A Host to History

A HOST TO HISTORY

The Story of ATLANTA

ATHLETIC CLUB

Catherine M. Lewis

A HOST TO HISTORY

The Story of ATLANTA

ATHLETIC CLUB

O

n August 15, 1898, a humid summer afternoon, a group of young men, mainly professionals in their early twenties who worked in real estate or the law, gathered at Burton Smith’s law office on Broad Street in downtown Atlanta with the express purpose of organizing an athletic club that would serve the leisure needs of the burgeoning city.

On September 5, sixty-five men signed the charter granted by Judge Lumpkin of the Superior Court of Fulton County. The purpose of the club was explicit: “The object of this corporation is not pecuniary gain, but the formation of a social club, the special purpose of which is preparing and maintaining a gymnasium and enjoying physical exercise.” No one in that group ever expected that the club would, in 2005, have an international reputation, both for its facilities and for the athletes and civic leaders it has produced. None could have imagined that the AAC would host prestigious events in golf, tennis, swimming, and badminton. Nor could they have envisioned a multipurpose club that, on a single site, includes world-class athletic and tennis centers, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and two championship-quality golf courses that have hosted some of the game’s most important events.

About the Author Catherine M. Lewis, Ph.D., is assistant vice president of Museums, Archives & Rare Books and a professor of history at Kennesaw State University. She also serves as the Bobby Jones curator and special projects coordinator at the Atlanta History Center. She has curated or coordinated more than 40 exhibitions throughout the nation, including the History Center’s award-winning Down the Fairway with Bobby Jones. She is the author, co-author, or editor of fourteen books, including Considerable Passions: Golf, the Masters, and the Legacy of Bobby Jones; The PGA Championship: The Season’s Final Major co-authored with John Companiotte; The Changing Face of Public History: The Chicago Historical Society and the Transformation of an American History Museum; Bobby Jones and the Quest for the Grand Slam, Don’t Ask What I Shot: How Eisenhower’s Love of Golf Helped Shape 1950s America, and Memories of the Mansion: The Story of the Georgia Governor’s Mansion, co-authored with First Lady Sandra Deal and Dr. Jennifer Dickey.

For over a century, the Atlanta Athletic Club— the home club of Bobby Jones, Alexa Stirling, Charlie Yates, and many other amateur athletes and community leaders—has been recognized as one of the best clubs in the nation. Though impressive, these accolades are not what make the club great.

The AAC’s legacy is rooted in the membership.

A great club must have superb facilities, dedicated employees, good leadership, collegial members, and events and tradition borne out by history. This book demonstrates that the AAC passes this test.

Atlanta Athletic Club

1930 Bobby Jones Dr., Johns Creek, GA 30097 (770) 448-2166 http://www.atlantaathleticclub.org

A Host to History

A Host to History

The Story of

Atlanta Athletic Club

A Host to History The Story of

Atlanta Athletic Club Copyright © 2005, 2012, 2016 by the Atlanta Athletic Club

1930 Bobby Jones Drive Johns Creek, Georgia 30097 770.448.2166 www.atlantaathleticclub.org Author Catherine Lewis, Ph.D. Editorial Director Rob Levin Copyediting Bob Land Indexing Shoshana Hurwitz New Photography Bob Maynard, Warren Grant, Garrett Reid Book and Dust Jacket Design Rick Korab and Renée Peyton All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the Atlanta Athletic Club.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Second Edition Printed in Korea Book Development by ®

Covington, Georgia www.bookhouse.net

To all the members of the Atlanta Athletic Club, past, present, and future.

Contents

Foreword by Charles R. Yates. ................................................................ ix Foreword to the New Edition by Robert Tyre Jones IV..................... xi Preface by Furman Bisher........................................................................xiii Acknowledgments by Catherine M. Lewis. ............................................ xv Introduction by Jim Huber. ...................................................................xvii Prologue—A Distinct Asset to the City..............................................xix Chapter One Building a Club in the Age of the Amateur Athlete. ............................1 Chapter Two The Cradle of Champions. ........................................................................23 Chapter Three A Visionary Move.......................................................................................57 Chapter Four Building a Championship Venue...............................................................77 Chapter Five Hosting the Majors.................................................................................127 Conclusion A Place to Build and Renew Friendships.............................................163 Appendix.....................................................................................................186 Index...........................................................................................................192

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A Host to History

Charlie Yates with the 1938 British Amateur trophy.

Foreword

Charles R. Yates

I

was born in 1913, just as the Atlanta Athletic Club (AAC) was celebrating its fifteenth anniversary.

When I think back to my childhood at the Club, it’s hard to believe how much it has grown. Always

one of the South’s finest, it is now a championship venue with an international reputation. When I was just a boy, my family moved to 307 Second Avenue, which ran alongside the Club’s East Lake No. 1 course. I literally grew up at the Club, having been a member my whole life. My family, friends, and—it seemed to me—the whole of Atlanta belonged to the Athletic Club. It certainly has meant and still means a great deal to me.

My father, Presley Daniel Yates, played golf and taught me to love the game, and that has been passed on to my children and grandchildren. A story that is widely told in my family is of me sleeping with the first set of clubs that I was given. I developed an immediate interest in the game and used to slip across the fence onto the course to watch Bob Jones play. As a child, I would follow Bob and chase the balls that he hit toward the lake or the woods, though few went astray. I learned a lot just watching him play.

I began my amateur career in 1928, and I always proudly represented the Athletic Club. I feel lucky to be counted among a group of great players who were also members—Bob Jones, Alexa Stirling, Perry Adair, Berrien Moore, Tommy Barnes, Watts Gunn, Dorothy Kirby, and Charlie Harrison. One of my biggest years came in 1931 when I won both the Georgia State Amateur and the City Amateur Cup, but I was struggling with my swing. I was, at first, a left-handed player, but realized that I would be more successful playing right-handed. While Bob had Stewart Maiden as a mentor, I had George Sargent, who had won the 1909 U.S. Open and the 1912 Canadian Open. The Sargent family has a long history at the Atlanta Athletic Club, a story that will be told in the pages of this book. I can say, from personal experience, that George was a fine teacher. He immediately diagnosed my problem and helped repair my swing, though it took several years for me to become comfortable with it. In 1934, the work paid off, and I won the National Intercollegiate title, which gave me a place in the first Augusta National Invitation Tournament, later renamed the Masters.

The highlight of my career came in 1938 when I won the British Amateur at Troon. As thrilling as the victory was, I was even more awed by the reception I received upon my return home. Mayor William Hartsfield, Bob Jones, and thousands of fans met me at the old Terminal Station and drove me and the trophy down Peachtree Street, followed by a procession of eighteen cars and a large group of caddies representing

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many of the city’s great country clubs. It was the fitting end to an important part of my life, a part that has brought me many friends and fine memories.

Except for my three years of service in the navy during World War II, I have always lived in Atlanta.

My wife, Dorothy, and I have four children, Dorothy, Charlie Jr., Sarah, and Comer, who have all made Atlanta their home and are all members of the Atlanta Athletic Club. This book tells the story not only of this great club but also of this great city. In 1898, sixty-five young men signed a charter to establish a club where residents could exercise, relax, and socialize. More than a hundred years later, the buildings have changed, people have come and gone, but the Club that brought them together has endured.

Charlie Yates passed away in 2005.

Charles R. Yates in his youth.

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A Host to History

Foreword to the New Edition Robert Tyre Jones IV, Psy.D.

F

ew clubs can boast a history like the Atlanta Athletic Club. John Heisman was its second athletic director and members of the Club have played a pivotal role in both regional and national sports. It is a great honor to me

that my family has been present for most of the Club’s outstanding history and I am further humbled at the role my family members have played. My great-grandfather, Robert Purmedus Jones, known affectionately as “Colonel Bob,” long served as both president and chairman of the Club.

Of course, my grandfather, Robert Tyre Jones, Junior, holds no peer as a golfer. Further, his support was instrumental both in the move of the Club from East Lake to our current location and in the establishment of the Atlanta Athletic Club as a host to world-championship golf. It was his letter to U.S.G.A. President Robert Howse that secured the awarding the United States Open to the Club in 1976, a tournament that finished with one of the most exciting shots in golf history, Jerry Pate’s five-iron shot to the eighteenth green. Since then, the Club has hosted a great number of national championships including three PGA Championships, the United States Mid-Amateur, the United States Junior Amateur, and—in 2014—the United States Amateur Championship.

As great a history as our Club has achieved, perhaps its greatest achievement is in the fact that it stands as a place where friends gather together and families are strengthened. This is a long-standing tradition of the Atlanta Athletic Club, going back to the days when my grandfather’s own children learned to play at East Lake in the 1930s. Later on, it was at the Atlanta Athletic Club’s East Lake Course that another Jones family outing occurred. On a Sunday afternoon, my grandparents decided that it would be fun to play a nine-hole match with two of their children, my father, Bob Jones III, and my aunt Mary Ellen. My grandmother was a passable golfer, with a handicap in the lowtwenties. My teenage father was a pretty good player, easily sporting a single-digit handicap. My aunt Mary Ellen, who was a very young girl of about nine or ten, however, had probably never swung a golf club before in her life.

So, in equity, Neenah and Bub (our family nicknames for our grandmother and grandfather) decided that the match would consist of the teams of Bub and Mary Ellen versus Neenah and my father. To make things more interesting, the match would be a foursome, an event where the players would hit alternate shots until holing out.

On the first hole, Bub hit first, cracking a drive down the right edge of the first fairway that drew back to the center. Mary Ellen approached the second shot and dribbled the ball just a few feet. Bub followed by knocking the third shot onto the green. Aunt Mary Ellen promptly putted the ball into the sand trap. Bub dutifully blasted out and, somehow, they escaped the first hole with a triple-bogey seven. After a double bogey on the second, they approached the third hole where, again, Bub smacked a prodigious drive to the left center of the fairway. Aunt Mary Ellen responded by hitting a solid skull shot straight into a prickly bush on the right side of the fairway. On the match went,

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hole after hole, Bub growing ever more frustrated but not wanting to say anything harsh to his beloved daughter.

Finally, though, the match came to the sixth hole. The East Lake sixth hole holds the unique distinction of being the oldest island green in the United States. Not a hole of tremendous length, the tee shot is often affected by the wind coming across the lake and a shot that is too greedy will very often find a home with the fish that swim in the lake.

Aunt Mary Ellen was responsible for teeing off on the even-numbered holes and she stood there staring at this green that, to her, must have appeared to be a mile away. Behind her stood her father, covered in brambles, with a torn shirt from the thorn bush on number three, trying his best to stay calm. It was not a battle that he was destined to win. As they stood there on the tee of this tricky, difficult par three, Aunt Mary Ellen looked up at her father and said, “What do I do here, Daddy?”

Bub, no doubt concerned that he might have to play his next shot from somewhere in the middle of East Lake, looked down at his beloved daughter, his youngest child and said, between clenched teeth, “Okay, honey. Daddy wants you to whiff it. Dammit, just whiff it.”

Not all stories from the history of the Atlanta Athletic Club are quite as dramatic, but the history of our Club is made up of events like this, just as much as it is from the great championships and champions who have graced our history.

You know, most clubs are lucky to have enough happen to write one history in a century. It is a testimony that this is the third history of the Athletic Club to be written since I was privileged to be made a member forty years ago. As you read this, it is my hope that you will remember the great public and private moments that have made our Club so special. I further hope that you will join me in remembering the events in your own life that have contributed to the larger legacy of the Atlanta Athletic Club: A home for championships and a place for families.

Bob Jones Jr. with Bob IV and Bob III.

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A Host to History

Preface

Furman Bisher

I

n other days, another time gone by, there was no more elegant address in downtown Atlanta than one on Carnegie Way. The highlight of my onetime membership in the Club was breakfast with

Sir Edmund Hillary one morning, not long after he and his sherpa partner, Tenzing Norgay, had scaled Mount Everest, a historic pioneering ascent.

The Atlanta Athletic Club was a significant organ in the life and times of Atlanta in those days, and though distantly removed since, is no less significant to the noteworthiness of the area. It was the Athletic Club that brought the only U.S. Open to the city in 1976, emotionally influenced by a letter Bobby Jones dictated from his deathbed about a month before his passing in 1971.

What first comes to mind when I ponder that event? Not what you’d think. Not Jerry Pate’s dramatic 5-iron shot to the flagstick on the 18th hole that delivered him the championship on Sunday, but a moment in deep twilight on Thursday, as the first round dwindled down.

The entire field was in, except for one group, the story already in form on most typewriters—word processors were still in the distant future—when a raw amateur, Mike Reid, checked in with the round of the day.

Call the desk. Rewrite. No Mormon has ever been so vigorously accursed, at least in the sporting world.

In time, the AAC brought Atlanta the PGA Championship in 1981, appropriately won by a player who drove from home to work daily, like any other working man. Larry Nelson, who Longtime Atlanta Constitution columnist Furman Bisher.

lived in Marietta, about fifteen miles from the

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XIII

Club—and still does—won by the comfortable margin of four strokes over Fuzzy Zoeller. The PGA Championship paid a return visit in 2001, when another mild-mannered player, David Toms, delivered a hole-in-one at No. 15 on Saturday, then strategically laid up on the seventy-second hole Sunday and sank the victorious putt that upset Phil Mickelson.

What the preface of a book is supposed to do, I think, is to prepare the reader for what is to follow.

The history of the Atlanta Athletic Club needs no embellishment from me. It tells its own story, beginning with a few young gentlemen of Atlanta acting on an urge to organize a club devoted to athletics and the social and physical development of its members. It took place so long ago, more than a century, that the very idea of carrying out such a plan from the ground up is difficult to imagine.

What developed, by way of the Atlanta Athletic Club’s golf facility at East Lake, is the evolution of a bold and ambitious leadership. As the Club aged, its membership became centralized on the north side of the city, and East Lake became a financial detriment. The new chosen location in the postal area of Duluth was better situated to the majority of the membership, it was deemed. At one time, the area was even considered by the United States Golf Association as a candidate site for its headquarters, and it came close to happening. Then the USGA changed its mind and stayed home at its own location in Far Hills, New Jersey.

Now, what you read here, in Dr. Catherine Lewis’s book, is as much a history of the rise and expansion of Atlanta as it is of one country club. Thank heaven for the vision of Tom Cousins and the resurrection he engineered that has brought the East Lake golf course back from doom. Now both areas enjoy the privileges of classic country club life, and both move on with their own particular agenda. The cornerstone of it all, though, is the Atlanta Athletic Club, a jewel in the crown of this city.

Furman Bisher passed away in 2012.

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A Host to History

Acknowledgments Catherine M. Lewis

B

ooks are always collaborative ventures, and this one is no exception. I want to begin by thanking the board of directors under the leadership of Charlie Anderson for inviting me to write the first edition of this book in 2002 and for assigning two former club presidents, William L. O’Callaghan and Charles Pittard, to the project. They helped guide me through this process and are the reason for the book’s initial success.

The members of the Heritage Committee also deserve special recognition. It has been a true pleasure working with this wonderful group.

Furman Bisher, Charles R. Yates, Jim Huber, and Dr. Bob Jones IV deserve special recognition for their contributions to this volume, and we certainly miss Furman, Charlie, and Jim and their many contributions to the game of golf. I would also like to extend my appreciation to Chris Borders, the former general manager of the Atlanta Athletic Club, for his wise counsel and good humor throughout both editions of this book.

Kevin Carroll, the current general manager, has been a wonderful resource for this most recent edition.

Over the years, a number of current and former staff members have helped make this book possible: Rick Anderson, Jeff Chandley, James Cole, Neil Doldo, Lukus Harvey, Tony Kelley, Peter Lovelace, Erica Smith, Chan Reeves, Chris Clark, Vincent Longo, Ken Mangum, Brian Marcus, JoAnn Jordan, Carol Stampley, Jennifer Moseley, Lisa Berggren, and Geneva Jiles helped me throughout this project in ways that I can never repay.

So many members agreed to be interviewed for this book that I cannot possibly name them all. I would, however, like to thank Lynn and Janelle Nunley, Howard Crispin, Hill Griffin, Cole Van Houten, Don Moss, J. Chandler Baldwin Jr., Archie Hooks, Buz McGriff, Sam Kiker, Martha Kirouac, Bill Pierce, the Hale family, Neal Purcell, Tom and Betty Van Houten, Don Scartz, John P. Imlay Jr., Reuben Berry, Reese Hooks, Mayo and Pat Atkins, Richard Grice, Harold Williams, Tom Forkner, Bailey Tardy, Patrick Ford, Dave and Kathy Tholen, DeWitt Weaver III, Herb and Mildred Waterhouse, Maria Licata, Lisa Licata, Lindsay Jones, Millie Jones, Richard McGinnis, Debbie Doverspike, and so many others. I would also like to recognize the dozens of members who agreed to be interviewed for the Club’s Centennial video in 1998. The information gleaned from those interviews proved particularly useful.

Bobby Jones and Alexa Stirling, 1923.

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The 2016 Book Committee and Heritage Committee—Bob Dutlinger (chair), Margaret Almand, Kevin Carroll, Davis Stewart, Bob Jones IV, Jim Teate, Chris Borders, Bob Sharpenberg, Bill O’Callaghan (club historian), and Jim Thorne—have been quite helpful as we updated the 2005 edition. Margaret deserves special recognition for her efficiency and amazing organizational skills. I truly could not have done this book without her.

In 2005, this book became part of a yearlong celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Grand Slam, accompanying a traveling exhibition developed by the Atlanta History Center that was on view at the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the U.S. Amateur. It was on display at the Atlanta History Center’s Swan Ball in April, the AAC’s September-October Grand Slam celebration, and at the Tour Championship in November. The book and exhibition played an important role in preserving the Jones legacy, and I am grateful that we had the opportunity to be a part of such a worthy endeavor.

I owe a particular debt to numerous individuals who read the manuscript and helped correct errors.

Stacey Braukman at the Atlanta History Center did a wonderful job of editing the manuscript, as did my father, Richard Lewis, PhD, who taught me how to write and on whose keen editorial eye I have come to depend.

Gene McClure also edited the original manuscript and essentially contributed this book’s title and deserves special recognition. The club’s Book Committee struggled to come up with a title that reflected the essence of the Club and felt strongly that it would be appropriate to look outside the committee for assistance. Gene was a logical choice. He is a member of Ansley Golf Club and the AAC, a former member of the USGA Executive Committee, a former president of the Georgia State Golf Association, trustee of the AAC’s Jones Room Foundation, and an inductee in the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame. He has written widely about golf throughout the state and is one of the most knowledgeable people in the field on the history of the sport and its rules.

In the July/August 1995 issue of Golf Georgia, Gene wrote an article about the AAC titled, “Atlanta Athletic Club: Host to History.” He also used this idea for his keynote speech on the occasion of the Club’s Centennial in 1998. That thought seemed to the committee to capture the essence of this book and the Club. As Gene says, “This is the way I see this club and its role, in the past, the present, and continuing into the future.”

I am grateful to Rob Levin, Renée Peyton, and the entire staff at Bookhouse Group Inc. for their assistance with the book. We would like to recognize Laurie Porter, in particular, for her beautiful design.

Warren Grant, Bob Maynard, and Garrett Reid are responsible for the new photography of the course and clubhouse.

My personal debts are as significant as my professional ones. My family offered continued encouragement.

Special thanks to my daughter, Emma Companiotte, who entertained herself for hours while I worked away at the computer. Finally, I owe my greatest debt to my husband, fellow golf writer and historian John Companiotte, who counseled me and kept me sane while I was working on multiple books that all seemed to have impossible deadlines. His support, editorial assistance, and love of golf made all of this possible.

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A Host to History

Introduction Jim Huber

I

t was a thunderstruck Thursday in the dead of June 1976, and I was attached somewhat unceremoniously to the side of ABC’s television tower behind the 18th green. (If you look very closely at the official portrait of that U.S. Open, you can see my platform exactly halfway up. It was in the contract that way.

Halfway, not an inch higher. ABC had its standards.) As the first gaggle of pros struggled home that first round, fussing and fuming and fighting mad, black clouds of another sort began to gather over the young pines on the other side of the lake. An afternoon lightning strike in a Georgia summer. How odd. And then I realized I had no roof.

I was a fledgling radio sportscaster with WGST in those days, and somehow the station had worked a deal for the live radio rights to the first Open Championship ever held in the Deep South. I knew very little about the Atlanta Athletic Club in the days leading up to that event, only what I’d recently read of Jones, Yates, Gunn, and Stirling. I was still trying to figure out the whole East Lake arrangement and why in the world they had chosen to move all the way out to Duluth.

All I knew was, I was doing live reports every fifteen minutes from a course half a day away from the office. Just close enough to forfeit my per diem. Just far enough to question the necessity of new tires.

From a hundred yards away, a crack of lightning and resulting thunder shook the tower. I looked around and realized there was no shelter. I was a minute away from another report. The rain was moving like a dark gray sheet toward me. My equipment was modest: a sound board, microphone, headphones—rudimentary stuff back in those days, but it was more vulnerable to the storm than I. “Huber,” came a huffing voice from below, “gimme a hand.” I rushed to the side of the tower and looked down to see the red-faced, rotund club general manager Jim Petzing, enveloped in a sea of tarpaulin.

“Thought you might need this.”

I hauled the tarp to the top, covered the equipment, and crawled underneath with Petzing just as the rain reached us.

“What are you thinking?” he laughed, wetter from perspiration than if he had been standing in the middle of the 18th fairway. “Everybody else has sense enough to cover their stuff and get down off these towers when storms hit.”

“Hang on, Jim,” I cautioned, and from the sheltered darkness I began my next live report—of the delay in the action and the bad lightning in the area, of how it appeared the first round would probably spill into Friday.

“I just happen to have the Athletic Club’s general manager with me. Jim Petzing, how . . . ?” And we filled the allotted time talking about the championship and its meaning to the Club, to Atlanta, to the South itself.

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Being a rookie, I had no idea that players grumbling about a U.S. Open setup was akin to my great uncle complaining about closing time. I assumed then that because they didn’t seem to like the sand and the fairways and the greens and the June weather, the chances of another major championship coming to the Athletic Club were slim.

But the more time I spent with the Club and its members, working Sports Appreciation Night every spring, the more I realized what a shame that would be and how it would have little or nothing to do with the players and how they felt but about the USGA, the PGA of America, and the Athletic Club itself. As the Club made itself available, those presenting bodies were discovering a gold mine here.

I found myself walking a fine line as a new member between those who hated giving up their courses for upward of a month every few years, and those who felt the prestige of hosting these events was more than worth the inconvenience. I gave up my courses, yes, but as I worked the championships through my various media outlets over the years, I sensed the inordinate pride of being part of one of the most unique operations in the world. I heard the wonderment expressed by my colleagues, that while the championship course itself might not be in the planet’s top-ten, the Club itself presented the most complete setup anywhere they could imagine. And so it has grown in the last three decades or so. There is not a finer facility anywhere in America for holding a major golf championship. Perhaps the world.

But, you know, even though the Atlanta Athletic Club has become known for just that, I know it for so much more. When the dust and the storms settle, when the grandstands are gone, when the TV compound becomes the back of the driving range again, and the hospitality area is the par-3 course once more, it is about you and me. And if we never host another championship again, that is more than worth the price of admission.

By the way, wherever Jim Petzing is today, I think I still have his tarpaulin.

Jim Huber passed away in 2012.

Jim Huber and Billy Payne at Sports Appreciation Night.

