded Spa at The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island Resort.

Your back will thank you.

Kiawahresort.com

Haig Point Club Hilton Head Island, SC The Rees Jones Signature Course at Haig Point Club will have you coming back again and again—literally. Its unique 20-hole design, third nine and alternate teeing boxes offer a wide variation of ways to play—making it almost like two or three courses in one. In-between rounds, you can take a horse ride on the beach, charter a deep-sea fishing trip, sharpen your tennis or croquet skills or dine in the beautiful Calibogue Club. Like the strategies on course, the recreational options at Haig Point are nearly endless.

Haigpoint.com

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W R INKL E FR E E D RE S S S H I RT S now available at southernmarsh.com

From one perspective, Charlotte Motor Speedway (CMS) is one of the great chapters in the story of Southern racing; its sun-baked, 1.5-mile oval has seen enough grease and sweat to soak a lifetime of Carolina T-shirts. From another, it’s the story of one man, a big personality who loved racing, loved life, went for broke—and got there, before coming full circle. Like its neighbors at Talladega, Bristol, Darlington and Daytona International, Charlotte offers a lot of great speed, great fun and great racing south of the Mason-Dixon line. And like all good Southern stories, Charlotte’s comes with its share of bad times, as well.

There’s tragedy, triumph, big egos, some family, a little bit of humor and a whole lot of heart here. In fact, the only thing not Southern about Charlotte Motor Speedway is the pace, which is anything but slow

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A New TrACk Everyone knew Bruton Smith would end up in racing. The Oakboro, North Carolina, native watched his first race in 1935, aged 8, and bought his first race car at 17. Aiming for a career as a driver, he gave it up for the best reason a Southern boy could have: his mama asked him to.

But if the good son agreed to get out from behind the wheel, it didn’t mean he was leaving the track.

By 1949 Smith was running the National Stock Car Racing Association (NSCRA), one of the many racing organizations down South and a direct competitor to the then-new NASCAR. Most boys born in the land of grits and sweet tea would have been content to sit pretty, enjoy life and watch the cars go round and round, but Smith had bigger plans.

In 1959, he talked his wealthy brotherin-law into financing a new $1.5 million track in central North Carolina, and late that year ground was broken for Charlotte Motor Speedway. Curtis Turner—the “Blond Blizzard of Virginia”—came in as a partner to help promote the track and construction took off at a furious pace, with workers on-site 24 hours a day trying to make an impossible May 1 deadline. But it wasn’t long before Charlotte’s troubles began, and—perhaps predictably—they were financial.

With just a small strip of the main straight left to be paved, the contractor stopped all work due to outstanding payments. According to D.L. Morris’ biography of Turner, Timber On The Moon, the volatile driver took matters into his own hands. With local law enforcement looking the other way, Turner and a group of friends showed up at the construction site armed with at least one shotgun and a pistol and compelled the workers to get back to it. On June 19, 1960, with Southern smiles all around, CMS opened for action with the inaugural World 600.

As quickly as CMS started, it crashed. In December 1961, the track declared bankruptcy and Smith lost his beloved race course. Control was eventually awarded by a judge to a group of stockholders led by furniture storeowner Richard Howard. For Smith it was a bitter loss, but it was more a pit stop than a checkered flag. Over the next decade and a half, he worked in banking, opened a string of car dealerships and pursued other businesses. Bit by bit, he re-made his fortune until, by 1975, he’d bought most of the CMS shares and was back in charge. Today Smith chairs Speedway Motorsports, Inc., which controls nine major tracks. Never content to sit still, he keeps pushing CMS forward. The facility has recently attracted the attention of ESPN as a potential X-Games venue, and of course it continues to provide great, if hot, afternoons of racing.

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SpeeDwAy OvAL FACTS Opened: 1960 / Capacity: 140,000 / Surface: Asphalt / Length: 1.5mi / Banking on Turns: 24˚ / Banking on straights: 5˚ / Lap Record: 0:24:490 (Tony Stewart, Team Menard, 1998, IndyCar Series)

Charlotte Motor Speedway annually stages the Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day

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The heart of the Speedway is the 1.5-mile quad oval with its 24˚ banked turns, which has seen some of racing’s most exciting moments in its more than 50 years of operation.

Today host to NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series and Nationwide Series, in addition to the Camping World Truck Series, its longest-held and most prestigious race is the Coca-Cola 600 (formerly the World 600).

Memorial Day’s “other” event, the Coca-Cola 600 is NASCAR’s longest sanctioned race, running 600 miles in daylight, through dusk and into night. The race is staged later in the day to allow drivers to compete in both the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 on the same day, should they so desire. While 1,100 miles of racing in a single day might seem ridiculous, there are no regulations preventing it, and more than $20 million has been offered to the first driver to win both races (so far, there have been no takers). The later staging also affects track conditions, which vary widely between the infernally hot Carolina afternoon and the cool evening.

With the grueling hours and the variable conditions, it’s perhaps not surprising that the race holds the NASCAR record for number of cautions nor that it has seen its share of horrific crashes, including one by Reds Kagle in the event’s second year, which saw him lose a leg.

As tough as it is, the race is a proving ground and has been a first victory for a number of future champions, including David Pearson in 1961, Jeff Gordon in 1994, Bobby Labonte in 1995 and Matt Kenseth in 2000 (the first and only rookie to win it). Darrell Walltrip has won it a record five times (1978, ’79, ’85, ’88 and ’89), while Jimmie Johnson is the only man to take it three years in a row (with his third victory coming in 2005).

The oval also hosts the Sprint All-Star Race, which sees race winners from the previous season compete with winners from the start of the current season, the past ten event winners and previous ten Sprint Cup Series champions.

While the oval is CMS’s most famous feature, the quarter-mile, four-lane ZMAX Dragway is responsible for almost as much drama. The dragstrip opened in 2008 across the street from CMS. Like its parent track, it didn’t come without a fight.

When Smith announced plans for the dragway in 2007, locals in the city of Concord balked at the idea, concerned about excess traffic and noise. The brouhaha was significant enough for the city to adjust the site’s zoning, effectively stopping the dragstrip from being built. Undaunted, Smith announced that if he didn’t get his dragstrip, he would close CMS and relocate it to a different town. He also demanded that CMS and the land he owned around it be un-annexed from the City of Concord, separating him from the city’s oversight once and for all. With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, the city council bowed to pressure from the mayor, and even the state’s governor, and reversed its zoning decision. Additionally, the city offered an $80 million incentive package to keep CMS where it is, which saw Speedway Boulevard, an adjacent road, renamed as Bruton Smith Boulevard, in addition to improvements being made to roads that service CMS.

FINALLy The dragway implementation extended a long line of CMS challenges, which also includes one of NASCAR’s biggest disasters. In May 2000, 107 fans were injured when an 80-foot section of a pedestrian bridge linking a parking structure to the track dropped 17 feet onto the highway.

Lawsuits ensued, many settled out of court. Will there be future problems at CMS? As surely as there will be sunshine in North Carolina, but the track is nothing if not resilient. For racing, CMS lies at the heart of the experience: big enough to host some of the sport’s greatest events, small enough to feel like a local track, and just as neighborly as apple pie and ice cream—served with the scent of burnt rubber and gasoline.

If you get down South, do pop in; they’d love to have you.

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CALEDONIA INVASION Golf in the United States has its roots in a unique sporting migration more than a century ago. Malt whisky might still be Scotland’s most successful export, but the Royal and Ancient game also grew into a major influence as a result of the exhortation, ‘Go West, young man’

Scots John Reid (left) and Andrew Carnegie (right) were the founding fathers of American golf

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Courtesy USGA Archives

AN

Millions of people from the British Isles crossed the Atlantic to make a fresh start in North America during the late 19th century. But there’s no doubt the Scottish influx, in particular, had an indelible influence on the growth of golf in a country that went on to produce so many of the world’s finest players, courses and championships.

Surprisingly, perhaps, Canada was in the vanguard of golf’s arrival in North America with the formation of Royal Montreal in 1873 and Quebec Golf Club two years later, followed by a course in Toronto in 1876.

The U.S. love affair with golf, however, remained non-existent until February 1888 when John Reid, a steel merchant from the town of Dunfermline in the Kingdom of Fife on the east coast of Scotland, laid out three holes on a 30-acre cow pasture in Yonkers, New York. Thus was born the country’s first course—Saint Andrew’s Golf Club.

Like fellow émigré Andrew Carnegie, who also hailed from Dunfermline and made his fortune in the same industry, Reid, although not a golfer of note, was smitten with the game having played it since childhood.

Carnegie, the world’s richest man at the time, was one of the club’s early members before returning to live in the county of Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands where he bought Skibo Castle and acted as patron to Dornoch Golf Club.

In 1894, Saint Andrew’s and four other new courses— The Country Club at Brookline near Boston, Shinnecock Hills on Long Island, Newport Golf Club on Rhode Island and Chicago Golf Club—formed the United States Golf Association for the purpose of administering the rules and creating the U.S. Open.

The modern jewel that is Shinnecock Hills, host to three U.S. Opens in recent times, was built in 1891 with the aid of 150 Native Americans from a plantation adjoining Great Peconic Bay. They worked under the direction of Willie Dunn, a native of the town of Musselburgh, a few miles south of Edinburgh where several of the early [British] Opens were staged. Famously, Dunn was recruited by William K. Vanderbilt and two wealthy associates when they tracked him down to a project he was overseeing near Biarritz in southwest France.

Next door to Shinnecock Hills is the National Golf Links, created shortly afterwards

by Canadian-born Charles Blair Macdonald, who studied in his youth at the University of St Andrews, also in the Kingdom of Fife, and had previously put his learning to good effect by ushering Chicago Golf Club into existence. Coincidentally, Philadelphia insurance broker Hugh Wilson, with no previous design experience, also made a pilgrimage to Scotland to learn what he needed to know to complete the incomparable layout of this year’s U.S. Open venue, Merion.

Reid and Dunn were but two of hundreds of British golfers who flooded into the New World during the last decade of the 19th century. Three Scots—James Foulis (1896), Fred Herd (1898) and Willie Smith (1899)—along with two Englishmen—Horace Rawlins (1895) and Joe Lloyd (1897)—won the initial five U.S. Opens before Willie

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Anderson, from North Berwick near Musselburgh, claimed four of the first six to be played in the opening decade of the 20th century.

By then, more than a thousand clubs had opened in the U.S. with five brothers from Carnoustie near Dundee, also on the east coast of Scotland, having done as much as anyone to lay the foundations that transformed golf from a niche pastime into a sport of genuine stature.

Needless to say, Alex, Willie, George, Jimmy, and Macdonald Smith, who sailed to America around the turn of the century, were all formidable players. During that period, at least 300 sons of eastern Scotland, unable to earn much more than a pittance from the game at home, moved to America to take up the comparatively lucrative positions that were opening up in abundance for professionals and greenskeepers.

Despite his brother Willie’s earlier triumph, Alex, the eldest of the Smith clan, was regarded as the top player in the American game, and following several near misses he finally won the U.S. Open in 1906, a victory he repeated four years later. After that, the brothers continued to compete for major honors though Willie later moved to Mexico to become that country’s first professional golfer.

By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, home-grown American talent was inevitably emerging.

But the Scots were far from finished.

Aberdeen’s Willie Macfarlane outlasted the great Bobby Jones to win the 1925 U.S. Open at Worcester Country Club, Massachusetts, while another

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Left to right: Harry Holbrook, Alexander Kinnan and John Reid watch John Upham putting during an early game at Saint Andrew’s Golf Club. Holbrook’s sons, Warren and Fred, are the caddies

Scottish immigrant who made his mark, admittedly as a naturalized American citizen, was Tommy Armour. The winner of the first [British] Open to be played at Carnoustie, in 1931, he was blinded in one eye during World War I but still managed to perform at the pinnacle of the game.

With due deference to Martin Laird, three times a PGA Tour winner in recent seasons, Armour, who also won the 1927 U.S. Open and the 1930 PGA Championship, was probably the last in a lengthy roll call of Scottish-born golfers capable of beating the leading American players on a regular basis in their own back yard.

Ironically, the shift in power towards U.S. players during the game’s formative years was largely due to the expert tuition they received from Scottish pros. In 1913, young American amateur Francis Ouimet recorded a sensational win in the U.S. Open at The Country Club, an achievement immortalized in Mark Frost’s wonderful narrative, The Greatest Game Ever Played.

Afterwards, Ouimet, who never turned professional, preferring to work instead as an executive in the sports goods business, put his success down to the guidance of Montrose-born Charles Burgess.

Jones, arguably the finest golfer of his generation, was also taught by a Scot, Stewart ‘Kiltie’ Maiden, while Alex Smith was partially responsible for the prowess that enabled Gene Sarazen and Walter Hagen to win 18 major titles between them.

Not only did the Scots influence the way the game was played in America, they also had a massive role to play in shaping its courses.

Arguably, it is the Scottish triumvirate of Tom Bendelow, Donald Ross and Dr. Alister MacKenzie—every bit as potent

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in their field of expertise as the leading players of the time, Harry Vardon, James Braid and J.H. Taylor, to whom the game in the U.S. owes its deepest debt.

Bendelow, from Aberdeen, crafted more than 800 courses across the U.S. and Canada between his arrival in New York in 1892 and his death in Chicago in 1936. First employed in New York as a newspaper compositor, Bendelow acquired a reputation for producing lowcost courses, thanks to his flat fee of $25 for visiting and ‘marking out’ a plot of land. True to his origins, he initially concentrated on pioneering municipal golf centers, but later he turned his attention to more ambitious projects, notably his layout during the early 1920s of Medinah No.3, scene of three U.S. Opens, two PGA Championships and last year’s Ryder Cup. Ross began his career as a greenskeeper at Dornoch (150 miles north of Carnoustie and a short distance from the famed Glenmorangie whisky distillery) before working under ‘Old’ Tom Morris at St Andrews. He was ultimately responsible for the construction of 413 courses in the U.S. before his death in 1948. Apart from Pinehurst No.2, where the U.S. Open will be played in 2014, Ross’s most celebrated designs are Aronimink in Pennsylvania, Seminole in Florida (ironically, so private it never became one of his 48 championship courses), Oak Hill Country Club near Rochester, New York (venue of this year’s PGA Championship) and Oakland Hills Country Club, just outside Detroit.

