A short history of the PGA tour

Monday, Oct. 20, 1997 | 4:21 a.m.

It is not always easy to discover the exact beginning of something and so it is with the PGA Tour. Certainly there were professionals who competed against each other from the earliest days of the game.

In 1895, 10 professional golfers and one amateur played in the first U.S. Open in Newport, R.I. Shortly thereafter, tournaments began to pop up across the country. There was the Western open in 1899, played in Longview, Ill., but this was not "tour" golf; the events lacked continuity.

Interest in the game, however, continued to grow. American professionals were rapidly improving and when John McDermott became the first American-born player to win the U.S. Open, enthusiasm for the game blossomed.

Adding to this growth was a commercially backed exhibition by Englishmen Harry Vardon and Ted Ray. The duo traveled across the country and attracted good crowds wherever they stopped during the warmer months of 1913. A 20-year-old, Francis Ouimet, defeated the pair in a playoff for the United States Open Championship at Brookline, Mass., and, suddenly, golf became front-page news and a game for everyone.

In the early 1920s, the PGA Tour saw it's first development. Tournaments were held on the West Coast, Texas and Florida. These events were held in the winter and the golfers played their way east and up to Pinehurst in the spring. By the middle of the decade, the tour was doing relatively well -- offering $77,000 in total prize money.

The tour became more structured following World War II and exploded in the late 1950s and early 60s. When television became a player in the game, the eyes of the world were on golf. This exposure inspired millions to try the game and, at the same time, TV rights fees sent purses soaring. The bulk of these rights fees, which are distributed by the PGA Tour to all co-sponsors, have gone back into the purses, accounting for the tripling of prize money in the last decade.

The touring professionals began to gain control of the tour in late 1968. Joseph C. Dey was the first commissioner of what was then called the Tournament Players Division. He served from early 1969 through February 28, 1974 and was succeeded by Deane R. Beman, who took office March 1, 1974.

During Beman's administration, the value of tournament purses escalated at an unprecedented rate: PGA Tour assets grew from $730,000 in 1974 to more than $200 million and total revenues increased from $3.9 million to $229 million in 1993.

Timothy J. Finchem, previously the PGA Tour's deputy commissioner and chief operating officer, became the third commissioner on June 1, 1994. In 1995, Finchem undertook a restructuring program designed to strengthen the PGA Tour's core business, which is its competitions; expand the tour's international scope and prepare it to enter the 21st century. In 1996, Finchem helped to spearhead formation of the PGA Tours International Federation as golf's five world governing bodies laid the groundwork for taking competition into the 21st century.

Since 1938, PGA Tour events have donated more than $300 million to charity. Of that total, more than $164 million has been raised in the 1990s. One-year charity-giving records have been produced annually since 1992, reaching the high of $29.3 million in 1996.

The competitive scope of the PGA Tour also is much broader today. The Senior PGA Tour is considered by many the sports success story of the 1980s. The Nike Tour is enjoying its eighth season as a proving ground for professionals, taking golf to 30 additional markets and paving the way for future John Dalys, Jeff Maggerts, Tom Lehmans and David Duvals of the PGA Tour.

Also continuing to grow is the Tournament Players Club Network. When the PGA Tour opened the TPC at Sawgrass in 1980, it introduced the era of stadium golf and record-breaking attendance. Owned and/or operated the the PGA Tour, the concept means these courses are the only major league sports arena owned by the players themselves.

The TPC Network now includes facilities in Japan, Thailand and China, as well as the United States.