His Leadership Put PGA Tour on the Green

Don’t look now, but who would you guess is the longest-running commissioner in all the field of sports? Why, the commissioner of golf is the correct answer. You might say he is the Deane (ouch!) of athletic commissioners.

A lot of people were surprised when Deane Beman became commissioner of golf in 1974. They thought the game already had one--Arnold Palmer.

Other people didn’t think the game needed one. Golf is the last stand of the freebooter, the rugged individualist in this era. Remember, these guys pay to play. There’s no team plane, no coach, trainer. They even have to provide their own clubs and golf balls and get to the tee on time themselves.

They’re only semi-welcome at some of the venues they play--L.A. Country Club won’t even hear of having a pro tournament, even a U.S. Open. They take care of their own board and room and transportation.

They are the Bedouins of sport. You would think they would be as hard to govern or regulate as a school of sharks. Golf is a game of self-reliance. None of this “We” stuff for the birdie-makers.

Deane R. Beman was an unlikely candidate to lead this nomadic, headstrong band. A dry, somewhat taciturn individual who was an insurance man, Deane played golf the way he played life--meticulously, cautiously.

There was no room for error the way Beman played. When you are the short hitter he was, the rough is Siberia. Beman could never waste a shot. He wore out two four-woods a year.

He probably never had an eagle putt in his career. If he did, he would have made it. He won four pro tournaments in five years, two U.S. Amateurs and was in a playoff for a third. He won the British Amateur and finished second in a U.S. Open. It was an extraordinary career for a guy who never heard anything on a fairway but, “I believe it’s you, Deane.”

There were those who thought the professional golfers didn’t need a commissioner so much as they needed a warden. But Beman considered the challenge just another par-five to a guarded green--two woods, a seven-iron and one putt.

The PGA wasn’t exactly giving the product away that calendar year, but the prize money was $7,895,450. Last year, Beman’s 15th, it was $36,959,307.

The four-wood is still working fine.

The plus about golf is that, other sports may sell beer and razor blades, golf sells Cadillacs and Caribbean cruises. You don’t need big numbers in the ratings, just big spenders.

The graph went steadily up. Beman ruffled feathers, talked, so to speak, on someone’s backswing. But he was jealously protective of the tour he had been hired to guide.

He put in the all-exempt tour, which eliminated Monday qualifying. The idea--Gary McCord’s--was that Monday qualifying made permanent rabbits of the players because, once they shot their way into the tournaments they only sought to keep themselves there by just trying to make the cut, not to win.

Beman also protected the sponsors. Where the by-laws mandated a player tee it up in at least 15 tournaments a year, guaranteeing a sponsor Nicklaus or Trevino in a minimum of one-third of the tournaments, there was pressure to relax the restriction in the case of foreign players. Beman resisted and then finally threw the problem in the lap of his tournament policy board and the general membership.

The foreign players might have won the Ryder Cup, but they lost this international competition. Even if it cost the tour Seve Ballesteros, the 15-tournament requirement stuck. The word to the Europeans was, “If you want our money, play our game.”

He led the PGA out of its middle-man category and into active participation with the formation of PGA Tour Investments, which includes 13 new stadium-type tournament players’ courses, teaching centers and other golf real estate development. PGA assets have grown from $730,000 to $70 million.

The senior tour, which began with two tournaments in 1980, is 40 tournaments strong and growing. The Ben Hogan Tour, golf’s minor league or mini-tour, will kick in with 30 events next year.

“We are looking at 51 regular tour events, 42 senior events and 30 Ben Hogan Tour events next year,” Beman says. “We will be playing for a total of $75 million.”

A pretty creditable stewardship, reflects the Deane of golf. “I’m not sure it can get much better.”

But Deane Beman, as usual, is not satisfied with just par. If there is a hazard on his fairway, it is that the PGA does not have a “major” to sell. He hankers either to supplant the Masters as the fourth or create his own fifth major.

“We are running a business here,” he complains. “And you have no idea what a plus it is to have a star event in your briefcase when you’re dealing with television. Don’t you think baseball is glad to have the World Series in its quiver? Football has the Super Bowl. College basketball has the Final Four. Hockey, the Stanley Cup. Those help sell the whole package.”

Beman has striven mightily to make, first, the World Series of Golf a “major” and more recently the Players Championship.

He does this by sweetening the pot. Victory in the Players Championship provides for 10 years’ exemption on the tour. For a golfer, that’s a castle in Spain.

The public, however, does not get any institutionalized goodies and it remains to be seen whether the players’ enthusiasm can translate to fan enthusiasm.

Pete Rozelle is gone from pro football. Baseball has had, tragically, three commissioners in a year, David Stern is only in his fifth year at the helm of the NBA. The word czar is overworked and misleading.

But no one speaks for his sport any more authoritatively--or successfully--than Deane Beman. As usual, you may be ahead of him off the tee. But when you get on the green--well, you better make the putt.