Then there’s Inverness in Toledo, Ohio, scene of four U.S. Opens; Interlachen in Edina, Minnesota, where the 2002 Solheim Cup took place; East Lake, in Atlanta, Georgia, home club of Bobby Jones

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OldGolfImages.com

and regular host to the Tour Championship at the culmination of the FedExCup Playoffs; Sedgefield Country Club, venue for the Wyndham Championship on the PGA Tour; and Scioto in Columbus, Ohio, where Jack Nicklaus learned to play. Not surprisingly, the Golden Bear says of Ross: “His stamp as an architect was naturalness. He was, and still is, considered the Michelangelo of golf.”

Meanwhile, MacKenzie, born of Scottish parents in the English county of Yorkshire, trained as a doctor and served in the second Boer War (18991902) before abandoning his medical career to design courses in the United Kingdom in association with Harry Colt.

The first prominent designer who had not been a leading player, he published Golf Architecture in 1920 before emigrating to the U.S. where his two most notable achievements were Cypress Point on the Monterey Peninsula in northern California and Augusta National in Georgia, which he created in tandem with Jones.

The quality of this Tartan trio’s creations, and the requirements of the clientele they served, varied greatly, but there can be little argument that each deserves his position in the course architects’ pantheon.

It is possible that golf would be no bigger in America today than, say, cricket or rugby union had its founding fathers from across the Atlantic not warmed to their task with such intensity and commitment. The result is that today the U.S. is the game’s international epicenter, and the contribution from those early Scottish settlers cannot be understated.

The game would probably have found its way Stateside eventually, as it has done to almost every country in the world, but if its arrival in America had taken place 10 or 20 years later, then who knows whether we would have ever witnessed, and celebrated, the skills of Hogan, Nelson or Snead, let alone the likes of Jones, Hagen and Sarazen?

A visit to the USGA headquarters confirms the legacy of those pioneering Scots—from playing and teaching to course design and maintenance—and the important role they played in establishing the game’s rich heritage.

Golf today is a mighty oak, yet it originated from the humblest of acorns.

Indeed, few industries or companies can claim to have grown so significantly in 125 years. And to think it all began with a mere cow pasture in Yonkers!

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The wedge of land across France’s midriff from the port of Nantes to the ancient city of Orléans some 200 miles to the east was the cradle of northwest European civilization in the Middle Ages. Today the Loire Valley is a cornucopia of cultural and sporting delights— from glorious historic châteaux and vast sweeping vineyards to traditional hunting grounds and, nowadays, a plethora of golf courses. John Halnan, accompanied by some friends, made a pilgrimage to the region and was instantly chastened by the golfing beauty, and beast, that is Les Bordes

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nown as the Garden of France, the western half of the Loire Valley is supremely fertile and verdant. So it is perhaps no surprise that some of the country’s wealthiest and most aristocratic families have made this region their home, some going back more than a thousand years. And as is usually the case with rich families, the pickings have also been rich— châteaux that are more sybaritic than palaces, vineyards that stretch as far as the eye can see, and, more recently, golf courses to die for, or on.

One course in particular has been the scene of more scorecard deaths over the past couple of decades than perhaps any other in Europe.

The brainchild of Baron Marcel Bich, co-founder of Bic, the world’s leading producer of ballpoint pens, and his Japanese business associate Yoshiaki Sakurai, Les Bordes is an amphibious masterpiece enmeshed by several tributaries of the Loire within the forests of La Salogne.

Consistently ranked as one of Europe’s finest, and hardest, courses (indeed, it was originally conceived as France’s answer to Augusta National), Les Bordes was laid out on Bich’s 1,300-acre hunting estate near the sleepy town of Beaugency, 90 miles The 18th (left) and the 1st (below) represent very different challenges

south of Paris and halfway between the historic cities of Blois and Orléans.

It was designed by the late Robert von Hagge, who, despite being based in Houston, Texas, crafted many of continental Europe’s finest courses, including Golf National southwest of Paris where the 2018 Ryder Cup will be played.

At the time when Von Hagge visited this enchanting site, replete with duck, pheasant, boar and deer colonies, he was clearly at his most wickedly imaginative, not least in how he has seamlessly brought water into play and his creation of varied island greens. Ever since it opened for play in 1986, Les Bordes has presented a massive challenge to every golfer who pitches up nursing the (soon-to-be) forlorn hope that he, or she, might actually play to their handicap. To put this charming yet lethal layout into perspective, Jean Van de Velde, who infamously ‘blew’ the 1999 [British] Open at Carnoustie (another excruciatingly difficult test of golf), holds the course record with a one-under-par 71. If the thigh-high rough doesn’t get you, nor the water that comes into play at some point on almost every hole, then the giant oak trees that are strewn throughout the property surely will.

Until recently, Les Bordes was virtually inaccessible to all but a select few. Its few private residences are hidden away while the simple, cottagestyle hotel accommodation adjoins its rustic clubhouse, a converted hunting lodge that offers a wide range of meals from bar snacks to cordon bleu cuisine. It also houses a tremendous cellar. We asked for a Krug and, expecting a current Grand Cuvée, were surprised when the waiter returned with a rare 1990 Krug Clos de Mesnil. We shouldn’t have been.

Until Bich’s death in 1994, only a few of his friends, family, and acquaintances had ever played the course. By 2001, Sakurai had opened Les Bordes up to about 30 members and it then became available for limited public play after the Japanese tycoon’s death in 2004. Now, however, thanks to a syndicate of European investors who purchased the property in 2008, Les Bordes has reopened as a

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Sublime but treacherous, island greens are a distinctive and recurring feature of Robert von Hagge’s etheral layout at Les Bordes

private club, but with ambitious plans to expand the membership, facilities and property offering.

In addition to access to the 7,062yard, par-72 golf course, members at Les Bordes are entitled to hunting privileges not only on the Bich estate but the neighboring property of the Guerlain family and, with permission, others. The club, which also has a shooting academy and plans for an equestrian center, will soon offer home sites for sale, on parcels no smaller than 2.5 acres, and will build state-of– the-art, environmentally-friendly golf lodges that come with membership.

However, if you are thinking Florida-style fairways lined with McMansions, think again. No residences will be built within sight of any of the holes. The estate is vast as well as largely forested, so the peace, tranquility and natural serenity of Les Bordes will remain sacrosanct.

Our group played the course three times over two days and while we enjoyed regular sightings of the local deer, not to mention the innumerable birds that make Les Bordes their home, not once was our view of nature compromised by man-made intrusion. In fact, we only saw two other people on the course— the first, when it started raining on day one, was a kind member of staff who brought us dry towels and umbrellas, and the other, the following day, was a different member

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of staff who changed our buggies mid-round in case of battery failure.

At this point, so enchanted had we become with this beguiling private playground that the appearance of someone else shocked me to such an extent that I took a divot the size of Texas out of the tee—much to my companions’ amusement and my eternal shame.

How else did I play? As well as I possibly could, though I was still comfortably over my already considerable handicap despite a few birdies and a lot of pars. The combination of water and rough simply means that if you make a mistake you will be lucky to escape with even a double- or triple-bogey. I parred the long par-4 18th in rounds one and three, but also carded an 11 there second time around. Yet not once did I feel vexed or cheated by Von Hagge’s sublime creation. The course is completely fair: the greens are tricky but true, good shots are rewarded,

birdies are makeable, and mistakes are generally of your own making even if the subsequent score-card punishment is severe. Unlike any other course I have played—and I have hacked my way around a fair few—there isn’t an average or so-so hole on the course.

From 1 to 18, each hole is memorable and each shot requires mental engagement.

Although he passed away in 2010, Von Hagge’s plans for a second 18-hole course are still on the drawing board if the new owners decide the property needs an additional track.

One thing’s for certain: I can’t wait to return. It may be a while before I have the time and wherewithal to invest in a Les Bordes property, but as the small château on the estate (see below) is also being converted into a boutique hotel/spa, I’m sure it won’t be long, and the whole family will enjoy it too. lesbordes.com

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ALLuRe OF LOiRe GOLF In addition to Les Bordes, there are at least fifty 18-hole courses in the Loire Valley, most built in the past 25 years and nearly all close either to a park, château or nature site. Below is a selection of 20 (* indicates on-site hotel)...

Anjou G&CC*—A long, flat course set amid an ancient oak forest alongside several punishing water hazards. anjougolf.com Augerville*—Laid out on a hillside an hour’s drive from Orleans around a 13th century château. chateau-augerville.com Avrillé—An undulating 1988 design by Robert Berthet within

the prestigious Château de la Perrière estate, just outside Angers. bluegreen.com/avrille Barrière La Baule*—A superb resort at the mouth of the Loire

estuary that features 45 holes, including the 18-hole Lucien Barrière and Diane Barrière-Desseigne layouts. lucienbarriere.com Baugé-Pontigné—In the heart of the Baugeois forest, 20 miles east of Angers, this Alain Prat design is augmented by a clubhouse converted from 18th century farm buildings. golf-bauge.fr Château de Cheverny—Designed by Olivier Van der Vynckt, this course is about 15 minutes’ drive from Blois and has its own heliport. golf-cheverny.com Château des Sept Tours*—A mainly flat layout at the foot of the 19th century Château Vivier near Tours with copious vineyards in the background. 7tours.com Golf de La Bretesche*—Designed in 1967, this delightful parkland course a few miles northwest of Nantes is set in beautiful surroundings with château and lake views. golf-bretesche.com Golf de Nantes—An undulating, tree-lined Frank Pennink design at Vigneux-de-Bretagne that zigzags across the River Cens and around the Château de Buron. golfclubdenantes.com Golf de Pornic—Extended to 18 holes in 1992 by Michel Gayon, this mature, undulating parkland layout about 20 miles west of Nantes has numerous water hazards. bluegreen.com Golf de Savenay—Close to the beaches of La Baule and the Brière marshes, this Michel Gayon creation a few miles north of Nantes wends magically through a chestnut grove. bluegreen.com Golf de Touraine—This 40-year-old, undulating woodland course near Tours has numerous water hazards and a clubhouse incorporated within a 19th century castle. golfdetouraine.com Golf Parc Robert Hersant—Designed in 1981 by the eponymous Robert Hersant, this course meanders pleasantly through woodland and a sprinkling of water features. legolfparc.com Les Dryades*—Stretched out across a landscape of hedged farmland with a state-of-the-art spa on site. les-dryades.fr Limère-Orléans*—Set in the Sologne forest just south of Orleans, this scenic Cabell Robinson layout has 94 bunkers, well-guarded greens and its fair share of water hazards. bluegreen.com Sablé-Solesmes—36 holes located near Sable-sur-Sarthe, some 30 miles north of the city of Angers. golfsablesolesmes.com Saint Jean de Monts—Forty miles south of Nantes, this 1988 Yves Bureau-designed links runs initially through a pine wood before finishing alongside the ocean. golfsaintjeandemonts.fr Sancerrois—A flat, wooded course located on the banks of the Loire about 30 miles north of Bourges. golf-sancerre.com Tours Ardrée—Near Tours, Ardree’s fairways slope enticingly between beech, maple and cedar groves. bluegreen.com/tours Vaugouard*—A beautiful course routed through oak and willow woodlands around Fontenay-sur-Loing’s château. vaugouard.com

FRuiTS OF THe ViNe The River Loire, now a UNESCO World Heritage site, is officially 635 miles long, measured from its source high in the Massif Central in the east of France to beyond the port of Nantes where it reaches the Atlantic Ocean.

The region has a long history of viticulture, dating back to the 1st century AD, and Loire wines tend to exhibit fresh, fruity flavors. Along the way, the vintages are magnificent—from effervescent Muscadet near Nantes to crisp Sancerre and herbaceous Pouilly-Fumé just southeast of Orléans. In between are the vineyards of Anjou, Saumur, Bourgueil, Chinon and Vouvray.

Most of the Loire Valley output is white wine, but some red, rosé, sparkling and dessert wine is also produced, especially around Chinon.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the Romans planted the first vineyards in the Loire Valley. By the 5th century, the flourishing viticulture was noted by the poet Sidonius Apollinaris; and in the History of the Franks, Bishop Gregory of Tours wrote of the frequent plundering by the Bretons of the area’s wine stocks. By the 11th century, the wines of Sancerre had a reputation across Europe for their high quality, even more prized than those from Bordeaux.

The actual River Loire has a significant effect on the region’s mesoclimate, adding extra degrees of temperature so grapes can grow when the areas immediately north and south prove unresponsive. In addition, several of its tributaries are also well planted, including the Allier, Cher, Indre, Loir, Sèvre Nantaise and Vienne. The climate can be cool in spring when frost is a potential hazard for the vines. Later, excessive rain can cause the grapes to be harvested under-ripe.

Wine production divides mainly into three regions. Upstream is dominated

by Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir grapes (Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé), the middle by Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc, and the lower Loire by Melon de Bourgogne (Muscadet). The area around Saumur, a town in the heart of the mid-region, is the third largest sparkling wine appellation in France after Champagne and Crémant d’Alsace. More than 12 million bottles of Saumur Mousseux are produced each year. Unlike Champagne which is made with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, Saumur sparkling wine is based on Chenin Blanc. The region around Vouvray, Montlouis-sur-Loire and Touraine has the most diverse planting of the whole region. For years Touraine would race to release an early bottling of Gamay to rival the launch of Beaujolais Nouveau.

In the 17th century, Dutch wine merchants laid the foundation for Muscadet by encouraging villagers living near Nantes to plant the early-ripening Melon de Bourgogne grape to use in the production of their brandewijn (distilled wine with brandy added to it). Following the devastation in 1709 of winter frost to many of the local vineyards, King Louis XIV ordered that the frost-resistant Muscadet grape be given precedence when the area was replanted.

