The “Hush Y’all” paddles are back.
With the return of the FedEx St. Jude Championship this week at TPC Southwind – the PGA Tour event that kicks off the FedEx Cup Playoffs – one of the most visible stamps that makes it so uniquely Memphis will once again be on full display.
Rather than the customary “Quiet Please” signs that most golf tournaments employ as either a subtle reminder or a not-so-subtle reprimand for spectators, the FedEx St. Jude Championship has put its own signature spin on the tradition.
Who do we have to thank for it? Dwight Drinkard had only recently become the tournament’s first full-time tournament director – when it was known as the Federal Express St. Jude Classic. It was high time to make the conversion from wooden paddles to something lighter, and it was the perfect time to add some Southern flair to them.
Drinkard, who died on Aug. 5, seized on the opportunity.
“It all started with him,” said Jack Sammons, the FedEx St. Jude Championship’s general chairman. “That thing has just snowballed and become this thing that’s talked about throughout the PGA Tour. I give Dwight 100% of the credit for that.”
But even Drinkard admitted it wasn’t an original idea. In 2019, he told The Commercial Appeal he was inspired by the Atlanta Classic, which also bandied about “Hush Y’all” paddles. But even the Atlanta Classic borrowed the idea from a golf tournament in Jamaica that went with “Hush Mon!”
“It was endemic to our Southern way of doing things and we became more known for it than Atlanta,” Drinkard told The Commercial Appeal in 2019.
While it has become so popular at the FedEx St. Jude Championship that the paddles are even sold at the merchandise tent behind the 18th green – along with “Hush Y’all” hats, T-shirts and other swag – it was a hot-ticket item dating all the way back to their inception.
When Sammons became general chairman in 2010, merchandise branding was being updated as the tournament went from the St. Jude Classic to the FedEx St. Jude Classic. That included the “Hush Y’all” paddles.
“The good people that make the golf shafts (TrueTemper), they donated these golf shafts with grips so that our marshals could hold the signs up,” said Sammons. “At the end of every day, when they were to turn them in, if they took 500 of ‘em, 250 would come back.
“That told me, one, we had some folks that had a little bit of larceny in ‘em and, two, it told me it was such a popular souvenir that people were willing to pilfer them. That spoke volumes to me.”
Reach sports writer Jason Munz at jason.munz@commercialappeal.com or follow him @munzly on X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter.