Earlier this week, the fine folks who run the World Golf Hall of Fame announced the selection of four new members as well as a most unique setting for the 2015 induction ceremony. Golf”s Hall of Fame has been under intense scrutiny during the past two years after members such as Raymond Floyd questioned the golfing resumes of class of 2013 inductees Freddie Couples and Colin Montgomerie. After developing a committee of 16, including Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Nancy Lopez and Annika Sorenstam, a new class of noted linksters are now in the Hall based upon receiving 75 percent of the vote from that stellar entity.
As a brief aside, I have always felt that Floyd and some of the other HOF members were out of line with their criticisms in the spring of 2013. Their argument was merely numerical. Couples and Montgomerie didn”t win as many tournaments or as many majors as someone like Floyd, who had four grand slam titles and 66 professional wins worldwide. However, there is a totality to the outstanding golfer with additional considerations such as Ryder Cup and European Tour success in the case of Montgomerie, and Senior Tour success and Presidents Cup captaincy results in the case of Couples. Since then, Montgomerie has added two senior majors.
Anyway, with all that in mind, the four new members of the World Golf Hall of Fame”s class of 2015 are American professional Mark O”Meara, Australian professional David Graham, English professional Laura Davies, and American golf course architect A. W. Tillinghast (from the game”s golden era). They will be inducted into the HOF on the Monday prior to the commencement of the British Open Championship at the birthplace of golf, St. Andrews. The setting for their induction will be the University of St. Andrews, the oldest college in the British Isles. How”s that for tradition, history and promotional genius?
Mark O”Meara attended Long Beach State and captured the 1979 U.S. Amateur at Canterbury that summer, defeating John Cook in the finals. As a portent of things to come, O”Meara also won the California State Amateur that summer of 1979 at Pebble Beach. During his long professional career, O”Meara would record five victories at Pebble from the 1985 Bing Crosby to the 1997 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. O”Meara would win a total of 16 times on the PGA Tour and he would record 34 total wins, including four victories on the European Tour and a pair of wins in Japan.
At age 41, O”Meara was a top pro who had had a nice career that made him a lot of money. Then came 1998. He birdied the final two holes on Sunday at the Masters to win the green jacket by one stroke over David Duval and Freddie Couples. Later that summer, he beat out Brian Watts in a four-hole playoff to win the British Open and its claret jug. It was the big-time icing on the cake for what had suddenly become a distinguished career. He played on five Ryder Cup teams, two Presidents Cup teams and won a senior major in 2010 at the Senior Players Championship. Mark O”Meara, who grew up in Mission Viejo, is a most deserving of his spot as a new member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Australian David Graham joins O”Meara in the Hall. Graham won 38 times on a variety of world tours. In 1979 he won the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills and followed it up two years later with a win in the U.S. Open at Merion. As evidenced by his major triumphs, Graham played very well on tough tracks. His final-round 67 at Merion even impressed the long-retired Ben Hogan, who called Graham after his round to congratulate him. A classy, well-liked professional, Graham was playing on the Senior Tour in 2004 when he collapsed on the golf course. The 58-year-old was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Graham walked away from competition at that point.
Nowadays, Graham leads an easygoing retirement lifestyle in Whitefish, Montana. He has been inducted into the Australian Hall of Fame and has been awarded the Order of Australia.
Laura Davies is the greatest English woman golfer of all time. She burst upon the Ladies European Tour in 1985 and was both its rookie of the year and golfer of the year. In 1987 she won the U.S. Women”s Open, defeating Joanne Carner and Ayako Okamoto in an 18-hole playoff. She won the LPGA Championship in 1994 and 1996 and added a fourth major title in 1996 when she won the duMaurier. Along the way, Laura won 84 tournaments and also played for Europe on 12 Solheim Cup teams.
Interestingly enough, Davies would not have qualified for the old LPGA Hall of Fame at this time because of its numerical criteria. Four majors and 20 wins in America by that old standard meant Davies would need either one more major or two more regular tour wins. Numbers aside, Laura Davies is where she truly belongs in the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Golden Age of Golf architect supreme Albert Warren Tillinghast took lessons as a youngster from Old Tom Morris, a four-time British Open winner. A talented amateur golfer who grew up in the Philadelphia area, Tillinghast competed in two U.S. Opens and five U.S. Amateurs. Yet his contribution to the game is the 265 golf courses he designed after the turn of the century, including such noted gems as Bethpage, Winged Foot, Baltusrol, Quaker Ridge, and the San Francisco Golf Club. A.W. Tillinghast did much of his work along the eastern seaboard, including 16 courses of note in New York”s Westchester County such as Scarsdale, Sleepy Hollow and Briar Hall (Trump National). He was one of the founding members of the PGA of America alongside Walter Hagen and Gilbert Nicholls. Tillinghast died in Toledo in 1942 at age 68. He joins such contemporaries as Allister Mackenzie, Donald Ross and C.B. Macdonald in the Hall.
I don”t think the World Golf Hall of Fame necessarily needed to get it right this time around, yet I”m sure many pundits will claim that the new foursome added to the HOF are most deserving. Next time around I”m hoping they give some serious consideration to Samuel Ryder, Henry Longhurst, Meg Mallon, Max Faulkner and Johnny Farrell. Except for Mallon, the others are names from golf”s past, and yet the World Golf Hall of Fame will someday be just as prestigious as it is today with all these new additions. They too deserve to be there.