Muscadet is often bottled straight from the tank where it is fermented without any racking or filtering, so it can be cloudy and require decanting to remove sediment. Finally, the white wines of Coteaux du Layon, Montlouis-surLoire, Savennières, and Vouvray, based on Chenin Blanc, are known for both their high acidity when young and their ability to develop and age well.

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Château de Chenonceau, built in the early 16th century, is second only to Versailles as the most visited royal château in France

CHâTeAux CHiT-CHAT Even though you might have consumed plenty of wine and played enough golf, don’t forget the Loire Valley is also an historian’s delight. Every couple of miles you’ll stumble on another castle, and these things weren’t built yesterday.

Here’s a sample of what lies in store for intrepid culture vultures…

Abbey of Fontevraud—Founded in 1101 by Robert

d’Arbrissel just south of Saumur, this monastic enclave is run by women. The abbesses of royal lineage succeeded one another after Eleanor of Aquitaine spent her last days here.

Transformed into a prison by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804, it became a penitentiary until the last prisoners left in 1985.

Amboise—Situated a few miles east of Tours, the original medieval fortress was replaced by the Royal Château around the end of the 15th century. Leonardo da Vinci spent his last three years at the nearby Château Le Clos Lucé from 1516 and is buried in the Chapel of St-Hubert.

Azay-le-Rideau—Described by novelist Honoré de Balzac as “a facetted diamond,” this astonishing structure is situated a short distance west of Tours. After the original 11th century chateau was destroyed during the Hundred Years War, it was rebuilt on an island on the River Indre by early Renaissance visionary Gilles Berthelot.

Château d’Angers—This vast medieval fortress, surrounded by 17 towers, was built in 1246 by the young St. Louis as a gift to his younger brother Charles. Since then, the site has constantly changed both in use and appearance.

Inside the huge fortress walls are residential buildings and gardens. The château also houses the famous and sacred Apocalypse Tapestry.

Château de Blois—Seven kings and ten queens of France resided at this panorama of art and history. Furnished and embellished with magnificent polychrome decorations,

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this glorious château is resplendent with beauty and treasures. It is the ultimate snapshot of the Loire Valley’s architectural diversity since the Middle Ages—from Gothic and Renaissance styles to Classicism.

Château de Chambord—Located between the river and woodlands near Blois, Chambord is the largest of the French Renaissance châteaux. This majestic stone colossus was the 1519 brainchild of King Francis I, who liked nothing better after an exhausting battle than indulging in his favorite sport of hunting for wild boar and deer.

Château de Chenonceau—Once a royal residence and the property of the crown, this early 16th century edifice is second only to Versailles as the most visited château in France. It houses a distinguished collection of paintings by the great masters and a remarkable series of Flemish tapestries.

Château de Chinon—The royal fortress of Chinon, home town of the celebrated 16th century writer Francois Rabelais and a few miles up the river from Saumur, was built by the Count of Blois, Thibaut I. In the main hall of the royal house in 1429, a crucial meeting took place here between Joan of Arc and the Dauphin (the future Charles VI).

Château de Saumur—Since construction at the end of the 11th century, this château has been a fortress, prison, manor house and arms depot. Overlooking the town and river, its high octagonal towers, mullion windows, gables and embellished fleur-de-lys battlements irresistibly bring a fairy-tale castle to mind.

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legendary Forget Titanium drivers and composite-core balls; these guys like their game with a lot of backspin. James Ellis slows down to take a look at the world of hickory golfers...

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omanticized visions of champagne-drenched flappers and grand cars with ski-jump fenders make the years around the Jazz Age seem like so much fun, but it wasn’t all easy going, and certainly not on the golf course. Most early 20th century golf equipment seemed nearly antique even when it was new: the clubs were just wooden sticks, really, and probably not that different from what Mary Queen of Scots used two centuries before. The de rigueur jackets and ties looked nice but were hardly conducive to a backswing. The balls didn’t have a lot of distance in them and the pants—well, they barely reached your knees. So why on earth, in a world of new-tech drivers and NASA-inspired clothing, would anyone put on a dress shirt, pull on a jacket and chase balls around a field with a tree branch?

“I said, ‘you gotta be kidding me… who in the heck can hit this thing?’” remembers Chris Deinlein, former president of the Society of Hickory Golfers, talking about the first time he picked up a hickory club.

“But you get into it and you truly start enjoying the feel of the ball coming off the clubface, where you can actually feel it.”

“Feel” is a word that hickory fans use a lot, and it’s something they believe has been lost from the game in terms of both the equipment and the overall experience. To preserve what they feel are some of golf’s best attributes, enthusiasts all over the world regularly meet to play events with hickory clubs on classically styled courses. They dress in vintage clothing, sometimes engage a vintage vocabulary and enjoy playing what they feel is a more authentic, and even more interesting, game of golf.

There’s certainly an argument when it comes to strategy, which for many modern pros is now simply “bomb the drive, chip to the green and putt.”

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This defeats the purpose of course design, argue purists, because architects such as Alastair MacKenzie couldn’t have conceived of today’s equipment, which allows players to smash the ball from the tee to the front of the green. Their naturally irrigated courses were designed for hickories, which mostly take the ball out of the air and put it on the ground. More than encouraging a “grip it and rip it” approach, hickory clubs rather re-set the game, as it were, reintroducing the need for real strategy and that good old fashioned game-changer: creativity.

“It’s a game of angles,” Deinlein says. “And that’s really what these guys, the Donald Rosses, folks of that nature, were working with on the golf course… With these clubs, you can work the ball a heck of a lot easier. You can put in that punch shot, the slides or whatever.”

Easier once you slow your swing down, that is, and start to develop a feel for the ball and the club. And that feel extends beyond the swing and into the very clubs themselves, much more so than with modern equipment, says Deinlein.

“You almost get a kinship from each club,” he says.

“They’re all different.”

Not so with a high-tech modern club?

“Oh no, gosh no! When you pick up a club that’s an original clubhead with an original shaft, you just start thinking, ‘this club is maybe 80, 90, 100 years old.

Where’s it been and who’s been handling it?’”

Hickory tournaments, then, are a celebration of that fascination, with the experience extending to the dress and often to the courses as well, turning major tournaments into a cross between sport and historical reenactment.

“I imagine this is what I would have been like had I been playing with Bobby Jones, walking down the fairway,” says Deinlein.

Here, the modern world doesn’t often get a lot of love, especially when it comes to technology. Deinlein recalls taking a swing with a friend’s modern driver after years of playing exclusively with hickory: “I teed it up, blew it, and it just went forever,” he says. “I threw the club back at him and said ‘too easy.’”

For those who would challenge the viability of hickory as useful golf equipment, though, the transition from modern clubs isn’t as dramatic as one might think.

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“You lose in two areas of play,” explains Matt Dodds, longtime hickory enthusiast and organizer of the Vermont Hickory Open. “You definitely lose off the tee, so your drives are going to be shorter. And the second thing is that it’s tough to get high-quality sand clubs. Just not that many high-quality sand clubs out there.”

Dodds raises an interesting point in that, unlike heading down to your local retailer and purchasing a set of modern clubs, hickories aren’t always easy to come by.

“I pestered my dad, and he finally walked out to the tree row, cut a branch off and fashioned a club for me,” says Rob Ahlschwede, chair of the Society of Hickory Golfers’ equipment board and owner of Dark Ages Golf, a hickory repair and restoration company, remembering his first hickory club experience as a child on a Nebraska farm.

More commonly, people scour eBay to get clubs or spend years looking for originals that match their style of play.

“If you have a set that matches your swing, you’re going to play better,” says Ahlschwede. “The challenge is to find shafts that match what you need, with heads that are playable, to give you a swing weight that works…

“The only hickory hole-in-one I’ve had was on a 150yard Par 3, and I used a Spalding Ladies 2 iron someone had cut down for their kid.”

It’s possible to buy replica hickory sets, but where’s the fun in that? A Frankenstein-like collection likely offers more personal satisfaction, and it has the added bonus of potentially earning the respect of other hickory players— something modern equipment does not often receive.

“They call clubs that have huge sweet spots ‘gameimprovement irons,’ and this is a matter of great ridicule in the hickory set,” says Dodds. “I would tell you what improves your game is when you play with a set of clubs that when you hit [the ball] on the toe it goes nowhere.”

In fact the sweet spot on a hickory club is about the size of a dime, and there are two ways to look at this: either it’s potentially a lot harder to play well with hickory clubs, or you’ll learn the game much faster—and become consistently much better—with hickory clubs. For higher handicap golfers, most hickory players say it’s not really an issue.

“It’s interesting,” says Dodds. “It’s about a stroke and a half for me. When you get down to a lower handicap,

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single handicap people, already striking the ball well, and when you’re being consistent, the switch isn’t really that big of a deal… Lee Trevino could play with a plank and kick your ass. I think good golfers are great golfers.”

If nothing else, playing with hickories is an awful lot of fun. Hickory enthusiasts seem a great bunch of people eager to share their love of the game with others. And for those who would join their ranks, a good place to start is with the Society of Hickory Golfers (hickorygolfers.com), the premier organization in the United States. The society was formed to promote hickory golf as a living, vibrant part of the sport and to liberate hickory clubs from the dusty display shelves in collectors’ homes and clubhouse walls. Around 500 active golfers comprise the society, and with a growth rate of about 5-10 percent a year, it’s easy to feel optimistic about the future of hickory golf in America. Part of the society’s strategy for growth is a robust mentoring program, matching new hickory players with more experienced society members in their local area.

“You develop these friendships, and that’s really what attracts most of us to it,” Deinlein says. “The fun we have renewing old acquaintances, and meeting new ones.”

The society also partners with smaller, regional hickory associations to lend advice and guidance on how to organize a hickory tournament in accordance to the agreedupon equipment standards and rules. “There’s Carolina Hickory, Virginia Hickory Golf Association, California, Florida, Michigan... They’re spread all throughout the country,” Deinlein says.

The society also works closely with European organizations, joining the British Golf Collector’s Society in a biannual Ryder Cup-style tournament called “The Grail,” which pits American hickory players against European players. Next October, the society plans to organize a new tournament called “The International,” in which the best North American players would compete with players from all around the world.

At all of these events, the conversation will likely turn to questions of how today’s pros would perform if they traded in their latest pro irons for a set of hickories (it’s a favorite conversation for hickory golfers). If last April’s

2012 Zurich Classic in New Orleans is any indication, the answer is “pretty good.” Wearing vintage-inspired clothing, Luke Donald, Ricky Fowler and five other Tour pros played a three-hole challenge with hickory clubs. After a double bogey on the first, Donald recovered with an eagle-2 on the second, holing out from 100 yards, which causes Kingdom to wonder if the next big equipment fad on Tour could be shafts grown on trees, not made in a lab.

Hickory Golf Glossary Benny named after its inventor and one of the first professional golfers, Ben Sayers, this rare club is a variation of the Mashie that provides a little extra loft.

BulldoG This fairway wood’s scarcity makes it a great showpiece, and its tiny clubhead (twice the size of the ball) makes it invaluable for making the best out of troublesome lies.

Brassie another fairway wood to be used in troublesome situations. Only take it out of your bag in desperate situations, however, as the club’s rareness makes it difficult to replace if broken. cleek The long and narrow iron clubhead of the Cleek made it a popular choice from the tee until around the 1930s, when its popularity was eclipsed by driving Irons and driving Mashies. common Gutta percHa during the middle of the 19th century, the traditional leather ball stuffed with feathers was phased out in favor of the gutta percha ball. Made from the evaporated sap of the gutta percha tree found in Southeast asia, the ball was popular due to its low cost and superior playability.

JiGGer an iron with a very shallow head shape, the Jigger has the advantage of getting the ball up in the air and is used mostly around the green. line cut a ball design where lines were cut into the surface. masHie a type of iron club closely resembling a modern 5 iron.

Mashies come in a wide variety of club heads, giving each club a different loft and speciality. niBlick a type of club that most resembles today’s 9-iron or wedge. during the hickory era, it was used to get out of the most troublesome lies.

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pa lm e r & t he pre s i d e n t One of Arnold Palmer’s most enjoyable rounds of golf was played almost half a century ago at the scene of this year’s U.S. Open, in the company of his great friend, President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The King shares his treasured memories of this occasion at Merion with Dave Shedloski

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hen the U.S. Open came to Merion Golf Club this June for the 113th staging of America’s national golf championship, Arnold Palmer, one of Pennsylvania’s most revered native sons, did more than just show up for dinner. Winner of the 1960 U.S. Open, Palmer co-hosted a feast for past U.S. Open champions along with Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino and David Graham. And while Trevino and Graham were the last to win the tourney when it was staged at Merion (in 1971 and 1981, respectively) and were thus responsible for the dinner’s planning, it was Palmer who claimed one of the course’s more memorable rounds—and we don’t mean his tie for 24th in 1971.

“Merion is just a wonderful place, a wonderful golf course, and I can think of a lot of enjoyable rounds of golf that I have had there and some very good competitive rounds there as well… and some tough ones,” said Palmer. “One thing you can always say about Merion is that it keeps your attention.”

Fifty years ago, that attention came with a Presidential seal. The occasion was a charity event that benefitted the Heart Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania, where Palmer was paired with one of his closest friends, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The duo squared off in an alternate-shot competition against former Masters winner Jimmy Demaret and comedian Ray Bolger.

While nearly every U.S. President since William Howard Taft in the early 20th century has been an enthusiastic golfer, Eisenhower, the 5-star general who served as Commander in Chief from 1953-61, is credited with helping to change the perception of golf among the American electorate. This just happened to coincide with Palmer’s rise as the game’s dominant player and personality.

Together, they were integral to growing the game in the United States.

