As the PGA Tour heads to Dublin, Ohio, and Jack’s Place for a twinbill – Workday Charity Open (July 9-12) and The Memorial (July 16-19) – it’s worth remembering that this has happened before.
It’s been 44 years since the PGA Tour crafted its version of the Ernie Banks catchphrase, “Let’s play two,” by setting up shop in Akron, Ohio, for two straight weeks in late August – early September at Firestone Country Club. Amidst its forest of elm trees, the Tour held The American Golf Classic on the North Course and crossed the street for the World Series of Golf on the South.
Deane Beman thought he had achieved one of his first coups as PGA Tour commissioner, reaching a handshake deal in February 1975 with media mogul Walter Annenberg to sponsor three seasonal championships – winter, spring and summer – under the TV Guide banner.
Beman recast the World Series of Golf from its longtime format as a four-man, 36-hole exhibition of that season’s major winners into a limited field, no-cut, end-of-the-year culmination of the golf season akin to today’s Tour Championship.
Beman’s bold vision included taking the event to Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on Long Island – how cool would that have been? But these plans crumbled when the PGA of America, which co-owned the event, publicized the TV Guide deal before a formal announcement was made. Annenberg reneged and without another title sponsor to foot the bill, Beman asked tournament organizers in Akron to run a double-header of sorts.
Bobby Nichols, the 1964 PGA champ and Firestone club pro from 1968-1980, said the Firestone CC membership knew the ins and outs of playing tournament host. After all, the club had been home to the former Rubber City Open (which debuted in 1954), the CBS Golf Classic, and three PGA Championships.
But two tournaments in a row?
“After we picked ourselves off the floor, I said, ‘We can do it,’ ” remembered Tom Knoll, tournament chairman in 1976.
A Herculean effort ensued. Grand stands and concessions were razed following Sunday’s check presentation to AGC winner David Graham, who shot four rounds in the 60s (“That was some of the best golf I ever played,” he recalled), and erected on the South Course in time for Tuesday’s pro-am.
Eight golfers competed in both weeks. In an era when driving from event to event was still de rigueur, pros revved their engines to arrive at Firestone. “They would get a tune-up and four new tires,” recalled The Plain Dealer golf writer George Sweda.
Nichols said it also was the first tournament to provide complimentary meals to players. For dinner, many pros feasted at Diamond Grille, a small, understated steakhouse that Frank Chirkinian of CBS Sports made a Tour institution.
In an effort to truly put the “World” into the World Series of Golf, the Tour welcomed international figures from the far corners of the globe. Japan’s Takashi Murakami, who trailed Jack Nicklaus by two strokes after 54 holes before a Sunday 77, and Taiwan’s Sheng-San Hsu of the Asian Tour represented golf in the Far East, while Allan Henning was exempt as leading money winner on the South African Tour’s Order of Merit. The tournament’s international flavor would flourish in the years to come.
Nicklaus, who already had won the four-man exhibition four times and 1975 PGA Championship on the South Course, captured the inaugural World Series of Golf by four strokes and cashed the Tour’s first $100,000 winner’s check. It seemed like a fortune.
The Tour never landed a sponsor for the seasonal championships and before long they disappeared. Even though it didn’t work out as Beman had planned, the World Series of Golf deal should be remembered as one of the most important to the Tour bottom line. In restructuring the event, Beman negotiated out of an existing 7.5 percent royalty payment to the PGA, which the Tour estimates would’ve resulted in payments in the neighborhood of $600 million – $900 million over the last 40-plus years. (In a later deal, the Tour acquired full rights to the World Series of Golf.)
The Tour hasn’t played two weeks in a row at the same club since until now. At the conclusion of the Firestone doubleheader, Beman told tournament organizers they could host either tournament, but they couldn’t keep both.
“We thought about it for about three minutes,” Knoll said.
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