The World Golf Hall of Fame has relocated to Pinehurst, North Carolina, at USGA’s Golf House Pinehurst.
It opened to the public this week as the 124th U.S. Open descended on the Village of Pinehurst.
The HOF, was previously located in St. Augustine, Florida, but that location closed last August after a 25-year run that included 16 induction ceremonies, 76 new members, special exhibits honoring the game’s greatest players, entertainers and U.S. Presidents.
The new location has received items such as Gene Sarazen’s 1922 PGA Championship and 1935 Masters Championship trophies; Jack Nicklaus’ MacGregor bag from his 1965 Masters victory; Johnny Miller’s clubs, ball and gold medal from the 1973 U.S. Open at Oakmont (where he shot a record 63 in the final round); Seve Ballesteros’ wedge he used when he won the first of his five majors at the 1979 Open Championship; and the shirt worn by Annika Sorenstam when she became the first woman to play in a PGA Tour event at the 2003 Colonial.
The facility features nearly 3,000 artifacts in all, showcasing the most accomplished and influential figures in the game.
Golf could use more dedication, decorum and decency. Harrington exemplifies all these.
PINEHURST, N.C. — In the early days of his career — when he’d accumulated just a few of his 30-odd worldwide wins but none of his major championships and was on no one’s radar for the World Golf Hall of Fame, which he enters today — Padraig Harrington took pride in the fact that there were corners of Ireland in which he was better known for being Paddy Harrington’s son.
Harrington the elder, who died in 2005, was a footballer of some repute, but Gaelic games are an amateur sport so he worked as a cop for the Garda Siochána, Ireland’s police force. His team twice reached All-Ireland finals, the equivalent of a Super Bowl, losing both. By contrast, Brendan Lowry (father of Shane) was on a winning team in 1982 and probably hasn’t had to buy a drink in his home county since. Even against that fervent backdrop, Padraig Harrington would have to admit now that there’s not a village in the land in which he isn’t the best-known member of his clan.
And villagers from Mizen Head to Malin Head don’t need the Hall of Fame to tell them that.
Halls of Fame aren’t really a thing in Ireland. In the United States, regardless of the sport, HOFs are often a subject of heated debate about the appropriateness of the criteria or the admissions and omissions among its members. Golf’s is no different. Most folks deserving of a spot have gotten there, some via the express lane (Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson both won majors after being inducted in their early ‘40s), and some condemned to arrive on the slow bus.
Peggy Kirk Bell, for example. She was a charter member of the LPGA Tour and a legendary teacher at Pine Needles, her family’s resort five miles east of Pinehurst, where the new Hall of Fame building debuts during this week’s U.S. Open. Bell was inducted in 2019, three years after she died at age 95. The 2024 HOF class includes seven deceased founders of the LPGA Tour who aren’t already in. One of them, Shirley Spork, passed two years ago. She was 94. Also being inducted is Tom Weiskopf, who left us in ’22 at 79. They aren’t the only new inductees who won’t be alive to give speeches Monday evening. Golf’s Hall is so inclined to posthumous awards that one feels a little extra gratitude when it chooses an honoree who is deserving and above ground.
With Padraig Harrington, the Hall got it right, and at the right time.
I first interviewed him almost 20 years ago at a hotel in suburban New York, days before he won the Barclays Classic. Our photographer brought a vintage box camera, and immediately Harrington fixated on it, utterly intrigued by its inner workings. It was my introduction to one of his defining characteristics: an insatiable curiosity about the world around him. That attribute would seem incompatible with another of his notable character traits — an unshakeable confidence that his considered viewpoint is correct. That combination turned a decent amateur into a world-beater and one of the game’s most beloved figures.
During that ’05 interview, Harrington told me that every January he’d fly to Sandy Lane resort in Barbados for an extensive practice session and on the journey he’d be terrified that everything he knew about golf had evaporated over the bleak Irish winter. I reminded him of that comment just before Christmas in 2007 as we sat at his kitchen table in Dublin. The Claret Jug was a few feet away.
“You know,” he said with a chuckle, “this was the first year I didn’t feel that starting my season.”
2008 Open Championship winner Padraig Harrington poses before his press conference with the Claret Jug and his Wilson 5 wood that he hit his memorable shot on the 17th hole to within three feet at the 137th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. (Photo: Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)
Even for the best golfers in the world, doubt is a constant companion. Determination is what defuses it, and they don’t make ‘em much more dogged than Padraig Harrington.