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A Host to History

Prologue “A DISTINCT ASSET TO THE CITY”

O

“The original founders would probably not recognize the organization today; for it has kept abreast of the times in equipment and methods. As one of our esteemed members expressed it: ‘This perennial youthfulness of the Club has been and always will be one of its outstanding characteristics.’”

—Club Times, February 1940

n October 17, 2004, the Atlanta Athletic Club hosted a dinner in the Club’s Merion Room for noted amateur golfer and AAC member Martha Kirouac, who had served as the captain of the victorious Curtis Cup team that summer. This celebration became part of a century-long tradition of the Club’s recognition of the achievements of its members in the field of amateur athletics, not unlike dinners in years past for Alexa Stirling, Bobby Jones, Charlie Yates, and the golfers competing in the 2014 U.S. Amateur hosted by the AAC. During the evening’s program, Kirouac recounted the details of the event at Formby Golf Club in Merseyside, England, but mainly focused on the importance of the support she received from the staff and fellow AAC members, all of which made her Curtis Cup experience all the more memorable.

Kirouac captained eight young women, ranging from fourteen to twenty-two in age, to victory in June 2004. The American team, composed of Erica Blasberg, Paula Creamer, Sarah Huarte, Liz Janangelo, Brittany Lang, Jane Park, Annie Thurman, and Michelle Wie, lost in the first-round foursomes, thus facing formidable odds. No other team in the history of the event had ever come back from that kind of start. Yet the Americans rallied, going into Sunday’s final singles matches with the score tied at six points for each team. In the singles, Annie Thurman’s victory was responsible for the winning point. With losses that year in the matches for golf’s Ryder Cup, Solheim Cup, and Walker Cup, the Curtis Cup, captained by Kirouac, became the only international team trophy held by the United States. Throughout the fall of 2004, the trophy was displayed simply and without fanfare in the AAC, amid Bobby Jones’s first cup, Charlie Yates’s 1938 British Amateur medal, and the many historical artifacts from other notable athletes, including Alexa Stirling, Watts Gunn, and Dorothy Kirby. The Curtis Cup victory, under Kirouac’s leadership, was just the kind of achievement that the Club founders had in mind.

On August 15, 1898, a humid summer afternoon, a group of The 2004 Curtis Cup team with captain Martha Kirouac behind the trophy.

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young men, mainly professionals in their early twenties who worked in real estate or the law, gathered at Burton Smith’s law office on Broad Street in downtown Atlanta with the express purpose of organizing an athletic club that would serve the leisure needs of the burgeoning city. On September 5, sixty-five men signed the charter granted by Judge Joseph Henry Lumpkin of the Superior Court of Fulton County. The purpose of the Club was to “promote health and well-being by exercise, sporting activities, social relations, kind feelings, and general culture among its members.” No one in that group ever expected that the Club would today have an international reputation, both for its facilities and for the athletes and civic leaders it has produced.

None could have imagined that the AAC would host prestigious events in golf, tennis, swimming, and badminton. Nor could they have envisioned a multipurpose club that, on a single site, includes world-class athletic and tennis centers, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and two championship-quality golf courses.

Homosassa Fishing Club, 1905.

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A Host to History

From the beginning, the AAC was a club for amateur athAtlanta Athletic Club letes, those who played sport purely for pleasure and were interested in improving their physical fitness and building Organized lifelong friendships. That has not changed over the years.

The men who signed the original charter all believed that August 15, 1898 sport should build character and not be played for money.

Instead, the founders felt that members should embrace the Incorporated tenets of fair play and enjoy the collegiality of sport.

September 5, 1898 This early emphasis on amateurism was consistent with the mid-nineteenth-century focus on physical fitness.

Town Club Victorian-era reformers embraced recreation as a way to 56 Edgewood Avenue refresh the mind and body to escape the drudgery of work opened April 15, 1899 and urban life. Frederick Sawyer’s 1847 publication A Plea for Amusements advocated the establishment of “athletic Town Club institutes,” as an antidote to dance halls and saloons. Many 37–39 Auburn Avenue years later, AAC athletic director Joe Bean echoed this very philosophy in the Club Times, the AAC’s monthly newsletter: opened November 27, 1902 “Exercise is one of our greatest blessings. Everyone should take a little, especially at this particular time. We have been East Lake Country Club and still are being pointed out as a nation of softies. The Course opened July 4, 1908 AAC offers you every opportunity to refute this.”

Clubhouse opened May 8, 1915 Country clubs such as the AAC became the place where a focus on amateurism and physical fitness found a logical Town Club home. In the late nineteenth century, cities such as Phila166 Carnegie Way delphia, New York, and Atlanta established metropolitan opened June 15, 1926 athletic clubs. Later, country clubs, modeled on English country homes and summer resorts, were built in suburbs and offered members access to hunting, fishing, horseback Yacht Club opened riding, and golf. The first such facility in the United States, July 4, 1958 the Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, was founded in 1882, sixteen years before the AAC. But these clubs Atlanta Athletic Club only grew in large numbers when Sabbatarian laws were 1930 Bobby Jones Drive overturned before and after World War I, thus permitting opened May 27, 1967 recreation on Sundays. Prior to that, local ordinances often resulted in the arrest of those who engaged in public sport.

Historian Richard Moss explains in his book Golf and the American Country Club, “Attendance at church and Sunday morning golf waged a long and sometimes bitter battle that many still fight.” It was a fight in which a young Bobby Jones did not engage, indicated by a question he once asked his father, “What do people do on Sundays who don’t play golf?”

The AAC was not the first club that catered to Atlanta’s elite. Several others had been formed, including the Nine O’Clock German Club and the Capital City Club in 1883, the Concordia Club (later renamed the Standard Club) in 1867, and the Gentleman’s Driving Association (later renamed the Piedmont Driving Club) in 1897. The Driving Club’s membership laid out the first golf course in the city, though it was only seven holes. The AAC was, however, the city’s first true athletic club and claimed the distinction of establishing the first eighteen-hole golf course in Atlanta, which opened officially in 1908.

A great club must have superb facilities, dedicated employees, good leadership, collegial members, and events and tradition borne out by history. The pages that follow demonstrate that the AAC passes this test.

The Story of the Atlanta Athletic Club

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The 1908 baseball team. Top row (left to right): George Spence, Bert Addams, Will Glenn, Frank Reynolds, Carlton Smith, and George Sore. Center row (left to right): Tech Lechner, Arthur Howell, George Adair, and Fred Patterson. Front row (left to right): Alvin Haymes, F. G. Byrd, and Nat Thornton.

XXII A Host AH toost History to History

CHAPTER ONE

Building a Club in the

the

Age of

Amateur Athlete

“In general, the purposes of the Club are to establish a social organization, to promote health and exercise, sporting activities and social relations, kind feelings and general culture among its members.”

Article 3, AAC Constitution

D

etermining the location of the Atlanta Athletic Club’s first facility was an easy decision, as most of the members worked downtown and desired a club within walking distance of their offices. Joel Hurt, one of the Club’s charter members, opened the first clubhouse at 56 Edgewood Avenue, a street away from Five Points in the heart of the city, in April 1899. He leased it to the new club for five years, and the board immediately purchased sixteen hundred dollars’ worth of new athletic equipment. The renovated building, which included a gymnasium, lounge, administrative offices, locker rooms, and showers, was remembered as relatively spartan by today’s standards. During this period, the Industrial Aid Association (Life Insurance Company of Georgia), the Coca-Cola Bottling Company, Atlanta Steel Hoop Company (Atlantic Steel), and Georgia Electric Light Company (Georgia Power) were founded, and many of the executives of these companies joined the AAC. By 1901 membership reached seven hundred. To accommodate the members’ growing interest in tennis, two courts were constructed on a vacant lot next to the Edgewood building.

The club’s expanding membership quickly outgrew the first building, and the officers began to search for a new site. Unable to find a suitable existing structure, they elected to build a new facility. In 1901 the Club purchased a vacant lot on Auburn Avenue, with the

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Building a Club in the Age of the Amateur Athlete

support of Asa G. Candler, who made a generous donation to the Club. Burton Smith and the officers of the Club hired architects Bleckley and Tyler to design the new building and opened it on November 27, 1902, at 37–39 Auburn Avenue, a site it would occupy for nearly a quarter of a century. “The second building, much larger than the first, included four tennis courts, a swimming pool, basketball and handball courts, an indoor track, pool tables, a locker room, and shower facilities,” explained former AAC president and club historian Bill O’Callaghan. “It reflected the growth in the numbers of members and the activities of members.” One of the most notable features was the addition of sectional double bowling alleys. But the installation of a telephone drew the most attention.

Invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell, the telephone was introduced to the AAC before many private homes in Atlanta had them. On December 4, 1902, Southern Bell installed a “special line metallic circuit” telephone station for a charge of five dollars per month. A year later, a second line was added; that same year, Western Union installed a telegraph line.

By 1919 the membership had once again exceeded the Club’s facilities, and the executive committee purchased from the Atlanta Theater Company property bounded by Carnegie Way, Cone Street, and Williams Street (then James Street). In 1924 the AAC purchased the Lyric Theater building for $275,000, remodeled it, and added a façade to the front. The ten-story building measured 140,000 square feet and included athletic facilities, exercise rooms, and fortyfive guest rooms. The members loved the downtown club for its convenience and its modern facilities. It had the largest dining room of any country club in America, boasting a $20,000 kitchen. The main dining room featured chandeliers that were imported from Czechoslovakia by the Capitol Electric Company.

In 1927 the AAC hosted twelve hundred diners, the largest seated indoor dinner given in Atlanta at that time, for a convention of Coca-Cola bottlers.

Former athletic director W. R. “Buz” McGriff, for whom the AAC gymnasium is today named, recalled, “The downtown club had the first rectangular track in the city, and the third floor had a big gym that was clearly part of the old theater. We played sports on the area where the audience used to sit. The smaller gym was situated where the stage once was. The downtown club also had a tile pool that measured

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Early Club Rules The Atlanta Athletic Club’s early rules provide a window into the history of the Club.

“Employees must not be reprimanded by members or visitors.”

“Playing cards or throwing dice for supplies is prohibited.”

“Dogs will not be allowed in any part of the Club building.”

“No member shall bring into the Club House a gentleman who has previously been expelled from the Club, or a visitor who is under the influence of whiskey.”

“A fine of $50 will be imposed upon any member staying or sleeping at the Club House after it is closed and locked for the night.”

“Members are not allowed behind the counter in the Buffet.”

“Members are not allowed to sign the name of other members to any tickets for supplies.”

“No lofting of balls on bowling alleys will be allowed.”

Women’s exercise class, ca. 1950s.

S. Smith and Lee Kennedy enjoying a massage.

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thirty by seventy-five feet in the basement. It was really something.” The Club Times urged members to make use of the downtown club, especially in the summer: “If it is a warm day—and if you are perspiring—then read no further. Just grab your hat and hike right down to the Athletic Club—jump into the elevator and say, ‘Drive me to the cooling chambers.’ Up you will be whisked four stories.

When you step off, by an odd coincidence, you will find that you are on the fourth floor. . . . Believe it or not—they’ve AIR CONDITIONED the fourth floor—from stem to stern.”

The club immediately realized that “the social aspect of modern business has become more pronounced each year and no clubs are better situated to serve their members than here in Atlanta.” This certainly was true for those who wanted to entertain their guests in style. Former AAC president George H. Brodnax explained, “Atlanta had a law that you could not serve mixed drinks except in private clubs. So the downtown club really served useful purposes for people who had business associates coming into town. They would put them up at the AAC downtown because there were really no good restaurants or hotels in the area. The downtown club really flourished until that law was repealed.

Then everything changed, and the need for the facility diminished.”

Longtime members remember the downtown club fondly. Pat and Mayo Atkins explained, “It was the feather in the cap of the Atlanta Athletic Club.” Reuben Berry agreed: “Back in those days, everyone went to the downtown club.” J. Chandler Baldwin recalled at the age of five telling his father after a visit, “When I retire, that’s where I want to live.” He also told a story about the annual meeting when the AAC still held it at the downtown club: “During one meeting, we took over the billiard and pool room and put blankets over the tables to shoot craps. Well, a guy who was a gambler slipped in and began taking everybody’s money. When we found out, one of the members who was a football player chased that guy out and down the street for about a mile.”

With the opening of the Carnegie Way facility, the AAC ushered in the Club’s “Golden Age of Sports.” Many of the sports that became popular at the AAC in this period were organized in the latter

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Building a Club in the Age of the Amateur Athlete

The 1913–1914 basketball team with coach Joe Bean.

part of the nineteenth century. By the turn of the century, the AAC had formed teams in a variety of sports that were competing not only with club teams from other cities but with Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, and other colleges. There were teams for basketball, swimming, baseball, track, handball, and cross-country, led first by the Club’s athletic director, Dr. Theodore “Ted” Toepel, who was hired in 1905.

Each of the AAC’s athletic directors has left a different legacy, and Toepel focused most of his energies on developing an indoor track team. On

Quote of the Day “A Club is merely a group of

men who have banded themselves together to provide, through

mutual association, facilities which no one of us can hope to own or

enjoy individually. As such, every

man has the obligation of helping to

maintain this organization of which he is a part.”

—Lew Gordon

▶

The AAC’s first president, Burton Smith.

April 7, 1908, John Heisman, Georgia Tech’s fulltime football coach for whom the Heisman Trophy was named, was hired as a part-time athletic director and basketball coach at a salary of seventy-five dollars per month. Heisman’s contract with the AAC, which is on display in the Club’s Heisman Room, specified his duties: Under this agreement and during its continuance it shall be the duty of the party of the second part to organize, take charge of, direct and coach outdoor baseball team or teams; indoor baseball team or teams; football

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Building a Club in the Age of the Amateur Athlete

team or teams; basketball team or teams and track team or teams and such other athletic team or teams of the Atlanta Athletic Club as may be required by the board of directors of such club . . . devoting the same time, attention and degree of care as is usually and customarily exercised by coaches of colleges or university teams of the same character.

Heisman was eventually followed by Joe Bean.

In 1911 the AAC elected an athletic committee, for which member Al A. Doonan served as chairman.

Under his direction and with Bean’s assistance, the AAC produced some of the finest amateur athletes in the South. In his book East Lake Country Club History, Charlie Elliott explained, “Joe was also the power behind those years when AAC teams, competing with other athletic clubs and top-ranking college teams, won championship after championship and established the AAC in the highest echelon of sports.” Bean was born on March 18, 1874, and became an accomplished baseball player. At the age of twenty and weighing only 113 pounds, he turned professional and played shortstop in the minor leagues. From 1902 to 1903 he played with the New York Giants, then moved to New Jersey where he played until 1909, after which time he managed the ball club. He came to the AAC as athletic director in 1911 and, with the exception of a five-year hiatus between 1938 and 1942, stayed for nearly half a century.

Fred Lanoue, from Springfield College in Massachusetts, where basketball was invented, replaced Bean during the brief hiatus, and he was followed by Ed Shea, who was at the AAC for a year until Bean returned to the Club. Under Bean, the physical fitness classes were well attended by notable Atlantans, including former governor John M. Slaton.

In the fall of 1949 John T. Foster replaced Bean and was followed by Phil Cady, then Charles Cooper in the fall of 1952. Cooper remained at the AAC until the summer of 1962, when he left to work for a similar country club in South Carolina. He helped build the swimming program and was succeeded by his friend, Buz McGriff, who remained at the AAC for more than thirty years. Following McGriff were Chip Smith, Darin Armour, Jeff Chandley, and finally Neil Doldo, who serves as the current athletic director.

Baseball was one of the most popular sports in the early years, but AAC members had a wide variety of The swimming pool was on the bottom floor of the downtown club.

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The downtown club had ten floors,

including lodging for members and guests.

▶

The Story of the Atlanta Athletic Club

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Building a Club in the Age of the Amateur Athlete

8

are now on display at the Club’s tennis center.

Between 1907 and 1940, AAC tennis players won twenty-one of the thirty-four Southern Tennis Singles Championships. Bryan M. Grant Sr. was a noted champion, but his son, Bitsy, would soon overshadow him. In 1930 Bitsy won the United States Clay Court Championship and then repeated the feat in 1933, 1934, and 1935. He won the Southern Tennis Singles in 1933, 1935, 1938, 1939, and 1940. In 1936 Grant, called the “Mighty Atom,” was ranked third in the national amateur ratings.

The next year he was named to the Davis Cup team.

Basketball was played on Saturday nights, often followed by a dance. The AAC basketball team played and lost its first game in 1903 against Yale, as the Yale team passed through Atlanta on a Christmas tour. By 1908, under Heisman, the AAC was competing against other athletic clubs around the state. Years ago, a former member remembered about Heisman, “He didn’t know a thing about basketball when he took the job, but in the first month he had learned more than the rest of us put together.” In the early years, the

John Heisman, who served as Georgia Tech’s football coach from 1904 to 1919, was the AAC’s second athletic director.

A Host to History

▶

▶

sports from which to choose. In 1900, when baseball players’ uniforms made them appear more like streetcar conductors than athletes, the AAC won the city championship. Eight years later, the team captured the amateur state championship. Nat Thornton, the noted tennis player, remembered, “Arthur Howell was the finest pitcher you ever saw.

We played colleges and other athletic teams—such as Birmingham, Cleveland, Yale—and could beat most of them.”

Tennis was also gaining in popularity, so much so that nearly every country club in the city added tennis courts. Thornton, C. Y. Smith, E. V. Carter Jr., and Frank “Hop” Owens helped the AAC reign supreme for three decades on the court. Smith won the Southern Amateur title in 1912, 1916, 1918, 1920, and 1921, and Owens won in 1922. Nat Thornton, the younger brother of Henry Thornton, a charter member, recalled his early years at the Club: “They took me in before I was old enough to be a regular member because I won the tournament.

I won forty or fifty cups playing tennis all over the South.” Many of these cups and other memorabilia

The Heisman Room.

basketball season comprised games with college teams and other athletic clubs, and they were rough.

One member recalled the early games: “One of our guys was a noted football player at Georgia Tech. We had a boxer on the team and a professional wrestler.

They used to knock opposing players right and left.

The referee didn’t call many fouls in those days. It may have been because he was afraid to. You had to hit a man with your fist, or knock him down and step on his head, or almost kill him some other way before they called a foul on you.”

“I recollect one game we played with Birmingham Athletic Club,” offered Nat Thornton. “The Birmingham

▶

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William McRae, Slick Carnog, Albert Happoldt, and Clyde Mingledorff celebrating Christmas in 1945.

An illustration of the interior of the downtown club.

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Building a Club in the Age of the Amateur Athlete

boys were our most bitter rivals. That affair looked more like a free-for-all fight than a basketball game.

The main object was to lay ’em out, and we did a good job of that. We shook ’em up so bad that a little college team—Vanderbilt—beat them the next night.”

During the first twenty years of the Club’s history, Saturday night basketball games were popular social activities. The AAC basketball team, captained by Al Doonan, won its first Southern Championship in 1909. Doonan was one of the Club’s best all-around athletes. He played forward on the first basketball team, served as chairman of the athletic committee, and then managed the Club’s teams for many years.

He was also the Club’s billiard and pool champion.

In 1920 he brought the National Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Basketball Tournament to Atlanta. To recognize his accomplishments and service to the Club, the AAC named the gymnasium at the downtown club “Al Doonan Hall.” According to member Charlie Harrison, “The AAC team won or was runner-up in the Southern Basketball Tournament every year from 1912 to 1926.” This domination prompted the City Builder in 1925 to declare, “Atlanta—the unquestioned basketball center of Dixie.” From 1925 to 1930, the last years in which basketball was a dominant sport at the AAC, the team won sixty-four of the seventy-four games on the Club schedule.

Swimming gained in popularity after the AAC built the country club at East Lake, and the first

▶

With the opening of the downtown club, more children began to participate in athletic programs.

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Kevin Carroll, Rose Mary Dennis (daughter of Nat Thornton), Bradley Dennis, and Davis Stewart beside the Nat Thornton exhibit.

Margaret Mitchell,

Atlanta Journal Magazine, described the 1926 Carnegie Way building:

writing for the

“To describe as magnificent the new home of the

Atlanta Athletic Club, which is being completed at a cost of a million and a quarter dollars on

the site of the old Lyric Theater at Carnegie Way and Cone Street, is to tell only half the story of this splendid new building. It is magnificent

in furnishings and appointments, in beauty of

design, in the luxuriousness of its velvet rugs, its red and gold damask draperies and its elaborately

carved paneling. But almost immediately this first impression is crowded out by the completeness of its equipment for physical development,

recreation and sports, its great tiled swimming

pool, its squash tennis courts, its handball courts, its gymnasium with a seating capacity for 2000 spectators for the Club’s basketball and other

games, its locker rooms for club members, for the Club’s team and for visiting teams; its women’s

locker room and showers, its boys’ locker room and showers, its business men’s locker room, showers and special gymnasium; its wrestling room, its

boxing room, its bridge room, its billiard room and its Turkish bath with various attendant rooms,

steam room, dry heat room, needle shower room,

electric cabinet ‘baking out’ room, massage room, barber shop, and, in fact, practically everything that would appeal to this side of the masculine nature. . . . From basement to the elevator

penthouse, which rises above the roof garden

and contains all the electrical machinery of the

building, the new Atlanta Athletic Club justifies

every cent of the million and a quarter dollars spent on it, and when completed will be one of the show places of the city.”

▶

Though remembered as a tennis player, Nat Thornton was active in most AAC sports.

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Building a Club in the Age of the Amateur Athlete

team competed in 1915. The AAC hosted the AAU Southern Swimming Championships for many years, winning the title in 1917 and 1921. Some of the early champions were Gilbert Fraser, Homer Thompson, and Mariana Goldsmith (later Mariana Knox). In the early years, swimming events were held at the lake over a course that Bobby Jones described as going “from the old poplar tree where we used to find bream beds just opposite the dining room, up to the bridge.” Older members still tell stories about swimming with Olympic champions who came to Atlanta to test themselves against the AAC’s teams.

Swimming remained an important sport at the Club through the 1960s. The Club Times reported in 1966 that the AAC team acquired half the points for the state of Georgia in the regional meet. Member Billy Heinz Jr. was asked to try out for the Olympic diving team, and Lee Bradford was named an AllAmerican swimmer in high school, but interest in

The AAC basketball team regularly played other

▶

country clubs and corporate and university teams.

12

Athletic director Joe Bean.

A Host to History

▶

Inset: Bitsy Grant, called the “Mighty Atom,” South during the Depression.

dominated tennis in the

The Story of the Atlanta Athletic Club

13

Building a Club in the Age of the Amateur Athlete

AAC members regularly came to the

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A Host to History

downtown club to exercise and rest during the workday.

Quote of the Day “As our Club moves on toward the

half century mark, time in itself has

certified its strong foundations, and the long record of accomplishments in a wide field of endeavors

merely chronicles its usefulness of purpose.”

▶

—H. Lane Young

▶

team competition eventually waned. Track and cross-country also became popular at AAC in the early years, though the first team consisted of one man, Walter Scott, who won the annual road races held in Birmingham three years in a row. In 1911 the AAC track team won the Southern Championship road race held at Grant Field.

While tennis, swimming, and basketball are still important parts of the AAC experience, golf has become the Club’s main attraction, thanks in part to the fame and success of Bobby Jones. However, the game’s origins and its place in the Club’s history precede Jones. The first permanent golf club in the United States, the St. Andrews Golf Club in Yonkers, New York, was founded in 1888. Golf boomed in America in the early part of the twentieth century and directly influenced the AAC. In 1920 the United States Golf Association (USGA) counted 477 member clubs; by the 1930s,

The AAC basketball team was awarded this medal in 1923.

