Some of the bronze plaques for the 176 members of the World Golf Hall of Fame are better than others.
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — It’s golf’s highest honor.
To be elected into the World Golf Hall of Fame is to be enshrined among the greatest. There have been only 176 men and women to be inducted in the Hall.
When the facility opened at World Golf Village in 1998, the members were commemorated with crystals but they were mounted in the floor and took up too much space for special events. So, the crystals were removed and bronze plaques replaced them. Some are better than others. According to the Florida Times Union, the plaques will not be relocated to Pinehurst, N.C., where the Hall will take up residency again in 2024.
Some of the plaques, it really helps to have the name written below it because the resemblance is minimal at best. See if you can name the Hall member.
Count Hall of Fame golfer Tom Kite as a member of the rapidly growing Scottie Scheffler Fan Club
Count Hall of Fame golfer Tom Kite as a member of the rapidly growing Scottie Scheffler Fan Club — not that he’s a new convert.
He’s always believed in his fellow former University of Texas Longhorn, and Kite sees more promise than ever in the young golfer’s upside.
Kite watched Scheffler firsthand during the recent Ryder Cup in Whistling Straits, an experience he appreciated.
“They asked past captains, and we had a great time,” Kite said. “They really played well (in dominating the Europeans to win the Cup at Whistling Straits.) We had nine of the top 11 in the world, and it wasn’t like the Europeans played bad. We just played inspired golf.”
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As for Scheffler, he was expected to be in the hunt at this week’s Shriners Children’s Open in Las Vegas. Scheffler was one of the betting favorites but struggled to get out of the gate on Thursday, finishing near the bottom of the leaderboard with a 74. He limped home with four bogeys and an unseemly 40 on the back at TPC Summerlin.
Still, Kite thinks the first victory for Scheffler — who did not finish outside the top 20 in a major championship, a record that includes three top 10s — is fast approaching.
At the Dell Technologies Match Play at Austin Country Club back in March, Scheffler made it all the way to the championship match.
“He’s excelled at every level of golf from junior golf to UT to amateur golf, and now he is excelling in the professional ranks. I don’t think it will be long before he wins (his first PGA Tour event),” Kite said.
“I have no doubts he will win in the near future.”
The aphorism that familiarity breeds contempt holds true in friendships, but not at the Masters, where the prevailing sentiment is fear.
The final round of the 85th Masters unfolded in the same manner as most of the 84 preceding it, marked by neither charge nor collapse that would further burnish the lore of Augusta National, but instead just a humdrum march into history.
What was surely a tremendous relief for Hideki Matsuyama and the expectant nation whose weight he carries, also served also to highlight the absence of the other, less noble narrative we’ve come to relish at the Masters: the agony that invariably shadows someone else’s ecstasy.
As the only major championship venue visited annually, Augusta National occupies an intimate space in the minds of fans and competitors. The aphorism that familiarity breeds contempt holds true in families and friendships, but not at Augusta National, where the prevailing sentiment is anticipation or fear, depending upon whether one is viewing or competing.
For no matter how serenely a man may be sailing through the final round, he— and everyone watching — knows exactly where icebergs lurk ahead, and that no deviation is possible.
With each triumph authored on the second Sunday in April (or, in Dustin Johnson’s case, the third one in November) there are attendant disasters, many better known to aficionados than the limbs of their family tree. The Masters shines an adoring light on its winners, but no tournament casts a more coruscating and enduring glare on its losers.
“It’s just a different feel,” Rory McIlroy said. “That’s the difference between closing out another major championship and closing out a Masters.”
McIlroy can attest, having closed out four of the former but melted to a back-nine 43 when called upon to do the latter.
No one really got close enough to Matsuyama on Sunday to qualify as either challenger or choker, but the ranks of Augusta’s nearly men can wait another year to expand. No player is eager to be the next conscript, though they’d join a legendary cohort.
A few years ago, I chatted outside the National’s clubhouse with Curtis Strange. Back in ’85, he had opened with 80 but held a three-stroke lead walking off the 12th green in the final round. He rinsed balls at 13 and 15, finishing T-2. More than 30 years had passed, but when I asked how long it had taken for that hurt to fade, he replied: “You mean it does?”
In 2018, I sat watching the third round with David Duval, whose mind wandered to the four straight years (’98-’01) when he had a chance to win a Masters. Three months after his last tilt at a green jacket, Duval claimed his lone major at the Open Championship. I asked if that win had eased the disappointment of not winning at Augusta National.
He gazed at me as though he had never before been presented with a question so imbecilic. Finally, he shook his head firmly and said, “No.”
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There are others: Greg Norman, defined less by his successes in the British Open than by his failures at the Masters; Ernie Els, owner of four majors but not the one he most wanted; Tom Weiskopf, who would be in the hall of fame had he won at Augusta National, but instead, he was second four times so he’s not. Johnny Miller, runner-up three times. So too Tom Kite. No one played Augusta National better for longer without winning than Kite, whose longevity is cemented by the fact that he was the runner-up in both Jack’s last win and Tiger’s first.
One of the most memorable mini-tragedies wasn’t even wrought by clubs but rather by a pencil. See: De Vicenzo, Roberto.