Eisenhower, who became a member of Augusta National Golf Club while in office, didn’t try to hide his near obsession with golf. It’s been written that as soon as he awoke in the morning, Ike grabbed his wedge and practiced swinging, and he was known to swing a club while dictating letters to his secretary. A portion of the wooden floorboards in the Oval Office is pocked with spike marks, thanks to Ike. And just a month after taking office in 1953, Eisenhower became the first President to use the South Lawn of the White House for a practice range to hit pitch and chip shots. A year later, with the help

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of the USGA’s Green Section, a practice putting green of about 3,000 square feet, adorned with an adjacent bunker, was installed about 50 paces from the Oval Office.

With all that chipping practice around the White House lawns, Eisenhower’s short game from about 100 yards and in was reported to be exceptional. He did not enjoy receiving tips on the golf course, though he often accepted advice from Arnie. “He always wanted to learn more about the ins and outs of the game, and he always asked a lot about what was going on out on the tour,” Palmer said.

Ike, who played to about a 15-handicap, insisted on privacy when it came to his golf and the scores he posted, and he seldom allowed fans to watch him play, let alone members of the press. In fact, the event at Merion is believed to be his only known public golf exhibition.

Palmer and Eisenhower, who were initially introduced at a group function in 1958 at Laurel Valley Golf Club in Ligonier, Pa., not far from Palmer’s hometown of Latrobe, went on to become close friends and remained so until Eisenhower’s passing in 1969. They first played golf together soon after Palmer won the 1960 Masters, and frequently thereafter. Ike even surprised Arnie by showing up in Latrobe for Palmer’s 37th birthday party.

In his book, A Golfer’s Life, Palmer wrote of Eisenhower: “After that first encounter at Augusta in 1960, our meetings on the golf course became more frequent and our playing companionship deepened into a genuine friendship that, for me at least, eclipsed any relationship I’d ever had with an older man besides my father. He loved to hear me talk about tour life, and I loved to hear him reminisce about his wartime experiences and reflect on current events.”

Palmer would go on to write that he “loved [Eisenhower] like a second father.” On March 27, 1990, Palmer was asked to address a joint session of Congress to commemorate what would have been Ike’s 100th birthday.

Palmer delivered a heartfelt and moving speech, almost entirely off the cuff, and he received a standing ovation when it was over.

Eisenhower’s golf at Merion was worthy of a standing ovation, too. A large gallery showed up for the exhibition match, according to Don Van Natta in his book, First Off The Tee: Presidential Hackers, Duffers and Cheaters from Taft to Bush.

“It was supposed to be just a fun day, but the President really wanted to win, too,” Palmer, now 83, recalls. “We had a conversation on the first fairway about strategy, in fact, because we were going to go out there and win, and I wanted to win for him with all those people there supporting what we were doing.”

Palmer also remembers the day clearly because he had given the President a tip as they were warming up. He noticed how Eisenhower’s right elbow was flying away from his body on his backswing, and Palmer instructed him to keep it tucked as close to his body as possible to generate more power and control. By the time they’d gotten to the 1st tee, Eisenhower had rubbed the elbow raw holding it close to his hip, so much so, that he began to bleed.

“Bless him,” Palmer wrote, “like the good soldier he was, in his determination to keep that right wing tucked as

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“Our playing companionship deepened into a genuine friendship that eclipsed any relationship I’d ever had with an older man besides my father” ordered, he’d actually rubbed the skin off his arm. When I pointed it out to him, he acted as if it were nothing but a scratch and completely dismissed my concern.”

Merion’s opening hole is a slight dogleg right, uphill, and Eisenhower, who fought a slice from the day he picked up the game, striped his first tee shot about 220 yards up the fairway. The lesson had paid off.

“Hustler,” Bolger yelled, keeping on his comedian’s hat.

Palmer then banged his drive much closer to the eisenhower and palmer completed their round on merion’s 18th green

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green. He remembered the conversation that ensued as they walked to their drives.

“I hit my tee shot, and Ike hit one, and we walked down, and I thought that he would play my shot up to the green,” Palmer explained. “It was up pretty close to the green. And he said, ‘Arnie, I’ll hit your shot to the green,’ and I said, ‘that’s fine.’ We got to talking about it, and I said, ‘Well, wait a minute, you’re a good putter; why don’t you let me hit your shot to the green?’ And I remember him smiling.”

Ike’s drive was good enough that Palmer needed only a 6-iron to put the ball on the putting surface.

“I hit his shot on the green,” Palmer said, “and it was about 15-18 feet from the hole, and he had a [Spalding] Cashin putter, and I remember him putting it in the hole.

You can’t imagine the joy he got out of that. He just really thoroughly enjoyed that. And the day from then on was really a very enjoyable day and a very successful exhibition.”

There were other highlights, mostly by Ike. He nearly chipped in on the 8th hole for a birdie. On the 17th, he sank a 45ft birdie putt—after he and Palmer had already closed out the match on 16. Eisenhower was so focused and determined that he chose to delay arrival at a speaking engagement and dinner at the nearby Valley Forge Military Academy so he could play all 18 holes.

When it was over, GOLF Magazine reported that “Eisenhower beamed like a boy with a new bicycle.”

“If he had started golf a little sooner than he did, he would have been a really good player,” Palmer said.

“He enjoyed the competition. He enjoyed the things that happened in his golfing career, and we played a number of exhibitions together for the Heart Association, for the Heart Fund, which was his charity.”

Palmer still has a picture from that day.

“It’s one of the great pictures we have together,” he said. “It was a fun day, and something that remains a very nice memory for me. He played great and we won, and we raised a lot of money. You know, he was always happy on the golf course, but that day I know he enjoyed as much or more than most.”

iKe’s GOlF GiFt tO tHe WHite HOUse Dwight D. Eisenhower’s affinity for golf didn’t translate into consistency or proficiency, but his overall game was, nevertheless, rather solid for a man who started playing later in his life. Initially, putting was an immense source of frustration for the retired Army man, but once he had daily access to a putting green near the Oval Office his problems with the flat stick diminished.

The putting green was installed for Eisenhower on the South Lawn of the White House property in the spring of 1954 after Ike had shown such a fanaticism for golf that he started practicing on the South Lawn early in his first term. Robert Trent Jones, Sr. designed the 3,000 sq. ft. putting area, about 50 paces from the Oval Office, while officials from the Green Section of the United States Golf Association and the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America oversaw construction. The green had two undersized holes and was flanked by one small sand trap.

Eisenhower conveyed his thanks in a letter to USGA president, Ike Grainger.

“As you may know,” Eisenhower wrote, “I enjoy and need the exercise I get from occasional golf practice, and this makes it easy for me to slip out for a half-hour or so whenever I find the time.”

Ever since that time, America’s chief executive has had a chance to slip out to the South Lawn and relax, though in the early 1970s, Richard Nixon, who had served as Eisenhower’s vice-president, had the putting green removed. It was Bill Clinton who asked the USGA in 1994 to restore it with the help of Robert Trent Jones, Jr. The green is one-third smaller than the original, and there is no bunker this time, though President Clinton wanted one.

As Jones recalls it: “A Secret Service agent didn’t have faith in the President’s sand game. He told me, ‘Mr. Jones, if you build a bunker, his shots will hit the White House, the alarms will go off, and we’ve got a Code Red. Please don’t build a bunker.’”

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a beautiful world I As with the company itself, there’s more to Whirlpool’s product showcase and training center in Chicago than meets the eye. Kingdom’s editor drops by for an oldfashioned chat about contemporary business

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t’s as established as American companies get, founded 102 years ago and still going strong.

But Whirlpool is also one of the country’s preeminently modern operations, and nowhere is that more evident, perhaps, than in the World of Whirlpool product showcase and training center in Chicago. The showcase is important because it’s a state-ofthe-art (not to mention attractive) way to keep Whirlpool’s clients and partners abreast of the company’s

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latest offerings. The company is important because, in short, America needs Whirlpool. Not just because 85 percent of the products it sells in America, it makes in America. And not just because it employs more than 67,000 people worldwide and has a significant impact on local economies.

America needs Whirlpool because, at the end of the day, Whirlpool is a good company.

If phrases like “There’s no right way to do a wrong thing” and a stated commitment to employees and their families harken back to a simpler time in American business, it’s a testament to the timelessness and effectiveness of traditional values that Whirlpool is creating the modern market as much as it’s responding to it. As such, it’s a global ambassador for the country, showcasing the

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best aspects of the American way of doing business. That and the products the company makes are both brilliantly on display at the aforementioned World of Whirlpool, itself housed in a traditional American building that’s been re-tooled in supremely modern fashion.

“It’s less about the appliances and more about the experience,” says Sam Abdelnour, Whirlpool’s Vice President of Sales, North America Region. “Honestly, this is all about how we do business.”

The setting atop Chicago’s historic Reid Murdoch Building is appropriate. The building, built three years after Whirlpool was founded, is on the National Register of Historic Places; Whirlpool’s facility, finished in 2010, is on the cutting edge. Exit the elevator on the top floor and one steps into a clean and crisp meeting environment, with an interior more reminiscent of a trendy lounge than a corporate showpiece. A path around the mostly glass-walled perimeter of the space leads past fully functioning kitchens and showrooms outfitted with the latest appliances from Whirlpool’s numerous brands, including JennAir, KitchenAid, Maytag, Whirlpool, Amana and Gladiator GarageWorks.

Outside, a formidable roof deck features accordingly appointed outdoor kitchens, plenty of elegant seating and fantastic views of Chicago and the river below.

As a meeting and training center meant to showcase “how we do business,” the World of Whirlpool excels. Real-world (and highly styled) functioning kitchen layouts mean sales staff and clients can familiarize themselves with the latest product lineups and operations, while extensive meeting space (including a fun “Man Cave,” complete with large TV and comfy seating) provide ample settings for business and socializing.

Chief among these in terms of exclusivity has to be the formidable clock tower, which Whirlpool renovated into an elegant meeting or dining room, impressive as much for its views of the city as for the four large clock faces that comprise the better part of the high walls.

In this inspiring setting, enjoying a surprisingly sophisticated menu (the main course was prime skirt steak on creamy kale with sousvide baby carrots in garlic and butter with a mushroom-and-asparagus arancini on the side), Abdelnour and I talked about appliances, relationships, loyalty and why almost no one knows that 85 percent of Whirlpool’s products for sale in America are made right here at home.

“I don’t know if it’s our Midwestern roots or what, but we don’t talk about it,” says Abdelnour, who was born in Michigan. “You put your head down, do your job and the rewards will come.

We don’t self-promote, we don’t talk about ourselves and we don’t, to our own detriment perhaps, let people know that 85 percent of what we sell here, we make right here. And that’s more or less true of every country we do business in. We build product in those countries.”

It is, perhaps, a startling commitment to the communities in which Whirlpool does business (including such locales as Italy, Germany and Brazil) if only because so few companies seem invested in anything besides their immediate bottom lines. In the U.S. alone, Whirlpool spends $7.4 billion every year to manufacture here, supporting 4,000 U.S. direct and indirect suppliers. Beyond those commitments, Whirlpool has long been a sponsor of the United Way, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Komen for the Cure, and Habitat for Humanity, contributing appliances for every H4H home built anywhere in the world. As Abdelnour explains, if Whirlpool has had to adjust its business strategies to shifts in the global marketplace, the company hasn’t changed its core values.

“Originally there were five major Midwestern appliance manufacturers, none of us were marketers, none of us understood what brands were. It was all about the products and the hard work and living up to your commitments to people, to your consumers, to reliability and durability and ‘this stuff’s gonna work and we’re gonna stand behind it.’

We’re in a different world now, right?

But here we still operate that way.”

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Part of that is evident in Whirlpool’s relationships with its retailers and distributors, many of which are longstanding and all of which are important, Abdelnour says.

Major stores like Sears, Lowes, Home Depot and Best Buy are critical to business, he emphasizes. But so are regional players like P.C. Richard & Son; h.h. gregg; Nebraska Furniture Mart; RC Willey; BrandSmart in Florida; Bob Abt in Chicago; ABC Warehouse in Detroit; and others.

Some of these relationships have been in place for decades.

“I’ve got customers that I did business with in 1978 when I started with Whirlpool that I still do business with today—not the company, the people… We have relationships that are built on going through numerous successes and failures together.

Like in any relationship, you fall in and out of love constantly, and unfortunately you can fall out of love with a shorterterm relationship and it’s over. With a longer term relationship you can fall back on history and say ‘we’ve been through this before and we’ll get through it again.’”

This heartfelt statement is interrupted by an absolutely stunning vanilla bean cheesecake on top of caramelized white chocolate with vanilla Chantilly cream, pecans and phyllo pastry flake, and I’m suddenly compelled to ask Abdelnour where the World of Whirlpool found its chef.

“We’ve not had much trouble recruiting great chefs to come work here,” he says. “I don’t think we understood why right away, but

the why is 9 to 5, five days a week, benefits, health insurance, holidays off, weekends off. Generally they’re going to work at 5pm and working until 2am.”

Makes sense, and it’s a fantastic plus for anyone visiting the World of Whirlpool. In the middle of the building, behind the fully functional showcases, is a commercial kitchen that Abdelnour says can handle 250 meals at a time. Six groups had come through the day before our visit and, following training on the latest range of kitchen appliances, washers and dryers and more from Whirlpool brands, the visitors had enjoyed sublime dishes prepared using herbs

the visual integrity of the old building intact. And even this intentional low profile is somehow appropriate for a firm that is more associated with the iconic KitchenAid stand mixer and generations of washers and dryers than with supporting the communities in which it operates, though it certainly does. Whirlpool is almost half of the U.S. appliance business, and its Whirlpool and KitchenAid brands are sold all over the world. Its technology and design are industryleading, and its revenues total in the multiple billions each year. Despite all of this, it somehow still feels like it has the personality of a small midAmerican business.

In this it’s offering a bit of hope, I think, for the future of global executive behavior (in addition to its solid products).

There was a time when the success of big business was something that was championed by Americans at all levels—not feared. At Whirlpool, for good reason, it seems success is still a reason to celebrate.