This sign, from the downtown club, shows how much prices have changed.

The Story of the Atlanta Athletic Club

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Building a Club in the Age of the Amateur Athlete

Quote of the Day “We loved the roof garden at the downtown club

on Carnegie Way. Every Saturday night, we loved to dance to the music. I really miss that part of the Club’s history.”

—Harold Williams

more than 1,100 private clubs were members. The United States had more than fifty-seven hundred golf courses. In Atlanta, between 1900 and 1935, several notable courses were built, including Ansley Park Golf Club (1912), Brookhaven Country Club (1913), and Druid Hills Golf Club (1913). Over the next several decades, half a dozen public and semiprivate golf courses opened. In the South, the AAC was the first country club to add golf permanently to its athletic activities. The AAC hired Tom Bendelow to expand the first holes that the Club laid out to a full eighteenhole course, which formally opened on July 4, 1908.

Bendelow designed more than one hundred courses from 1885 to 1948, including Minnetonka Country Club and the three courses at Medinah Country Club.

Bill O’Callaghan described the construction: “They had to utilize hand-held, mule-drawn equipment.

That’s probably good in the sense that it meant that the golf course played naturally along the land.” It was eventually remodeled by Donald Ross.

In 1928, one year before the start of the Great Depression, the AAC bought an undeveloped tract of rolling land across Second Avenue from East Lake and hired Ross again to build the No. 2 course. It opened to much fanfare on May 31, 1930, but the growing financial crisis quickly made it apparent that the AAC, like most clubs in America, was going to have to struggle to remain solvent. Membership declined from 1,250 to 500. Dues were reduced to seven dollars, but few members could afford to eat at the Club. Many credit Scott Hudson, who served as president from 1919 to 1937, with the Club’s survival. Under Hudson, the board began a “spark plug” program to help generate new membership by

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A Host to History

The roof garden at the downtown club was one of the most popular spots for club

â–ś

â–ś

members.

Jack Davis, the rooftop chef at Carnegie Way.

David Williams, locker room attendant at East Lake.

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Building a Club in the Age of the Amateur Athlete

“scouring the city for eligible men who might become new members and help hold the Club together.”

Lewis F. Gordon, chairman of the new membership committee, had a regular feature in Club Times highlighting the committee’s successes. But there were significant losses as well. Paul C. Maddox claimed to be the only member to join the Club twice: “I joined at a time when all businesses were at risk for failure. I figured that instead of having a good time at the Club, I needed to work even harder at my business, so I resigned. Once things became better, I knew I could always come back.”

Born in Danville, Kentucky, in 1870, Hudson became a member of the AAC at the age of forty-one and dedicated his life to the Club. In the midst of the Depression, the AAC found itself with new properties, a decreasing membership, a million-dollar debt, and barely enough money to furnish the new downtown club on Carnegie Way. Hudson became more of a club manager than president and found numerous ways to save money. The May 1940 issue of the Club Times reported, “The Pencil Committee has insisted that all pencils be cut in two and that only one be allowed to a foursome, which they say shall result in a savings of 87%, or $1.98 for the year.” Gene Branch once said of Hudson, “He actually saved the Atlanta Athletic Club. During the Depression, it would have undoubtedly disappeared.” This conclusion certainly is reflected in a story that J. Ross Hanahan told of Hudson: “He went down to C&S Bank and told Mr. Henry Heinz, who was a member and vice president of the bank, that they couldn’t pay. Mr. Heinz extended the loan on one condition—that as long as Scott was president of the Club, he would renew the loan.” When Hudson retired, Bobby Jones presented him with a gold membership card, which is now on display in the Hudson Room.

On June 3, 1937, the Club hosted a testimonial dinner to honor Hudson’s many years of tireless service. Colonel Robert P. Jones, Bobby Jones’s father, succeeded Hudson in 1937, and he continued to reduce the Club’s long-term debt while enhancing the properties in the midst of the Great Depression.

The Colonel joined the AAC in 1902 and served as a director for more than thirty years. In June 1938 Jones began a newsletter to aid in communication between the members, the officers, and the staff, naming it the Club Times. Member Merriell

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A Centennial Memory by Jim Walker

▶

In the fifties, the downtown club rose proudly above the city—and was crowned by a delightful roof garden. I concluded that its best use during the closed season was as a kite-flying platform.

So, preparations were made for an early spring kite launch. With a very large red box kite and a dozen balls of string, my wife, Charlotte, and two other club friends all filled the Club’s elevator and headed up to our adventure. The big, red box kite immediately became airborne and headed for Georgia Tech as though late for the kickoff. It was a good thing there were four of us in attendance—one hung on to the very taut kite string, two readied the apparatus and tied on more string, and the fourth person had to run like the blazes to the nearest drugstore for more—much more—string. When I had made the final run for string, I simply said to the person behind the counter, “I’ll buy whatever you have left.” Returning to my position on the rooftop, I was delighted to find we had acquired our own cheering section. The back side of the former Henry Grady Hotel looked over the downtown club’s roof and had become a sea of white shirts. Guests were hanging out of their windows shouting encouragement.

Everyone marveled at the sight of our red box kite, which was fast becoming but a tiny speck somewhere in the sky over Georgia Tech, and it was headed for Buckhead. We all wondered if it would be possible to retrieve the kite, given the wind and the distance it had already traveled. A newly discovered length of pipe served as a sort of winder, and we began the task of trying to retrieve a relatively reluctant “Big Red.” Finally, we had the kite in our grasp and triumphantly held high a huge oval of string—it was as large as a football—for our cheering section to see.

Their applause and cries of victory sounded just like one of those close games at Tech. Except this time, everybody won.

The downtown club offered members and guests access to comfortable lodgings.

Scott Hudson is credited with guiding the Club through the Depression.

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Building a Club in the Age of the Amateur Athlete

Autrey described another important innovation: “Somewhere after 1930, they put in slot machines, which were legal. My good friend Alva Maxwell told me that when he left the Club as treasurer in 1948, the Club did not owe any money and had $350,000 in government bonds and about $250,000 in cash.

He said the slots did it.”

The creativity and fierce loyalty that Hudson, Jones, and other members showed to the AAC helped it survive and eventually grow again. The club that emerged from the Depression was strong and vibrant, and golf was now clearly the main focus. Resources were once again poured into improving the facilities, but the growth was temporarily halted during World War II. The members, however, did their part for the war effort. Many served in the armed forces. In 1942, the Club Times reported, “There will be no dances for the balance of January. This gives members an opportunity to get rest from holiday activities and to use money that they might have spent at club dances for Red Cross subscriptions or Defense Stamp and Bond purchases.” The board also encouraged members to carpool to help ration gas and tires. By the end of the war, the Club was in solid financial condition, and in 1950, a new wing, designed by the architectural firm Stevens and Wilkerson and built

by J. A. Jones Construction Company, added to East Lake a modern locker room and grill for men and a new terrace for dining and dancing. The renovation was prompted by the U.S. Women’s Amateur slated to begin at East Lake on September 12, the Club’s first national championship.

Quote of the Day “We used to go sunbathe on the roof of the

downtown club in the nude. Well, the Club put a

note in the Club Times telling us we could not do that anymore.”

—J. Chandler Baldwin

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Mary Jane Youngblood at the Carnegie Way barbershop, 1953.

The Story of the Atlanta Athletic Club

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22 A H Aost Host to to History History

A map showing the development of the East Lake neighborhood around the AAC’s new golf course.

CHAPTER TWO

The Cradle of

Champions

G

eorge Adair, president of the Atlanta Athletic Club from 1905 to 1911, is largely credited with bringing golf to Atlanta. As a result of his efforts, in 1904 the AAC purchased property in the East Lake neighborhood and helped establish the city’s first permanent course. The site, formerly part of the G. W. Collier estate, was a rolling series of hills near East Lake, not far from the streetcar line. The 187acre tract included a thirty-acre lake, which gave the neighborhood its name. The lake and surrounding land had been the site of an amusement park in East Atlanta at the end of the nineteenth century, complete with a tightrope act across the lake. It was owned by charter AAC member Henry (often known as Harry) Morrell Atkinson and operated by Tom Poole. For a modest sum, visitors could swim in the lake, picnic at the tables, and, for a penny, view scenes from the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, Pikes Peak, and the Eiffel Tower. A steamboat traveled up and down the lake, giving visitors a ride. In 1904 Georgia Railway and Power Company, the parent company of Georgia Power, extended the streetcar line from downtown to East Lake after being influenced by George and Forrest Adair, who by then had purchased a large portion of the land that would become the Club’s course at East Lake.

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The Cradle of Champions

When the AAC approached Atkinson about purchasing the site, he reportedly replied, “You may have it at your own figure. And you may put me down for a cash subscription toward the building of the clubhouse.” Atkinson later said in the February 1939 issue of the Club Times, “I could at times even visualize another St. Andrews. But I never saw, even in the rosiest moments of the vision, an Alexa Stirling, a Bobby Jones, who were to carry East Lake to the top of the world as a home of golf.” The AAC’s first golf course was built on the plot in DeKalb County, and the first tee was almost on the site of the present clubhouse. The building of the course was an ordeal, as the Club Times reported: “More than two years were needed to hack the space for fairways, tees, and greens out of the forested hillsides, to grade and shape, and grow a stand of grass on the reluctant red soil. The machinery used consisted of scoops, graders, and mowers—all powered by mules.

Most of the work to bring the new golf course into existence was done by hand, with ax and saw, pick and shovel.”

While the AAC’s downtown facility had already established itself as a social and athletic club, the East Lake facility emphasized golf and tennis.

The AAC laid out the first seven holes, and Tom Bendelow was hired to expand it to a full eighteen.

On March 6, 1906, the AAC hired architect Edward E. Dougherty and builders P. J. Wesley and Sons to enlarge the existing facilities and build a boathouse and bathhouse in time for the Fourth of July. But the original structures would not suffice. On April 13, 1907, the AAC hired architect Harry Leslie Walker to build a formal clubhouse. The grand opening of the expanded course and new clubhouse, which cost forty-five thousand dollars, was held on July 4, 1908. Bobby Jones once said that the old course “was a sort of a strange layout as golf courses go, because it had only two 3-par holes, the first and the third. The rest were short par 4s and 5s.”

With the Club’s membership nearing one thousand and interest in golf increasing, the AAC hired Donald Ross in 1913 to redesign the East Lake course, which formally opened on July 4, 1915. A fire on March 22, 1914, which destroyed the clubhouse,

halted work temporarily. The members hired Walter Danning to build the new structure at a cost of one hundred thousand dollars, which formally opened on May 15, 1915. In an article for the American Magazine, Jerome Travers praised the new facility: “There probably is no club in the country that gives as much for the money as the Atlanta Athletic Club.”

Informed observers believe that remains true today.

Ten years later, in the fall of 1925, a second fire destroyed the clubhouse, the result of faulty wiring in the lounge on the first floor. This time, the fire injured several of the staff members. W. C. Carpenter, the Club superintendent, and his wife were severely burned and narrowly escaped with their lives. Carpenter tried to rescue some of the Club’s trophies on display, but failed. After the smoke had cleared, the Atlanta Journal reported that hundreds of silver and gold cups and medals were “melted into unsightly lumps of metal.”

The USGA’s silver Havemeyer trophy, which was on display in the main lobby to celebrate Bobby Jones’s victory in the 1925 U.S. Amateur, was included in the rubble. The USGA replaced the silver one with a different gold trophy that is still used today. Jones later quipped, “The fire burned up my golf clubs too, but the USGA evidently didn’t hear about that one because they failed to give me a new set of golf clubs.”

The AAC hired Hentz, Reid & Adler to build a new facility, which opened in August 1926.

The AAC’s golf professionals played a critical role in helping to mentor the Club’s best players. The golf club’s first professional was Alex Smith, born in Carnoustie, Scotland, in 1872. He immigrated to the United States through Ellis Island in 1898 with five brothers and took his first job as greenkeeper at Washington Park in Chicago. Smith, a runner-up in the U.S. Open in 1898 and 1901 and champion in 1906 and 1910, was offered a position at East Lake after winning the 1906 U.S. Open and remained for about a year. On March 1, 1907, James Maiden, Smith’s brother-in-law and known to the members as “Jimmy,” replaced Smith, at a salary of sixty dollars per month. Maiden’s duties were spelled out in his contract and restricted him from charging more than a dollar for a forty-five-minute lesson and two dollars for playing eighteen holes with a member.

The boathouse at East Lake, 1909. Boats

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were rented for twenty-five cents an hour.

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Bobby Jones (on right) with H. M. Atkinson, who owned the land East Lake was built upon, ca. 1920s.

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Dixie Whiz Kids Perry Adair, Elaine Rosenthal, Alexa Stirling, and Bobby Jones traveled around the country to raise money for the Red Cross during World War I. Jones, Stirling, and Adair were all AAC members.

In 1908 Maiden left to become head professional at Nassau Country Club on Long Island, where he remained until 1948. East Lake replaced him with his brother, Stewart, known as “Kiltie.” He is best remembered for giving a young Bobby Jones his first set of clubs (a driver, brassie, midiron, mashie, niblick, and putter) and being the person after whom Jones modeled his golf swing. In his 1927 autobiography, Down the Fairway, Jones wrote that the arrival of Stewart Maiden at the AAC was “the luckiest thing that has ever happened to me in golf, which is saying a lot, because my entire career, if it may be called a career, has been lucky.”

Over the past century, the AAC has produced some of the sport’s best amateur golfers in the nation, including Alexa Stirling, Perry Adair, Margaret Maddox, Watts Gunn, Charlie Yates, Charlie Harrison, Tommy Barnes Sr. and Jr., Gladys and Joyce Denson, Neal Hendee, Justin Bolli, Courtney Swaim Trimble, and Bailey Tardy, all of whom enjoyed or are enjoying distinguished careers. Their accomplishments have kept the AAC in the national spotlight for nearly a century. Many competed in state or regional events, making a name for themselves and the Club throughout the South. But none was better known than Robert Tyre “Bobby” Jones Jr. Born on St. Patrick’s Day in 1902, Jones was a lifelong member of the AAC, having played his first and last rounds at the Club’s East Lake course.

Jones explains how he was introduced to golf in Down the Fairway: “Golf began for all of us—Mother and Dad and me—in the early summer of 1907, when we moved out of the city to board with Mrs. Frank

Quote of the Day “As a teenager I lived across the street from the fourth tee. And in the mornings I would look out on that golf course. The sun used to come up over that grass, with all the dew on it. It sparkled like diamonds. Things like that used to make a big difference in my life.”

—Eugene E. Brooks

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â–ś

Friends of Bobby Jones Dinner in 2013, AAC reenacted Whiz Kids, with Brett Barron as Bobby Jones, Bailey Tardy as Alexa Stirling, Josh Crawford as Perry Adair and Mimi Taylor as Elaine Rosenthal. for the

their own version of the

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The Cradle of Champions

Meador in a big house about a mashie pitch from what was then the second fairway of the East Lake golf course of the Atlanta Athletic Club, five miles from town.” Jones’s parents had taken lessons from Jimmy Maiden and played regularly at East Lake.

Fulton Colville, one of the other boarders at Mrs. Meador’s house, gave Jones his first club, a cleek (an iron with a long, shallow blade that compares to today’s 3-iron) cut down to size by club professional Jimmy Maiden. Because Jones was too young to play on the actual course, he and Frank Meador built their own five-hole course alongside the East Lake property and played it all summer.

Jones learned the game by watching Stewart Maiden on the course. In his autobiography he explained, “Stewart never gave me a lesson in golf, though he has spent many hours, most of them profane, coaching me when I was in a slump with one club or another. I picked up my game watching him play, unconsciously as a monkey, and as imitatively.” During their second summer at East Lake, the Jones family rented a building, fondly known as the mule house, on the AAC’s property, which had been renovated as a summer home. Though Jones confessed to have liked baseball better than golf at the outset, he played in his first unofficial tournament, a six-hole match at East Lake. Alexa Stirling, who became Georgia’s first national amateur player, shot a lower score, but they gave Jones the six-inch cup that is still on display at the Club.

In 1911, at the age of nine, Jones won the AAC’s Junior Championship by overcoming sixteen-yearold Howard Thorne, 5 and 4, in the final, but Jones was not yet enamored of the sport. That changed when Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, on their way to the 1913 U.S. Open at Brookline (an event won by Frances Ouimet), stopped at East Lake to play an exhibition match with Stewart Maiden and Willie Mann, then head professional at Druid Hills Golf Club. The match so impressed Jones that he was inspired to polish his game. Later that year, while playing with Perry Adair, he shot an 80 for the first time. In August 1916 Jones won the Georgia State Amateur at the Brookhaven course of the

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Capital City Club by defeating Adair. That win presented him with an opportunity to compete in his first national championship, the U.S. Amateur at Merion Cricket Club in Philadelphia, where he lost to Robert Gardner in the third round.

Between 1916 and 1922 Jones was a student at Tech High School and the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), where he completed a degree in mechanical engineering. Throughout this

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The clubhouse at East Lake was destroyed by a fire in 1925.

Bobby Jones modeled his swing on that of Scottish club professional Stewart Maiden.

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The Cradle of Champions

period, he played in dozens of tournaments but did not capture a national title. Jones enjoyed his best round at East Lake while playing with his father, Tess Bradshaw, and Forrest Adair Jr. on September 16, 1922, a week after Jones lost to Jess Sweetser at the U.S. Amateur at Brookline. The next year, while studying for a second bachelor’s degree in English literature at Harvard University, he defeated Bobby Cruickshank in the playoff at the 1923 U.S. Open at Inwood Country Club in New York. Jones wrote, “I broke through at Inwood, and since then things somehow have been different.” When he returned to Atlanta on July 17, he was greeted at Brookwood Station and paraded home.

A week later, the AAC hosted a dinner for five hundred guests at East Lake to honor Jones. Mayor Walter A. Sims and Jones’s father, called “the Colonel,” as most lawyers were in this era, gave speeches extolling Jones’s “sterling qualities.”

Jones won thirteen major championships from 1923 to 1930. In A Golf Story, Charles Price explained, “From 1923 on, then, it was Jones against anybody; Jones against everybody; Jones, in fact, against the field.” One incident at the 1925 U.S. Open at Worcester Country Club in Massachusetts made Jones famous for his sportsmanship. On the eleventh hole in the first round, his iron shot put his ball in the tall grass. After he addressed it, the ball moved slightly, prompting Jones to call a penalty stroke on himself. Even though USGA officials urged him to reconsider because no one had seen or was sure what had happened, Jones refused to relent because he witnessed it. Gene Sarazen, who was competing, later said that it was the “greatest display of sportsmanship I’ve ever witnessed.”

Jones ultimately lost by one stroke in one of the event’s best finishes. Years later, in 1955, the

Quote of the Day “No male citizen of Atlanta has ever brought

more renown to the city than Robert Tyre Jones.”

—Franklin Garrett, Atlanta and Environs

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Bobby Jones was featured on Club Life after playing in his first major championship, the 1916 U.S. Amateur.

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AAC members at East Lake, ca. 1950s.

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The Cradle of Champions

Mae Murray and Beverly Hanson at the 1950 U.S. Women’s Amateur.

USGA established the annual Bob Jones Award for distinguished sportsmanship in golf.

The AAC received top billing at the 1925 U.S. Amateur Championship at Oakmont Country Club because Bobby Jones and Watts Gunn met in the finals. Gunn joined the AAC while at Georgia Tech. He was born in Macon in 1905 and enjoyed a distinguished amateur career, winning the 1928 Southern Amateur and Southern Open titles. He was a member of the U.S. Walker Cup teams in 1926 and 1928. But 1925 may have been his most memorable year. Never before or since had the finalists been members of the same club. In his first thirty-sixhole match, Gunn won fifteen straight holes, which became a world record at the time. On the evening before the final round, though, Gunn tried to leave the clubhouse to see a young woman by sneaking down the back stairs. Jones caught him and said, “Oh, no you don’t. You’re going to march right back Noted Georgia amateur Charlie Harrison.

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The Club’s First Major

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From September 11 to September 16, 1950, the AAC’s East Lake course hosted the Club’s first major championship, the fiftieth anniversary of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship. In advance of the event, AAC President W. B. “Bip” Farnsworth extended a warm welcome to the participants on behalf of the Club: “We consider it a great privilege to extend hospitality to America’s golf and country club leaders, if only in exchange for that enjoyed so often elsewhere by East Lake’s noted golfers. . . . Our committees have planned and worked eagerly to arrange facilities and accommodations worthy of our distinguished guests.” In the week leading up to the event, the trophy was on display in Davison’s department store downtown. AAC member Alexa Stirling, who had three U.S. Women’s Amateur titles, came from Ottawa, Canada, to compete, losing to Betty McKinnon 1-down. Her loss, however, gave her time to spend with her childhood friend and general chairman of the event, Robert Tyre Jones Jr. AAC member Dorothy Kirby was the favorite for the 1950 event, having been runner-up twice and medalist twice before and a four-time member of the Curtis Cup. She would win in 1951, and her championship medal is on display in the clubhouse. Beverly Hanson eventually won the title after defeating Mae Murray. The October 1950 issue of Club Times reported: “Youth routed tourney veterans and foreign entries from the start of the competition.” After the event, the AAC installed a plaque in the clubhouse to commemorate one of the matches: “Longest extra hole match between Miss Mae Murray of Rutland, Vermont, and Miss Fay Crocker of Montevideo, Uruguay. The match was scheduled for 18 holes. In the fourth round on Wednesday afternoon, September 13, 1950, the players were all square after 24 holes, when darkness stopped play. They resumed play the next day at noon and Miss Murray won on the 27th hole. The nine extra holes were three more than the previous USGA Championship record.” AAC member Gladys Denson explained what the event meant to the membership: “I was over there every day and watched it. Of course, I had just started playing golf. It made me want to play more and better after seeing those ladies play.” Twenty years after the U.S. Women’s Amateur was played at the AAC, Martha Kirouac, who would later become a member, won the title in 1970.

Dot Kirby, winner of the 1951 U.S. Women’s Amateur.

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AAC members Watts Gunn and Bobby Jones at the 1925 U.S. Amateur.

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Charlie Yates at Troon up to that room. You’ll need all the sleep you can get for tomorrow.”

The next day, Jones and Gunn faced a difficult thirty-six-hole match, but Jones remembered the 600-yard 12th hole, known as the Ghost Hole, as the turning point. Six years earlier, Jones had lost the hole in a match with Davy Herron when the blast of a megaphone interrupted his play. Going into the hole, Gunn played what Jones later called “the hottest inspirational golf I ever faced.” Gunn was on the green in three, but Jones’s third shot landed in the bunker, and he seemed destined to lose the hole. Jones blasted out of the bunker, put his ball ten feet from the cup, and sank his putt to halve the hole. In the last six holes, Jones was two under par and four holes up on Gunn. Gunn remembered with awe, “From there in I shot the best golf I knew how to shoot, but you know what I faced? He showed me 3-3-4-3-3-4, and at the end of the first eighteen holes I was four down. When he started the afternoon round at 4-3, it cooked my goose. I never caught up.”

