Honoring past great golfers

Rich Conwell / Culpeper Star Exponent
Published: August 15, 2007

With the passing of baseball Hall of Fame member Phil Rizzuto at age 89 this week, it got me to thinking about the history of the game of golf and why older golfers such are not celebrated on a more regular basis as they are in baseball.

A few thoughts on this topic are needed to back up my reasoning. There were not always four majors. As recently as 1955 there were many more majors, such as the North and South Open, the Canadian Open and the Western Open. This is because the four majors as we know them today were either in their infancy or were not celebrated by television and the media as majors. But the above mentioned tournaments were majors in the eyes of the most important group, the participants.

So many great players could claim these events as major titles. Players such as Chick Evans, Johnny Palmer, Ky Laffoon and many others were multiple winners of these majors. In keeping with the thought that you can only win the majors you participate in, let us appreciate how great players like these were. They were much admired amongst their peers and history records them, but judges them very lightly. This is not fair.

I have personally met some of these players, most notably Johnny Palmer, and I can tell you they were every bit as good as the dominant players of their day. The true measure of a great player is if he was in the elite of the game at the time of his peak. If you were able to see them play, better yet, dig out information in the history books, you will rapidly gain an appreciation of how great these players really were.

I am not trying to rail against the system here, but I just wish, for all the greatness surrounding the game of golf today, the history of the game and its players were a little clearer and much better publicized. These people were benchmarks, a target for someone trying to become a great player, and they should not just be a footnote in a dusty book somewhere.

These great players laid the foundation of the game as it stands today; I just wish golf would be a little more conscious of the history that is so much a part of the game.