“I joined this company 35 years ago,” Abdelnour says, “and I stayed a lot longer than I expected because of who we are, not necessarily because of what we do. I stayed because of the morality, the Midwestern integrity, the people that I work with and interact with. We have a saying at Whirlpool that ‘There’s no right way to do a wrong thing.’ You ask any employee here and they know it. A lot of times those things are just words, but I’ve seen Whirlpool people live those words for 35 years. You don’t get that everywhere.”

“We don’t self-promote, we don’t talk about ourselves and we don’t, to our own detriment perhaps, let people know that 85 percent of what we sell here, we make right here.”

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from Whirlpool’s own rooftop gardens, which sit on the broad roof deck. In addition to hosting the company’s events, the World of Whirlpool also routinely hosts wedding rehearsal dinners and bridal showers, various other companies’ functions and more, including a benefit for the Chicago chapter of the Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA), which, the last time it was held, saw roughly 350 people at the facility.

It’s a beautiful place, with its seeming acres of glass, spaceshipesque interior, large roof deck with outdoor fireplace and tremendous views of the city. Sightlines are such that you can’t see the World of Whirlpool from the street because the city and the company wanted to keep

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CONQUER NAPOLEON

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ne of the greatest uses for cold ever to be conceived, icing down a gloriously sweet mixture of cream and other ingredients is one of those joy-creating activities that’s more universally beloved than stirring any hot concoction together. Ice cream is good no matter what you do with it, but these cold creations from Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain are particularly inspiring. Find a good scoop, and make your own joy.

Root Beer Float It doesn’t get much easier than this: Get hold of a tall soda glass, pour in a top-shelf root beer and add a naturally flavored vanilla ice cream.

Farmacy likes Sprecher’s Root Beer, an old-school creamy soda made in a gas-fired brew kettle with honey, pure vanilla and aromatic botanicals. Fill the glass 3/4 full, then add the ice cream—then pour more root beer over the top.

And absolutely use a spoon.

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Pink Poodle The tropics have their share of beautiful flowers and hot weather, but never has one been used so effectively to battle the other until this treat came along. Made from hibiscus soda and vanilla ice cream, we’re not sure there’s a bad day bad enough to not be remedied by this ebullient treat. Ensure the soda is chilled to near freezing, then add the scoop like you would for a float.

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Egg Cream In Brooklyn, Farmacy does it right with Fox’s U-Bet Chocolate Syrup and a classic atmosphere. Where you live, you might have to sort it yourself in the kitchen. Easy enough: Pour a 1/2 inch of cold milk into a glass, add a lot of soda, drizzle in 2 tablespoons of chocolate syrup and stir like mad until you have an inch of foam on top. Drink it fast, and don’t worry about the eggs or the cream, neither of which appear in an egg cream.

Milkshake Chocolate is the obvious choice, but there are myriad options of course. Blend 2 cups of milk, two scoops of ice cream, chocolate syrup and maybe a 1/2 tsp of vanilla and enjoy. Less milk if you like it thick.

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Hot Fudge Sundae A classic. The classic, even. Vanilla ice cream covered in ridiculous amounts of hot fudge and topped with whipped cream. The trick is to use a natural ice cream and quality hot fudge, which you can make yourself from a top-drawer dark chocolate. And don’t forget the cherry on top.

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Summer

eat may not be optional when the calendar flips over to June, July and August, but that doesn’t mean you have to go down without a fight. Generations of mixologists have sought to concoct perfect cooling potions to help us survive the infernal months.

Here, Mateeusz from Dudley’s in New York City offers some ideas on the best escape routes for intolerable afternoons. As with most drinks, these are best served with friends...

Dudley's Cup Nothing better than a bite of watermelon on a hot summer’s day, right? Well, after tasting this we’re not so sure any more. In fact, we rather like the idea of squeezing a large green melon into a manageably sized glass—and no seeds! There’s a bit of sugar in this one, but the sweetness is countered by the cracked pepper, which makes the drink seem even cooler somehow. We don’t know how it works, but we love it all the same.

Ingredients v

2oz Belvedere Vodka

1oz watermelon liqueur

muddled watermelon

to taste: sugar syrup

on top: cracked pepper

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Old Fashioned As a Southern man, Mark Twain would have enjoyed an Old Fashioned. As a traveling man, he might have had to adjust his tastes now and then, as he most certainly did when visiting London’s Langham Hotel, which primarily featured Glenmorangie at its bar.

Legend has it that after trying an Old Fashioned with the iconic Scotch, he found it delicious— worth writing about, even. We’re sure you’ll feel the same.

Ingredients gl ab

2oz Glenmorangie Original

2 dashes Angostura bitters

1tsp sugar

1 splash water

Street Lamp Fizz How illuminating, we think, to mix bourbon and berry flavors with a bit of fizz—which no summer cocktail should be without (unless it’s one of the non-fizzy drinks we’re suggesting). We’re also liking the Cherry Heering, which the Danish Court and H.M. Queen Elizabeth II have been enjoying almost since it was first produced by Peter Heering in 1818. The lemon bitters make this a fantastic heat-beater with bite. The berries make it fun.

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Ingredients b

2oz bourbon

1/2 oz raspberry syrup

c lb

1oz Cherry Heering

3 dashes lemon bitters

on top: club soda

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Whirling Tartan While a whirling Dervish spins as a form of religious ceremony, a whirling Tartan usually spins because there’s a good tune on and plenty of libation around. This drink, made with Glenmorangie Lasanata, which is aged in sherry barrels, offers its own sweet Satori with a smooth edge, sure to send you into fits of frenzied bliss no matter what you’re wearing under your kilt.

Ingredients

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1.5oz Glenmorangie Lasanta

fs

1/2 oz Fino Sherry

as

1/2 oz apricot syrup

lb

2 dashes lemon bitters

Ingredients g

When the sun’s hot and high, the weekend day is long and the drinks are cool, it’s always a thin line between “this could be my last one” and “I’ll have one more.” This particular Thin Line doesn’t make the decision any easier, adding a hint of lavender to a bright libation that invites you to keep celebrating with an effervescent mouthful of prosecco at the start and a beautifully citrusy mix all the way to the bottom of the glass.

gl

ca

1oz cucumber-infused gin

3/4 oz Cocchi Americano

3/4 oz lemon juice

lvb pr

2 dashes lavender bitters

on top: Prosecco

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One long weekend, one hotel, a few restaurants and a hit list of must-visit sites is not the ideal way to see Iceland, but if you get the chance to go you should take what you can get. Even a short trip is worth it to see this fantastically beautiful country. Still, try not to rush it no matter how short your visit. Just take a few deep breaths, put on your adventure hat, and have a great time trying to pronounce the names of some of the most beautiful places on Earth i m ag e s b y

Steve Galle

i c e l a n d i c p r ov e r b

Kemst þó hægt fari.

You will reach your destination even though you travel slowly.

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We’re helping to pick up the pace.

Sign the Pledge.

Join the Movement.

www.usga.org/whilewereyoung

Supported by:

REYKJAVIK Unless you wash up in Iceland during a solo attempt to row around the world, your first experience of the country will most likely be Reykjavik—this is a good thing. In addition to being the country’s capital (and the world’s northernmost capital of a sovereign state) the city is a tremendous cultural experience, offering top-drawer restaurants, accommodations and sightseeing for adventurous travelers.

STAY: Center Hotel Thingholt Don’t mess about with a hotel out of town. Get right into the center of things with this acclaimed accommodation, which in 1943 was the Isafold Printing Factory.

Accordingly trendy and minimalist as per Icelandic style, its location on Reykjavik’s main shopping street can’t be beat. centerhotels.com/our-hotels/hotel-thingholt

EAT: If you’ve only got two or three nights, try at least one of these: Grillmarkadurinn The interior resembles what you might think of as a cross between a super-chic igloo and a winter lodge designed by a top London fashion house. The good news is, whether you love or hate the look (we love it), the ingredients are as fresh as they come, sourced from local farmers and ranchers, and the menu is a beautiful survey of hearty, modern Icelandic food. Try the charcoal grilled duck breast from Reynir with portobello, sweet potato croquette, oxtail and glaze, or a course of salted cod with lobster salad, Jersualem artichoke and apples two ways. If nothing else, stop by for a drink in the lounge. grillmarkadurinn.is/en

Sjavargrillid No big surprise that seafood factors heavily into Icelandic cuisine, but if the idea of hakarl (rotted shark meat) sounds a little too authentic for you, make your way to Chef Gústav Axel Gunnlaugsson’s Sjavargrillid for modern twists to traditional dishes. Panfried salted cod and grilled pork belly with cous cous, cumin, carrot, spring onion and blue mussel foam is a good place to start. sjavargrillid.com

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The Sea Baron Forget the fancy stuff. Down by the old harbor, retired fisherman and Coast Guard Chef Kjartan Halldórsson is serving up casual Icelandic comfort fare from a shack. A quintessential coastal setting and insanely good lobster soup. Feel free to wear a beard. saegreifinn.is

DO: Drive the Golden Circle Less than 190 miles long, the “Golden Circle,” as it’s called, loops from Reykjavik’s city center into the center of the country and back. If you’re short on time, it’s a great option as you get to see some of Iceland’s most famous offerings, including the Pingvellir National Park, the Gullfoss (“Golden Falls”) the Skáholt church and geysers in the valley of Haukadalur.

ALTERNATE OPTION #1: Blue Lagoon We’d love to tell you Vikings used to stop here during their travels, but in fact the Blue Lagoon is a man-made attraction fed by a geothermal power plant. Still, its lava-field setting on the Reykjanes Peninsula 24 miles south of Reykjavik is stunning, and the silica- and sulphur-rich waters look and feel great (they’re also said to help with skin problems). Spend a few days here in one of the 15 rooms at the on-site Blue Lagoon Clinic, which offers a taste of Nordic minimalistic luxury and a private swimming area. bluelagoon.com

ALTERNATE OPTION #2: Private Retreat Head to the beauty of the southern coast and stay in Priest House, a road-less-traveled luxury experience designed by architect Tryggvi Tryggvason. A 10-minute walk takes you down to a black sand beach, while sitting and gazing at the glaciers takes no effort at all.

Alternately, the private three-bedroom rental house is an excellent home base for further Icelandic adventures.

Search “Priest House” on: boutique-homes.com

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SUN PROTECTION – A WAY OF LIVING™ SkinCancer.org © 2010 The Skin Cancer Foundation Campaign created by Laughlin Constable, www.laughlin.com

Summer Sun

Perfect kit for when the sand’s between your toes, the sound of waves is rolling in and there’s a cool breeze driving your cares away...

Photography me gh a n t i l l e y

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i pa n e m a

RJ Sandals

Lushly comfortable and impeccably styled by leading Brazilian designer Oskar metsavaht, the rJ from Ipanema sandals is the only footwear you’ll need this summer. ipanemausa.com

bowers & wilkins

P3 Headphones

Foldable, and made by the same guys who built Abbey road Studios’ speakers, the P3s are newly available in blue—just like the beach sky. bowers-wilkins.com

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southern marsh

Stonewall Polo

The finest polo ever made by the Louisiana-based Southern marsh, its crease-free collar will keep you sharp while the fine brushed cotton will keep you comfortable and cool.

Look for the duck. southernmarsh.com

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D i ta

Victoire Sunglasses LA-based Dita sources its inspiration from classic eyewear of the 1950s and ‘60s, but the style is absolutely modern. Handmade with the finest materials, including titanium and 18K gold, these sunglasses might shine as brightly as the sun itself. dita.com

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polo ralph lauren

Bienne Boat Shoe

A classic design from a classic designer, this rugged leather boat shoe has one more eyelet than the “typical” example, adding style as well as substance as it slightly dresses up this casual staple. ralphlauren.com

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richer poorer

Top-drawer Socks For when barefoot won’t do, these cool and comfy cottonblend socks from richer Poorer come in a wide array of colors and styles, ensuring your feet are having as much summer fun as you are. richer-poorer.com

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100/100 points. And it will only get finer with time.

The 2008 Grange has been awarded 100 out of 100

by Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, a respected publication. Over time there have been some extraordinar y vintages, an unbroken line since 1951 proves it, but a number have been exceptional.

An outstanding vintage release, the 2008 is highly anticipated by collectors around the world.

FINER with TIME Private cellar, New York, USA.

penfo l ds. c o m

Summer’s Sweet Fruits Kingdom samples more luxury gifts BESPOKE GLOBAL From Bespoke Global, an excellent e-commerce platform that features best-in-class home furnishing and accessories from carefully selected designers, artists and artisans, comes this folding Maclaren bar or counter chair by Richard Wrightman.

Superbly designed and crafted with quality materials—the way furniture should be.

BespokeGlobal.com

FRANK CLEGG LEATHER This alligator briefcase is designed and produced by leading American leatherbag maker Frank Clegg. Hand-stained and handmade from especially selected wild American alligator hides purchased directly from hunters, the briefcase comes with hand-stained harness belting for trim and lining. This 35th anniversary edition of the Frank Clegg English briefcase really is an American-crafted classic.

FrankCleggLeatherworks.com

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CURTIS PENS Award-winning pen makers and jewellers Curtis Australia create their work in sterling silver and solid gold to the exacting standards of fine craftsmen. Drawing on a heritage of craftsmanship since the 1890s, the pen makers at Curtis create their pens using time-honored techniques far removed from typical mass production. Hand-tensioning each clip and handpolishing each part individually, they carefully bring together a perfectly balanced pen with a clearly distinctive style and character. With a range that includes finely modeled, sculptured pens such as their Brighton and Prestige Collections and the smooth, hand-forged Dais, there is a pen to suit the most discerning writer or pen connoisseur. Other models in the range include limited edition pens and a collection of colorful Curtis resin pens trimmed with sterling silver.

curtisaustralia.com

LA PALINA CIGARS La Palina Cigars were first wrapped in 1896 by Samuel Paley.