In 1926 Jones became the first American to win “the double”—the British Open and U.S. Open— in the same year, and in 1927 he returned to St. Andrews for the British Open. He had married Mary Rice Malone and had one daughter, Clara. He would eventually have a son, Robert Tyre III, and another daughter, Mary Ellen. Jones continued to play in golf tournaments while attending Emory University Law School in Atlanta. During his second year he passed the bar exam and joined his father’s law firm, today’s Alston & Bird LLP. He also completed his autobiography, Down the Fairway, in collaboration with O. B. Keeler. For the next two years, Jones reduced his competitive schedule, playing mainly in major championships.

Though he did not make his plans public in 1930, Jones privately revealed the goal of winning the four major championships in one year to his wife, father, and Keeler. He first conceived the idea in 1926 after having lost the British Amateur for the second time.

When it became widely known that he would compete in the two nations’ amateurs and opens, Lloyd’s of London set the odds of Jones winning all four at

Ralph McGill, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, reported the following story from Scotland during the 1938 British Amateur. The event was won by Charlie Yates, who had been an AAC member since 1926: “Trudging along behind Charlie Yates as he marched through wind and rain and sun to win the British Amateur golf championship at Troon, I found myself thinking of East Lake and its members. The old tradition had come alive again, and here, after a lapse of eight years, was another golfer from East Lake bringing terror and dark days to British golf. East Lake was on the march, and I hope the members appreciate what it means to be a member of the East Lake club, a club known wherever golf is played. Thousands were asking how one club could produce so many fine golfers, and two British amateur champions within so short a span. I knew how the locker room faithfuls, and the caddies and attendants, and George Sargent were suffering as the field grew smaller and smaller. But Yates remained at the end of each day, until the last day came when he and East Lake were left to fight a lone battle for America. As long as golf is a subject of conversation, they will tell of that Friday when his eagle ‘two’ shook Cyril Tolley, and of his really magnificent comeback to catch Hector Thompson at the eighteenth and beat him at the nineteenth with as bold and fine a putt as golf has seen. Ten thousand men and women cheered him when the putt dropped and he looked up, a finalist. The next day he won the championship from a big Irishman (R. C. Ewing—3 and 2). East Lake and Atlanta had done it again.” Newspapers and photographs from this event are on display at the Club.

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50-1. In the winter and spring of 1930, Jones began trimming his weight and building his strength. He played in two regional events, the Savannah Open, where he lost to Horton Smith, and the Southeastern Open. With a thirteen-shot victory over Smith this time, Jones said of the event, “That’s where I played my finest golf in 1930.”

On April 30, Jones; his wife, Mary; Keeler; John G. Jackson of the USGA; members of the Walker Cup team; and other friends, including movie star Douglas Fairbanks, left New York for England aboard the Mauretania. On May 15 and 16 at the Royal St. George’s Golf Club in Sandwich, England, Jones captained the U.S. Walker Cup team to a 10 and 2 victory. He then traveled to St. Andrews for the British Amateur, the only major championship he had not won and the one he would later call “the most important tournament of my life.”

Jones received a bye in the first round and then faced a series of eighteen-hole matches, his least favorite format. Cyril Tolley took him to nineteen holes in his fourth-round match, and he had to rally from a 2-down deficit with five to play to beat George Voigt in the semifinals. Writing for American Golfer, Charles Price explained, “Looking back over Bobby’s eight matches, you may see crisis after crisis, in those furious encounters with Tolley, Johnston and Voigt, where the least slip in nerve or skill or plain fortune would have spelled blue ruin to Bobby’s dearest ambition. Yet at every crisis, he stood up to the shot with something which I can define only as inevitability and performed what was needed with all the certainty of a natural phenomenon.” In the final thirty-sixhole match, he bested his old friend, thirty-one-yearold Roger Wethered, 7 and 6. Elated by his victory, Jones turned to Keeler to say, “O.B., honestly, I don’t care what happens now. I’d rather have won this tournament than anything else in golf. I’m satisfied.”

Upon hearing the good news back home in Atlanta, Frank Ball, the AAC’s head professional at the East Lake course, threw his mashie in the lake behind the clubhouse to express his elation. In the Times of London, Bernard Darwin wrote that Jones “has now caught up to Alexander the Great and has no more championships to win.”

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After Jones won at Hoylake in 1930, O. B. Keeler began to call his quest “The Grand Slam.”

Bobby Jones being awarded his fourth and final U.S. Open trophy in 1930.

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Bobby Jones with his first and only British Amateur trophy, 1930.

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Jones paused from his competitive march long enough for a brief holiday in Paris with Mary. Then he traveled to the Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, England, for the British Open starting on June 18. Worried about his driving and putting, Jones qualified with a 73 at Hoylake and a 77 at Wallasey for a 150, putting him in twentieth place among qualifiers, nine strokes behind Archie Compston. He had now been traveling for seven weeks, and fatigue was diminishing his usual unerring play. If Jones played his best golf at the Southeastern Open earlier in the spring, he played his worst at the British Open.

O. B. Keeler later exclaimed that “he had more golf out of a worse game than he has ever managed before in an important competition.” Jones certainly agreed, confessing to Keeler, “I simply don’t know where the darned ball is going when I hit it.” Despite his erratic play, Jones won, with his score of 291. The Times of London declared it a “triumph of courage and putting.”

After Jones won the two British events, Keeler, writing for the Atlanta Journal, gave Jones’s quest a name—the Grand Slam.

The Liverpool Post and Mercury reported how America received the news of Jones’s win: “At Atlanta (Georgia), Jones’s hometown, the people literally went wild. Newspaper boys were swallowed up by crowds who, having bought newspapers themselves, took up the boys’ cries of ‘Bobby wins!’ All business came to a standstill, and staid business men pounded one another on the backs in true American fashion in enthusiasm at the win of their local hero.”

With his third British Open title, Jones and his family returned to America aboard the Europa. On July 2 they arrived in New York City and were met

by Mayor Jimmy Walker and 250 Atlantans, who had come to New York aboard a train named the Bobby Jones Special. At four in the afternoon, the Sanitation Department band and seventy mounted policemen led a motorcade up Broadway, giving Jones his second ticker-tape parade in just four years. The next day, Jones, his parents, Cyril Tolley, and O. B. Keeler boarded the train for Minneapolis and the U.S. Open.

His wife, Mary, returned home to Atlanta.

In contrast to the cool temperatures in Scotland and England, Interlachen Country Club, the host

O. B. Keeler celebrating some of Jones’s accomplishments in 1930, including his victorious play in the Walker Cup.

Jones won the last leg of the Grand Slam at the same site where he played his first major championship—Merion

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Cricket Club.

Quote of the Day “The wonderful thing about golf is that it holds forever the

interests of all who play—part of my devotion to golf is that I

extend an equal devotion to those who treat the game with love and respect. The Championships have been very much worth the effort they cost, but more important by far have been the

expanding interests they brought and the avenues of friendship with individuals and groups of people they opened for me.

That these rewards should endure so long makes it easy to see why for me golf will always be the greatest game.”

—Bobby Jones

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site for the U.S. Open, was experiencing a stifling heat wave. Against a field of 143 players, Jones opened with a 71, one stroke behind Tommy Armour and Macdonald Smith. The heat was so intense that Cyril Tolley lost nine pounds on the first day, Jim Barnes carried an umbrella to shade himself, and Armour rubbed his face with ice before each shot. Jones had to have his sweat-soaked tie cut off because it could not be loosened.

At Interlachen, Jones faced some of his toughest competitors—Macdonald Smith, Horton Smith, Armour, Walter Hagen, Harry Cooper, and John Golden, described by Charles Price as “all capable of sticking to the final putt.” Against these formidable opponents, Jones enjoyed some good fortune that complemented his overall outstanding play. After the first round he trailed coleaders Armour and Macdonald Smith by one stroke. At the end of the second round, Jones was tied with Cooper and Charles Lacey for second place, two strokes behind Horton Smith, who stood at 142. In Saturday morning’s third round, Jones separated himself from the field, leading Cooper in second place by five shots. In the afternoon final round, Jones came to the final hole leading by a single stroke at the time, though his closest pursuers would finish after him. Later he described the final putt on No. 18 that gave him a 75: “As I stepped up to the putt, I was quivering in every muscle. . . . It is impossible to describe the sensation I felt when I saw my ball take a small break five or six feet from the cup, so I knew it was in.” Jones’s final score of 287 was a stroke off the U.S. Open record.

With three legs of the Grand Slam completed, the pressure and excitement grew about whether Jones could now win the U.S. Amateur and capture all four major titles in a single year. Atlanta welcomed Jones home from Minneapolis with another parade, and Atlanta mayor I. N. Ragsdale presented Jones with a gold key to the city as a “symbol of affection of his friends and neighbors.” Afterward, Jones and his family went to the AAC for a quiet lunch with friends. Over the next few weeks, Jones occasionally played golf at East Lake but mostly tried to rest and regain his strength.

Merion Cricket Club outside Philadelphia was the site of the U.S. Amateur in 1930 and the last leg

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AAC members Bobby Jones and Perry Adair defeated Chick Evans and Ned Sawyer in an exhibition match in 1917.

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Quote of the Day “I remember so many of the longtime employees at

East Lake; they helped raise me. Mac ran the halfway house on the No. 2 course. Eddie was the maître d’ at the downtown club, and Duret ran the men’s grill.

Melvin was the bartender. Annie ran the boat house, and Barbara, Mattie, and Fannie worked at the grill.

Woodrow oversaw the bag room. I was a child, so I don’t

recall their last names. But I remember them all fondly.”

—Bill Pierce

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of the Grand Slam from September 22 to 27. At the age of fourteen, in 1916, Jones had played in his first national championship at the Club, also the U.S. Amateur. He won his first Amateur at Merion in 1924. Clubs used by him in that event are on display at the Club.

By this time, there was intense international interest about whether Jones could complete an unprecedented sweep of golf’s four majors. His sterling performance in the qualifying round, when he won medalist honors with a 142 against 167 other golfers, produced more anticipation. On the first day of the tournament, rounds played on Wednesday, Jones won his first two eighteen-hole matches against two Canadian golfers, Charles Ross “Sandy” Somerville and Fred Hoblitzel. To claim the trophy in those days, Jones would need to win three matches played over thirty-six holes, a format Jones preferred.

On Thursday, in the quarterfinal match, he beat Fay Coleman, 6 and 5. In the semifinal on Friday, Jones defeated his old friend and fellow baseball fan Jess Sweetser, who took a double-bogey 6 on the first hole and eventually lost, 9 and 8. In the other semifinal match, Charlie Seaver, the father of modern baseball star Tom Seaver, and Eugene Homans, a former Princeton champion, battled to get to the final bracket. Homans, who beat Seaver 1-up, was a twenty-two-year-old golfer from New Jersey who had a short drive, but a good short game.

At 9:15 on Saturday morning, September 27, Jones faced Homans. An hour before their tee time, the crowd was estimated at nine thousand people.

Homans was playing the best golfer in the world, who was on a mission to accomplish something no golfer had done before. Understandably this was a little daunting, and he did not card a par for the first five holes. At the end of eighteen, Jones was 7-up.

By the afternoon, the gallery had swelled to eighteen thousand, and Jones, Homans, and their caddies had to be protected by fifty Marines hired to control the crowds. On the 378-yard 11th hole, Homans missed a twenty-five-foot putt and conceded the match to Jones, who had rolled his approach putt close to the hole. Jones had a victory of 8 and 7. Herbert Warren Wind described the crowd’s reaction, “The moment

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The terrace at East Lake in the 1950s.

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they saw that Homans’ putt was not going to fall, the eighteen thousand spectators jammed around the green and back on the fairway let out a stentorian roar—a roar that reverberated around the world.”

The Grand Slam of today is different from the one in Jones’s era; it now includes the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship. Yet Jones’s accomplishment stands as among the most remarkable in all of golf. What he achieved in 1930 at the age of twenty-eight had no precedent, but it has become a goal for which all other competitive golfers strive, even as the events that make up the Grand Slam have changed. Jones himself appreciated the enormity of what he had accomplished: “I felt the wonderful feeling of release from tension and relaxation that I had wanted so badly for so long a time. I wasn’t quite certain what had happened or what I had done. I only knew that I had completed a period of most strenuous effort and that at this point, nothing more remained to be done, and that once I had completed this particular project, at least, there could never at any time in the future be anything else to do.”

To the surprise of his fans, Jones retired on November 17, 1930, barely two months after winning at Merion. In sum, he played in fifty-two tournaments, fewer than most professional golfers today play on tour in two years. AAC president Scott Hudson praised the decision: “Bobby Jones has done the proper thing at the right time. He has done what no other athlete has ever done. He has made himself the idol and ideal of the young men in golf and in business. He has left them a splendid example of sportsmanship.”

In each of his competitions, Jones registered as a member of the AAC, and he always shared

Quote of the Day “The streetcar stopped near my house on Lanier

Boulevard, and it would take you downtown then to East Lake for a nickel.”

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—J. Chandler Brown

The clubhouse at East Lake in the 1950s.

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a plaque near the putting green to commemorate the event, and Charlie Yates sang “A Wee Deoch and Doris,” the Scottish drinking song he had sung after the U.S. team lost the 1938 Walker Cup, to the delight of the audience. In 2005, for the seventyfifth anniversary, the AAC once again hosted the world’s celebration of his achievement.

After his retirement, Jones regularly played golf at East Lake. Jim Brett, the longtime AAC starter, remembered that until 1947 Jones came out to the Club often. “When I’d ask him how he’d played,” recalled Brett, “he’d say, ‘Not very well.’ Then I’d look at his card and it would read 67, 68, or 69.” Jones was a member of the AAC for his entire life, and he served the Club with distinction. When the Club elected to move north, he did not hesitate to go with them.

From 1928 to 1947 Jones served on the AAC’s board of directors and as president in 1946. Charlie Elliott, one of Jones’s closest friends, explained that “before,

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his victories with his home club. To honor him, the AAC has commemorated regularly the Grand Slam since Jones won it seventy-five years ago. In 1955, for the twenty-fifth anniversary, the AAC hosted a program to remember the event. In 1980, for the fiftieth anniversary, the AAC arranged a “Pilgrimage Commemoration” from September 27 to October 15. AAC members traveled to the Grand Slam sites—the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, Scotland; Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, England; Interlachen Country Club in Edina, Minnesota; and Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. Upon completion of the trip, the AAC hosted an awards banquet on October 15, 1980, with Merriell Autrey Jr., the president of the Club, presiding. A member from each of the Grand Slam sites made a tribute, and Harold Sargent, then golf professional at AAC, presented the awards. The members dedicated

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Celebrants at the AAC’s fiftieth anniversary of the Grand Slam in 1980.

Quote of the Day “East Lake was very formal and very genteel. Even the guests who would

come were well dressed. The club had a certain amount of prestige. I was a

young man in the business world and

an Atlanta Athletic Club membership meant a lot.”

—Richard McGinnis

▶ during, and after the time of these official duties, he contributed his invaluable experience to the growth and progress of the Club. During and following those two decades, Jones had a big voice in major decisions of policy and programs, which saw many changes and important moves such as the new club building on Carnegie Way, the addition of a second eighteen holes at East Lake to accommodate the increase in golf traffic, and the addition of the Yacht Club on Lake Lanier, a U.S. Corps of Engineers impoundment north of Atlanta, within easy access of a majority of AAC members.”

After 1930 Jones wrote several books, designed a matched set of clubs for A. G. Spalding & Bros., and acted in instructional films for Warner Brothers.

Yet he is probably best remembered today for establishing Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament with Clifford Roberts in the early 1930s. After serving in World War II, Jones returned to Atlanta, but was unable to play golf after 1948 because of a degenerative spinal disease, then diagnosed as syringomyelia. Even so, he remained active in the administration of the AAC, Augusta National Golf Club, and Peachtree Golf Club, which he helped establish in 1948. Ten years later, he returned to St. Andrews to accept the Freedom of St. Andrews—the first American to receive this honor since Benjamin Franklin nearly two centuries earlier. Jones was presented with a silver casket and

The Grand Slam plaque at the AAC dedicated in 1980.

scroll adorned with the seal of the city. Upon receipt, Jones declared, “This is the finest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

On October 11, 1992, under the leadership of AAC president Bill O’Callaghan, representatives of the AAC returned to St. Andrews to present a reproduction of the silver casket, made by Tiffany & Company, as a token of friendship between the two cities. The silver casket, which was presented to Joe Carr, captain of the R&A and a three-time British Amateur champion, is now used as the trophy for the Annual Town Match between the Captain’s Teams of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews and members of the St. Andrews Golf Club and the New Golf Club, representing the town. AAC members were invited to play in that year’s event, helping the R&A to victory, and the casket resides in the R&A clubhouse, along with the Queen Victoria Jubilee Vase and the original championship belt of the British Open Championship. The AAC also made a copy for the Jones Room.

Jones has been admitted into dozens of sports and golf halls of fame; there are three scholarships named for him, and a dozen clubs and museums continue to preserve his legacy. One of the most lasting tributes, though, came from his home club.

Shortly after the AAC moved north to Duluth, a decision that Jones supported, several club officers and directors decided it would be appropriate to

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The Cradle of Champions

Jones Museum today.

designate a corner of the new clubhouse to house the AAC Hall of Fame, in which pictures, books, trophies, golf clubs, and other memorabilia might be located to establish continuity between the new facilities and the important club history at the previous locations throughout the city of Atlanta. The special purpose was to recognize the achievements and leadership of those members who had contributed so much to the tradition and progress of the Club. Jones, who contacted Alexa Stirling Fraser and others to encourage them to provide special items for display, endorsed this plan for a memorial corner. After Jones’s death on December 18, 1971, the Club directors revisited their original plan. Because of the large number of items received, and particularly the priceless memorabilia given by Bobby and Mary Jones, it was decided that a special room was needed to display and protect this important collection.

The dedication ceremony for the Bobby Jones Room, funded in part by his old friend and fellow AAC member and former president of The CocaCola Company Robert Woodruff, took place on the evening of June 14, 1976, as a highlight of events preceding the 1976 U.S. Open. Present for the ceremony were Alexa Stirling Fraser, Watts Gunn, Charlie Yates, and Harold Sargent, all honorees in the Robert T. Jones Jr. Room. Also present were Jones’s daughters and grandchildren, together with families of other honorees and dignitaries from throughout the world. With the help of the R&A and USGA, the four Grand Slam trophies were brought together for the first time since 1930, when Jones

Quote of the Day “My parents joined East Lake in 1956, when I was

four years old. We lived in East Atlanta, and the Club was ten miles away. When I was eight, my father

would drop me off at East Lake on his way to work and pick me up on the way home.”

—Patrick Ford

▶

Harold Sargent, Watts Gunn, Alexa Stirling Fraser, Charlie Yates, and George Broadnax cutting the ribbon to open the Bobby Jones Room in 1976.

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A Host to History

â–¶

The Bobby Jones Room, ca. 1987.

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The Cradle of Champions

won the Grand Slam. Participating in the dedication ceremony were Joseph C. Dey (captain of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews), Harry W. Easterly (president of the USGA), and William H. Lane (chairman of Augusta National Golf Club).

On behalf of the AAC, Alexa Stirling Fraser cut the ribbon for her old friend and competitor. The Jones Room is one of the Club’s most visited sites, and is particularly popular among foreign visitors from as far away as Portugal, Chile, Japan, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and the Philippines.

The Jones Room has been continually updated and renovated over the years. In 1995 the AAC established the not-for-profit Jones Room Foundation to help support the museum. On April 1, 1995, the AAC unveiled replicas of the four Grand Slam trophies for permanent display in the Jones Room. The USGA and the R&A gave the Club permission to replicate the trophies. The exquisite reproductions were made by Garrards of London, the jeweler to the queen of England since 1843.

These trophies replaced the four plaster-of-Paris replicas that Jones gave the Club in 1932.

In partnership with the Club’s Heritage Committee, the Jones Room Foundation continues to act as steward for the Jones Room, the AAC archives, and the memorabilia on display throughout the Club. In 1999 AAC member John Bekkers donated a framed tapestry of Jones to the Jones Room Foundation which is displayed in the Interlachen Lounge. In 2000 the AAC added a kiosk to the room that shows a film documenting Jones’s life and legacy.

The AAC unveiled a bronze sculpture of Jones in the Centennial Garden on July 31, in advance of the 2001 PGA Championship.

Quote of the Day “I think both the Women’s Amateur and the Ryder Cup put East Lake on the map.”

—Bill Pierce

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George and Harold Sargent, along with George’s son, Jack, served the AAC as club professionals from 1932 until 1985.

The Sargent Family The Sargent family served the AAC with distinction for fifty-three years. After Stewart Maiden left the AAC, a succession of golf professionals, including Willie Ogg, Frank Ball, Billy Wilson, and Charlie Gray followed, but none left the kind of indelible imprint that the Sargents did. George Sargent became the professional at East Lake in 1932. Born in Epsom Downs, England, he learned to play golf early under Harry Vardon and immigrated to the United States as an established player and professional.

He won the 1909 U.S. Open, setting a record for the lowest score, and did the same in the 1912 Canadian Open. His U.S. Open medal is on display at the entrance to the AAC’s golf shop, appropriately named in honor of the Sargent family. George was a founding member and served as president of the PGA of America from 1920 to 1926. While working at Chevy Chase Golf Club, he gave lessons to President Taft. From there, he moved to Interlachen and then Scioto. Two years after Bobby Jones won the Grand Slam, he came to East Lake and remained there until his retirement in 1947. Harold Sargent, an assistant at the Club, followed his father as club professional at the AAC upon George’s retirement. Harold also served the golfing community as president of the PGA of America from 1958 to 1960 and was instrumental in bringing the 15th Biennial Ryder Cup Matches to East Lake in 1963. He moved with the Club when it elected to go north in the 1960s. In 1979, his brother, Jack, became the professional at the new facility and served until 1985, just as the AAC was building its reputation for the new courses as a championship venue. The Sargents’ legacy continues. Rick Anderson, the current director of golf, trained under the Sargents and was one of the first golf professionals in Georgia to earn the Master Professional designation. As a result of his efforts, his golf shop is listed regularly among the top in the nation.

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On March 17, 2002, in honor of Jones’s hundredth birthday, the Club made available to AAC members limited-edition reproductions of the portrait of Jones painted by Wayman Adams. The original portrait had been on display at the Club for the past seventy years, and the reproductions were sold, with proceeds benefitting the Jones Room Foundation, to carry out its mission. A copy was given to the Jones family, the USGA, and the Atlanta History Center.

On June 10, 2004, on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the R&A, Don Scartz, club president; Charles Anderson, chairman; and Bill O’Callaghan, past president, presented His Royal Highness Prince Andrew, the Duke of York and captain of the R&A, a copy of the Adams portrait for the R&A clubhouse.

The AAC was one of 20 U.S. clubs, among about 120 other international clubs, invited to participate in the International Foursomes Competition.

While Jones’s life and legacy are an important part of the Club, over the past century numerous AAC members have served the sport. Former Georgia State Golf Association president, former USGA executive committeeman, and AAC member Gene McClure emphasizes the often-unheralded legacy of golf at the AAC: In golf in this state and in the nation, members of the Atlanta Athletic Club have not been just the championship players. Many have given unselfishly of their time and talents to the administration of the game. AAC members have served as officers, directors, committee members, and volunteers in every possible capacity for the Georgia State Golf Association. At the national level, the first time a Georgian was selected as a member of the USGA’s Executive Committee was in 1909.

Of course, that person was from the Atlanta Athletic Club—Milton Dargan, who served as vice president until 1915. Four other AAC members followed him on the Executive Committee over the next fifty years, including Bobby Jones, who was a member when he won the Grand Slam in 1930.

