I got one of those promotional texts this past Wednesday. It was announcing first- and second-round play on the Golf Channel for the Waste Management Phoenix Open commencing on Thursday. The eye-popping theme from the text contended that “It’s gonna get LOUD.”
A serious fan of the game will never mistake the flavor of the Phoenix Open with events such as the United States Open, the Masters or even the Memorial. While this week’s tournament has been a staple of the PGA Tour since 1932 when three-time major winner Ralph Guldahl won the inaugural version and pocketed the $600 first-place prize, it has always been one of those non-descript weeks on tour at the beginning of the calendar year. However, as of late, the Waste Management has promoted itself as the party tournament of professional golf with enormous galleries, after-tournament concerts, caddie races, and grandstands packed with well-lubricated patrons. And yes, it is oftentimes very loud.
For those of you who are total purists of the game and have a hard time with celebrity events such as the Pebble Beach Pro-Am or the zany good-time tourneys such as the Phoenix Open, I point to the beginnings of all this with one George S. May of Chicago. I consider May to be the Bill Veeck of professional golf. As a quick aside, Veeck was the owner of the St. Louis Browns and then the Chicago White Sox. He promoted the game with exploding scoreboards, unique uniforms (Wilbur Wood in shorts), theme nights, and a little person pinch-hitter with the uniform number 1/8. George May had a 17-year run as a tournament promoter during the 1940s and 1950s and some of his innovations are still around to this very day.
Born in 1890, May started out as a Bible salesman during the Billy Sunday Revival Shows of the Roaring Twenties. In time he walked away from Bible sales and started a freelance consulting business in Chicago. His first client was the Chicago Flexible Shaft Company, which over the years morphed into the Sunbeam Corporation, known for its toasters, waffle irons, and coffee makers. In time his consulting firm was the biggest around and was named the George S. May International Company. May had become a very wealthy man.
May believed in diversifying his business interests and purchased Tam O’Shanter Country Club in suburban Chicago. Tam O’Shanter was an interesting layout designed by C.D. Wagstaff (Sugarloaf Mountain, University of Illinois GC) with the Chicago River flowing through it. In 1941, May held his first professional tournament called the All-American Open. Byron Nelson won it four times, Lloyd Mangrum had three wins, and other past champs included Doug Ford, Roberto de Vicenzo, Bobby Locke, Sam Snead, and Cary Middlecoff. In 1946 he started up an event called the World Championship of Golf. From 1946 through 1957 both tourneys were played in back-to-back weeks at Tam O’Shanter, meaning that the pros didn’t have to travel for two consecutive events. Hogan, Boros, and Snead were past winners of the World Championship. The fields for the All-American and the World included the game’s greats.
May completely moved the needle in 1953 when he offered an unheard of $25,000 first-place prize to the winner of the World Championship as well as a promotional tour of 25 clinics that paid the pro $1,000 per exhibition. The big money was one thing. The format was another. That year May paid to have his tournament broadcast on the new medium of television. Approximately 2 million viewers tuned in to watch the World Championship as it broadcast only the 18th hole of the final round. May caught a massive break when former United States Open champ Lew Worsham came to the final hole. Trailing by one shot, Worsham hit a drive up the middle. With the limited world of television viewers watching, Worsham hit his 104-yard wedge shot into the cup for an eagle-two. He was $25,000 richer and televised professional golf was suddenly a very big deal. So was golf promoter George S. May.
The following year May upped the first-place prize to $50,000. Bob Toski won and ended up as the leading money winner on tour that year with $64,000 in total earnings. Jackie Burke was second with barely over $20,000. When Dick Mayer won the World Championship in 1957, he too won $50,000. Earlier that summer he won the U.S. Open and pocketed $7,500.
Yet May wasn’t just about big purses and golf on television. His golf course was the first to have motorized golf carts. He was the first tournament director to build grandstands for the spectators throughout the back nine and the first tee. He packed the galleries by offering ticket prices for the low price of $1. He said he’d rather have 20,000 fans pay $1 than have 3,000 spectators pay $10. He set up picnic tables in the rough, sort of a forerunner to corporate tents of nowadays. He also had a bevy of tournament officials with walkie-talkies who would announce tournament results. While sitting in the grandstand on the 17th hole, a tournament staffer would walk onto the green and announce, “Ben Hogan just birdied the 15th hole to take a two-shot lead.” This was obviously before the advent of the giant hand-operated scoreboard.
Speaking of Ben Hogan, not all of May’s ideas met with success. He wanted to put numbers on the players’ backs so that fans could identify the golfers from far away. Hogan led the pros in putting thumbs down on that plan. Instead, May had the caddies wear different colored T-shirts. The program would list what color the caddie for Hogan or Nelson or Demaret was wearing that day. That was how things were still done when I caddied in the Western Open in 1967 and 1970, before caddies started wearing their player’s name on their backs.
May also was ahead of the times regarding social issues. Black golfers such as Ted Rhodes and Bill Spiller played in his two tournaments. He invited international golfers into his fields such as Locke and de Vicenzo. He also began a Women’s All-American a good decade before the founding of the LPGA Tour. It all ended for May and big-money golf when he got into financial disagreements with the PGA. All of his big-money events were canceled in 1958.
George S. May was the godfather of promotional golf. He is a member of the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame as a golf innovator and was named by Golf Digest as one of the game’s most 100 influential people. He passed away in 1962 at age 71. So this weekend, if you happen to be watching the Waste Management Phoenix Open with all its zaniness and loudness, keep in mind that this is nothing new to the game. It all started with George S. May some 80 years ago.