When Sam retired in 1926, sadly the company retired with him. That is until his grandson, William Paley, successfully re-launched La Palina Cigars in 2010. Rolled at the Raices Cubana factory in Honduras, all of the La Palina’s classic cigars have hints of sweetness and spice that are underpinned with earthy undertones. These authentic South American cigars are richly-flavored but so well balanced that some smokers have commented that they are the perfect choice for daily enjoyment.

lapalinacigars.com

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RALPH LAUREN CANTWELL DECANTER This handsome decanter with stitched leather cover is the ideal gift for the eclectic drinker. The rotating silver disk displays a selection of varied spirits: Vodka, whisky, rum or gin.

lvharkness.com

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PENFOLDS WINE

PARADIS IMPERIAL

In recognition of the fact that the country can finally boast a Masters winner this year, we can thoroughly recommend Australia’s premier winemaker, Penfolds.

After several tastings we picked out their Bin 389, a solid combination of structured Cabernet and silk-rich Shiraz.

The winery’s most famous marque is Penfolds Grange, a much-sought -after wine that comes with an eye-watering price tag. While not quite at that level, the 2010 Bin 389 is nonetheless an excellent wine at a more everyday price point. It has justifiably become known as ‘Baby Grange’ with its balance between fruit and oak no doubt aided by the fact that components of the wine are matured in the same barrels that held the previous vintage of Grange. Good with a juicy steak, or perhaps a slice of Manchego cheese.

Created by Hennessy’s Master Blender Yann Fillioux in 2011, the Paradis Imperial has taken inspiration from a legendary order of a unique blend of rare cognacs for Tsar Alexander I of Russia in 1818. It is a remarkable composition, combining exceptionally fine, textured eaux-de-vies aged between 30 and 130 years old. The result is cognac of incomparable nose and one to savor slowly, with each sip a finessed symphony of flavor. We like the bottle too.

hennessy.com

penfolds.com

THE ZCLIP The last money clip or wallet you will ever buy! Lighter than paper, stronger than steel, and guaranteed to last, the RFID blocking carbon fiber ZCLIP is the ultimate money clip.

Credit-card wallet included.

zclip.com

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DAAN RINGS German-based Daan Design studio is one of the most creative jewelers in Europe, specializing in producing one-of-a-kind accessories and crafted jewelry often on a bespoke basis with direct client input. Featured here are rings from Daan’s golf range. Crafted to engage the eye through re-working the structure and surface of the common golf ball and then finished with gold and gemstones for rings of compelling contrasts.

daanstudio.com

THE BIBLE OF GOLF Edition No.1 of The Bible Of GOLF, a 585-page journey through the history, culture and elegance of the game, was presented to Arnold Palmer, after it debuted at the Masters, by his great friend, Frank Christian. Created by broadcast media veterans, Paul Skellett and Simon Weitzman, this leather-bound and gilded tome takes the reader through 18 uniquely illustrated chapters, investigating the past, present and future of golf. Limited to 600 cased editions worldwide, it includes over 50 interviews and thousands of rare and original photographs and art prints, including photographs of Arnold and Mark McCormack, from the McCormack family library. Presented in an archival case, each copy is signed, numbered and dedicated by the authors, together with a small signed archival print in each edition.

The Bible Of GOLF has been described as a ‘book for life’ and ‘the ultimate golf heirloom,’ and is certainly a treat that golf aficionados will never tire of having in their collections.

wonderlandpublications.com

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BUBBA’S HOVER You’ve seen the video, now own the real thing. The video of Masters Champ Bubba Watson flying down a golf course in his hovercraft was meant to be a stunt, but Neoteric Hovercraft received so many calls they decided to actually offer the thing for sale in limited numbers. With side-by-side seating for four and room for two golf bags, the model 7600 Bubba’s Hover will set you back $58,000. But that includes a trailer and sand bottles—and the distinction of being the only member of your club who can soar over the water hazards with ease.

neoterichovercraft.com

ORION GOLF What the golfer in your life really wants is... one-putts!

Breakthrough improvement putters, the Black Swan and the Black Hawk (below), are designed with just one thought in mind... Make More Putts! Named Golf Digest’s Top Equipment Story of 2012, the putters are custom-built and fitted to the player.

one-putts.com

CALLAWAY HEX CHROME + BALLS HEX Aerodynamics creates penetrating distance, reduces drag and promotes a stable ball flight. The fast core, and inner and outer mantles, lead to high ball speed and maximum distance for most swing speeds. The Duraspin cover provides soft feel and exceptional short game spin along with enhanced durability. Available in two color options: traditional white and optical yellow,

callawaygolf.com

CALLAWAY RAZR RANGEFINDER Kingdom’s rangefinder of choice, the Nikon Callaway RAZR is 10 percent more compact than previous models while providing increased power and accuracy. RAZR is tournament legal where local rules allow measuring devices in play, is capable of ranging objects out to 600 yds and, for low-handicappers, can read in increments of 3.6 inches. The fully elastomer-armored body design offers shock-proofing during use. Includes 3V CR2 Lithium battery (good for around 10,000 ranging sessions) and comes in a round case and carabiner for walkers.

callawayrangefinders.com

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ARNIE BELTS Arnold Palmer, named one of the 25 coolest athletes and 75 best-dressed men of all time, inspires us all with his lifestyle.

His belts are appropriately clean, classic and cool. Designed and handcrafted in Toronto, the Arnie belt collection draws on retrospective accessory designs as well as current fashion trends.

The men’s belts feature quality leather straps and nickel-free finishes on handsome hardware components. The iconic Arnold Palmer umbrella logo is prominent on each buckle.

arniebelts.com

VESSEL BAG Vessel, the world’s leading custom golf bag company, offers the best in quality and innovation. Each bag is handcrafted to reflect the unique personality of every Vessel customer. Through the company’s unique “Build A Bag” customizer, customers are able to take part in their golf bag’s design from the bag material and zipper color, all the way to logos and embroidery.

Vessel’s superior design and high functionality has made it the go-to golf bag for many professional athletes, including John Daly, Michelle Wie and Wayne Gretzky, to name but a few. Best part? With every Vessel bag sold, the company funds a World Vision Promise Pack. These special backpacks provide aid to orphans and at-risk children throughout the developing world. They can be filled with school supplies and basic personal hygiene provisions that will help a child in need to stay healthy.

vesselbags.com

THE LITTLEST GOLFER The Littlest Golfer is the ‘complete lifestyle brand.’ With the strong belief that the life lessons inherent in golf can indeed positively impact children, the Littlest Golfer, along with their signature turtles Putter and Sandy, have created an unparalleled line. This includes TLG’s First Set training clubs, premium golf apparel, accessories and books. The Littlest Golfer strongly believes in “getting caught up in the details,” and this shows in their classically inspired clothing for children and families. Whether it’s the incredibly soft and durable baby piques for infants and children, or the seersucker ‘first knickers,’ the Littlest Golfer has the look and comfort to inspire even the most discerning little players.

thelittlestgolfer.com

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*offer ends Jan 31 2012. Calendar ships seperately.

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KIDS ARE AMAZING. no one’s better at keeping them that way.

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Healthier Kids, Stronger Families.

B e y o B o r d e Donald J. Trump stresses the importance of seeing past established guidelines

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n d e r s

Visionaries have a unique view of the world. Their world is without borders or constraints. It is open and inviting to innovators and innovation. This is the world that entrepreneurs live in and thrive in. As an entrepreneur, I have to say that it’s the most exciting place to be. The world is a big place—that’s one reason I believe in my own Think Big credo. Why limit yourself?

One example is Mark Burnett, who changed the television landscape forever when he introduced successful reality shows, The Apprentice being one of them. Not only did the industry think they wouldn’t last for long, the critics dubbed the success of The Apprentice as “a one season wonder.” We’ve just finished our thirteenth season. I had also been warned by many advisors (and my former agent) not to do this show, as it would probably hurt my image as a businessman as well as my brand. I chose to see beyond the ‘established guidelines’ and went for it—and since then my business and brand have been stronger than ever, and on an international level. It was a risk, and it paid off for everyone.

What if you had no limitations? What if you could do whatever you wanted with the guarantee that you would succeed? These are good questions to ask yourself in order to get your visionary capabilities in order. Then temper them with the constraints that are necessary in reality. You can’t really get the big picture if you never give it a chance to surface.

I spent five years looking for a place to develop a golf course in Europe. When at last I saw the land in Aberdeen, Scotland, I knew that was the place. I knew getting the approvals wouldn’t be easy, and it wasn’t. But I refused to be discouraged and if there were difficulties I knew I could deal with them. I’d already seen the golf course in my mind and knew it could be achieved. It has been a tremendous success.

Likewise, I have announced a golf course in Dubai.

Dubai is a premier global destination point and we are very excited. We waited until the time was right and plans are underway. I love the challenge of a new landscape—the desert—and I don’t view that as a negative but as a positive.

It’s important to see challenges as a way to grow, a way to find new solutions which can very often lead to innovations.

The way to be exceptional is to look for the exceptional, in both your personal and professional life.

When I was building Trump Tower, I wanted a specific marble, Breccia Pernice, that could only be found in Italy. I went to Italy and marked the slabs I wanted. Then instead of the suggested paintings to decorate the lobby, I decided I wanted a waterfall. At seven stories high in the atrium of the tower, it is a fantastic and beautiful sight—and definitely exceptional.

Look beyond your borders—be a visionary. Don’t allow small thinking to thwart your goals and talents.

Realize your significance. And don’t forget to play golf.

Donald J. Trump

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Cinderella Stories

Main picture: Harry Vardon.

Right, from top: Francis Ouimet, Lee Trevino, Calvin Peete and Tony Jacklin. Facing page, from left: Angel Cabrera, Tommy Gainey and Ian Poulter

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Every sport—every pursuit, really—has its Cinderella stories, the people who cross from the wrong side of the tracks to triumph as champions in fields dominated by others more groomed for success. Golf has long been fertile ground for such feats, if only because the game was so limited to the upper classes for much of its history. Even today, with the game more accessible than ever, the majority of golf’s champions seem to have enjoyed special access to the game at a young age, often with supportive parents and in somewhat privileged environments. Still, there are some whose tales do not fit the common plotline; who, like Arnold Palmer, were not born with a silver putter in their hands. Here are just a few of those from history, and today— golf’s Cinderella stories…

HARRy VARdOn 1870—1937 There’s a scene at the beginning of golf’s most evocative movie, The Greatest Game Ever Played, where a group of thugs evict a poor family, including two young boys, no more than 6 and 8 years of age respectively, from their small cottage on Jersey in the Channel Islands.

It was the late 1870s and the land around the cottage was needed to build Royal Jersey golf course for the benefit of affluent local citizens. That Harry Vardon, the elder of the two brothers, became anything at all of note after that demoralizing experience is incredible; that he became one of the greatest golfers ever to play the game is the stuff of fairy tales. Born into abject poverty, Harry and his brother Tom were as far from golf as one could imagine. However, both were passionate about the game and managed to earn a few pennies from caddying at the new club. Their father, an unemployed shipbuilder who took odd jobs to make ends meet, did not support his sons’ ambitions so Harry worked as a gardener in his late teens. But that didn’t stop Tom from eventually leaving for England to pursue a career in the game; and shortly after Harry followed him, employed initially as a greenkeeper before becoming the club professional at Ganton in northeast Yorkshire in 1896. That same year, Harry won the first of his record six [British] Open titles (the last was in 1914),

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and thus cemented his place in history in defiance of his modest origins. His other contributions to the game included victory in the 1900 U.S. Open at Chicago Golf Club, the popularizing of a swing and grip that are still taught by PGA professionals more than a century later, and the introduction of practical golf attire (he was the first to eschew coats and ties on course in favor of knickerbockers). All in all, it’s hardly surprising that Harry’s story made it to the big screen.

FRAnCIs OuIMeT 1893—1967 The child of poor immigrants, Francis Ouimet most likely would have ended up a laborer had it not been for one thing: he grew up across the street from the 17th hole of The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. He began caddying there at the age of 9, using borrowed clubs and found balls, and by the time he reached high school he was one of the best golfers of his age across the entire state. During his junior year, his father compelled him to leave school for a job in a dry goods store, where he worked until moving to a sporting goods store. While there, Ouimet entered—and won—the 1913 Massachusetts Amateur, a championship he eventually annexed six times. That victory, plus

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a strong showing in the U.S. Amateur Championship, prompted then-USGA president Robert Watson to invite Ouimet to play in that year’s U.S. Open. He initially declined due to concerns over potentially losing his job in the sporting goods store for taking so much time away from his duties, but his boss encouraged his participation in the tournament, which (fortunately for Ouimet) was to be played at the course in Brookline where he’d worked as a caddie for so long. Now the stuff of legend, Ouimet (accompanied by his 10-year-old caddie, Eddie Lowery) went on to win the 1913 U.S. Open in a playoff against the men who were regarded at the time as the best two golfers in the world—his childhood hero Harry Vardon and fellow British player Ted Ray. After that incredible feat, also immortalized in The Greatest Game Ever Played, Ouimet won two U.S. Amateur Championships (1914, 1931), played in the first eight Walker Cup matches and was captain in the next four, and in 1951 became the first American to be elected Captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews. He never turned professional and to this day is regarded as the grandfather of U.S. amateur golf.

Lee TReVInO 1939— Born in Dallas, Texas, into a family of Mexican immigrants, Trevino never knew his father and was raised by his mother and grandfather, a gravedigger.

His childhood consisted of attending school occasionally and working from the age of 5 in local cotton fields.

Introduced to golf when his uncle gave him a few balls and an old club, Trevino left school at 14 to caddie full-time at Dallas Athletic Club. After work, he perfected his trademark fade on the practice range and sometimes hustled extra money by playing matches using a shovel as a club with the head taped to a 32oz Dr. Pepper bottle. When he turned 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served four years. After his discharge, Trevino became a club professional in El Paso, Texas, and joined the PGA Tour in 1967. The following year, he won the U.S. Open at Oak Hill.