Gene, a member of the AAC, was the fifth AAC member to serve in this capacity.

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AAC members Bill and Faye O’Callaghan, Charlie and Beth Anderson, and Don and Nita Scartz presenting a reproduction of the Wayman Adams painting to His Royal Highness Prince Andrew, in 2004.

Quote of the Day “No man can honor a club like this. The honor lies in belonging to it. I am prouder of being a member of this club than I could be of winning all the championships there are.”

—Bobby Jones

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The Cradle of Champions

The Legacy of Bobby Jones The AAC has helped preserve the Bobby Jones legacy in numerous ways. The Jones Room is an enduring tribute to one of the game’s most notable players and one of the AAC’s most beloved members and is one of the most visited sites at the Club. Visitors from all but three states have signed the guest book, as well as guests from forty-two countries. In 1976, AAC members helped establish the Robert T. Jones, Jr. Scholarship Program, an exchange between Emory University, where Jones attended law school, and the University of St Andrews.

Each year, the scholarship provides a fully paid year of study for four Emory students at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. The Robert T. Jones Trust recognizes individuals who will be excellent representatives of Emory University at St Andrews. In general, the qualities required to fulfill this ambassadorship include academic excellence and exemplary character, integrity, and citizenship. The AAC also hosts an annual dinner for the Jones Scholars. Additionally, John P. Imlay, Jr., former AAC president, helped establish the Friends of Bobby Jones group to honor Jones’s legacy. Each year around Jones’s birthday, on March 17, the group hosts an event at the AAC to commemorate Jones’s contributions to golf, to the city, and to his home club. Imlay, who passed away in 2015, also helped chair the Bobby Jones Executive Committee at the Atlanta History Center, which houses the largest exhibition on Jones in the world.

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Bill O’Callaghan awarding the replica of the silver casket given to Bobby Jones in 1958 to the town of St. Andrews. From left to right: Bill Funne, captain of the St. Andrews Golf Club; O’Callaghan; Joe Carr, captain of the R&A; and Jim Gould, captain of the New Golf Club.

Ambassador Members In October 1994, the board of directors recognized Ambassador Members to further the friendly relations between members of the AAC and members of clubs outside the United States. Perhaps these relationships started with the AAC’s first three golf professionals, all from Scotland. They were no doubt solidified by the travels of Bob Jones, Charlie Yates, and more recently by our many members who travel the world and by members of other clubs around the world who regularly visit the AAC. Today there are over thirty Ambassador Members from nine different countries.

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The AAC’s 1967 volleyball team.

56 A H Aost Host to to History History

CHAPTER THREE

A

Visionary

Move

T

he Atlanta Athletic Club’s move north to Duluth (now John’s Creek) in the 1960s was part of a century-long trend of suburbanization. The AAC opened the East Lake facility in the early twentieth century as a country retreat, just as prosperous Atlantans were looking for rural enclaves in which to enjoy recreation and fresh air. Many were responding to a major population shift that affected urban areas between 1900 and 1920.

During this period, the population in cities grew by 80 percent. Overcrowding, pollution, and crime prompted older and wealthier residents to seek refuge in places like East Lake, one of Atlanta’s first suburbs. East Lake primarily served the AAC’s summer residents, as well as members, who, with limited access to transportation and good roads, lived relatively close by. With the advent of the interstate highway system, begun during Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency, many of the Club’s members began to move out of the city, distancing themselves from the golf course, lake, and changing demographics of the neighborhood. The prosperous northern suburbs of Marietta, Sandy Springs, Roswell, Dunwoody, Alpharetta, and Duluth—which developers called the Golden Crescent—became home to many AAC members.

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A Visionary Move

Suburbs were originally isolated from the city center and had few of the services available to city dwellers. But that quickly changed, and clean streets, new schools, and large houses made them some of the most desirable places to live. In this context the membership elected to relocate the AAC. Members who remained in or near the city continued to enjoy the amenities of the downtown club and East Lake; those who moved north began to call for an accessible facility that would serve their recreational needs. In 1958 the AAC opened the Yacht Club at Lake Lanier to accommodate the latter group. The decision to do so is best understood as a compromise. At the time, there was some debate about whether the Club should build a third course north of Atlanta. Charlie Elliott pointed out that the Yacht Club was intended “as a peace move to bring the two factions together by giving the northsiders a facility and keeping East Lake intact.”

What began as little more than a casual suggestion quickly became a reality. The Club Times reported on October 15, 1957, “When the Lake Lanier property is completely developed, it will give our Atlanta Athletic Club accommodations unsurpassed by any other club in the nation with a beautiful City Club, a comfortable Country Club with two first-rate golf courses, and the Lake Lanier area. Certainly all members agree that AAC membership is the most valuable that can be had in this or any other city.”

Built along Lake Sidney Lanier, Buford Dam was a U.S. Corps of Engineers project intended to block the Chattahoochee and Chestatee Rivers with the intention of establishing the thirty-ninethousand-acre Lake Sidney Lanier, named for the Georgia poet. Before the lake was filled, the AAC, under the leadership of Ira H. Hardin, who joined the AAC board in 1953, was given the task of locating waterfront property to establish a marine facility for the Club. Responsibility for purchasing the land rested with T. R. “Dick” Garlington, who served as AAC president in 1947–1948, and he took from the estate of A. H. Holland an option on two tracts of land on the east side of the lake—a long, sloping hillside on

A Host to History

Arnold Palmer, far right, at the 1963 Ryder Cup.

▶

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The 1963 Ryder Cup

▶

From October 11 to October 13, 1963, the AAC’s East Lake course played host to the Ryder Cup, with one of the most charismatic playing captains in the history of the game. Arnold Palmer led the American team, which consisted of Billy Casper Jr., Tony Lema, Gene Littler, Dave Ragan Jr., Dow Finsterwald, Billy Maxwell, Johnny Pott, Julius Boros, Bob Goalby, and first alternate Bob Rosburg. Palmer came to the event claiming that the American team would “beat the rest of the world combined,” and he made good on that promise. The British team was composed of nonplaying captain John Fallon, Brian Huggett, Neil Coles, Bernard Hunt, George Will, Peter Allis, Tom Haliburton, Christie O’Connor, Harry Weetman, Dave Thomas, and Geoffrey Hunt. Former AAC president Neal Purcell explained that “the Ryder Cup matches in 1963 put the Club in the limelight around the world.” Both teams found a tough course that played to a par-70 at 6,898 yards, with long and narrow fairways and small greens that required tremendous accuracy.

In 1963 the PGA of America streamlined the format of the event, adding a day of four-ball matches.

On Friday, for the eighteen-hole foursome matches, the U.S. team gained 6 points to the British team’s 2.

On Saturday, for the eighteen-hole four-ball matches, they repeated the same score. On Sunday, the sixteen matches were played eight in the morning and eight in the afternoon. The United States took 11 additional points to the British team’s 5. The final score was 239, giving the Americans a victory for the twelfth time in fifteen tries. Six months before the matches, AAC golf professional Harold Sargent, who was largely responsible for bringing the event to Atlanta, hosted a Ryder Cup Pro-Am to coincide with the Masters. Julius Boros, playing with AAC members Charlie Harrison, John Shea, and William Branch, won. After the Ryder Cup, Bobby Jones wrote H. C. “Hikie” Allen Jr., the Club’s president and the general chairman of the event, about how much he enjoyed it: “I just thought I would tell you that there is not one single thing coming to my attention or notice about the Ryder Cup matches that failed to give me pleasure. More specifically, the golf course was beautiful, the crowds well behaved and knowledgeable, the players skillful and attractive, and the general functioning as smooth as possible. This could not have been done without a lot of work and splendid organization.”

Bobby Jones and Harold Sargent at the Ryder Cup in 1963.

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A Visionary Move

the Big Creek side of the lake and a wooded cove near the mouth of Flowery Branch Creek. The club settled on the Flowery Branch site and eventually purchased additional land for a total of fifty acres.

The Charles M. Graves Company was hired as the landscape architect to develop the facility, and William H. “Bud” Walters, who had served for six years as maintenance engineer for the downtown club, was hired to manage it. The Yacht Club formally opened in July 1958 and soon became known for a series of events throughout the year—the Fourth of July Barbeque, Pass-in-Review, the Labor Day Country Dinner and Square Dance, the Cast-Off Party, the Mystery Island Party, and the Shipwreck Party. Mike Hale, who grew up at the Yacht Club, fondly remembered the ring toss in the clubhouse: “It was a steel washer on a string, and there was a hook on the wall. Every kid who grew up in the Athletic Club would run to the Yacht Club restaurant to swing that washer. It would keep us kids busy for hours.”

Hal A. Cook became the first commodore in 1957, and membership grew to two hundred by 1966. In the 1970s, though, the economy was faltering, inflation was increasing, and the nation found itself in the midst of an energy crisis. Tom Forkner explained how the Yacht Club managed to grow in these lean economic times: “At a board of directors meeting, we discussed how much the Yacht Club needed new slips. But we didn’t have the money. One member offered to pay for the additions, allowing the Club to pay them back when they could. Times were tough.”

Like the sale of East Lake in the 1960s, the sale of the Lake Lanier Yacht Club was a difficult decision for the Club. In the mid-1990s, the facility began to show its age, and the original slips could not accommodate the larger boats that members had been buying for several years. About 6 percent of the membership, or about 120 members, were active in the Yacht Club, and though they loved the facility, it became clear that the Club was going to need to spend $2 million renovating the current facility. The board and membership found themselves at a crossroads. On one hand, the Yacht

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Yacht Club, 1960s–1980s.

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A Visionary Move

Club was popular, even if for a small group, yet it was beginning to cost the Club more than seemed prudent.

One way the Club sought to compromise was to offer a separate Yacht Club Only Membership program, with a reduced initiation fee to help attract a large number of new members. It was mildly successful, bringing in thirty-five additional members. However, by 2001, under Don Moss’s tenure as president, the Yacht Club was no longer profitable and needed to be closed down. Finally, under the leadership of Louis J. Douglass III, in 2004, it was sold to a private investor, who elected to keep it as a private compound. The funds from the sale of the Yacht Club were used to partially offset the cost of renovating the Highlands Golf Course.

During this same period, to accommodate the in-town members, in 1954 the AAC remodeled the dining room, entrance hall, and roof garden at the downtown club and invested additional resources into the athletic program. Member Kay Smith, daughter of general manager Albert Happoldt, remembered, “It had marble, crystal chandeliers, polished brass.

It was very regal. It was probably the closest thing at that time in my life to being in a castle.” The roof garden proved particularly popular and is frequently remembered by longtime members. Gladys Denson recalled, “What I liked best about it was the roof garden. In the summertime, we’d go up there and dance, and you could see the whole city.” Charlotte Heinz expressed the same sentiment: “The stars were beautiful, the band was great, and the steaks were good. What more could you ask for?” Frank Deaver recalled, “Jimmy Gonzales had a little combo and for years he played. And as people would walk in he would know what your favorite songs were. He would play the song that he knew you were going to request before the evening was over.”

The 1950s and 1960s were marked by a period of renovation and change for East Lake as well. In 1950 the porch at East Lake was enlarged to provide a terrace for dancing, and in 1957 a 164-foot swimming pool, one of the largest in the South, was completed.

A Host to History

Children playing at the beach at East Lake.

▶

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Quote of the Day “When my wife and I moved out here

to a new apartment complex, there was nothing. But we moved out here to be near the Club.”

—Cole Van Houten East Lake lifeguards.

▶

Aerial of East Lake.

The annual meeting buffet at the downtown club, ca. 1950s.

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Reuben M. Berry remembered, “We’d dance on the patio and out on the deck. In the springtime, the weather was perfect, and the moon would be shining as big as a pumpkin. You’d walk down hand in hand with your date. It was so romantic, and you’d steal a kiss or two. Nobody ever became tired in those days; we just danced, danced, and danced.” The AAC also built a new bathhouse and remodeled and expanded the clubhouse and tennis courts. In advance of the 1963 Ryder Cup matches, the Club added new bunkers and rebuilt many of the tees on the No. 1 course. But problems with parking and other logistics during the event revealed that in order to become a championship venue, the Club would have to follow the rest of the city in moving north.

Where members once brought their families to play at East Lake during the day and stay for dinner, in the early 1960s few remained on site after a round of golf. Jean Brooks recalled, “The golfers would come out, and in the summer the swimmers would come out. But they weren’t supporting anything socially at the Club. They said it was too far away.”

Hugh M. Dorsey Jr. echoed the point: “As fine as East Lake was, it was clear that it was not where the future was going to be. The geographical center of the membership of the Club was no longer there.”

The usage of the facility began to decline, and the course became a popular target for vandals. The September 1962 issue of the Club Times reported that “vandalism on our two courses cost the Club approximately $1,000 [during a four-month period].

This money went to replace markers on the tees, repair broken benches, replace flags and flagpoles which were stolen or wrapped around a nearby tree, repair mutilated ball washers and drinking fountains, and in some cases replace a section of green dug up or otherwise damaged by the prowlers.”

In the early 1960s club president H. C. “Hikie” Allen began investigating the viability of purchasing property in north Fulton County. A small committee looked at land on both sides of the Chattahoochee River and optioned a tract of land along the

▶

Nationally known talent, such as Sammy Kaye and his orchestra, played regularly at the AAC.

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â–¶

The Crystal Room at the downtown club.

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A Visionary Move

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Quote of the Day “When the Club moved, I think it was good for the members. They were wise to buy this land; it proved to be a good investment. I moved up here with Tom Forkner, Joe Rogers, and other members and built a home near the Club.”

—Harold Williams

▶

Norcross-Cumming Road, west of the river. The 614-acre northside property, called River Bend, was purchased in January 1963 for $420,000. The land had been a farm owned by Ben Summerour. “It was rich bottom land,” former AAC president Charles Pittard recalled. “Mr. Summerour grew cotton and corn, and when I was a teenager, I used to hunt over there.” A development committee, made up of Jim Shumate (who was later replaced by Oliver Saggus), Watts Gunn, and Allen Hardin, was responsible for selecting an architect and handling the contract for the golf course and new clubhouse.

The club originally planned to maintain both courses at East Lake and build two new ones north of the city. But such a strategy was not fiscally possible, and on January 19, 1965, the AAC membership voted to sell the No. 2 course at East Lake to help finance the building of the new course. The anticipated sale to an apartment building developer out of Memphis, Tennessee, was contingent upon proper zoning. The price was reportedly set at $1 million. The city of Atlanta, upon the recommendation of Alderman Ed Gilliam, considered purchasing the land to make a public park, but it was deemed too expensive. Gilliam is reported to have had “no idea where the city would get the money, but I do know we need additional parks and it is all but impossible for the city to find large areas of undeveloped land suitable for closein parks.” The developers who bought the property converted it into FHA public housing units, and those units ultimately became part of the Atlanta Housing Authority’s East Lake Meadows project.

No one ever dreamed that shortly after the purchase of the River Bend property the AAC’s new course would host the U.S. Open. In March 1966 the board reported, “We have entered into a contract with Robert Trent Jones, the world’s most outstanding golf architect, to construct 27 holes of championship golf at River Bend for a price of $650,000. The contract is bonded and insured that regardless of happenings, we will not be in a position of having a half-finished course with all of the money gone.” Jones promised

Jerry Gardner was named athlete of the month, ca. 1970s.

â–¶

Noted amateur AAC golfer Joyce Denson was inducted into the AAC Hall of Fame in 1995.

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A Visionary Move

to oversee the construction personally and complete the new course by 1967. By April 1966, twenty-seven holes were mapped, and the construction had begun.

In May 1966 the name River Bend Country Club was officially adopted, and in September and October 1966 the course was seeded. The new twenty-sevenhole course at River Bend was dedicated on May 27, 1967, with a celebration that was attended by some 700 members; 224 golfers played the course for the first time. The club announced a “Name-The-Nines” contest for a fifty-dollar prize and received two hundred entries. They finally settled on Big Bend, Waterloo, and Long View.

Robert Trent Jones actually designed the first thirty-six holes, with the last nine running along State Road 141. But the Club decided to hire architect Joe Finger to rework the last nine holes because they did not go down to the river bottom like the other three nines. The club eventually bought additional property near Nos. 2 and 3, and the fourth and final nine opened late in the summer of 1970.

Construction on the new clubhouse began in October 1968, scheduled for completion in September 1969, for a price of $1.1 million. The clubhouse was originally divided into two distinct wings to accommodate golfing and social members.

During construction, golfers used the tennis and swimming complex as a temporary clubhouse. The athletic center, Olympic-sized swimming pool, and five outdoor tennis courts officially opened on June 14, 1970. Several months later the city finished the extension of Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, helping

Quote of the Day “When the Club moved to Duluth, it was like a family.

Everybody worked really hard and took so much pride

in the new facility. We were here to serve the members, and had a clear purpose.”

▶

—Jimmy Cole, director of facilities

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Aerial view of club construction.

Robert Trent Jones

▶

Born on June 20, 1906, in Ince, England, Robert Trent Jones was one of the most prolific golf-course architects in the twentieth century.

His family came to Rochester, New York, in 1912, and he attended Cornell University for two years. In 1929 he joined Canadian architect Stanley Thompson’s firm, working on Capilano in Vancouver and Banff in the Rockies. During the Depression, Jones designed six public courses for the Works Project Administration (WPA) before ending his partnership with Thompson in 1938. He established his own firm, pioneering what he called the “heroic” approach to golf course architecture, a blend of the best features in the competing “penal” and “strategic” approaches.

Jones’s synthesis of these two schools of thought created the modern approach to golf-course design. For the next seven decades, he designed some of the most famous courses in the United States, including the first twenty-seven holes of the AAC. In 1976 Jones was the first recipient of the Donald Ross Award for outstanding contributions to course design from the American Society of Golf Course Architects. He died on June 14, 2000, but his sons Robert Trent Jones Jr. and Rees Jones have carried on his important legacy. Rees, known as “the Open Doctor,” guided the renovation of both the Highlands and Riverside courses.

An artist’s rendering of the new clubhouse in Duluth.

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A Visionary Move

to significantly reduce travel time for members. The St. Andrews Room, which offered the members a large banquet facility, was added to the original clubhouse in 1974.

For a while, the AAC thought it could operate both the No. 1 course at East Lake and the new River Bend course. But play at East Lake did not dramatically increase, despite the notable improvements to the facility. At a February 13, 1968, board meeting, Larry Martin explained that the Club was going to have difficulty maintaining two golf facilities and recommended that River Bend become the only one.

He explained, “I believe that this club can live with only one golf facility, unless we want to pay substantially higher golfing dues than at present.” At a stockholders meeting on April 2, 1968, the final vote, on the board’s recommendation, was to dispose of East Lake, 900 in favor, 551 opposed. As Jim Auchmutey reported in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “The sale of East Lake, in 1968, was controversial to say the least. To some, the idea of disposing of the hallowed links was almost sacrilegious—tantamount to building a drivein theater at Augusta National. Friends parted over the issue. Harsh words were spoken.” But the final vote prevailed.

When it came time to sell the East Lake course, twenty-five members of the AAC, led by Paul Grigsby, pledged money to raise $1.6 million to purchase the older facility “with the intention of continuing its existence for all time as one of the world’s most noted country clubs.” The membership dropped dramatically, from two thousand to less than two hundred. In a 1983 article for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Grigsby, an AAC member since 1938, explained, “You know, I went to talk to [Bobby] Jones eight or 10 times back in 1968 to try to stop the sale, but he never wavered.

His loyalty belonged to the Athletic Club, not a plot of ground. But he did say he was happy we weren’t going to let the old place go to pot.”

There was a great deal of speculation at the time about whether Jones would remain with his old club or go with the group that sought to preserve the

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Quote of the Day “Joining the Atlanta Athletic Club was a

privilege. Like the Piedmont Driving Club and

Peachtree Golf Club, the Atlanta Athletic Club

reflects the history of our city. We have seen the Club change and become more family friendly, but it is the history that sets it apart.”

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—Dave and Kathy Tholen

Top: 1960s building with flags; Bottom left: Athletic Center in 1970; Bottom middle: The remodeled Athletic Center in 1999; Bottom right: The clubhouse during construction in the late 1960s.

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A Visionary Move

course upon which he learned to play. In an article for the Atlanta Journal, he made his position clear: “Of course, I have a great deal of sentiment toward the Atlanta Athletic Club. But, as far as the ground itself is concerned, it doesn’t matter any difference.

I grew up there, but what the hell. Whatever the membership wants is what I’m for.” Charlie Yates echoed Jones’s sentiment: “I am very proud of the fact that East Lake golf course has been preserved, and I’m also proud that the Atlanta Athletic Club decided they would move to the north part of Atlanta, where the real growth was. I am also very proud of the judgment of the policymakers to realize that a move was necessary, given the changes in population patterns in Atlanta, and that they did decide to move out to the River Bend area.” Harold Sargent moved north with the membership and began his forty-fifth year with the AAC. On July 1, 1969, the twenty-five former AAC members took full responsibility for East Lake. (Years later, when Tom Cousins redeveloped East Lake, the AAC fully supported his efforts to preserve the historic course and clubhouse.)

With the disposal of East Lake, the Club began debating in August 1969 what to do with the downtown club, because it was losing approximately twenty-five thousand dollars a month. Just a year earlier, the board spent four hundred thousand dollars, proceeds from the sale of East Lake, to redecorate it. The members loved it, and the staff acted like a family. Gwen Lyons, who was the payroll supervisor, recalled, “At the downtown club where I worked, I can recall that one of the Club’s masseurs used to play on the Atlanta Crackers baseball team on his day off.” But the sale was inevitable.

Larry Martin reflected on the final decision: “The whole board—I along with them—made an error in judgment. We thought that improvements and promotion of downtown was what was needed. We failed to see that the center city was changing and our members just wouldn’t patronize us as before.

We should have been concerned with River Bend earlier.” It quickly became clear that the resources

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Joe Finger Joe Finger remodeled or revised some of the best courses in Georgia, among them Augusta National Golf Club in partnership with Byron Nelson, Capital City Club, Peachtree Golf Club, and the AAC’s Highlands course in 1971, for which he renovated the last nine holes of the original layout (now the Highlands front nine). Born in Houston in 1918 Finger played on the golf team coached by Jimmy Demaret while attending Rice University in 1939. Finger would later partner with Demaret in 1964 on the design of the Monster Course at the Concord Resort in New York.

Finger received a master’s degree in engineering from M.I.T. in 1941.

After a successful career in plastics manufacturing, he turned to golf course design in 1956. His original designs include Atlanta Country Club with Willard Byrd, Cypress Lakes Golf Club in California, two courses at Colonial Country Club in Tennessee, and Las Colinas Country Club in Texas. He had been retired for thirteen years prior to his death in 2003.

Quote of the Day “I think now everyone would agree that the move to our new location in Duluth was one of the greatest things we did.”

—Buz McGriff, athletic director Board member Harry Cashin, General Manager Jim Petzing, and President Eugene Branch at the grand opening ribbon cutting of the new building.

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and energy should be turned to the new club, not in maintaining older structures.

In 1971, as the Club faced declining membership and increasing costs to maintain off-site facilities, the AAC made preparations to sell the downtown club.