He won that Claret Jug in ugly fashion at Carnoustie, with two balls finding water on the way to a double-bogey on the final hole. But it was a gritty double, and he was flawless in the playoff. He stumbled late at the PGA Championship in ’08 too, but he left with the trophy. In those moments, he embodied a sentiment best expressed by Terence MacSwiney, a long-ago playwright and politician from his dad’s hometown: “It is not those who can inflict the most but those who can endure the most who will conquer.”
It was fitting that his foil in both of those majors was Sergio Garcia, who could never equal his nemesis in maturity, grace, grit or professionalism. But then Garcia never had to shag his own practice balls on a wet, windy driving range in the grim Scottish town of Largs, as Harrington did any time he went to work with his late coach, Bob Torrance.
In some important respects, Harrington is dissimilar to many of his peers in PGA Tour locker rooms. He says he never reads his own coverage so it won’t impact how he treats the media. His advice to rookies is this: give your cell phone number to your hometown golf writer and make sure they never get beaten on a story about you. You’d struggle to find a single player on Tour who adopts those precepts, but Harrington practices what he preaches. At the ’21 Ryder Cup in Wisconsin, he exhaustively answered questions in his daily captain’s press conference. On one day, as a PGA of America official announced an end to the session, he insisted on taking a final inquiry from an Irish newspaper reporter at the rear of the room. “He’s come a long way,” the skipper said with a smile.
More than anything else, Harrington is an evangelist for golf. He simply loves it, adores the thrill of a fine shot as much as the challenge posed by a lousy run. All of it feeds his soul. He cannot comprehend how anyone else might not love golf in the same way, and he’s determined to convert them to the cause. On the range at the 2014 PGA Championship at Valhalla, I watched slack-jawed as Harrington — on his knees on a towel — took full swings with a driver. It was a new drill he thought would help. Today he passes along similar gems to a huge audience on YouTube. All part of his personalized mission to grow the game.
For most Tour professionals, mimicking Padraig’s approach would be ruinous. The constant seeking, the unquenchable interest in swing theory, the tendency to look at conventional stats from unconventional angles in case a greater truth reveals itself, the giving more than he takes. But the current melancholy moment in which professional golf finds itself is a reminder that in so many respects — in dedication, in decorum, in disposition, in decency — this game would be a damn sight better off if more guys were like him.
Before there was Bryson DeChambeau, Padraig Harrington was the golfer who tried everything and anything for the slightest edge in his golf.
Remember when he wore the Golf Swing Shirt? Well, that just the least of Harrington’s outside-the-box efforts to transform his game into a three-time major winner and it paid off. On Monday evening, the 52-year-old Irishman officially will be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Harrington outworked his competition, routinely spending 12-hour days training with instructor Bob Torrance. Like DeChambeau, he also was serious about his training and that extended to what he put in his temple.
“In my heyday, I wouldn’t have eaten a french fry. I didn’t eat a burger for years. I didn’t eat red meat at night for years. I went 10 years not doing this,” Harrington tells Golfweek in a recent Q&A. “I remember I hadn’t eaten a burger for years, and I went maybe five years when I won the Order of Merit in Valderrama in 2006.”
As Harrington recounted the story, he rushed to the airport to catch a flight home and by the time they got through security, the only place still open was Burger King.
“There was about six of us, my family were there and we came back with 12 burgers. We were all hungry. I know I had two of the Whoppers. I think that was the nicest piece of food I’ve ever eaten in my life. Bear in mind, I had not eaten a burger for at least five years before that.”
To give a sense of his dedication to his craft and how he has tempered his obsession ever-so-much as he has transitioned primarily to playing PGA Tour Champions, Harrington compared himself to Scottie Scheffler.
“Everything was about my performance in golf,” he said. “I still go to the gym. I work out relatively hard when I’m in the gym. But I was two tee times behind Scottie Scheffler at the PGA Championship when he got arrested. So 20 minutes after him on the time sheet. I was in my bed when he got arrested. I would have stayed, whatever, 15 minutes at the course. I was Scottie Scheffler. In that sense, I would have been there three and a half hours before my tee time. I would have done 45 minutes in my room. I would have done two different workouts then when I got to the golf course. I had one with my physio for 30 minutes and then I had a 15-minute dynamic warmup, so that’s an hour and a half before I got to the range, and then I’d practice until dark afterwards. You just can’t keep that up. You burn out, so you look for different things.