In all, Trevino won 29 times on the PGA Tour, 29 times on the Champions Tour and 31 other tournaments. He was at his best in the early 1970s, when he took over from Arnold Palmer and Gary Player as Jack Nicklaus’s main rival. He topped the money list in 1970, but perhaps his most remarkable spell came during a 20-day span in 1971. After beating Nicklaus in an 18-hole playoff for the U.S. Open at Merion, he won the Canadian Open at Richelieu Valley, Quebec a fortnight later and the [British] Open the following week at Royal Birkdale. No stranger to adversity, Trevino, a compulsive wisecracker, had to resurrect his playing career after being struck by lightning at the Western Open in 1976. The legacy of this accident was three decades of debilitating back pain, known as lumbar spinal stenosis. He eventually gained lasting relief only a few years ago when he underwent a Medtronic X-STOP Spacer procedure. In addition to his six Major titles—the last of which was the 1984 PGA Championship at Shoal Creek— he played in six Ryder Cups and won the Vardon Trophy for the lowest scoring average five times.

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CALVIn PeeTe 1943— Before Tiger Woods, there was Calvin Peete. In fact, there were numerous African American golfers—Ted Rhodes, Charlie Sifford, Pete Brown, Lee Elder and more—but Peete held the record for tour wins by an African American player (12) until Tiger came along.

While it might be said that any minority player in the game before the modern era qualifies as a Cinderella story due to the early hardships of getting into golf (the PGA of America restricted the professional game to “Caucasians only” between 1934 and 1961), Peete’s story is all the more incredible because he didn’t start playing until he was in his 20s. Born in Detroit in 1943, he was working as a farm laborer in Florida by the age of 14. His father was an auto plant worker and farmer, and golf wasn’t even a passing thought in the Peete household.

By 1961, Calvin was selling goods to migrant workers on the East Coast, and it was during this job that he played his first game of golf—at the age of 23. Contributing to his difficulties with the game was a slightly misshapen left arm, the consequence of a poorly repaired broken elbow after falling from a tree during his childhood. Despite that, in 1971—ten years after he started working as a salesman—Peete, who never worked as a caddy, qualified for the PGA tour. Four years later, he became the second black professional golfer to earn more than $100,000 in a single year, and in 1979 he won his first PGA tournament (Greater Milwaukee Open). He added 11 more titles to that over his career, including the Players Championship at Sawgrass in 1985, a year after earning both the Vardon Trophy and the Byron Nelson Award. Peete joined the Champions Tour in 1993, officially retired in 2001, and today lives in Jacksonville, Florida, with his wife Pepper, who runs the First Tee of Jacksonville.

TOny JACkLIn 1944— Tony Jacklin, the son of a truck driver, was born and raised in the industrial town of Scunthorpe in northeast England. After leaving school, he became an apprentice steel worker but he had already taken up golf and, after showing considerable talent despite limited playing opportunities, he turned professional in 1962. He moved south to Potters Bar just north of London to work as an assistant to the club’s veteran professional Bill Shankland. During his time there, Jacklin practiced voraciously and admits that “in my mind Ben Hogan was always standing over my right shoulder making a critique of every shot.” He also admits that Shankland was a tough taskmaster, driving him on many occasions to the point of quitting. In retrospect, Shankland’s harsh approach ensured that Jacklin did not fall by the wayside, and by 1964 his protegé had joined the winners’ circle on tour.

Four years later, Jacklin, very much an anti-establishment figure though already a Ryder Cup player, had a tilt at the PGA Tour.

His decision was vindicated almost immediately when he won the Greater Jacksonville Open, ushering in a four-year period

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when he was truly one of the world’s great players. A famous victory in the [British] Open followed in 1969 at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, but the highlight of his playing career came 11 months later at Hazeltine National in Chaska, Minnesota, when he spreadeagled the field to win the U.S. Open by seven shots. Jacklin won at Jacksonville again in 1972, but his time in the sun was effectively ended later that year when Trevino kept chipping in at Muirfield to deny him a second claret jug. In the long run, Jacklin, whose first wife Vivien died of a brain hemorrhage at the tragically young age of 44, is likely to be remembered for his Ryder Cup exploits—both as a player, when he was the beneficiary of Nicklaus’s immortal “concession” in 1969, and as the captain during Europe’s spectacular revival throughout the 1980s.

AnGeL CAbReRA 1969— Angel Cabrera, winner of 50 tournaments worldwide and nicknamed El Pato (the duck), came from an impoverished suburb of Córdoba, Argentina’s second city. He was only 4 when his father, a handyman, and his mother, a maid, split up. He was left in the care of his paternal grandmother and stayed with her until he was 16 before moving next door to live with a woman 12 years his senior and already the mother of four boys. They had a son, Federico, followed swiftly by another, Ángel.

Interestingly, both sons are now also professional golfers. When Cabrera was 10, he became a caddie at Córdoba Country Club and learned the game by playing against the other caddies for money.

His powerful swing soon caught the eye of members, one of whom, a local real-estate developer, bought him his first set of clubs. With his stocky figure and his habit of smoking almost continuously, Cabrera cuts a distinctive figure on the course. But there were few openings available to him beyond local tournaments until his fellow Córdoba resident Eduardo Romero, now playing on the Champions Tour, stepped in with financial support from his tour winnings in Europe during the 1980s and ’90s. Cabrera, who showed he had the temperament for Major championships by tying for fourth in the 1999 [British] Open at Carnoustie, Scotland, made his breakthrough in 2007 after holding his nerve to win the U.S. Open at Oakmont, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by a shot from Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk. He claimed his second Major, the 2009 Masters, with a playoff victory and nearly made it two green jackets in four years at Augusta National this April. A superb birdie-three at the 72nd hole put him into a playoff against Adam Scott, but the Australian eclipsed him with a birdie on the second extra hole.

TOMMy GAIney 1975— No one can accuse Tommy Gainey of not grabbing his chance to take on Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson with both hands. Not only did he finish fourth on the 2010 Web.com Tour, but he has since established himself on the PGA Tour with money-list finishes of 35th and 55th over the past couple of

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seasons, collectively worth nigh on $4 million. Nicknamed “Two Gloves” because of his on-course hand attire as well as his initials, his second tilt at the big league following modest campaigns in 2008 and 2009 is a dream come true. A genial slugger from a blue-collar background whose baseball-influenced swing looks like a mongrel version of Arnold Palmer and Jim Thorpe, Gainey chalked up the most dramatic victory of all on the 2012 PGA Tour when he fired a scorching 11-under-par final round of 60 to win the McGladrey Classic at Sea Island, Georgia, by a single shot. Apart from anything else, this spectacular charge proved that Gainey has the ability not to lose focus when the white heat of competition intensifies. Indeed, he knows a lot more about heat than some people might imagine, thanks to his previous life insulating appliances for A.O. Smith, North America’s leading manufacturer and marketer of residential and commercial water heaters and boilers, in McBee, South Carolina. “It was real hard work for eight hours a day and you had to make sure you did the job right, but it was also fun and I made a lot of friends there,” he says. “Now they [A.O. Smith] are my sponsors on Tour. They really look after their workers and they want to see me succeed.

This [playing on the PGA Tour] is the best job in the world out here. Where else can you play for a million dollars each week? I’m blessed to have the talent to do what I love so much, and I can’t think of anything better than to have A.O. Smith sponsor me.”

IAn POuLTeR 1976— If Ian Poulter was not quite a legend of European golf before last year’s Ryder Cup at Medinah, he certainly is now. The in-your-face, never-say-die Englishman is Europe’s go-to man whenever the going gets tough, and his five birdies in a row while partnering Rory McIlroy in the Saturday fourball outings in Illinois sparked the most dramatic revival in the match’s history. Poulter, whose contribution to his side’s 14½-13½ win was a perfect four points out of four, may be the ultimate team man but he can also play a bit when he’s on his own—his 16 tournament victories dating back to 2000 include two World Golf Championship titles.

The only accolade missing from the 37-year old’s CV is a Major, but he first needs to contend more regularly. Born into a workingclass family in the English county of Hertfordshire, he didn’t arrive on tour via the traditional college route and, as his on-course dress sense suggests, he still favors the conventional approach.

To the amazement of local golfers who knew him well, he turned professional at 16 with an official handicap of four (it was actually a few strokes higher). At the time he was selling Mars bars and tee pegs from behind the counter in a pro shop, but eight years later his burning desire and competitive edge had propelled him to his first European Tour title—the Italian Open. After winning the WGC-HSBC Champions at Mission Hills in China at the back end of 2012, Poulter entered the current campaign brimming with his usual confidence. His form to date has been patchy to say the least, but as he proved at Medinah, anything is possible.

Certainly, a Major win—he has six top-10s to date, including three in 2012—would boost sales of his IJP Design clothing business as well as bloating his personal Twitter following beyond 1.5-million.

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Pristine and Private Midway between Charleston and Savannah, where the Colleton and Chechessee rivers meet the Atlantic Ocean, and where South Carolina’s Lowcountry is found at its most pure and undisturbed, lies an island of untold treasure. That Spring Island has retained its pristine state is a testament to its 300-year history of private ownership. That its discovery led to the preservation of an ancient eco-system and privileged way of life, is a tribute to the vision and values of its founders, and the community of proud owners with the fortune of calling it home.

Spring Island is the green of the salt marsh in summer, the green of 1,200 acres of nature preserves, and the greens of one of the finest golf courses ever designed by Arnold Palmer. Dramatic by design yet eminently playable, its staggering beauty is assured by meticulous and diligent upkeep, reflecting a gold standard of uncompromising quality upheld across the island.

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HEALTH STRATEGY Everyone recognizes that information and planning are key to success in business, but few apply the same outlook to their personal health. Cleveland Clinic Florida’s Huizenga Executive Health Program can help you create a health strategy that’s sure to keep you on track—and on course

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Focus is one of the keys to success, but with today’s pace it’s often easy to lose focus on personal health until your life depends on it. To help you take charge of wellness, the Cleveland Clinic Executive Health Program encourages a preventive approach to health, tailored to the individual whose busy schedule demands a streamlined yet high-quality experience. At Cleveland Clinic, we regard health as a personal responsibility, and our comprehensive Executive Health Program provides strategies of engagement that can make a difference for your health now and in the years to come.

When you participate in Cleveland Clinic’s Executive Health Program, your health is the center of attention. As a leader in world-class medical care and preventive health, we strive to provide you with a wide array of personalized options to enhance your well-being. This dedication to empowerment is what the Huizenga Executive Health Program at Cleveland Clinic Florida is built on. At the Attarian-Huizenga Executive Health Suite in Weston, our custom-designed evaluations are designed to detect and treat diseases in their earliest stages, before major problems develop.

STRATEGIZING BEYOND THE BOARD ROOM Like many CEOs, Wayne Huizenga, Entrepreneur and Chairman of Huizenga Holdings, couldn’t find time to focus on his health until he discovered our program. The convenience, one-on-one care and access to sophisticated technology impressed him and his wife, Marti, enough to lend their support—and their name—to what is now The Huizenga Executive Health Program at the AttarianHuizenga Executive Health Suite in Florida.

“The South Florida business community is extremely fortunate to have Cleveland Clinic Florida as a healthcare resource,” says Huizenga.

As in the boardroom, strategy is essential to good health. Cleveland Clinic Florida’s Executive Health Program tailors executive physicals to each individual—taking age, gender, family and personal history as well as other risk factors into consideration. We also emphasize prevention and wellness through fitness and nutrition consultations as well as personal and executive coaching. Our Executive Health evaluations take place during a single visit to the Clinic—a convenient option for people with hectic schedules. After the exam is completed, you’ll receive a written report detailing all findings, and recommendations for lifestyle changes and/or follow-up care.

Cleveland Clinic Florida’s Executive Health physicians spend at least an hour discussing the patient’s medical and family history. “The vast majority of correct diagnoses are not based on test results, but on the physician spending time to take a good family and personal history,” explains Stephen Avallone, M.D., Medical Director of the Huizenga Executive Health Program. Hereditary concerns play a big role in which tests he orders and how aggressive he may be with follow-up care.

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PROACTIVE PREVENTION FOR A FULL-SPEED LIFE The Huizenga Executive Health Program is designed to help busy professionals—who have multiple priorities demanding their energy and attention—take charge of their health while investing a minimum amount of time.

Aware of these competing priorities, Cleveland Clinic Florida’s Executive Health Program schedules all tests and evaluations on the same day, at on-site clinics and laboratories. This allows participants to bundle a year’s worth of preventive healthcare into a single day, without leaving the Cleveland Clinic Florida campus.

Through the Huizenga Executive Health Program, you have access to the finest in medical care. Cleveland Clinic physicians are leaders in their fields who practice in a setting that emphasizes research, innovation and collaboration.

They bring a high degree of personal expertise, backed by knowledge from colleagues representing a full range of medical and surgical specialties. Cleveland Clinic has one of the newest, innovative medical centers in Florida.

To make the most of your time while adding value to your care, our Executive Health Program is dedicated to creating a highly personalized visit. Before scheduling evaluations, Cleveland Clinic’s physicians develop an extensive medical profile for each participant. They then order a suite of tests and screenings that focus on areas of greatest concern for each individual, while still covering the bases needed to ensure a clean bill of health.

One test that is often considered for men is the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, which measures the level of a protein produced by the prostate gland that can indicate the presence of cancer. “While many physicians still recommend regular PSA testing for men between ages 50 and 75, the PSA is often seen as a flawed test that saves few lives and leads to unnecessary biopsies,” explains Dr. Avallone. “We typically couple results with family and personal history to decide whether follow-up is needed.”