The club held an auction for the members, and Pat and Mayo Atkins remembered, “We bought four of the armchairs and a couple of the silver finger bowls. I think the chandeliers were sold for seventyfive thousand dollars each.” Regarding the sale of the facility, Gene Branch recalled, “None of us had any crystal ball, but we knew we had to take drastic action if we were going to be a first-class club.” The projected sale was part of a redevelopment effort of the area between Peachtree Center and the new coliseum under construction on Techwood Drive.

The plan, at first, was to convert the existing ten-story building into a hotel to help serve Atlanta’s growing convention business. But that would take some time, and finally the Carnegie Way facility was auctioned off in 1972 for just over $1 million to a group of investors, led by George Griffith. The downtown building was eventually demolished in 1973—the first building in the South to be imploded—to make way for a thirtyone-story, $28 million Treadway Inn hotel.

But those plans never materialized, and the site was leased to Central Parking, which operated it as a ground-level parking lot beginning in 1978. Albert and Mary Happoldt, who served the AAC for eighteen years, remembered the demolition: “We were on our way to Florida, coming up Spring Street on a Sunday, and I saw the roof cave in.” Albert confessed, “I cried.

That was a beautiful place. And it was home to us.”

Buz McGriff recalled, “The building was gone, just wiped away. The only sign it had been there was the muddy water where the pool had been.” With the establishment of the Yacht Club and the sale of both East Lake and the downtown club, the AAC entered a new era. All eyes turned north.

A magazine article describing the

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demolition of the downtown club.

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Squash was a popular sport at the AAC in the 1950s and 1960s.

Quote of the Day “When the Club moved, it went from a very

mature club and course to a very new one. It was

a very different environment from East Lake. But

we moved to be with Atlanta’s future growth, and it was a great decision.”

—Patrick Ford

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An aerial photograph of the new course at River Bend.

76 A H Aost Host to to History History

CHAPTER FOUR

Building a

Championship

Venue

T

he March 1969 issue of the Club Times boldly announced, “River Bend will be one of the finest country clubs in the South. Golf, swimming, tennis, or resting in the shade of the pine trees will be available to all members of the family. The club will be attractive and well managed, and you will be proud to invite your friends and associates to join you there as guests.” The editor could never have envisioned that the AAC’s new home would also become a championship venue for tennis, badminton, swimming, and golf, unmatched in the South and with few peers in the nation.

On June 14, 1970, the AAC celebrated the opening of the Olympic-sized swimming pool and five tennis courts. The fitness boom of the 1970s helped shape the next few decades of the Club’s growth. During this period, the board surveyed the membership and elected to build a freestanding athletic center in October 1973, encouraging basketball, volleyball, badminton, squash, and racquetball. Numerous members actively played these sports. William L. Hale Jr. said of his father, Bill, who played handball, “He has enough first-place silver goblets for the whole group to have one at dinner, about eleven or twelve.” In addition, an exercise room with weight machines was included. Buz McGriff, who served as athletic director for thirty years, recalled, “We were at the right place at the right time. All over

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Jim Petzing, general manager, with Mary Jones, Employee of the Year, and Chris Borders, club manager.

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the United States people were zeroing in on physical fitness. And now we had the knowledge and the tools to work with.” That same year, to keep up with the demand, the board elected to build four additional tennis courts that were illuminated for night play.

Today, there are sixteen lighted courts.

The AAC began an annual ten-kilometer invitational run in 1979, which was conducted through the surrounding neighborhood, and Mark Thompson of Druid Hills Golf Club won the first event. For years, the Club has hosted an annual five-kilometer Turkey Trot, with a one-mile fun run on the golf courses a Saturday before Thanksgiving Day. In keeping with recent trends, the AAC opened the Cardio Theater in 1995, which offered members a chance to enjoy all forms of entertainment while exercising. The athletic center was renovated in 2001, and the Retreat, a fullservice spa, was added soon after.

The AAC hosted regional and national events in a wide range of sports throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In March 1979 the AAC was the site of the Southern Badminton Tournament. The club was selected because AAC members Cam Mitchell, Ed Patton, Guy Johnson, Bill Braswell, Jim Carlton, W. P. “Bill” Rocker, Allen McGhee, and Jim Taylor were active members of the organization and had competed in national championships since 1940. The tournament included players from around the nation and was classified into divisions—collegiate for men and women, an open division for all players, and a veteran division for various age groups over forty.

Though the AAC played host, the event was held at the Emory University Field House because of the need for additional seating. Because of the success of the 1979 tournament, in 1984 and 1985 the AAC hosted the United States Badminton Association Senior and Open National Championships, which included three hundred competitors. In honor of the 1985 tournament, Georgia governor Joe Frank Harris declared April 21–27 “Badminton Week” in Georgia.

The only sad note came two weeks before the event when Guy Johnson, the tournament chairman, passed away. During this same period, in 1984, the AAC, at the request of member Dick Andrews, sponsored the National Senior Racquetball Tournament, which ultimately raised ten thousand dollars for leukemia

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Robert L. Johnson and Bob Lassiter on the badminton court.

First Impressions

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Though supportive of the Club’s decision to move north, many of the members were skeptical when they first saw the facility. John P. Imlay Jr. recalled, “People thought we were crazy.” Glenn Dewberry agreed. “We had gone from one extreme to another.

We were way out in the country, and it was difficult to get the facility used.” Angie Wells remembered, “It was like a retreat. We saw no cars.”

Member Sonny Ackerman told a revealing story about the early years at River Bend: “They had a time getting people to join the Club. I never will forget, we’d been out here about ten months, and we’d hired a maître d’. I don’t even remember his name.

And Joe Rogers and I and our wives came out one Friday night around seven o’clock to eat dinner. When we arrived at the door, he said, ‘Do you have a reservation?’ I replied, ‘What do you mean a reservation? There ain’t anybody in here but us four.’”

Member William L. Hale Jr. said, “This place was in the sticks. It was so far from our house, it was like going to Birmingham to see our grandmother.

Back then I-285 had a grass strip in the middle of it. I remember coming to the Club one day, and we had to stop because an airplane had run out of gas and had to land in the grass right at Peachtree Industrial and I-285.”

Athletic Director Buz McGriff with a member in the Athletic Center.

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research at Emory University. From March 8 to March 10, 2001, the AAC once again became host to the Southern Badminton Association Tournament.

The AAC’s reputation as a championship venue in golf started to grow as the Club began hosting national events, starting with the 1976 U.S. Open.

From September 21 to September 25, 1982, the AAC played host to the Commercial Union Junior World Cup, the premier international junior golf competition, which featured top junior players from sixteen countries in match and medal play. The event was intended to provide an international team event for boys seventeen years of age and under, thus stimulating good fellowship among young golfers.

Conceived in 1979 by Commercial Union Insurance Company in conjunction with London-based Ted Dexter & Associates, the Junior World Cup was first played at St. Andrews, Scotland, in 1980, and then at Portmarnock, Ireland, in 1981. Jim Heard, an AAC member, captained the first American team.

Thirty-two AAC families volunteered in 1982 for the Junior World Cup to serve as hosts for the participants, and general chairman Charles Brown, working with Merriell Autrey, Gene Branch, and Charlie Douglas, worked hard to create a familyoriented tournament. The U.S. team—Stuart Hendley of Houston, Texas, and Richard Marik of Anaheim, California—lost to the team from Spain that included Nacho Gervas and Jose Maria Olazabal. As member Bill Pierce fondly remembered the event, “We sponsored the Spanish team. We took the boys to Stone Mountain, the Governor’s Mansion, had them to the house for dinner. We spent the whole week together. I caddied for Olazabal. He didn’t speak a lot of English, and he and his partner were having a lot of trouble reading the bent-grass greens. They needed some help, but their federation could not pay for them to have caddies. Their captain caddied for Gervas, so I carried for Olazabal for thirty-six holes. One day, Charlie Yates was following us, and Olazabal hit a ball in the woods on No. 5 on Highlands. He took a 2- or 3-iron and hit a remarkable shot. For years he talked about that shot.”

The USGA Mid-Amateur Championship was played over the AAC’s Highlands course from September 29 to October 4, 1984. In advance of the

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▶ ▶

Gene Branch, J. Neal Purcell, John P. Imlay Jr., F. M. Bird, and Larry H. Garrett at the dedication of the remodeled clubhouse.

Golf Shop ribbon cutting.

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event, Bill O’Callaghan explained, “It is fitting that this important amateur event will now come to the Atlanta Athletic Club, since this championship will mark the sixtieth anniversary of Bob Jones’s first national amateur triumph in 1924.” The tournament, begun in 1981 by the United States Golf Association, offered amateur golfers over the age of twenty-five who had remained amateurs—as Bobby Jones did—a formal national championship. The winners of the first three events were Jim Holtgrieve (1981 at Bellerive Country Club), Bill Hoffer (1982 at Knollwood Country Club), and Jay Siegel (1983 at Cherry Hills Country Club). The trophy, aptly named the Robert T. Jones Jr. Memorial Mid-Amateur Trophy, was originally made by Davis-Freeman Company, an Atlanta jeweler, in 1909. Jones won the DavisFreeman tournament three times, in 1917, 1919, and 1920, and, as was common in those days, was allowed to keep the cup. In partnership, the AAC and the Georgia State Golf Association (GSGA) mounted the cup on a wooden base and donated it to the USGA in the first year the Mid-Amateur was played.

For the 1984 event, Neal Purcell, who became AAC president two years later, served as general chairman.

In 1983 he assembled a steering committee, and as he remembered, “We had thirty-one people in leadership positions who were invited to a 7:30 meeting on a Saturday morning. All thirty-one showed up. That shows you what cooperation we had.”

The Mid-Amateur was thirty-six holes of medal play with the low 64 from a field of 150 players advancing to the match-play competition. There was a fifteen-way playoff for the final seven spots, which included seven Georgians—Danny Yates, Seth Knight, Walter Driver, Robert Young, William Ploeger, Allen Doyle, and William Holbrook. Yates, Driver, Young, and Holbrook advanced to match play. The winner, Mike Podolak, a thirty-one-yearold insurance executive from Fargo, North Dakota, overcame co-medalist Bob Lewis Jr., 5 and 4, for the title. Podolak had barely qualified for the event. He was made an honorary member of the AAC, and he has returned to the Club to play the course and see old friends. As he noted, “I want to give special thanks to the Atlanta Athletic Club for my opportunity to come back and visit. The AAC is a very special place.”

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Mike Podolak, the 1984 Mid-Amateur Champion, with the championship committee: Jack Sargent, Bill O’Callaghan, Tom Wilson, Bess Smiley (behind Podolak), Jim Ganley, Rene Cote, Harvey Holding, Glenn Cornell, and Bob Lewis Jr. is seated to the right.

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The AAC hosted several additional regional and national golf events in the 1980s. Ryan Hybl of Colbert, Georgia, one of the nation’s top-ranked junior golfers, earned his first major amateur title at the ninetyfourth annual Southern Amateur Championship at the Atlanta Athletic Club in 2000. This was the first time the Southern Amateur had been played in Atlanta since 1956, when Arnold Blum of Macon, Georgia, won at Druid Hills Golf Club. The AAC permanently houses the George Adair Trophy in the Bobby Jones Room. The seventy-fifth anniversary of the Atlanta Open in 1992 featured 159 professionals competing on the AAC’s Highlands course in July. On the first day, former PGA Tour player Don Shirley Jr. led the field, but more than a third of the competitors shot 80 or higher. After his round, Shirley explained, “I never had played here until my practice round last week, and I can tell you I was in awe of the place.” Shirley went on to win by one stroke over Mike Cook.

The AAC hosted the Eastern Women’s Amateur Championship from June 14 to June 16, 1994—one of the oldest and most prestigious women’s amateur championships in the United States, and one of the few major women’s amateur events that is played in stroke-play format. For the second time in its eightyeight-year history, the event was played in Georgia.

The first time was in 1980 when Patti Rizzo won at the Savannah Inn and Country Club. The most talented women amateurs on the East Coast came to play the AAC’s Highlands course. The tournament’s format was a fifty-four-hole stroke-play competition, open to players with a USGA handicap index of 11.5 or less. Over half of the past champions have been chosen to represent the United States on the Curtis Cup team, and many have won the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship. Six Georgia players entered the 1994 championship—Lee Kaney, Caroline Peek, Eleanor Walker, Brenda Pictor, Ruth Anderson, and Wendi Patterson—but Stephanie Neill emerged as the victor.

From July 22 to July 27, 2002, the AAC hosted the USGA Junior Amateur Championship on the Highlands course, junior golf’s most competitive event. The event was first played on the University of Michigan golf course in 1948, attracting 495 entries; that year, Dean Lind defeated Ken Venturi.

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High School Invitational Every spring, Atlanta Athletic Club hosts a High School Invitational Golf Tournament. The event began in 2005 and consists of eighteen of the best boys’ high school golf programs in the Southeast.

The event originally began with eighteen local teams, but has since expanded to include elite programs from South Carolina as well, making it one of the most competitive high school golf tournaments in the Southeast. All teams bring four players, and the top three scores from each team make up the team score. The winning team is awarded a trophy that they keep for one year.

In 2014 the High School Invitational included a Girls Invitational as well, where the top junior girls in the Southeast are invited to compete in an 18-hole individual stroke-play competition. In its inaugural year, AAC’s own Bailey Tardy won the event with a stellar score of 2-under 70. In its second year the event grew to more than thirty girls from around the Southeast, many of whom are already, or soon will be, playing college golf. Many coaches and players say it is one of the highlights of their season, and the AAC is honored to host the High School Invitational as its flagship event in the promotion of junior and amateur golf.

Former Georgia State Amateur Champions: Neal Hendee, Charlie Harrison, Tommy Barnes Sr., and Watts Gunn (seated).

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Defending champion Henry Liaw and 155 other young men competed in 2002 to join an elite group of prior winners that included Johnny Miller, David Duval, and Tiger Woods. The competitors had a chance to play practice rounds from July 20 to July 22. On July 23 and July 24, they played in a thirtysix-hole stroke-play qualifier to determine who would advance to the match play competition. First- and second-round matches, of eighteen holes each, took place on July 25. The next day, players competed in the third round and quarterfinals. The semifinal matches and championship match were scheduled for July 27. The final pairing came down to a battle between Charlie Beljan of Mesa, Arizona, and Zac Reynolds of Edmond, Oklahoma. Tied at the end of the match, the first playoff hole was No. 18, which is one of the most difficult on the 7,008-yard, par70 Highlands course. Both players tied, sending the match back to No. 17. By sinking a two-foot birdie putt, Beljan took the 2002 title. Today he competes on the PGA Tour.

During the week, more than eighty college coaches, who were permitted to begin recruiting high school players in their junior season, attended the event to scout for new talent. University of Georgia coach Chris Haack explained the importance of the event: “Especially at this tournament, because you have to qualify to get in, you see a lot of new faces.

You never know when you might find a hidden gem.”

Dennis M. Patterson served as general chairman of the event for the AAC, joined by an executive committee that helped oversee the planning. After the event, the AAC published letters of congratulations in the October 2002 issue of the Club Times, including one from Benjamin Alvarado, who wrote, “In Chile I am telling everyone the good condition of the course and how it was prepared. In my life, I’ve never played so good a course.”

Two members played a key role in helping the junior players by extending the kind of hospitality for which the AAC has become known. Tony Cerniglia was a volunteer for the tournament in charge of security. Throughout the week he came to know the players who spent time in the players’ lounge, especially Charlie Beljan, the eventual winner. While many of the players had friends and family members

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The course at the 2002 Junior Amateur.

Zac Reynolds during the final of the 2002 Junior Amateur.

â–ś

The Arnold Palmer Cup The Arnold Palmer Cup, first played in 1997 and hosted by golfing legend Arnold Palmer, is an annual team competition between college golfers in the United States and Europe in alternating years.

The first Palmer Cup was played at Bay Hill Club in Orlando, Florida. Originally, the contest was between eight-man teams, and the rosters expanded to ten per side in 2013. In 2017 the Atlanta Athletic Club will host the twentieth Palmer Cup.

â–ś

Charlie Beljan, the eventual winner, during the final of the 2002 Junior Amateur.

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serving as caddies, Beljan carried his own bag.

Cerniglia approached him in the middle of the week and told him, “If you make it to the next stage, I’ll carry your bag for you.” He did, and Beljan won on No. 17 in the playoff. Jim Teate volunteered to caddy for Joe Panzeri, a fourteen-year-old player from Boise, Idaho. Teate remembered, “Everybody else had friends, family, or professional caddies.

Joe didn’t have anybody, so I stepped in to help. I volunteered the night before the tournament began.”

They spent six days together until Panzeri lost in the semifinals. Throughout the week Teate hosted Joe and his mother for lunch and dinner at the Club, and soon Joe had a small following. Teate recalled, “On the 16th hole, Joe hit a great tee shot and a perfect approach. He then turned to me to ask if I wanted him to carry the bag. I laughed and said that most of those people by the green were there to see if I could make it to the top of the hill one last time.

Thankfully, I did.” Teate and Panzeri, who went on to play golf at the University of Washington, have stayed in touch and work hard to see each other once a year.

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Tennis once again became a main focus for the membership in the 1980s. Neal Purcell observed, “We’ve reverted back to the early 1900s in tennis— back when we were a powerhouse.” On July 12, 1983, the Club opened an indoor tennis center that featured four indoor courts, a pro shop, locker facilities, and a lounge. Charles Benedict, who had served as the tennis professional for four years, recalled how the new center revitalized interest in the sport: “When I interviewed in 1979, the program was low in interest among members, and one of the questions posed to me was did I think the Club should have indoor tennis. I said they did if they wanted to be a premier club. Four years after that, they did it. Now the tennis facilities are second to none. There are clubs that have more indoor courts, clubs that have more outdoor courts. But we have the mix. We’re not the largest tennis center in the city, but we’re equal to any club.” In fact, in 1991 the AAC was voted the best tennis facility in the state by the Georgia Professional Tennis Association. The club soon had enough active

tennis players to compete in the Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association (ALTA) and remains active in the organization. The AAC hosted the First Atlanta Pro/Am Doubles Tournament in the early 1980s.

AAC member Randall Garner and his partner, John Alexander, won the 1985 event, with AAC member Hill Griffin and Armistead Neely as runners-up.

In 1993 the AAC began hosting the AT&T Challenge, an ATP Tour stop managed by ProServ, and for years it attracted the top names in men’s tennis, notably Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Jimmy Connors, Michael Chang, and Jim Courier. The event was popular among the world-ranked players because it was the premier clay court tournament in North America and served as a warm-up for the French Open. The event began at the Omni in Atlanta in January 1986 as a round-robin tournament featuring eight players, and Ivan Lendl won. In 1988 it moved to a new stadium, Horseshoe Bend Country Club in Roswell. The change in the event’s status from an exhibition to an IBM/ATP Tour event prompted the relocation to the AAC in 1993. Terri Florio, an official at ProServ, explained the decision: “Moving to the Athletic Club solved our needs for more parking, our biggest problem,

and expanded player locker rooms and amenities.”

The tournament featured thirty-two top singles players and sixteen doubles teams competing for a share of the purse.

Though the event was managed by ProServ, the AAC established an annual tournament committee to oversee the integration of the event into the Club. This decision was especially important because of all the additional activities, including a Charity Exhibition Match, the ATP Tour/Fanfest that was set up in the Indoor Tennis Center, the NIKE Playground, and the ATP’s Cartoon Network Smash Tour.

Volunteers were also the lifeblood of the event. The AT&T Challenge required one thousand volunteers working in hospitality, transportation, and securing and serving as ball kids, ushers, and ticket takers.

Each year, the event resulted in generous donations to local charities. The AAC hosted the AT&T Million Dollar Wild Card Challenge beginning in 1994 “to reward ALTA and its many doubles teams for their support of the AT&T Challenge.” ALTA members who had lived in Atlanta and had not played in an ATP Tour event for two years were eligible. The winner earned automatic entry into the doubles competition of the main tournament.

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The first year’s event, from April 24 through May 2, 1993, featured Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, and Jimmy Connors. Seventy-three thousand spectators saw the various matches, and Jacco Eltingh won the singles title. In 1994 Michael Chang defeated Todd Martin, 6-7, 7-6, 6-0. It was his fourth victory of the year, and gave him a forty-two-thousanddollar first-place check. The AAC hosted the AT&T Challenge until 2000, but the 1998 event probably was the highlight. In the Club’s centennial year, the AAC debuted a new twenty-five-hundred-seat stadium. Brian Marcus remembered, “We struck a deal with the promotion company that ran the event.

They increased the site fee and gave us a threeyear commitment, which essentially paid for the construction of the facility.” Jimmy Cole, the AAC projects manager who oversaw the construction, recalled, “One night we had about forty-five people working, and it was snowing. But in construction, you know that is going to happen and you work through it.” The new state-of-the-art facility had subcourt and surface-level drainage and stadium lighting that allowed for night matches, and because it was two feet below grade level and surrounded by ten-foothigh concrete stands, wind became much less of a factor. This new permanent structure, along with additional temporary stands, could accommodate over ten thousand fans.

From April 26 to May 4, 1998, the AAC hosted the thirteenth annual AT&T Tennis Challenge, featuring Jim Courier, Andre Agassi, MaliVai Washington, and Michael Chang playing in the new stadium.

Courier had won four Grand Slam events, including consecutive French Open titles in 1991 and 1992, and repeat triumphs at the Australian Open in 1992 and 1993. More than one hundred thousand spectators attended over the course of the nine-day tournament.

Pete Sampras won, and then went on later that year to win at Wimbledon.

Brian Marcus, then the AAC’s director of tennis, recounted an anecdote from one year: The AAC had a boutique stadium that was a great venue because you were really close to the action. I was seated behind the champagne table with longtime member Pete McElroy, and we were watching the semifinal

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The stadium court built for the AT&T Challenge.

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Nick Ceto, junior tennis player.

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Hill Griffin match featuring Todd Martin. Pete had just ordered a beer as Martin was serving for his third point in the match. The ball hit the line, jumped the six-foot wall, and hit the beer Pete just ordered. The glass flew up and splashed him with the beer. The crowd saw the whole thing and erupted in laughter.

The members loved the event, especially when players like Todd Martin and Luke Jenson mingled with the crowds. The AAC hosted the event from 1993 through 2000, at which point sponsorship waned and ProServ and AT&T elected not to continue.

Energized by the event, the Club was left with a vibrant tennis program that periodically hosts events.

For a few years in the late 1990s, the Club hosted the Champions Tennis Tournament, sponsored by BTI and then Nuveen, but Jimmy Connors’s appearance fee was so large that the organizers could not make any money. From April 21 to April 29, 2001, the AAC hosted the Atlanta Tennis Challenge, which featured

Raised in Brunswick, Georgia, Hill Griffin began his tennis career in high school. He played at UGA and after dental school and building a practice returned to the game at age thirty-five.

He has competed in several state, southern, and national championships, and met his wife, Ellen, on the tennis court. Griffin is a fierce competitor who boasts that he won the AAC Club Championship singles title in 1971 and again in 2007—thirty-six years apart. A member of the AAC Hall of Fame, Griffin won the 2013 World of Tennis Championships in Austin, Texas, in both the singles and doubles division in his age category. He has been ranked fourth in the nation for players over seventy.

Center Court Café opened in 2015.

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oted

AAC tennis player Hill Griffin.

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Andre Agassi. The AAC was the site of the Miracle Match on October 11, 2002, an all-charity tennis match featuring John McEnroe and Mats Wilander. The event raised money for the Miracle Match Foundation, helping those with leukemia and other stem-cell-related diseases. In 2004 the AAC hosted the Atlanta Tennis Challenge from April 29 to May 9, a USTA-sanctioned $50,000+H Pro Circuit Event.

