Golf Hall still a work in progress

By foxsports
Published

Halls of fame are museums meant to be tourist attractions. They are marketing vehicles designed to promote their respective sports. But when fans describe someone as a Hall of Famer, they're not talking about a plaque on a wall, they are honoring that person as one of the sport's all-time greats.

Baseball has Cooperstown, pro football has Canton and golf has the World Golf Hall of Fame in St. Augustine, Fla., 35,000 square feet of exhibition space crammed with old clubs, historic photographs and interactive video. Each of the 130 members thus far enshrined is commemorated with an open locker displaying personal artifacts and memorabilia. For any golf fan traversing Interstate 95 in northern Florida, I can highly recommend taking the cloverleaf spin-out at exit 323.

Compared with other halls, however, the golf Hall of Fame lacks some of the stature that only time can bestow. It is just 12 years old, and most of its members were never formally inducted — they were inherited en masse from a smaller, predecessor Hall of Fame at Pinehurst, N.C., dating from 1974. By contrast, the Baseball Hall of Fame has been electing members since 1936 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame since 1963. Fans argue endlessly about who belongs and who doesn't, a sign of how seriously they take those places.

The reputation of the golf Hall is a work in progress, which is why I was a bit disappointed last month at the news that George H.W. Bush will be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame next May in the Lifetime Achievement category. Nothing against the former president: The issue is whether he legitimately ranks as one of the 130 or so most important world golf figures of all time.

The qualifications cited by the Hall of Fame in support of  Bush are that he raised the profile of golf by playing frequently (and rapidly — often in 2 1/2-hour rounds) when he was president; that he supported the Presidents Cup by his attendance starting with the inaugural event in 1994; and that he has served as an active honorary chairman of the First Tee program since its inception in 1997. The First Tee, dedicated to instilling golf values in kids, is run by the World Golf Foundation, which oversees the Hall of Fame. Bush also comes from a famous golf family: The biennial Walker Cup between U.S. and U.K./Ireland amateur teams was created by his grandfather, George Herbert Walker, president of the U.S. Golf Association in 1920.

This sounds a little like getting an award for merely showing up. The Bush induction follows upon that of Dwight D. Eisenhower last year. The argument there was that when he went to the White House, his passion for golf popularized the game, took it out of the country clubs just as Arnold Palmer and television were coming in to finish the job. This argument may make some sense, but it set a bad precedent. How about golf fiends Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — they're next?

I wouldn't care as much about this if I hadn't met two people who have campaigned on behalf of other candidates to no avail. One is Peter Butler Sr., a retired insurance executive now living in Pebble Beach, Calif., who is an advocate for Eddie Lowery, the 10-year-old boy who famously caddied for the victorious Francis Ouimet at the 1913 U.S. Open and later become a prominent figure in U.S. Amateur golf. Byron Nelson, before his death in 2006, officially nominated Lowery for the Hall.

The other is Renee Powell, one of the first and few African-American members of the LPGA Tour. Her candidate is her father, William Powell of East Canton, Ohio, who built a golf course, essentially with his bare hands, starting in the 1940s when he was denied access to white-owned golf courses in the area. The course, Clearview, is still in operation. Powell got letters of support from the likes of Jack Nicklaus and Judy Rankin, but thus far to no effect.

There may well be good reasons that either or both of these candidates, or others like A.W. Tillinghast and Ken Venturi, were passed over this year, but I was unable to find out what they are.

"It's not no, it's just not yet," said Jack Peter, the Hall's chief operating officer, in reference to Powell.

Unlike the player nominees, who are elected by golf writers, Hall of Fame members and other golf influentials (or by a points formula, as LPGA players are), the inductees from the lifetime-achievement and veterans categories ultimately are chosen by the seven-person executive committee of the WGF. The members are the top executives from golf's elite governing bodies: the PGA Tour, the U.S. Golf Association, the PGA of America, the LPGA, Masters Tournament, the R&A and the European PGA Tour. Their deliberations are not made public.