“I say this anytime I’m talking to businesspeople. You get to that stage in your career, plenty of people feel like they should retire, and I often think, you’ve really got some great skill level to what you’re doing. You’ll never be an expert in anything else than what you’ve spent your last 30 years doing. So what you need to do is stay in what you’re doing but get rid of the rubbish, whatever that is. Whatever is upsetting you. Whatever is something that’s not letting you use your experience and your genius.”
Harrington’s genius is getting the most out of his talent — even if it meant sacrificing burgers and fries.
Burke claimed that he received more for attending the Champions Dinner at the Masters than he did for winning it.
John “Jack” Joseph Burke Jr. won 16 times on the PGA Tour, including two majors in 1956 – the Masters and PGA Championship – earning him Player of the Year honors. In 1952, he won four tournaments in a row, along with the Vardon Trophy, which is awarded for low scoring average. He played on five Ryder Cup teams during the 1950s, captained twice and hosted another at his own course.
Burke died on Friday at the age of 100.
While still at the peak of his abilities, he retired from the Tour and built one of the country’s first golf-only clubs – Champions Golf Club in Houston – with his former childhood babysitter and closest friend, fellow World Golf Hall of Famer Jimmy Demaret.
Burke grew up on River Oaks Country Club in Texas during the Great Depression, where his father, Jack, served as the first club pro in the state’s history and mentored the likes of Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Jack Grout and Harvey Penick. Young Jackie suffered from asthma and couldn’t play other sports so at age 7 he began sitting and listening at the feet of his father, who is himself a member of the Texas Golf Hall of Fame.
By age 12, Burke Jr. could break par and a year later gave his first lesson to John P. Fusler, who paid him $350 when Burke helped lower his scores from 100 to 85.
“He thought I was the greatest teacher in the world, but all I was doing was relating what I had heard at the dinner table,” Burke told the USGA’s Golf Journal in 1995.
He landed a job as a teaching professional at Galveston Country Club in Houston before he turned 20, and would later hold jobs at Hollywood Golf Club in New Jersey and Metropolis Country Club in New York. One time, in the company of Demaret and his golf buddy Bob Hope, the comedian innocently asked Burke, “What do you do?”
“I’m a golf professional,” Burke answered.
“Where?” Hope asked. “At Boys Town?”
The finest hour as a player for “the pro from Boys Town,” as Burke was affectionately called, may have been the final round of the 1956 Masters, which is still widely considered to be the toughest conditions of cold, wind and rain in tournament history. Somehow, Burke held it together against the elements to shoot 71 and erase an eight-stroke deficit as amateur Ken Venturi ballooned to an 80.
“He handed me the trophy,” said Burke, overlooking the fact that he tied for the low round of the day to finish at 1-over 289, still tied for the highest winning score in tournament history. “I thank him a lot for that.”
Burke, who was paired in the final round with Mike Souchak, always was known for his stellar putting and his short stick was his sword and his shield at Augusta National as he relied on a short, tap putting stroke.
“Sand had blown out of the bunkers all over the green,” he told Golf Digest in 2002 of a critical birdie putt he holed at 17. “I’d putted on sand greens in east Texas that were really fast, and factored that in, but I still thought I’d hit it about halfway — till the wind blew it right in the center of the cup. Mike’s a cheerleader-type guy, and he ran to pick the ball out of the cup and then clapped me so hard on the back I had to walk around on the 18th tee to recover. I put my second shot on 18 in the right bunker and had to make a downhill four-footer to save my par. It still makes me almost ill to think about that putt with the outcome riding on it.”
Burke won the 1956 PGA Championship at Blue Hill Golf & Country Club in Canton, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston, back when it was contested at match play, defeating Ted Kroll, 3 and 2, in the final.
“I beat eight guys to win the PGA,” Burke recalled. “Each day you felt like you’re standing on the edge of a cliff and some guy was going to push you off. I never felt like I was going to win the PGA. Never.”
Indeed, Burke needed two extra holes to prevail over Fred Haas in the third round and was five down after 14 holes in the 36-hole semifinals before rallying to knock off Ed Furgol on the 37th hole. And for good measure, he trailed three down midway into the finals before edging Kroll.
At the time, the life of a Tour pro was a meager existence, even during a banner year. Many years later, Burke claimed that he received more for attending the Champions Dinner at the Masters than he did for winning it.
“I won the PGA in Boston and my check was hot,” Burke once told the Houston Chronicle. “I couldn’t cash my check for $6,000. The PGA had to guarantee my check.”
It led Burke to consider scaling back his tournament schedule to spend more time with his family. He and Demaret, a three-time winner of the Masters who died in 1983, shared a mutual interest in creating a haven for hardcore golfers that would capitalize on the knowledge and experience they’d gained from playing the game around the world.