The AAC was the site for the National 55 and Older Clay Court Championship in October 2005, which featured 120 players from every state in the country, including the AAC’s own Hill Griffin. In 2005 the USTA recognized the Atlanta Athletic Club as the National Tennis Facility of the Year.

That same year, after a major renovation, the tennis facility won the Georgia Professional Tennis Association award.

When Jeff Chandley replaced Brian Marcus as the director of tennis in 2008, the AAC had fiftyone competitive tennis teams. That has grown to eighty-four. As he explained, “We had 250 women, about 75 juniors, and about 75 men.” Hundreds of AAC members at all levels actively participate in the Club’s tennis program. Individual members affiliated with the Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association (ALTA) continue to distinguish themselves on the courts. Others play for enjoyment. Today, tennis is growing, and the facilities are unequalled in the city, with four indoor courts, six clay courts, and seven hard courts (one of which is the stadium).

All of the outdoor courts are lit at night, and players can compete year round. Chandley states, “We have USTA leagues during the winter and summer months, but ALTA still dominates.”

Despite the economic downturn, Chandley brought Pete Sampras and Todd Martin in 2009 for an exhibition match. It was a sellout, with more than three thousand spectators. These events have helped promote the AAC’s tennis program.

The club was also the site of the inaugural Atlanta Tennis Championships from July 19 to July 25, 2010. The men’s tournament, played on outdoor hard courts, was the twenty-third playing of the championship that was part of the ATP World Tour 250 series of the 2010 ATP World Tour. The Atlanta

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Tennis Championships was the first ATP stop of the 2010 U.S. Open Series. At the announcement that the AAC had been selected, United States Tennis Association (USTA) southern president Rex Maynard said, “The Atlanta Athletic Club is the perfect site for the Atlanta Tennis Championships.

With its rich history of hosting ATP tennis and other major sporting events, it is a great location, and has wonderful facilities for showcasing professional tennis in the Atlanta area.” It was no surprise that the AAC was selected. As Chris Borders said, The Atlanta Athletic Club is pleased to host the upcoming Atlanta Tennis Championship this July and the best tennis players in the world. This continues our tradition of hosting national events in all areas of sport and athletics, such as the AT&T

Pete Sampras during the 1995 AT&T Challenge.

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Andre Agassi during the 1995 AT&T Challenge.

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Championships in the ’90s and our myriad of USGA and PGA golf championships. Our membership is supportive, our tennis facilities are the best, and we have easy spectator access with plenty of parking. It’s a great opportunity for the Tour and the Atlanta Athletic Club.

American Mardy Fish won the singles title, defeating John Isner. In doubles competition, Americans Scott Lipsky and Rajeev Ram defeated Rohan Bopanna of India and Kristof Vliegen of Belgium. Other top players who competed included Andy Roddick, Lleyton Hewitt, James Blake, Robby Ginepri, and Taylor Dent. The tournament attracted forty-one thousand attendees and also more than five thousand persons for qualifying.

That same year, after a major renovation, the tennis facility again won the Georgia Professional Tennis Association award.

In 2011 the Club was awarded the USTA National Men’s 40 Clay Court Championships. This event draws nationally ranked players from across the United States. It is one of four national championships for men forty years old and older and the only event played on a clay surface. The USTA has selected the AAC every year since, because of its organization and facilities. In September 2015 the AAC hosted the Atlanta Tennis Classic, with the world’s top-ranked doubles team, Mike and Bob Bryan. Though the exhibition match was rained out, the AAC still held the Pro-Am and clinic led by Wayne Bryan.

In 1979, under Charles Benedict, the AAC began a junior tennis program, and it has remained a vital part of the athletic activities over the years. As the demographics of the Club changed and more members moved closer to the Club, the junior programs grew quickly. At the time, it was difficult to attract a junior player from Buckhead, where many AAC members lived, to an after-school program. Today, most members live close to the Club. Over the years, a number of juniors have distinguished themselves— including Shannon and Shawn McCarthy, David and Ricky Doverspike, and Caroline Price. In fact, Ricky Doverspike and Caroline Price paired up to win the mixed doubles regional qualifier, earning a spot in the 2015 U.S. Open National Playoffs and reaching

the semifinals. Debbie Doverspike reflected on what the AAC tennis program meant to her family: “All of my children grew up in the junior program, and the quality of the instruction and facilities is amazing.

There is a professional for everyone, and my children learned to play on a variety of surfaces. They also saw championship-level tennis at the Club, and that helped them elevate their game.” The junior tennis program at the AAC has seen a dramatic increase in participation and success across the board over the last several years. The year 2014 saw an increase from thirty-five-plus participants to over one hundred junior tennis players. With the addition of the competitive and recreational pathways for clinics throughout the week, there is a program for every level and age of junior tennis player. The AAC also hosted its first USTA-sanctioned junior tournament in 2014, allowing some of the top juniors from around the area to participate in competition at the Club.

Some of the AAC juniors finished as high as third place. With special events like the Spooktacular and Easter Ball Hunt, the tennis center serves as host to many fun nights with the kids. During the summer, the popular Sports Camps and All-Day Tennis Camps keep the courts and the kids busy.

From 2013 to 2015 the AAC had an influx of associate (under age forty) members and began Tennis 101 for those who had never played the sport. A group of women who started playing tennis in Tennis 101 formed a 2.5 USTA team in 2015 and won not only the city finals but the state competition.

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Caroline Price and Ricky Doverspike.

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From left to right: Carmen Garcia-Jersild, Mike Bryan, Bob Bryan, John Isner, Sam Querrey, Jeff Stack, Jeff Chandley (director of tennis), Mike Robertson, and Jason Varela.

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Indoor tennis courts.

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The AAC’s mission—to deliver an exceptional and family-focused experience that consistently exceeds the expectations of all those we serve, while preserving our heritage, traditions, and reputation for championship golf—is reflected in nearly all of its activities. Bill Pierce recalled how safe and friendly the Club was for children: “My dad picked up our bill in a FootJoy shoe box every thirty days because we had so many tickets. My brother and I just spent so much time at the Club.” The AAC’s focus on junior programs sets it apart from other clubs. Throughout the year, the Club hosts a series of activities for juniors. Lisa Berggren was hired in 2014 to oversee these programs and has helped expand the offerings for the Club’s youngest members by hosting traditional day camps, sports camps, “dive-in” movies at the pool, Friday night socials, kids’ night out, book clubs, and family fun days. These events have been added to the traditional holiday celebrations, such as Boo Bash, the Christmas Spectacular, and the Easter Egg Hunt. The Treehouse also offers programs for infants and toddlers. Lisa explained, “We try to be really creative to engage all age groups with fun and enriching programs that help with team building and social skills. There are so many options that it is hard sometimes to decide what to do. But our membership loves it, and the children’s programs are growing.”

The AAC Barracudas, the junior swimming and diving team for children ages six to thirteen, is a vibrant part of the Club’s summer activities. In 1995 they had their most active and successful season, with Kendal Christian capturing a gold medal during the Georgia Games. As Neil Doldo explained, “We have to compete against teams in swim and tennis communities, but the Club’s program is growing. We had 125 participants this year. Our dive team won this year, and we won a meet for the first time in seven years. We’re seeing a lot of growth in the program.”

Junior golf has been a major part of the Club experience since its earliest days. The AAC’s first junior golf tournament was an informal one arranged at East Lake that included Frank Meador, Perry Adair, Alexa Stirling, and a six-year-old Bobby Jones.

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The AAC hosts a number of youth activities.

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Member and noted amateur golfer Charlie Harrison recalled, “Later on, Harold Sargent started a junior golf program for club children. I joined that. There were eight of us who took a morning clinic from Harold.” When the Club relocated to Duluth, the junior programs really began to expand. The Robert T. Jones Golf Instruction Center, which opened in 1996, is an important part of that growth. Courtney Swaim Trimble described the staff’s dedication: “Tommy Brannen, the head teaching professional, always found time for me. If I was hitting it badly and had a tournament the next day, he always stayed late.

He found the time to fix the kink in my swing.”

Richard Grice reflected on the status of the AAC’s junior golf program. “It is the best junior program in Georgia, if not nationally. Jimmy Harris, then Matt Scheck, and now Chris Moore have all helped it grow. Moore was named a US Kids Golf Top 50 Instructor of 2015, and Harris earned the same distinction in 2006 and 2008. The board of the Club, along with a very dedicated group of members who loved to help young players develop, really made junior programs a priority.” As DeWitt Weaver III explained, “The junior program plants the seed. It’s a great way for juniors to get involved. Every year the Club has a Junior Ryder Cup event, and Jimmy Harris and Chan Reeves choose their teams. This is just one way to get young players engaged.”

The junior golf program has continued to be a training ground for some of the state’s most prominent players. Neal Hendee, who began competing in the junior program at age ten, won the Georgia State Amateur in 1991 in a sudden-death playoff over Henry Claussen, an Augusta Country Club member.

West Streib, who played on the University of South Carolina’s golf team, qualified to play in the U.S. Junior Amateur in 1999 and the U.S. Amateur in 2001.

Former AAC club champion Justin Bolli competed in the 1999 U.S. Amateur, and in 2004 he finished ninth on the money list on the Nationwide Tour, making the cut in nineteen of twenty-six appearances. He received his PGA Tour card and finished sixth in the BellSouth Classic in 2005. Courtney Swaim Trimble was one of Auburn University’s most decorated golfers. She competed on the U.S. Women’s Curtis Cup team in 2002 and won the Eastern Women’s Amateur

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Many children learn to swim and compete at the AAC pool.

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Building a Championship Venue The weight room in the Athletic Center is one of the most widely used facilities at AAC.

In 2014 the Athletic Center added a Pilates studio.

Championship and the Georgia Women’s Open in 2001. The next year, she turned professional and played on the Futures Tour, posting four top-five finishes. She qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open in 2004 and finished sixty-first. Then she turned her attention to coaching and is now the head women’s golf coach at the University of Louisville.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2014–2015 recognized two AAC juniors as High School Athletes of the Year: lacrosse player Nathan Solomon and golfer Bailey Tardy. Solomon, a student at Centennial High School, completed his lacrosse career as the third-leading scorer in high school lacrosse history— with 623 points. A three-time All American, he was the first Georgian selected to participate in the Under Armour North-South All American game and signed on to play at Syracuse University.

As with so many golfers before her, Tardy’s career was nurtured at the AAC. A senior at Norcross High School, in 2014–2015 she finished second in the Class AAAAAA championship. In 2013 and 2014 she was an American Junior Golf Association Junior All-American. She was the stroke-play medalist at the 2013 U.S. Junior Girls Championship and signed on to play golf at the University of Georgia. She went on to win the 2015 North & South

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Bailey Tardy, 2015 Women’s North & South Winner.

Amateur Championship and arrived at the U.S. Women’s Open in the top twenty-five of the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking. As a freshman player at UGA, Bailey won her first collegiate tournament against a strong field of USC, Arizona, Arizona State, and Northwestern. She shot 12-under for three rounds and won by five strokes. She also shot a 31 on the back nine with birdies on Nos. 17 and 18 to move the team into a three-way tie for team championship. Chan Reeves, who has been coaching Bailey since she was twelve, says, “Bailey is a great player with an outgoing, fun-loving attitude.

It seems she is always working extremely hard, and truly enjoys what she is doing with golf on a daily basis. It has been a pleasure working with her, and I look forward to seeing her continued growth as a player and as a young woman. The future is very bright for her, and I am excited to watch her and assist her in reaching her goals.”

Rick Anderson, director of golf, explained how the AAC’s overall golf instruction program has grown. “It has expanded from one teacher—myself in the early 1980s—to five full-time PGA instructors.

Chan Reeves has been the director of instruction since 1997, and he has a great reputation. He was an All-American at Georgia Tech. We have a number of women and juniors taking up the game as a result of the Club’s commitment to golf instruction.

We have active 9-hole and 18-hole ladies’ groups.

Last season, we started a Par-3 Ladies’ Group. We also have a girls’ league within the junior program.

The AAC has also been a training ground for golf professionals; we train them and they can go anywhere.” In addition, the Club maintains an active golf instruction program for adults.

The club’s fitness program, overseen by director Neil Doldo, has continued to grow, too. Doldo joined the staff in 2012 and immediately realized “that we needed to improve the equipment, increase the group exercise numbers, and expand the number of personal trainers. All of this was intended to better serve the members’ needs.” The spa was an additional area that needed some attention. So in 2013, renovations and some important additions were made: a nail suite, a seating area in the lobby, a couples massage room, and a glass front for retail.

Since the renovation, the spa business has grown dramatically. The aquatics center was also renovated in 2013 to make it more family focused. Jimmy Cole explained that “the $1.8 million renovation added a zero-entry pool with water features, including two slides and a covered pavilion.” The club also expanded the food service to include gourmet salads and sandwiches. All of this has created, as Neil explained, “a resortlike atmosphere where members feel like they are on vacation.”

Spa entrance.

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Building a Championship Venue Centennial Garden.

The club’s focus on championships and family programs has had a notable impact on the facilities.

Though functional, the design of the original clubhouse in the 1960s was not in keeping with the stature of the AAC as a championship venue. Most members described it as looking like a giant Red Lobster restaurant or a bowling alley. In the 1980s the Club used money from the sale of one hundred acres of unused property to update the clubhouse interior, with most of the attention focused on the dining facilities of the social wing. The club held a grand reopening celebration on September 29, 1983.

Over the next several decades the Club dedicated various rooms to significant members. The main rooms in the AAC’s clubhouse are named for each of the golf clubs where Bobby Jones won the Grand Slam in 1930: the St. Andrews Room and Corridor, the Hoylake Room, the Interlachen Lounge, and the Merion Room. Over the years, the clubhouse has been renovated, with new rooms added and named for special golf venues (the Royal Troon Grill in honor of Charlie Yates, the Oakmont Room in honor of Watts Gunn, and the East Lake Rotunda), events (the Centennial Room), and people (the Hall of Presidents, the Hall of Champions, the John Heisman Room, the Bobby Jones Room, the Tommy Barnes Sr. Room, and the Scott Hudson Study).

The AAC marked its Centennial in 1998 with a yearlong celebration, planned by a committee chaired by Rene V. Cote. On September 5, 1996, two years before the event, the Club participated in a flag-raising ceremony to hoist the Centennial flag to generate enthusiasm for the upcoming anniversary. A centennial logo was designed and used on stationery, the Club Times, and other printed matter. Throughout 1998 the Club focused on three main audiences: other clubs in the state of Georgia; members from clubs in Great Britain, Scotland, and the rest of the United States; and AAC members. On September 1, 1998, the Centennial Garden in front of the Club opened, featuring historical plaques chronicling significant dates in the Club’s history. Charlie and Dorothy Yates, Ruth Branch, Rene V. Cote, and Charles Pittard cut the ribbon. The Yacht Club hosted the first official event, a Centennial Mystery Island Party on August 29. On September 4, 5, and 6, the Club hosted black-tie galas

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for club members and spouses. There was so much interest that the Club had to arrange three separate events. The 1890s-themed Centennial Member Picnic on September 7 was particularly popular. The tennis center hosted a Centennial Juniors tournament on September 5 and a Centennial Labor Day Adult Mixer on September 7, the Athletic Center hosted a Centennial Health Run on September 7, and the golf course invited members to participate in an eighteenhole scramble on September 5 and 6.

Afterward, Frank “Rick” Cheadle, a member of Doublegate Country Club, wrote, “Thank you for opening your doors and allowing some of the clubs of Georgia to be part of this grand celebration. I know full well were Mr. Jones still around, he would be very proud of his home club.” Karl S. Sheffield, a member of Cherokee Town & Country Club, echoed the sentiment: “Your warm hospitality, beautiful facilities, and the skill of your organization were an inspiration to us all.” Many of the members recalled it as a great celebration, where the friendships that were made with the international clubs have endured.

From October 22 to October 24, 1998, the AAC invited thirty-three clubs from England, Scotland, Canada, and the United States to an international golf tournament. At the opening ceremonies, Rene Cote welcomed the audience: “The tapestry of history is woven from friendship. You are forever a part of the Atlanta Athletic Club because of your willingness to share in our joy, and we are forever a part of you, too.” Junior athletes from the clubs carried flags in from each club, and after several speeches, the Southern Belle Cloggers entertained the crowd before dinner. For the next two days, the Club hosted members and guests for a golf tournament. On the evening of October 24, the closing dinner—the culmination of the Centennial celebration—was held in the St. Andrews Room.

AAC president Charles Pittard, past president John P. Imlay Jr., R&A captain John Beharrell, USGA president F. Morgan “Buzz” Taylor, and PGA president Jim Awtrey all spoke on this occasion.

The AAC presented special gifts to each of the participating clubs, and then displayed the gifts that each club brought in the Centennial Room.

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Jimmy Cole and Chris Borders during the construction of the clubhouse in advance of the Centennial Celebration in 1998.

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Chris Borders, Gaylord Coan, and Rene Cote raising the Centennial Flag in 1996.

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AAC members Rene Cote (left) and Charles Pittard (right) with Douglas Neave, an Ambassador member, and John Hunter, captain of the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, at the Centennial Celebration in 1998.

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AAC Hall of Fame wall in 2016.

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Hall of Fame

Club president Gaylord Coan (far left) with the first group of AAC members inducted into the Hall of Fame, 1995: Charlie Harrison, Joyce Gladys Denson, Joyce Denson, Joan Wiedeman, Jane Gunn, Rachel Barnes, Tommy Barnes Sr., Marilyn Mitchell, W. Cameron Mitchell.

The Atlanta Athletic Club’s Hall of Fame honors club members who have distinguished themselves in athletics by either a specific situation, a rare event, or a career relating to state, regional, or international competition. Inductees are nominated by fellow club members. The first members were inducted in 1995 upon the hall’s founding.

AAC Men’s Basketball (The Bean Boys: 1910–1932)............................ 1995 Thomas W. Barnes Sr....................................... 1995 Joyce Gladys Denson........................................ 1995 Alexa Stirling Fraser....................................... 1995 Bitsy Grant...................................................... 1995 Watts Gunn..................................................... 1995 Charles W. Harrison........................................ 1995 Robert T. Jones Jr............................................. 1995 W. Cameron Mitchell....................................... 1995 Charles R. Yates............................................... 1995 AAC Girls Swim Team (1950–1954)............... 1996 Thomas F. Forkner........................................... 1996 Harrison Glancy.............................................. 1996 C. C. (Buck) Hightower................................... 1996 Oliver P. (Sonny) Ackerman Jr........................ 1997 Martha Wilkinson Kirouac.............................. 1997 Dr. L. Hill Griffin............................................ 1998 Eleanor S. Swann............................................ 1998 Nathaniel Albert Thornton.............................. 1998 Furman Bisher................................................. 2002 Dorothy (Dot) Kirby........................................ 2002 Robert Wheeler (Bobby) Boylston..................... 2003 Mark Price....................................................... 2003 Allen S. Hardin............................................... 2004 Charles F. (Chuck) Hurston............................. 2004 Daniel E. Reeves.............................................. 2004 John (Jack) Brocksmith..................................... 2005 Robert L. Johnson............................................. 2005 Thomas W. Barnes Jr........................................ 2006 George Brodnax............................................... 2007 Jim Huber........................................................ 2008 Tim Christian.................................................. 2010 Paul Assenmacher............................................ 2016 Robert Kurland................................................ 2016 Matthew Stafford............................................. 2016 The Story of the Atlanta Athletic Club

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Jack Nicklaus at Sports Appreciation Night, 2013.

Don Moss, Davis Love III, and Charlie Anderson at Sports Appreciation Night in 1998.

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Arnold Palmer at the AAC’s annual Sports Appreciation Night in 1989.

Sports appreciation wall.

Sports Appreciation Night In 1976 the AAC, with assistance from Athletic Director W. R. “Buz” McGriff, created Sports Appreciation Night to honor an outstanding U.S. athlete or sports figure. This event become an important part of the Club’s traditions. At the gala dinner, the AAC presents the W. R. “Buz” McGriff Trophy, featuring a figure of Mercury, to the honoree and hosts a questionand-answer session with the audience. Trophy recipients are as follows: 1976 Fran Tarkenton 1977 Jerry Pate 1978 Ted Turner 1979 Harold Sargent 1979 Hubie Brown 1980 Steve Bartkowski 1981 Leeman Bennett 1981 George Rogers 1982 Larry Nelson 1982 R. L. “Bobby” Dodd 1982 Dan Magill 1983 Joe Torre 1983 Dale Murphy 1983 Bobby Pate 1984 A. J. “Duck” Swann 1984 Pat Dye 1985 Steve Lundquist 1985 Bobby Cremins 1986 Bo Jackson 1986 Erskine Russell 1987 Hugh Durham 1987 Mike Fratello 1987 Jeff Van Note 1988 Bobby Bowden 1988 Dominique Wilkins

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Top: Jimmy Roberts and Jack Nicklaus.

1989 Arnold Palmer 1990 Vince Dooley 1990 Ray Goff 1991 Billy Payne 1991 Bobby Ross 1991 Evander Holyfield 1993 Terry Pendleton 1994 Mark Price 1995 Herschel Walker 1996 Eddie George 1998 Davis Love III 1999 Dan Reeves 2000 Phil Niekro 2001 Chipper Jones 2002 David Toms 2003 Nancy Lopez 2004 Larry Munson 2005 John Smoltz 2006 Warrick Dunn 2007 Hank Aaron 2008 Suzanne Yoculan 2010 Stewart Cink 2013 Jack Nicklaus 2016 Matthew Stafford

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Over the past four decades, the AAC’s golf courses have been updated to keep up with recent trends and new technologies, always with a mission to improve these championship venues and make them more attractive for member play. Robert Trent Jones Sr. designed the AAC’s first twenty-seven holes for play in 1967, and Joe Finger redesigned the last nine holes in 1970. George and Tom Fazio spent three years renovating Highlands at a cost of four hundred thousand dollars in anticipation of the 1976 U.S. Open. Several years later, they once again led the renovations for the 1981 PGA Championship. Arnold Palmer and Ed Seay began their renovation of Highlands in November 1987, mainly to try to resolve problems in the original design with drainage and irrigation. The December 1987 issue of the Club Times reported, “The primary objective of this project is to add versatility to our Highlands course, making it more suitable and enjoyable for membership play.” In the process, holes were extended, greens were reshaped, cart paths were resurfaced, and cross-tie bumpers were installed at tees and greens. In addition, bunkers were cleaned and lined to maintain consistent sand and uniform depth to minimize discoloration from the red clay. During the construction, the Club made arrangements for members to play at East Lake Country Club and the Standard Club. In 1989 the Club hosted Palmer at Sports Appreciation Night.

During his visit, he played eighteen holes on the new course. Bill O’Callaghan caddied for him for the front nine, and Neal Purcell for the back nine.

Around this same time one of the assistant golf professionals asked Ken Mangum, director of the golf course and grounds, if he could put some flagsticks out on the construction staging area so the juniors could have a place to hit some balls. This prompted the building of the AAC’s par-3 course.

