“It’s New York City, what do you expect when you’re half-choking it away?” -Brooks Koepka on being taunted by New York golf fans.
The PGA Championship contested May 16-19, 2019, on the Black Course at Bethpage State Park in Farmingdale, New York, was historic for a wide assortment of different reasons.
First and foremost was the remarkable performance of Brooks Koepka who became only the second player, after Tiger Woods, to win back-to-back PGA Championships and host the Wanamaker Trophy in the modern era.
With rounds of 63-65-70 and 74, he became the first person to lead the PGA after every round since Hal Sutton won at Riviera in 1983, and he entered the final found with a seven-shot lead, the largest in PGA history since the Championship converted to stroke play in 1958.
Only gusting winds reaching 25 miles per hour kept Koepka from setting a PGA Championship scoring record with a final round 74, the highest winning score since Vijay Singh won with a 76 at Whistling Straits in 2004.
Koepka also wins his fourth major in his last eight attempts and regains his ranking as the #1 player in the world, while becoming the first player in history to hold two back-to-back Major Championships at the same time, having won the 2017 and 2018 United States Opens.
He becomes the eighth player since the Masters Tournament supplemented the United States Amateur and entered the Major Championship Rota, to have won one of the four professional majors in three consecutive years, joining Tiger, Phil Mickelson, Tom Watson, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Peter Thompson, and Ralph Guldahl.
And perhaps the most noteworthy accomplishment of all is Brooks Koepka, at just twenty-nine years old, joins Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods and Seve Ballesteros as the only golfers to win four majors while still in their twenty’s over the last 50 years.
Pretty impressive stuff.
History was also made by the PGA Championship moving up in the golf season to May for its earliest start since 1949 and leapfrogging the U.S. and British Opens in the Major Championship rotation, creating a more natural progression in magnitude and continuity.
Everything about the move makes sense.
If the Masters, in early April, is the quasi-official start of the golf season, then the two-month interval until the US Open kicked off in June, has always felt like championship golf had taken a sabbatical.
It was just too long and uneven between the main events.
The Players Championship annually tried to fill that void and has always touted itself, unsuccessfully, as golf’s fifth Major. Its movement to March is a much more logical placement as a lead-in and opening act to the Championship season.
The PGA’s move to May now gives golf fans around the world a significant tournament with strong international fields every four weeks throughout the entire season, culminating with the Fed-X Cup to finish the year and give conclusiveness to a sometimes seeming less and uncertain golf year.
A re-vamped schedule that now generates a more natural ebb and flows along with a definitive conclusion.
The PGA Championship, annually golf’s deepest field and only all-professional event, now avoids the inherent conflicts a late summer start has always presented. Namely, the beginning of the professional and college football seasons, golf in the Olympics and the ever attendant bi-annual Ryder and President Cup matches.
The so-called “Silly Season” and made for TV reality events now become more relevant and defined for the over-sized theater they have become.
Additionally, a late, end-of-the-season start, has always made it difficult for the PGA of America, the owners of the Championship, to compete in an over-crowded marketplace, elevate its brand, promote their members and utilize a global platform to grow the game and introduce new player initiatives and programs to a worldwide audience.
The May start, at the beginning of the golf season, now ensures a center stage with no unnecessary distractions.
Not to mention, with Tiger winning the Masters and continuing his assault on what were seemingly unbeatable records, contributed to an unbelievable build-up of anticipation leading to Brooks Koepka’s record-breaking performance.
I think everybody was happy with the move.
Including Golf Course Superintendents, Tournament Administrators and golf fans who no longer have to brave the late summer heat and humidity that can wreak havoc with attendance, course conditions and, more importunately, removing a course from circulation the entire calendar year as PGA officials and workers prepare the site for a major championship.
It is a big job getting a site ready for an event like a major and the early season start now allows the PGA of America much broader latitude in their options of available golf properties to host the Championship including courses like this year’s site, Bethpage Black.
“Warning-The Black Course is an extremely difficult course which we recommend only for highly skilled golfers.” -Sign on the 1st Tee at Bethpage Black
Residents of New York have been guilty, and rightfully so, of a certain arrogance when it comes to the plethora of recreational opportunities afforded anyone with an MTA MetroCard and a Long Island Railroad pass.
Including Bethpage and all this magnificent resource offers to the public.