“Golf is really in your blood when you drive through a strange area and start envisioning golf holes on every piece of property around the next bend,” Burke said in his autobiography, “It’s Only a Game.”
“This is what happened with Jimmy and me when we envisioned Champions. We looked at several pieces of property, but the land here looked just right for a golf course.”
They acquired 500 acres (at $500 per) in Northwest Houston in 1957, out in what was then a forest of pine and oak trees in the middle of nowhere, to build two courses – Cypress Creek and Jackrabbit – and hired Ralph Plummer as the architect.
On April 21, 1959, celebrities Bing Crosby, Mickey Mantle and James Garner joined Ben Hogan, Jay Hebert, Bob Rosburg and Souchak among the more than 6,000 who attended the grand opening. A day earlier, Burke and Julius Boros battled in an 18-hole playoff at the Houston Classic. Boros shot a 3-under-par 69 at Memorial Park … and lost by five.
“I believe we should have a saliva test on Jackie,” Boros said at the time. “As soon as he is available, I would like to sign up for a series of lessons.”
Burke’s reputation as “America’s grand golf sage” helped attract numerous prominent competitions to the club and tested golf’s elite amateurs and pros ever since. The Cypress Creek Course was home of the Tour Championship five times between 1990 and 2003, hosted tour events from 1966-’71 – Ben Hogan chose the course for his final tournament appearance of his career at the 1971 Houston Champions International – the 1967 Ryder Cup, 1969 U.S. Open, 1993 U.S. Amateur, 1998 and 2017 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur, and 2020 U.S. Women’s Open. Burke was one of five Champions members who have won the PGA Championship, along with Steve Elkington, Hal Sutton and the late Dave Marr and Jay Hebert. When a local sportscaster asked Burke if that’s unusual, he said, “Hell, we’ve got three members who walked on the moon,” referring to astronauts Alan Shepard, who hit a golf ball there, Gene Cernan and Charles Duke.
Jack and Robin Burke in 2016. (Golfweek/Tracy Wilcox)
Burke continued to foster the same atmosphere that his father promoted at River Oaks. Golf is it at Champions. In fact, he was so dedicated to protecting the spirit of competition that he refused to consider members who have a handicap higher than 15.
“You play your way in, you don’t buy your way in,” Burke once said.
Burke claimed that a country club where no one plays the game seriously “is like a yacht club where no one can sail a boat.”
Champions Club likely will be his most lasting legacy, which is just how Burke always wanted it.
“My dad said to me once, ‘Son, before you leave this planet, you try and leave more than two footprints here. So, I said, ‘I will do that,’ ” he said. “This is my footprint.”
Burke, who served in the Marines during World War II and fathered six children, was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2000, and in 2004 received the Bob Jones Award from the U.S. Golf Association, which is considered its highest honor and awarded for distinguished sportsmanship.
Burke has tutored the likes of Crenshaw, Elkington, Sutton and Phil Mickelson. Crenshaw once described a lesson with Burke as “a full-contact sport,” and former touring pro turned Golf Channel commentator Billy Ray Brown is living proof of that. Brown, a former University of Houston star, missed a putt at the start of a lesson from Brown and received a whack alongside the head for it.
“Son,” Burke said, “I want you to feel pain when you miss a putt.”
When Mickelson made his first pilgrimage to Champions for a lesson from Burke, he was challenged to pass Burke’s putting-pressure test: holing 100 straight three-footers. In typical Mickelson fashion, he bet Burke dinner at Houston’s finest restaurant in town that he could do it on the first try. Mickelson missed his fourth putt and wanted to double down.
In recounting the story to Golf Digest, Burke said, “Man, I can’t eat that much.” During his heyday, Burke would make the 100 putts every night before allowing himself dinner. “You’d get to 89 and you were a little tired and hungry. The key is to strike a carpenter’s 90, with the blade square to the line, and concern yourself less with sinking putts. Losers are result-oriented — winners are execution-oriented. On long putts, your target is that three-foot cup. You need mental aids.”
“Being with him was like a tonic for the soul,” Crenshaw said.
Sutton, who made Burke one of his assistant captains to the 2004 U.S. Ryder Cup team, said the smartest decision he made as a young pro was buying a house next door to Burke, who he considered one of the few people who really understood the game in its entirety.
