PGA Golf Championship
This week the PGA golf championship will be held in Bethpage, NY. Historically, the tournament is the last of the four Majors normally held in August, but the PGA switched the event to May so the Ryder and President Cups can be pulled ahead to August rather than competing for viewership with football in September. Confused? Personally I like the switch, as it means a major golf event occurs every month through the spring and summer to keep interest at a peak.
50 years ago, the PGA tournament was held at the NCR Country Club in Kettering. Ray Floyd beat out Gary Player by one stroke to win his first of 4 major championships in some rather severe weather for August according to reports at the time. Wait till the event is held in May at some northern location for really bad weather! Floyd also won the Masters and US Open, but never did win a British Open to complete a career grand slam, although he came close, finishing 2nd in 1978.
In 1996, I had an opportunity to meet Floyd at a Senior PGA event in Dearborn, MI sponsored by Ford where I was working. As an executive of the company, I was invited to play in the ProAm the day before the tournament started.
Although I was paired with Billy Casper, not Ray Floyd, they were close friends on the tour so Billy introduced our group to Floyd who was playing in the group ahead of us. They organized a small wager between our two teams, which we proceeded to lose, but fortunately, Casper covered the bet for us. Floyd went on to win the Senior PGA championship that year.
The PGA winner gets his name inscribed on the trophy called the Wanamaker Cup, named after Rodman Wanamaker, who helped create the Professional Golf Association in 1916. He also founded a department store that is now Macy’s as well as sponsoring the Millrose Games, a famous indoor track and field event in NY held each winter.
For a couple years in the late 1920s, the Wanamaker Trophy went missing. It was lost by Walter Hagen, who had won the event four straight years (1924-27). When Hagen lost in the 1928 final to Leo Diegel, the PGA needed the trophy back in order to present it to Diegel. But Hagen didn't have it. When PGA officials asked Hagen about what had happened to the Trophy, the five-time PGA Champion declared it was irrevocably lost. Hagen said that he had entrusted the trophy to a taxi driver to take the precious cargo to his hotel. It never arrived.
Luckily, Hagen's contention the trophy was "irrevocably lost" turned out not to be true. The Wanamaker Trophy was found in 1930 in a cellar of the L.A. Young & Company (makers, at the time, of Walter Hagen-branded golf clubs) building in Detroit. It was in an unmarked case and was discovered by a worker cleaning the cellar.
That original trophy shown below in the circle now resides at the PGA Historical Center in Port St. Lucie, Fla.
My uncle Hank worked for NCR back in 1969 and also was a member of NCR Country Club, so he was actively involved in bringing the PGA to the Club and for soliciting volunteers to be marshals at the event. Had I had any interest in golf at the time, no doubt he could have recruited me to be a marshal, a job I eventually did perform in the 2008 PGA Championship as well as the 1996 US Open, 2004 Ryder Cup and 2002 & 2016 US Amateur events, all held at Oakland Hills Country Club in Birmingham, MI.
Enjoy the PGA Major Championship this weekend! Will Tiger do it again?
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