Located just 32 miles from Downtown New York City, Bethpage State Park sits on 1,400 acres of prime real estate, offering a multitude of outdoor opportunities including polo fields, tennis courts, horseback riding, hiking, biking and nature trails, along with an array of mixed-use picnic areas.
And when you throw in Jones Beach on the Atlantic Ocean just 20 minutes away, you have the perfect confluence of outdoor fun, games and recreational pursuits.
But it is the five golf courses included on the property and the architect who designed and built them, that the park is best known.
Conceived and developed during the great depression the property was the brainchild of the Bethpage State Park Authority, a public works project working in conjunction with several New Deal work agencies including The Federal Works Progress Administration and Civil Works Administration, providing jobs, investment, and infrastructure during the dark days of the 1930s.
The man hired to oversee the renovation and construction of the golf courses was master designer and golf course architect, A.W. Tillinghast. Already a prolific builder whose work included major championship courses such as, Winged Foot and Baltusrol, Tillinghast was charged with overseeing, what would eventually be five golf courses contained within the State Park system and available for all residents to play.
The five courses, distinguished by their color designations and the increasing sequence of the challenge they present are in this order: Yellow, Green, Blue, Red and the crown jewel of public courses, “The Black” A golf course Tillinghast baptized “The Man Killer.”
From the very start, the objective was to provide the working-class public a golf encounter rivaling a private club experience that was affordable and accessible to as broad a segment of the population as possible, hence “The People’s Country Club” moniker was born.
Public access golf courses have hosted big-time events before. And the golfing public annually stands in line to play major championship venues like Pebble Beach, Torrey Pines, Pinehurst No. 2 and Chambers Bay.
But to compare non-resident Pebble’s $525.00 green fee, Pinehurst No. 2’s $405.00, Chamber Bay’s $275.00 and Torrey Pines $200.00 just to set foot on the property, if you can secure a tee time, is ludicrous compared to the Black’s $65.00-weekday and $75.00-weekend rates, prices that are readily available to all New York residents.
“Tales of terror of Bethpage’s Black course, instead of chasing players away, have brought…an unusual list of illustrious visitors.” -The Brooklyn Daily Eagle-1937
Thanks to former USGA’s Executive Director David Fay’s insistence, the Black became the first actual Municipal Golf Course to host our national championship in 2002 and again in 2009.
Along with this year’s PGA Championship and the 2024 Ryder Cup, both booked on the Black, will all but ensure this Tillinghast masterpiece remains the most accessible and affordable Major Championship venue in the world.
But that’s about to change.
The municipal golf course experiment of hosting significant championships is probably over.
After next year’s PGA Championship, played at San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department’s owned and operated, Harding Park, and the previously mentioned 2024 Ryder Cup at Bethpage State Park, there are no more major golf championships scheduled for actual municipal layouts.
The financial reality of preparing a tax-subsidized golf course to the exacting standards of the PGA Tour, coupled with the massive investment in infrastructure needed to accommodate the many corporate demands hosting such tournaments encumber on the host facility, place inconceivable burdens on municipalities to maintain and operated properties.
Public golf courses that are often left unrecognizable and unplayable for the everyday player, for whom the course was initially planned, budgeted, built and maintained.
The average Joe and Jane golfer can still bucket list the Pebble Beach’s and Pinehurst’s of the world but, the capability to play these public access, up-scale, resort courses, are limited by one’s ability to afford the experience and the travel necessary to visit these, often, remote and glamorous locations.
Unfortunately, for all involved, the list of championship golf courses accessible to the typical public golfer has become shorter, the journey more expensive, and access more restricted.
Paradoxically, as access to up-scale golf courses has become more trying and exclusive, a radical change has emerged within the organizational body that controls the championship along with the membership of that organization.
The PGA of America, the ruling body of golf with its 29,000 members, has become more open, encompassing, and inclusive.
“There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers.” -Susan B. Anthony
Because, by far the most significant piece of history, among all the other groundbreaking news gleaned from the 101st PGA Championship, is that the PGA and the tournament it annually conducts is now overseen and directed by a woman.
But not just any woman.
On November 9, 2018, the membership of the PGA of America elected Suzy Whaley as the 41st and first female President of a world-wide organization that has, historically, been slow to embrace ethnic, gender and racial equality.
America’s past, including the golf business, as we are all uncomfortably aware, has not been kind to women and minorities.
Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 abolishing slavery, leading to the passage of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution, granting citizenship and voting rights to people of color and significantly increasing the civil rights of all men in America.
It would take fifty-seven more years before the passage of the nineteenth amendment in 1920, granted those same rights, privileges, and responsibilities of citizenship to all females.
Unfortunately, the business of golf would lag even further behind in granting that same equality to minorities, people of color, and women.
The Professional Golfers’ Association of America was founded in 1916 by Rodman Wanamaker, whose name adorns the oversized trophy Brooks Koepka hosted at Bethpage Black.
It would take forty-five long years of struggle and perseverance before the PGA opened their membership to minorities and remove a “Caucasian-only” clause in their by-laws, allowing Charlie Sifford in 1961, to become the first black member of the PGA.
Almost 100 years after the United States Constitution had supposedly guaranteed equal rights to people of color.
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.” -Elisabeth Cady Stanton
Another sixteen more years would pass before the bias, intolerance, and discrimination of a predominately white and partisan organization, would be exhausted, and women were finally allowed to join the PGA in 1977.
And thirty-seven more punishing years before a woman talented enough, smart enough and good enough was able to rise through the ranks when, on November 22, 2014, PGA Master Professional and LPGA Professional Suzy Whaley would be elected Secretary of the PGA Board of Directors, becoming the first female officer in the history of the PGA of America.
Almost exactly 100 years after women gained the franchise granting them equality under the law and the right to vote.
Commencing her journey through the elective offices, which culminated in being elected President of that organization and presenting the Wannamaker Trophy to Brooks Koepka on Sunday, May 19, 2019, on the eighteenth green of Bethpage Black, “The People’s Country Club.”
Irony indeed and that poignant presentation on the grounds of a public golf course was hugely indicative of just how far reaching the arc of the PGA of America has evolved as an organization, as a major championship and as a manifestation of women’s rights in a world fraught with misogyny, discrimination, and inequity.
As a husband, father, and PGA Member, I could not be prouder of America, the PGA Organization, and President Whaley.
Who is Suzy Whaley, and how did she become, what arguably most people would consider, one of the most potent and persuasive figures in all of golf?
To begin with, her list of accomplishments is staggering.
PGA Professionals typically wear many hats, but most tend to specialize in one of three areas, namely as Teachers, Players, and Administrators.
President Whaley excels in all three.
She served as a PGA Head Professional at Blue Fox Run in Avon, Connecticut.
She is universally acknowledged as one of the top instructors in the game having garnered almost every teaching award in the world including GOLF’s “Top 100 Teachers in America, Golf Digest Top 50 Instructor, two-time Connecticut PGA Teacher of the Year and a US Kids Golf Master Teacher.
She is an incredible athlete and competed professionally on the LPGA Tour and became only the second woman in history to play in a regular PGA Tour event following Babe Zaharias when she qualified for the 2003 Greater Hartford Open.
She competed in both the 2002 and 2005 PGA Professional Championships, won the Connecticut PGA Club Professional Championship along with competing in the USGA Senior Women’s Open and well as the LPGA Senior Women’s Championship.
She also has worked for ESPN as an LPGA golf commentator and owns her successful instruction and coaching business, “Suzy Whaley Golf.”
She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina with a BS in Economics where she played on the women’s golf team and is currently the PGA Director of Instruction for the Country Club at Mirasol in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida where Suzy and her husband Bill, live with their two daughters, Jennifer and Kelly.
All in all, President Whaley is a remarkable, unique, and extraordinary human being, golf professional, wife, and mother.
I had a chance to sit down with President Whaley and ask her, among many topics, about the future of golf, her plans for the PGA, and introducing new players to the game. Listen here.
“Men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others shall have.”-Abraham Lincoln
When one is confronted daily with the cynicism of a fractured society and the ever-increasing polarization of the body politic. It is comforting to realize that golf, a game that once defined itself as the “Game of Kings” with all its inherent and symbolic elitism, has now chosen a woman to lead its governing organization into a new era of progress, equality, and egalitarianism.
The PGA of America and the business of golf, I believe, are in good hands.
One can only fathom where her leadership might take us, but, much like the 2019 PGA Championship, I know it will be historic.
Jeff Waters is a PGA Master Professional and a member of the Golf Writers Association of America.