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Cleveland Clinic

SPECIALIZED OPTIONS FOR YOUR INDIVIDUAL NEEDS As a world-class academic medical center, Cleveland Clinic offers many prevention services and health-enhancement programs rarely found in other medical settings. Those who participate in the Executive Health Program can opt to take advantage of one or a combination of services, including:

Hearing and Vision • Audiogram to assess hearing • Executive eye exam General Health • Spirometry to assess lung function • Bone density testing • Gynecology visit (women only)

History and physical • A comprehensive physical examination, including a complete lab panel

Fitness • Body composition and nutritional counseling • Physical fitness evaluation

Heart and vascular health • Chest X-ray • Electrocardiogram • Cardiac stress test (after age 40) • Vascular screening

Optional tests and consultations • Total body CT scan to further evaluate internal organs • Cardiac calcium scoring to determine risk for coronary artery disease • Screening chest CT scan (over 50 with 30 year smoking history) • Cosmetic surgery • Immunization update and discussion of health risks related to international travel

Cancer screenings and risk assessment • Colonoscopy or flexible sigmoidoscopy (after age 50) for colon cancer • Prostate cancer screening including PSA test (men only) • Pap smear for cervical cancer (women only) • Skin cancer screening Blood analysis (including but not limited to the following) • Complete blood count to detect anemia, leukemia and other blood disorders • Complete metabolic profile to detect liver or kidney disease, gout and diabetes • Full cholesterol panel • Thyroid hormone screening • Urinalysis to detect diabetes, kidney and bladder disorders

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A LIFELONG COMMITMENT TO WELLNESS There are many ways for professionals to participate in Cleveland Clinic’s Executive Health Program. From seeking additional medical care for any problems detected to enrolling in a fitness class, members are given the opportunity to make informed decisions and changes that can strengthen their health outlook for years to come—an opportunity Wayne Huizenga urges others to not overlook.

“When it comes to health, far too many executives neglect what is one of their own most important strategic advantages—themselves,” says Huizenga.

To make your commitment and learn more about the Huizenga Executive Health Program at Cleveland Clinic Florida, call 954.659.5380 or 800.729.5258.

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stop on a dime

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You know the shot: You’re close to the green and only need a simple chip or pitch to get it near the cup. You make your shot and it lands a foot or so in front of the hole—then keeps on rolling, past the pin, over the edge of the green, down a slope, and possibly into a bunker. PGA Golf Professional Hall of Famer Bob Ford doesn’t have that problem, not very often anyway. The head professional at both Oakmont and Seminole Country Clubs has competed in three U.S. Opens and 10 PGA Championships, and he knows how to stop a ball on a dime. Recently, he shared some of his braking wisdom with Kingdom…

We’re standing near the practice area at Oakmont Country Club just outside of Pittsburgh, PA, the sun is shining, the sky is cloud-free, and Bob Ford is a happy man.

“Well, I didn’t ask for it,” he says. “But they’ve got that pin exactly where I like to hit this shot.”

The shot in question is a chip that stops on a dime—more of a pitch, really— and I’m fairly sure that Ford could hit it no matter where they put the pin. Still, every ball he’s striking is landing within a few feet of the cup, and while Bob himself might credit the favorable pin placement, in fact it’s the man himself who’s responsible for the master’s clinic I’m getting. In addition to being a great golfer and the head pro at two luminary clubs, Bob Ford is a humble man.

There are a number of reasons one might want the ball to stop on a dime but the most common certainly come with shots close to the green, when too much roll will put you past your target and perhaps into trouble. Today, our ball is lying in closely mown grass just off the top of a bunker, the corner of which is between us and the hole. There’s not a tremendous amount of green in our target area, so our trick is to jump the bunker and stick the ball near the pin without (a) landing a rolling ball that continues past the cup and into the greenside rough or (b) hitting it over the

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green completely. As calmly as you like, Ford hits shot after shot, sticking each within one putt of the cup. Here are his thoughts on how he does it: As with any shot in golf, there are a lot of different ways to do it. But this shot is all about carrying it and making the ball stop really quickly, on a dime. We have a lot of these at Seminole where it’s closely mown and you’ve got to go over the corner of a bunker and there’s no green.

[Ford plays the shot with the ball forward. His grip is fairly standard, but his hands are back a bit.]

My deal with this shot is to slip under the ball pretty quickly and try to feel like I’m striking a match under that ball with the bottom of the club.

As the club goes like that, it creates an incredible amount of loft and so the ball is not going to continue to run. If I was going to hit a running shot, I would hit it with the handle forward. Here it’s well back. You do need a good lie for this.

[He takes the backswing to just above waist level, and swings easily. It’s almost as if he’s trying to get the club face—which is completely up, basically parallel to the

ground—to slide under the ball rather than strike it. Notably, he keeps the club face up throughout the follow through, rather than rolling the club over.]

You’re increasing the loft through impact, so that’s increasing the loft by unhinging your wrists so the face is still up. In a normal golf swing we’d hit it and roll [the club over] so that the face is down.

For this kind of a carry and roll, to get it five or six feet from the cup is a pretty good shot. A lot of people would feel like they had to hit it like this [Ford indicates someone hitting the ball hard, with the ball flying high in a steep arc that has it drop like a bomb on the green]. But I think this is a little bit more controlled and not as risky. I don’t want to take the risk of making such a big swing to make the ball go a short distance.

Still, what we’re trying to do is more risky than a normal shot. In a normal shot you’d play it back but you’d get the run.

So that’s the shot.

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There is so much ThaT can

be aTTached To The name

arnold Palmer Designers of Arnold Palmer Signature courses and architects of Palmer Refresh www.arnoldpalmerdesign.com | (407) 876–1068

An easy smile and a wicked swing A true sportsman’s style and sophistication A genuine approachability A trendsetter and a traditionalist A man of his word The gentleman athlete The father and the friend Host of the API presented by MasterCard The pilot and the businessman The Icon

The King.

APDC’s

Top 10 Design Tenets Over the past couple of issues of Kingdom, with the help of senior architects, Thad Layton and Brandon Johnson, we have outlined six of the Top 10 tenets that drive the work of APDC—Arnie’s golf-design company that has been responsible for creating hundreds of courses around the world.

In issue No.24, we emphasized the need to create and nurture courses that are fun to play, the role of strategy when setting up a course for players of all ability, and the importance of risk-reward holes that can make or break a round. In issue No.25, we concentrated on three further principles that help to create a memorable golf experience—beauty, sustainability and preservation.

Old Tabby Links at Spring Island, S.C. (below and right) exemplifies the ethical approach to course design

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Here, in the final article of this series, we touch on four outstanding responsibilities that all golf-course designers should feel privileged to hold dear— exercising sound and sensitive environmental stewardship over a property, ensuring variety of shot and view across each layout, recognizing the priority of creating facilities that will grow the game, and observing the legacies passed down by the history and traditions of the game.

EnvIrOnmEnTaL STEwardShIp The earliest golf courses occupied left-over land, “links” land between sea and town, or farmable pastures. They provided a public recreational activity with low-to-minimal impact on the environment and access to sprawling open spaces for all to enjoy. By today’s standards and technological advances these creations may seem primitive. But to others they are works of genius, fashioned by the passage of time, the growth of the game’s traditions and an enduring respect for the sanctity of the land.

Golf is one of the few sports with playing fields that are dynamic, forever changing with the natural flow of the earth.

Upon embarking on a new project, APDC is sensitive to these diverse environmental factors and proceeds with a sensitive, light-touch approach that promotes harmony between man’s artistic creations and development practices.

By only disturbing and enhancing what is ‘essential’ to integrating great golf course architecture within the natural environment and ecosystem, APDC has proven that responsible growth and development can peacefully integrate themselves with nature.

Old Tabby Links exemplifies this ethical approach to design. When Old Tabby Links at Spring Island, S.C. opened to critical acclaim in 1992, its environmental stewardship, combined with natural aesthetics and a low-density, low-impact development philosophy truly foreshadowed the green movement of today.

Exemplary coordination and teamwork between the developer, Spring Island Trust and now the Spring Island property owners has evolved into a shining example of how to integrate sustainable and responsible growth within a delicate and precious environment. This careful management and preservation of the island’s vegetation, wildlife and cultural heritage has made it possible for all to learn from and enjoy its beauty.

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GrOwTh Of ThE GamE Mr. Palmer’s heroic play, charisma, charm and kind-hearted nature have been luring millions of new participants and fans into the game since the early 1960s.

His influence spanned oceans, traveled beyond international borders and crossed a multitude of cultural boundaries. He inspired even the most unlikely people to play and fall in love with this beguiling game.

As a National Trustee for The First Tee, he continues to champion precious ‘growth of the game’ initiatives.

It is therefore no surprise that his design company has been the harbinger of many trends in the golf industry and has championed the growth of important initiatives like the design of TFT Augusta.

APDC has forged dynamic creations in over 25 countries around the world. Way before China’s recent boom, the APDC flag was firmly planted at Chung Shan Hot Springs, known as the country’s first “modern” golf course.

The pioneering DLF course just south of New Delhi annually hosts India’s premier professional tournament while more recent explorations have spread the cause to Uruguay and Brazil, where golf is now beginning to blossom.

As APDC consults with clients around the globe, it stresses the importance of providing participants with highquality practice venues accompanied by fun, intriguing practice or starter playing configurations that show a fresh and sustainable alternative to the status quo.

We strongly believe that the game is destined to grow and prosper when access and opportunity are afforded to all willing participants. Our studies for a potential Olympic course and the proposed Romania Golf Park illustrate our continued dedication and passion for supporting growth of the game.

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Laying out the new course in romania (see graphic) is set to be a dedicated labor of love for apdC, as it was with newport dunes at port aransas (top)

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varIETy

hISTOry and TradITIOn

If variety is the spice of life, then design variety sweetens golf-course architecture. This mind-boggling game of ours has sunk its hooks into everyone—from the humblest of folk to kings and dignitaries—through its intriguing riddles, mysterious strategies and deceptive hazards. Indeed, it has created one of the most diverse yet commonly shared passions amongst sports fanatics across the globe.

The myriad possibilities within an architect’s design interpretation are limitless. Each twist, turn, tweak or bold move creates a new playground for those who dare to try.

Not only does an architectural blend—of beautiful, wide-open spaces; tight, tree-lined corridors; wild, bold contours; subtle nuances that make a green or hole location [oh so] special; and ground game recovery options when it seems all previous options fail—stand the test of time but it defines the time we are in.

In a region known for its cattle, cowboys, oil rigs and big hats, APDC has produced an unlikely links-like gem that only Texas is big enough to handle, Newport Dunes at Port Aransas. As a result of APDC’s utilization of unique dunes, not to mention its intriguing but playful landscape creations that were meticulously blended into the natural surrounds and the revetted bunkers dotting the landscape, each hole has its own identity and presents players with a maze of alternative routes and a plethora of strategic options and scenarios to conquer.

Golf’s participants, past champions and course-design greats continuously pay tribute to the game’s rich and storied past. Even efforts to reinvent technology, or create a “new” style of architecture, are made with respect for the game’s traditions and under the guidance of its founding fathers and principles that, to this very day, bind golfers together across the globe.

At an early age, Mr. Palmer was taught golf’s history and traditions. Those lessons would go on to spawn a fantastic career that has spanned over 60 years of the modern era, inspiring millions and redefining history whilst upholding time-honored traditions. His play, character and behavior on and off the course have entrenched him within golf history as a true champion, pioneer and perioddefining figure.

APDC’s design and business philosophy is no different. It is rooted in the history and traditions of the game. Genuine and trustworthy, the company adheres to the same strict standards of excellence that Arnold Palmer has demonstrated throughout his life and career.

The inspiration of the company’s designers is often derived from the great classic courses or theories that helped define the game of golf and the profession of golfcourse architect. Thus when asked to renovate certain holes at the likes of Bay Hill and Pebble Beach, their natural inclination was to restore the original character and feel of the course, while bringing it up to modern standards so they could continue to be standout hosts for PGA Tour events and the U.S. Open.

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Ouimet Century F

rancis Ouimet, an unknown kid, famously snatched the 1913 U.S. Open from under the noses of Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, two of the contemporary game’s greatest players, at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts.

The young man never turned professional, but he went on to play in eight Walker Cup matches, captain the U.S. Team in a further four, and win two U.S. Amateur Championships for good measure.

However, Ouimet, who died in 1967, maintained in his later years that his greatest achievement in golf was the scholarship fund he created in 1949 (it had an inaugural class of 13). To recognize the centenary of Ouimet’s U.S. Open win, 2,100 dignitaries packed the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center where Arnold Palmer presided over dinner as the honorary chairman and received the Richard F. Connolly, Jr., Distinguished Service Award from top financial advisor Dick Connolly himself. Earlier in the day, Palmer had commenced proceedings by hitting golf balls

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to a floating island green in Boston Harbor. The evening featured appearances by Ouimet’s granddaughter and also the daughter of Eddie Lowery, who was Ouimet’s 10-year-old caddie in 1913. Palmer was the first recipient of the Francis Ouimet Award for lifelong contributions to golf in 1997 and he’s been an ambassador for the charity ever since. “I’m just flattered to be here. It is a foundry for golf,” Palmer said. “I am proud of my association with Boston and the golf community here. “The charities that are benefitting from this program and this caddie scholarship fund—my father’s name is involved—[means] there’s just a lot of things that make this extremely important.”

Rich Lerner of the Golf Channel served as emcee, and the student speaker was Ouimet scholar Julia McCarthy.

Terry Kennedy, president of the Ouimet Fund, announced that more than $1.5 million will be awarded in scholarships for the 2013-14 school year. This means in excess of $26.5 million has been given to more than 5,100 scholars since the fund’s inception.

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What Inspires You?

At Insperity, we are inspired by the entrepreneurs, the decision makers, the motivators – our clients.

These business owners have the drive to accomplish their dreams, day in and day out – never backing down, never standing idle, never playing it safe.

It’s that kind of commitment that changes things.

That’s why Insperity is committed to helping these leaders achieve success. For more than 26 years, Insperity has helped business owners capitalize on those opportunities with our powerful HR and business performance solutions.

After all, when businesses succeed, communities prosper. And that’s inspiring.

To learn more, visit Insperity.com

Thinking ahead. From the back seat.

The New Flying Spur.

For more information please call 866 560 8654 or visit www.bentleymotors.com The name ‘Bentley’ and the ‘B’ in wings device are registered trademarks. © 2013 Bentley Motors, Inc. Model shown: New Bentley Flying Spur W12.