Golf is a game for everyone. It doesn”t favor height, size, speed or quickness. Men and women play the game, grandpas play with their sons and grandsons, business deals are sealed on the golf course, and connections and friendships are formed on the links. Add fresh air, exercise and companionship, and you get so many of the positives that the game has to offer.
Of course, the game does have some splotches that are of its own making. There has always been an exclusive nature to the game with private clubs on one side of the tracks and municipal or public courses appealing to the middle class and the working class. Yet financial status didn”t always determine private golf club membership. The social history for most of the 20th century revolved around the separation of people by religion, color, gender and background.
Even the world of professional golf has had its exclusivity rules. Until 1961, the PGA of America had a membership clause that included the phrase “Caucasian-only” when it came to gaining entry onto the tour. In more liberal communities such as Los Angeles, black golfers such as Charlie Sifford and Ted Rhodes were not only good enough to get into the field via the qualifying route, but were also good enough to get their names on the leaderboard. Yet while the black professionals of the post-war era got into the L.A. Open, they were not welcome at tour stops throughout the South.
In the formative years of the tour, from the Walter Hagen-Bobby Jones era of the 1920s to the days of Byron Nelson-Sam Snead-Ben Hogan that went well into the 1950s, just about anyone could enter a professional golf tournament. At various times, golfers of note included popular singer Don Cherry, former heavyweight champ Joe Louis, and home run king Babe Ruth, playing alongside the game”s top linksters, a large contingent of journeymen, or rabbits as they were called in those days, local club professionals, and hot-shot amateurs who came from wealthy backgrounds.
That”s why someone such as Ben Hogan could stay on tour for close to a decade without ever winning an event and more often than not failing to get a check for finishing outside the top 20. It was hard to fill the fields, so almost anyone could get in, and it didn”t pay beyond 20 places, even if you made the cut. Very few professional truly made a living. Most of the pros during those times supplemented their incomes as club pros. Travel was also an issue in the era of the automobile. Professional golf was a tough existence and Byron Nelson was a good example of the pro who tried to make enough money so that he could buy a Texas ranch and get off the tour as soon as possible.
Then along came money and with it television, or maybe it was television that led to money. Nonetheless, golf was growing in popularity. The camera could get up close and personal as Arnold Palmer slashed at the ball from the thickest of rough.
Suddenly there was big money to be made at golf, the American PGA Tour was the place to play, and double or triple the amount of talented pros wanted a place on the world”s richest circuit. Tournament fields normally ranged form 128 to 156 golfers, but as the 1950s turned to the 1960s and beyond, there were probably close to 500 competitive golfing pros who felt that they were tour caliber in talent and ability level. Golfers were coming from places as far away as South Africa and Australia to compete in America.
At first, just around half the field at tour events were exempt players. The top 60 on the money list were in for the entire season. Tournament winners got an exempt year also. If you made the cut that weekend, then you were in the field at the following week”s tournament. Adding up the numbers with the exempt players and those who made the cut the week before, the field was now up to 90 or 100 golfers. The other 50 or so spots would go to qualifiers who teed it upon the Monday before the Thursday start of the event. Often there were multiple qualifying sites with 280 golfers vying for one of the 50 open spots. Those weren”t great odds, but if you had game and could get just under par, you were normally in the field for that week”s tourney.
It also made for a very volatile situation with professionals falling off and back onto the tour during the course of weeks and months. A club pro could qualify at his local event, make the cut, play the following week down the road, and continue the process until he stopped making cuts or ran out of cash. It allowed for some of those middle-of-nowhere, one-day wonders to get their shot and eventually earn a place on the tour. Six-time major winner Lee Trevino is a great example of a professional who got his break by qualifying into events.
Trevino, who played in the 1966 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club and made the cut, dabbled on the tour that year. He was more successful in 1967, and at that year”s Open at Baltusrol, he made the cut, finishing eight shots behind eventual winner Jack Nicklaus. Trevino ended up in solo fifth place and took home his biggest paycheck ever, one for $6,000. Now he had the money to stay on tour and his comfort level improved. He was financially set for the time being and the result was that he ended up finishing 45th on the money list that year. He was the tour”s rookie of the year and more importantly, he was exempt into 1968. The rest is history as he won the U.S. Open in 1968.
The modern era has included more of the established tour pros as exempt members. Since the early 1980s, the fully exempt PGA Tour gives exempt status to the top 125 money winners. Tournament winners receive a two-year exemption and sponsors give out free passes too. After all the spots have been taken, usually there are only four spaces left for open qualifiers. There”s a lot of talent out there, but in the end, there aren”t enough.
The PGA Tour”s Fall Series concludes next weekend at Disney World in Orlando and the bubble boys will be fighting it out for the last of the 125 exempt spots for 2012. While golf is a game for everyman, not everyone can find a place to play on the PGA Tour. While golf has grown in popularity and changed for the better, it”s more exclusive than ever at the game”s highest levels.