Even those welcome at the Champions Dinner weren’t immune. Twenty years ago, I asked a handful of legends to identify a single shot from their career they‘d most like to have over. Arnold Palmer and Gary Player combined for seven Masters wins, but both remained haunted by wayward shots to the final green—in ’61 and ’62, respectively—that handed victory to the other. Seve Ballesteros said he couldn’t let go of a ghastly hooked 4-iron into the water on No. 15 when he was leading in ’86.
But this was a Masters to be remembered for Matsuyama’s imperious stability on Sunday and the seismic impact his win will have in Asia, not for the implosion of someone else.
There were still plenty of disappointed contenders pointing courtesy cars to the crummy end of Magnolia Lane, but at least none carried with them the corrosive aftertaste of a final-round fiasco. Only 361 days until we see if the next cast in golf’s most thrilling drama will be as fortunate.
After more than 1,100 career starts in his illustrious career, Hall of Famer Tom Kite pens his first letter asking for a sponsor’s exemption. Allow us to explain.
What is a World Golf Hall of Famer with 19 PGA Tour victories, more than $27 million in earnings and more than 1,100 career combined starts as a professional doing asking for a sponsor invite into the PGA Tour Champions Cologuard Classic in Tucson, Arizona, this week?
Good question. Tom Kite, the golfer in question, provided me the answer.
“I failed the tour’s playing standard regulation last year because of how poorly I played,” he said.
There’s a playing standard on the senior circuit? Who knew? Here’s the actual language of this arcane rule that was implemented roughly 20 years ago, according to the PGA Tour Champions.
“Upon the conclusion of the season, any player who has played a minimum of six official rounds and played in a minimum of three tournaments shall have maintained a scoring average for all rounds played by such player during the previous year in tournaments awarding official money no higher than four and one-half (4.5) strokes in excess of the average score for all players in such tournaments.”
There’s two opposing schools of thought on this: you either think this rule is a joke and Kite is an all-time great, a name golf fans still care to pay money to see and he deserves our admiration that he’s still grinding and should be allowed to go out on his terms. Or you think this is a reasonable rule meant to protect the quality of the field and would tell Kite, ‘C’mon, old man, your time has passed,’ and, in what is very much a closed shop, you’re taking a spot from a more worthy player.
Kite, 70, has played in 426 senior tournaments since turning 50 in December 1999 and racked up 10 wins, 125 top-10 finishes and more than $14 million. But last season he played just 11 tournaments and earned $26,476. And, for our purposes here, the bigger problem was his scoring average in ‘19: 76.148, which was a differential of 4.847 compared to the fields he played against, so that’s how he missed the 4.5 stroke average.
Tom Kite won 19 times on the PGA Tour and 16 times on PGA Tour Champions.
Kite’s final tournament in 2019 was the Pure Insurance Championship at Pebble Beach, where he won his lone major in 1992. He shot his age, 69, in his first round but followed it up with a 79 at Poppy Hills Golf Course.
“I forgot about the rule,” Kite said. “I could’ve signed my scorecard incorrectly or not signed it at all and been DQed and still have my status.”
Here’s more on the rule affecting Kite’s status this season.
“Any such player failing to meet the guidelines set forth in this Section C.1(a) of this Article III shall retain regular membership but for subsequent seasons shall no longer be exempt. The scoring average portion of the Performance Guidelines shall not be applicable for those members who have a minimum of 50 combined (PGA TOUR and PGA TOUR Champions) victories in tournaments awarding official money, or players in the All-Time Victory Category A.1 (i)(i). There shall be no other exemption from this scoring average provision of the Performance Guidelines.”
The bar is set so high for a “get out of jail card” – a combined 50 wins between the tour’s junior and senior circuits – too high, you could argue, that even stalwart Bernhard Langer wouldn’t meet it. (Hale Irwin is one of the few, the proud, who does.)
But Kite didn’t complain about being in this no-man’s land to start the season. In fact, he said, “I endorse the policy 100%.”
At age 69, after 1132 combined starts on the @PGATOUR and @ChampionsTour, Tom Kite is the last man standing on the range at the @CologuardGolf Classic.
As a result, Kite sent his first letter requesting a sponsor exemption to tournament officials at the Tucson tournament, which begins Friday.
Fifty years ago this June, Kite made his PGA Tour debut at the U.S. Open at Hazeltine. He passed Tour Q-School in his first attempt and made it through Monday Qualifying initially. Never did he have to ask for a handout. Well, there was one time he accepted a sponsor exemption into the old Crosby Clambake, but that was arranged by his amateur partner.
Part of the reason Kite may have accepted having his exempt status suspended – technically, he qualifies through the all-time points, all-time money and Hall of Fame categories – is that he can receive unlimited sponsor exemptions. He already has another one lined up for the Hoag Classic next week in Newport Beach, California, and then he will re-assess his plans. And there’s also this:
“A player who loses his exempt status for failing to meet the scoring average provision of the Performance Guidelines may regain exempt status immediately by finishing among the top one-half (1/2) of the starting field in any PGA Tour Champions cosponsored or approved tournament awarding official prize money, excluding official money team events.”
In other words, if he can finish inside the top half of an official, non-team event – top-39 or better this week – his status will be reinstated. It’s not a high bar and one Kite is confident he can achieve.
“I know I’m at the end of my rope,” he said. “I don’t have any super-high aspirations other than to see the guys and compete and get my status back. I didn’t play worth a darn last year, but you know what? I’m still a pretty good player.”