“He’s seen all the great players, he knows how they hit it. He understands the golf swing, he’s made it happen and he’s been a great player in his own day,” said Sutton, who looked at Burke as a spiritual advisor, sports psychologist, sounding board, confidante, cheerleader and surrogate parent. “Without even knowing it, he did a great deal to make me a better, more well-rounded person.”
The award honors recipients for their spirit in advancing diversity in golf.
Steph Curry has piled up a number of awards through his feats on the basketball court, but his stockpile of golf trophies is catching up due to the hard work he has put into growing the sport.
The World Golf Hall of Fame announced Tuesday it will honor Curry with the Charlie Sifford Award at its induction ceremony next June. The award honors recipients for their spirit in advancing diversity in golf.
The ceremony will be the first after the hall officially opens its doors at Pinehurst Resort and Country Club.
Padraig Harrington, Tom Weiskopf, Sandra Palmer, Johnny Farrell and Beverly Hanson will join the remaining seven of the 13 LPGA Founders in the World Golf Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024.
“I’m incredibly honored to be chosen as the recipient of this year’s Charlie Sifford Award and am grateful to the World Golf Hall of Fame for the recognition in this sport that I am so passionate about,” Curry said. “I believe that we have the opportunity to grow the game of golf by providing equity, access and opportunity to young golfers who have that same passion, dedication and determination as so many of us out on the green.”
According to the National Golf Foundation, only 16% of all golfers are black or Latino.
“Steph Curry has shown passion and a commitment to giving more opportunities to young people who do not have access to the game of golf,” said Greg McLaughlin, the CEO of the World Golf Hall of Fame. “Steph’s dedication in advancing diversity in golf epitomizes the groundbreaking work demonstrated by Charlie Sifford. The World Golf Hall of Fame in partnership with Southern Company is committed to ensuring his legacy endures for future generations by recognizing others – like Steph – who are devoted to making golf an environment for all.”
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.
After 25 years, the Hall is shutting down at World Golf Village and relocating to Pinehurst.
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — For more than six years I worked at the World Golf Hall of Fame. I was there on opening day — May 19, 1998 — and was the last person to walk out on Friday, Sept. 1, 2023, when the Hall closed for good at 1 World Golf Place.
After 25 years, the World Golf Hall is shutting down at World Golf Village and relocating to Pinehurst, North Carolina, where it was originally born in 1974.
I hadn’t been inside since before COVID-19, so I wanted to make one last trip. Admission was free and the place was hopping late Friday afternoon. I forgot how much of a treasure trove of golf memorabilia was housed there. One of my former colleagues, who joined me for “last call,” compared it to the end scene of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” where all the trinkets from the Hall of Famers will end up boxed in a warehouse somewhere as the new facility is expected to be about one-tenth the size at approximately 3,500 square feet of exhibit space. One of the Hall’s employees — “I’m officially unemployed five minutes ago,” he said in a moment of gallows humor —noted that some staff from the USGA would be visiting soon to determine what items they want for the Pinehurst location. The rest will be returned to the members and their families.
Check out the photos of some of the exhibits — from a replica of Alan Shepard’s makeshift 6-iron used to hit a ball on the moon to Sam Snead’s lunchbox and Lloyd Mangrum’s Purple Heart — to the bronze plaques (some are better than others).
ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida — The World Golf Hall of Fame and Museum, the brainchild of former PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman, who was later one of its inductees, fell victim to dwindling attendance even before the pandemic when most museums closed in 2020.
The challenges of keeping the facility open were not unique: according to the American Alliance of Museums, attendance at museums nationwide was still down 38 percent in 2022 from pre-pandemic levels and 17 percent of museum directors believed there was some risk of having to close.
Once a 20-year sponsorship agreement with Shell ran out in 2018 it became harder and harder for the Hall of Fame to pay for itself.
But World Golf Foundation officials are quick to point out that the Hall of Fame is only changing places.
In the spring of 2024, the United States Golf Association will open the new version of the Hall of Fame at its six-acre Golf House Pinehurst Campus. That means it will have come full circle — the inaugural Golf Hall of Fame, with the charter class selected by the Golf Writers Association of America, opened at Pinehurst in 1974.
“It’s back where it started,” said Melody Herbert of St. Augustine, who came to the Hall of Fame with her husband Hank and their granddaughters Camille and Audrey during a visit last week. “It makes perfect sense to relocate it there.”
From now on, the World Golf Hall of Fame will be a joint operation between the USGA and the World Golf Foundation, which has moved to offices at the PGA Tour’s Global Home in Ponte Vedra Beach.
The Foundation will manage the process of nominating and electing new members, and plan and stage the induction ceremonies. The next ceremony will be the week of the U.S. Open in Pinehurst next June, with Padraig Harrington, Tom Weiskopf and the 13 founding members of the LPGA highlighting the Class of 2024.
“Once in the USGA will manage [the Hall of Fame] day-to-day,” said Greg McLaughlin, the executive director of the World Golf Foundation. “The foundation will work in concert with them for events and offer curating support.”
A rendering of the World Golf Hall of Fame Members Locker Room at the Pinehurst Resort. It will open in the late spring of 2024.
What to do with the property?
The issue now is what to do with a 64,000-square-foot Hall of Fame and Museum building, a 17,865-square-foot IMAX Theater and 36 acres of land.
There also will be the issue in early 2025 after PGA Tour Entertainment vacates its 32,000-square foot building for a new structure in Ponte Vedra near the Tour headquarters.
St. Johns County is in the midst of soliciting public opinion on the uses of the property and buildings, through a survey on the county website and two public meetings.
The meetings will be Sept. 27 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. and Sept. 28 from 9-11 a.m. at the St. Johns County Administration Building Auditorium, 500 San Sebastian View in St. Augustine.
Sarah S. Arnold, vice-chairman of the St. Johns County Commissioner who represents District 2, which includes the World Golf Village, said the county has received more than 2,300 responses on the survey or through emails. She said many of the ideas center around the recreational use of the property, which has served that purpose in the past through Easter Egg hunts, holiday tree decorating contests, car shows and school field trips.
“I think people very much want to see some form of recreation,” she said. “A community asset that serves all the demographics and the county as a whole. It’s important to have a strategic plan going forward.”
Arnold all but ruled out additional residential development, pointing out the number of single-family homes and condo communities on the site or that have been built around it over the past quarter-century.
“We have plenty [residential] there and don’t want to add to the traffic concerns,” she said.
Dean said other ideas have included using part of the Hall of Fame building as another branch of the county library and renting kayaks and canoes for the lake.
“It could be sort of a town center, a multi-use park, a place for kids and families to play,” he said. “But want our residents to have some creative thinking. We’re listening.”
The upcoming closure has us feeling nostalgic — so here’s a look at some of the greatest moments in the village’s history.
ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida — It’s almost the end of the line for the World Golf Hall of Fame and Museum, which is closing after 25 years in this Northern Florida town that sits about a half-hour from the PGA Tour headquarters.
The complex’s run included 16 induction ceremonies, 76 new members, special exhibits honoring the game’s greatest players, entertainers and U.S. Presidents — plus the memories of as many as 280,000 visitors per year at its peak.
Much of the contents from the museum are being shipped to the Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina as part of the United States Golf Association’s new USGA Golf House Pinehurst, set to open in the late spring of 2024.
The upcoming closure has us feeling nostalgic — and found us taking a walk down Memory Lane at some of the greatest moments in the village’s history.
Pinehurst is accepting items such as Gene Sarazen’s 1922 PGA Championship and 1935 Masters Championship trophies; Jack Nicklaus’ MacGregor bag from his 1965 Masters victory; Johnny Miller’s clubs, ball and gold medal from the 1973 U.S. Open at Oakmont (where he shot a record 63 in the final round); Seve Ballesteros’ wedge he used when he won the first of his five majors at the 1979 Open Championship; and the shirt worn by Annika Sorenstam when she became the first woman to play in a PGA Tour event at the 2003 Colonia.
Volunteer Coulter Schmitt walks past the wall of bronze plaques honoring members of the World Golf Hall of Fame. St. Johns County will retain possession of the plaques to be displayed in the reimagined Hall of Fame and Museum building.
But there are about 7,500 other items that were on loan or donated to the Hall of Fame. McLaughlin said the offer was made to living Hall of Fame members and the families of those deceased to return some items but other members have opted to send the items elsewhere:
Two-time U.S. Open champion Curtis Strange has asked for his donations to be sent to his alma mater, Wake Forest.
Items belonging to Chick Evans will be sent to the Western Golf Association.
Augusta National is accepting memorabilia associated with founder Clifford Roberts.
More than 3,000 books went to the USGA of the Southern Methodist Sports Management program.
“We haven’t had a problem finding a home for most of the assets,” McLaughlin said. “Eventually we hope to find a home for everything.”
The daunting process begins in six days — after the final visitor leaves the structure.
That’s when one era in First Coast golf history closes in St. Augustine, to be followed by the Hall of Fame’s mulligan in Pinehurst.