The club budgeted seventy-five thousand dollars, and construction on the course began in the fall of 1993. The par-3 course did several things for the Club. It cleaned up a construction site; gave the

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A view of the clubhouse from the 18th fairway of the Highlands course.

juniors a good place to practice and have clinics, and to play and develop their games; and also gave the Club a chance to experiment with greens built to USGA specifications. The new course opened in July 1994 before construction began in August 1994 on the front side of Highlands. Since then, hundreds of junior players have learned the game on this course, and it has also proved popular for all the Club’s golfers. Sarah Yates, the daughter of Charlie Yates, explains, “Sometimes I don’t have time to play a full eighteen, so I just grab a few clubs and go out to play the par-3. It’s just perfect.”

The success of the par-3 course paved the way for the next major renovation under the leadership of Rees Jones.

This plaque celebrates the various championships that have been played on the Highlands course.

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The executive committee met with Rees Jones during the U.S. Open at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, New Jersey, in 1993, and he was enthusiastic about the project. In 1994, under Jones’s direction, the AAC renovated the Highlands course. The greens, tees, and fairway bunkers were redone for continuity purposes. There were not major design changes; instead the focus was on making the course more playable for the members.

The renovation was done nine holes at a time to minimize disruption to the members. The front side opened in June 1995, and the back nine in June 1996. During the construction, both private and daily-fee courses throughout the area, including Atlanta National, Golf Club of Georgia, Legends

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Highlands No. 1.

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Highlands No. 17.

Quote of the Day “My favorite memory is playing golf with my two boys late one evening. We were carrying our own bags, and I can see the two of them

walking down the fairway at dusk. Isn’t that what this is all about?”

—Patrick Ford

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at Chateau Élan, and the Standard Club, allowed AAC members to play.

For a number of years, AAC members wondered why the clubhouse did not have a more traditional exterior to match the interior. After the completion of the Highlands renovation, the Club conducted a member survey that indicated a strong desire to alter the existing clubhouse. Lamar Wakefield, a club member and architect, drew hand sketches that detailed exterior as well as interior renovations that would add much-needed space and introduce a more timeless and traditional style. Bill O’Callaghan asked the Master Building and Site Committees, then chaired by Tim Christian, to begin the process of planning for the necessary expansion.

The AAC interviewed four architects and chose Chapman, Coyle, Chapman, working closely with Barry Coyle and Jim Chapman. The architects recommended using an English manor house and outbuildings as a theme for all the improvements on the Club property. Following careful deliberation within several club committees, a conceptual plan and estimated cost were presented to the membership, which overwhelmingly approved the project. Brassfield & Gorrie, a Birmingham firm with extensive experience renovating hospitals, was selected among five construction companies. They set a timetable of sixteen to twenty-four months to complete the construction, finishing in sixteen months and on budget.

Past president Don Moss eventually became chair of the Oversight Committee, which spent many hours assuring that the project was completed according to plan. “We wanted something that would stand the test of time, befitting the tradition and history of the Club,” Moss recalled. “East Lake and other clubhouses in Europe were our models. We wanted an English flair, and the brick and ceramic tile on the roof helped achieve that.” The expenditure was approved by 72 percent of the members. In addition to the work on the exterior, the renovation added the Men’s Grill to the second floor, allowed for an expansion and renovation of the Troon Grill, and moved the administrative offices to the second floor.

The square footage increased by sixteen thousand square feet. Bill O’Callaghan explained the impact:

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Watts Gunn, Neal Purcell, Jane Gunn, and Don Sands at the Oakmont Room in honor of Watts Gunn in 1988.

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The clubhouse at the Atlanta Athletic Club, Johns Creek, Georgia, 2008.

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Oakmont Room.

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Building a Championship Venue Riverside No. 2.

“The result of the remodeling is a facility which is timeless and traditional and more in keeping with the history and tradition of the AAC.” The new English Tudor façade and renovated interior reopened in 1998 in time for the Centennial. Commenting on the new look, longtime member J. Chandler Baldwin Jr. stated, “It looks like it ought to look.” Moss recalled that one member, after the new clubhouse opened, sheepishly confessed, “Don, I didn’t vote for the renovation, but I’m sure proud we did it.”

Planning for the Riverside course renovation began in 1996 after work on Highlands was completed.

With Riverside, the Club took a different approach and elected to do the entire renovation at once. Rees Jones presented a plan to the board in the fall of 2001, and then to the members in the spring of 2002. It was well received, and work was to focus on irrigation, drainage, cart paths, greens, and grass. The course finally opened in November 2003, after battling with over seventy inches of rain from October 2002 to July 2003, most of it during construction. The dedication of the contractors combined with the Club’s grounds staff, under the leadership of Ken Mangum, was invaluable during this period. Two major changes to the course generated quite a bit of discussion. Zoysia grass was used on the fairways, and Nos. 6, 13, 14, and 15 were rerouted at Rees Jones’s suggestion. While a bit controversial at the time, they both proved to be good decisions. Before the renovation, 60 percent of the members played Riverside and 40 percent played Highlands, but 80 percent of guest play was on Highlands. After that renovation, member play became more balanced.

Club president Don Scartz compared the two renovations: The renovation of Riverside was a project with different implications than the renovation of Highlands.

Riverside was very much a favorite of our members and a very playable course for golfers of all skill levels. In discussions with Rees Jones, Charlie Anderson and I commented that the members really liked Riverside and that we needed to take care that any changes would be well received. Rees was certainly the man for the job as the design enhanced virtually every hole on the course.

Our members are very proud of the course, and we

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Quote of the Day “The strength of this club is the many

longtime employees—Chris Borders, Jimmy Cole, Brian Marcus, Rick Anderson, just to name a few, that is what makes us great.”

—Ken Mangum, director of golf courses and grounds, 1988–2015

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Highlands No. 14.

presently have two of the finest courses at one location in the country.

The 2006 renovation of Highlands was a major undertaking in anticipation of the 2011 PGA Championship. Under Rees Jones’s leadership, the renovation sought to improve and update the course in three key areas—design, infrastructure, and grasses. Ken Mangum detailed the scope of the project: “We added length, repositioned bunkers so the fairways would be more challenging, changed all the grasses, and upgraded the irrigation. The changes were so successful that we did not have to make any additional ones in advance of the event.”

Both the Highlands and Riverside courses have matured and have become widely used and beloved by the members. But as Lukus Harvey, who replaced Ken Mangum as director of agronomy in 2015, stated, there is “always room for improvement.” Beginning in May 2016, Highlands will undergo another renovation that will focus on regrassing all the tees, fairways, and greens and eliminating some of the bunkers while maintaining its championship quality. Rees Jones will once again oversee the project, with the goal of keeping one of the Club’s most precious resources in top condition.

Quote of the Day “No other club in the city has the tradition and

history that we do. I love the game of golf, and just being a member has taught me so much about the

history of the game. You just have to walk through the Club’s halls to see what I mean.”

—DeWitt Weaver III

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Though operated by a skilled and dedicated staff, members direct the AAC. Dozens of members head committees that oversee everything from the golf course to the dining services. In 1969 the Club Times reported, The board meets at least once a month. In addition, each director is chairman of one committee and serves on two others. All totaled, there are eleven directors, ten committees, 17 sub-committees, and 84 committee members. There have been more than 200 committee meetings this year, representing over 3,000 man hours of volunteer service to your club . . . and this does not reflect the many information sessions that are spent on club affairs.

Serving on the board also reflects a great deal of sacrifice in terms of time and resources. Today, there are nine directors, a president, and a chairman, and nearly a hundred members sit on a range of committees to oversee the Club’s operations. They all work closely with the Club’s senior staff.

Over the years, the key to the AAC’s success has been strong management. Bill O’Callaghan offered that “the best-run clubs are those run by benevolent dictators.” The AAC has had numerous presidents who managed multiple facilities in different parts of the city and have left an enduring legacy. Many credit George Adair, who was president of the AAC from 1905 to 1912, with bringing golf to Atlanta and opening the East Lake facility. Scott Hudson, who became president in 1919 and served until Colonel Robert P. Jones took over in 1937, is routinely praised for saving the Club during the Depression. Finally, Eugene Branch, Bobby Jones’s law partner and president from 1970 to 1972, is remembered by many of the Club presidents who have served over the past thirty years for helping to mentor their generation.

These three men represent a very small percentage of those who have given their time and talent to helping the Club grow and thrive.

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The Hall of Presidents.

Presidents of the Atlanta Athletic Club As part of the Centennial celebration, contributions received from past presidents and directors made possible two specially crafted silver putters with golf balls, which were dedicated on March 21, 1999, in the Hall of Presidents in honor of Gene Branch. Every president has a silver golf ball representing his tenure and one gold golf ball to represent Bobby Jones. Two sets of fathers and sons have served as president: the Colonel and Bobby Jones and Ira and Allen Hardin.

Burton Smith Arnold Broyles George W. Adair W. H. Glenn J. H. Porter Asa G. Candler Jr. John W. Bachman Scott Hudson Sr. Robert P. Jones Henry C. Heinz E. A. Thornwell Robert T. Jones Jr. T. Richard Garlington W. B. Farnsworth Alfred D. Boylston Jr. Watts Gunn Hugh M. Dorsey Jr. Ira H. Hardin Walter L. Clifton Jr. Frances M. Bird H. C. Allen Jr. Larry P. Martin Allen S. Hardin Eugene T. Branch

1898 1903 1905 1911 1912 1915 1917 1919 1937 1942 1943 1946 1947 1949 1951 1953 1955 1957 1959 1961 1963 1965 1968 1970

L. Glenn Dewberry Jr. W. W. Gaston George W. Brodnax III Graydon Hall Merriell Autrey Jr. John P. Imlay Jr. Don W. Sands J. Neal Purcell Rene V. Cote W. Glenn Cornell William L. O’Callaghan Gaylord O. Coan John B. Koontz Charles C. Pittard Donald S. Moss Charles O. Anderson Don T. Scartz Timothy J. Pakenham James A. Thorne Davis Stewart Robert P. Dutlinger Patrick M. Ford J. David Smith

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1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016

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The Legacy of Women’s Golf at the AAC In the early 1890s golf became one of the few sports suited to the “genteel nature” of women. The sport grew in popularity among the newly established “country club set,” and some of the nation’s early golf clubs admitted women as members. Despite the growth of the sport, female golfers remained hampered by restrictive fashions—wide-brimmed straw hats, starched leg-of-mutton sleeves, corseted waistlines, whalebone stays, and ankle-length skirts. This situation began to change in the 1920s, giving women greater freedom of movement. Competitive play for women at a national level began in 1895, when the first U.S. Women’s Amateur was held at Meadow Brook Club on Long Island.

AAC women have been active in the administration of golf, through the Atlanta Women’s Golf Association and the Georgia State Golf Association. They have also been notable competitors in state and national competitions. AAC member Alexa Stirling was one of a handful of women who dominated the early national scene, and over the past century the AAC has produced some of the finest amateur golfers in the nation.

Born in 1897 Stirling grew up with Bobby Jones at the AAC’s East Lake course. She was the Club’s and the South’s first national champion, having won the Southern Women’s Amateur in 1915, 1916, and 1920; the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1916, 1919, and 1920; and the Canadian Women’s Amateur in 1920 and 1924.

While the most famous, Stirling was not the only notable female golfer from the AAC. Margaret Maddox, born in 1904, won the Atlanta City Tournament in 1928 and 1931, the Southern Women’s Amateur in 1929, and the Georgia State Women’s Amateur in 1931, 1932, and 1938. She played in the U.S. Women’s Amateur four times. Dorothy Kirby began playing golf at age eleven and won the Georgia State Women’s Amateur in 1933, the Southern Women’s Amateur in 1937, and the Titleholders Championship in 1941 and 1942. She played on four Curtis Cup teams. In 1951 she became the second AAC member to win the U.S. Women’s Amateur.

She was later joined by Martha Wilkinson Kirouac, who won the same event in 1970. Though not yet an AAC member, Kirouac also played with the victorious Curtis Cup teams of 1970 and 1972, and led the United States to victory over France in the 1970 World Amateur Team Championship. In 1990, as a member, she won the Southern Women’s Amateur, and in 2004 she captained the victorious U.S. Curtis Cup Team. The tradition has continued more recently with accomplished female golfers such as Courtney Swaim Trimble, Leigh Turner, Savannah Grice, and Bailey Tardy. In 2016 Bailey was named to participate in the 2016 Curtis Cup in Dublin, Ireland. She is currently the No. 7–ranked women’s amateur in the world. One of the reasons that the AAC has such an active group of female golfers is that it encourages girls to become involved in the junior program, hosts regular clinics for women at all skill levels, and supports several active organizations, including the Ladies’ 9-Hole Association and the Ladies’ 18-Hole Golf Association. Since 2007 the Club has employed a female golf teaching professional to continue to support the Club’s female players.

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Alexa Stirling accepting the 1916 U.S. Women’s Amateur trophy.

Curtis Cup member Courtney Swaim (second from left) with Ginny, Amy, and Martha Kirouac.

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oted amateur golfer

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Dorothy Kirby.

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Gary Player during the 1976 U.S. Open.

CHAPER FIVE

Hosting the

Majors

T

he Atlanta Athletic Club is one of a handful of elite clubs in the nation that, in the history of golf, has hosted multiple majors for both men and women. The 1950 U.S. Women’s Amateur and the 1963 Ryder Cup were both played at East Lake. The move to Duluth, however, provided the Club with the kind of facility that could accommodate championships that routinely attracted a quarter of a million spectators during the course of an event. Member and noted amateur golfer Martha Kirouac said, “The facility of the AAC is second to none, from the practice facilities to the ability to park cars to take people from one point to another. It really is a wonderful facility for a major championship.” Both the USGA and the PGA of America have taken notice over the years. The playing of the 1976 U.S. Open at the AAC represented the first time the event was played in the Deep South (the 1969 Open took place in Houston).

Bobby Jones, who served as a USGA committeeman from 1928 to 1930, directly influenced the USGA’s decision to bring the event to Atlanta. In a letter dated November 16, 1971, he wrote to the USGA, “I should be most happy if my old club should become host for my favorite golf tournament.” Though the Highlands course was not even a decade old at that time, any request from Jones was taken seriously. Thirty-one days later, Jones

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passed away, so he never had the opportunity to see his request honored. But the members and staff fondly remember the event.

General Manager Chris Borders recalled one interesting story in advance of the 1976 U.S. Open. Jim Brett, the starter who joined the AAC in 1946, was an eccentric man who did not play favorites. According to Borders, “Gary Player came to the Club to try to play in a practice round. Well, Harold Sargent and I were standing in the doorway, and Player walked right past us. Now, Harold and Gary were friends. But Player walked straight up to Jim Brett to see if he could go on the course. He politely explained to Brett who he was and that because he did not have a tee time, he wanted to first have permission from Brett. When Brett asked him if he had called in advance, Player said no, but explained that he thought he should speak with Brett first before going to his friend Harold Sargent. Harold and I are watching all of this, and Harold started to speak up. But Player cut him off, saying, ‘Harold, I’m speaking to Mr. Brett right now.’ Player knew who had the power at the Club.”

The course setup figured significantly in the finalround drama of the event. The 18th hole, normally a par-5 for the club members, was designated as a 460yard, par-4 for the tournament. Fronted by water and surrounded by bleachers, the green was a small target on a hole whose length required a long club for the

Jim Brett Mr. Brett—as he was known—served as the Club’s starter in 1946 and remained in that position until his untimely death of pneumonia in 1982.

His career began at East Lake Golf Course, and he moved north when the AAC purchased the Duluth property in 1966. Mr. Brett was abrupt and curt, and he treated everyone the same, no matter who you were. He had a dry sense of humor and was known for chewing up and spitting out young assistant managers and professionals. He was a legendary character whom many AAC members remember well.

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Longtime AAC starter Jim Brett.

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Gene Branch and the Championship Committee at the 1976 U.S. Open.

1976, 76th U.S. Open official program.

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Jerry Pate celebrating his victory at the 1976 U.S. Open.

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approach. The AAC hired George Fazio, uncle of Tom Fazio, to spend three years renovating the entire layout for the tournament. Repositioning of fairway bunkers to locate them more in play for the longer hitters was one of the main renovation projects in preparing the course for the event, which played to a par-70 at 7,015 yards. The championship course originally included the front nine of Highlands designed by Joe Finger, with Nos. 10 through 16 of Highlands designed by Robert Trent Jones, using Nos. 17 and 18 of Riverside designed by Jones to be the finishing holes.

Fazio explained the extent of the changes: Generally, we deepened the traps, made greens smaller, and eliminated sharp doglegs by moving tees and cutting trees. We rebuilt No. 7 completely. The tee was moved to the right, a huge green was reduced to a small terraced green, and we added a lake. On 8, we raised the fairway and in the process improved the drainage on 6. When we came to 10, we had to move the tee, and this cut the length of the hole by ten yards, making a shorter par-4. To proportion it we reduced the green by two-thirds, creating a smaller target.

When the course hosted the event, it was very young. The trees were ten or twelve feet tall, and the conditioning standards for that time were nothing like they are today.

P. J. Boatwright Jr., the executive director of the USGA at the time, spoke about the traditional character of the Highlands course. “I like the old style a lot more—holes that require thinking and finesse,” he explained. “An Open course ought to test length and accuracy. The rough will be at four inches. I feel the rough should be sufficient to mean a half-stroke penalty. Greens will be cut to three-sixteenths of an inch, and the pin placements will be balanced each day of the four rounds.”

The club was well prepared for the event, with twelve hundred members signed up as volunteers.

John P. Imlay Jr., who served on the security force, recalled one humorous anecdote. The AAC’s general chairman, Gene Branch, received an urgent call

▶T

he

Calamity Jane Post Office was constructed for the 1976 U.S. Open.

during the Open. When he asked what the problem was, the other end of the walkie-talkie shot back, “A water moccasin has crawled up on the terrace and is hissing at the spectators.” Without missing a beat, Branch replied, “Does it have a member badge on?” When asked if the Club had a disaster plan, Branch quipped, “What do you mean? With fourteen thousand automobiles and thirty thousand people descending on us, the whole damn thing seems like an impending disaster.”

In 1976, to coincide with the U.S. Open, J. Heard Summerour, the postmaster of Duluth, Georgia, proposed the idea of building a temporary post office near the first tee of the Club’s Highlands course. The Calamity Jane Post Office, named for Bobby Jones’s famous putter, was used exclusively by ticket holders during championship week.

Despite all of the planning, on the first day the players complained about the height of the fairway grass, resulting from a problem with the mowers.

Twenty-one-year-old amateur Mike Reid led after the first round by shooting a 3-under-par 67. Asked about whether the golf course affected his play, Reid replied, “What long grass? I play on fairways like these all the time.” His performance gave him a threestroke lead over Al Geiberger, John Mahaffey, Rod Funseth, Raymond Floyd, and Rick Massengale.

Reid went on to shoot 81-80-72 for the rest of the event, managing to tie forty-six-year-old Arnold Palmer, who shot four rounds of 75. Describing the difference in his putting from his glory days, Palmer said, “I used to try to make all of them from anyplace back then, and now I just try to be close enough to make the next putt.”

John Mahaffey took the lead after two rounds, shooting a 68 that put him one stroke ahead of Al Geiberger, then two ahead of Ben Crenshaw, Funseth, and PGA Tour rookie Jerry Pate. “I’m more determined to win this tourney than any other,” said Mahaffey after his round. “It’s nice to win a tourney that Hogan and Jones and Nicklaus and those great ones have won and maybe be put in their class.”

At 1:48 p.m. on Saturday, during the third round, a torrential downpour put a stop to play for two hours.

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The water left varying conditions depending on which green was being played. As the round continued into the twilight, the players strained to see the course. Matched with Mahaffey for the round, Geiberger remembered, “Everyone has gone home soaked, and we’re out here in fog and mist all alone. It’s spooky, especially where the course gets close to the Chattahoochee River.

There was fog rising off it and rolling in on the course.

It was eerie.” Geiberger finished the day with a 71 to fall behind the leader Mahaffey by three.

Former AAC president Charles Pittard recalled, “I was one of the marshals on the 4th

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hole, and the Club had set up bleachers because it was a great vantage point to view the action.

Well, a rain came up quickly, and we thought they’d have to call the event. I can’t remember exactly how this happened, but the crowd had the idea from the marshals that the Club was going to evacuate, so they left the stands. Well, one hour later, the sun came out, and Derrick Pepler, the head marshal, came over to us to find out who gave the order to evacuate, and he was furious. To this day, I don’t know who did it, and none of us have ever confessed.”

Hole no. 8 on the Highlands course in preparation for the 1976 U.S. Open.

Tom Weiskopf overcame a disappointing 73 in his first round with 70-68 to trail Mahaffey by four going into the final round. Tom Watson overshadowed his slow start of 74-72 with a 68 on Saturday, but he was too far behind to seriously contend, as was Johnny Miller, whose 74-72 was improved by a 69 in the third round. Weiskopf, Mahaffey, Geiberger, and Pate all seemed to be in the best position to win. Mahaffey had the best chance until the 16th hole, which he bogeyed after driving into the rough, hitting his approach shot near the edge of the green, but failing to get up and down for his par. When he three-putted the par-3 17th hole, Mahaffey lost the lead.

Jerry Pate A native of Pensacola, Florida, Jerry Pate was born in 1953 and graduated from the University of Alabama with a degree from its School of Commerce and Business. He won the 1974 U.S. Amateur Championship, and the next year was invited to play in the twenty-fifth annual Walker Cup Match at the Old Course at St. Andrews. The American team won, 15½-8½, though Pate lost in both his foursome and singles matches. Pate turned professional in 1975, just one year before winning his first professional victory, the U.S. Open at the Atlanta Athletic Club.

A few weeks after his win at the AAC, he won the Canadian Open in a duel with Jack Nicklaus. By the end of the year, he had earned $153,102, the most ever won by a first-year player until Hal Sutton bettered it in 1982.

A plaque on the 18th hole of the Highlands course commemorating Pate’s famous 5-iron shot.

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With one hole remaining, Pate had a two-stroke lead over Mahaffey, but was only one shot ahead of Al Geiberger and Tom Weiskopf. Number 18 is a dogleg left, and both Pate and Mahaffey hit their drives through the fairway and into the right rough. Mahaffey, who in 1978 went on to win the PGA Championship in a playoff with Pate and Tom Watson, hit first, trying to get to the green with a 3-wood. The shot did not reach the green and disappeared into the lake. Pate, who lay 190 yards from the hole, with at best a questionable lie in the right rough, had to decide if he would lay up and then try to put a wedge shot close to the hole or go for the green. Although Mahaffey had ended his challenge, Geiberger and Weiskopf were only trailing by one shot.

Pate pulled a 5-iron out of his bag and proceeded to make the most famous shot of his entire career. Asked later whether he had any doubts about going for the green, Pate replied, “It never entered my mind to lay up on 18. I remember seeing the ball, and it looked like a dandelion or something was behind it. It sorta scared me because I didn’t know what the ball would do when I hit it, but I knew when I did it was a good shot because it was on the flag all the way.”

His shot went straight to the flagstick, stopping two feet from the hole. Pate had not only salvaged a difficult situation, he had made a remarkable shot that any player would have been proud of, much less a twenty-two-year-old Tour rookie. The former U.S. Amateur champion sank the remaining two-foot putt for a birdie and a two-shot victory. Despite the obvious risk, Pate seemed convinced that he had taken the best approach. “I knew I could go over the water, maybe over the green or in a bunker, but over the water,” said Pate. “But a 5 was the worst I figured I could score, and I’d still be in a playoff. When I hit that shot, I knew I had won.”

To confirm that this victory was not a fluke, Pate won the Canadian Open later in the season and set a record for earnings by a PGA Tour rookie. The AAC had brought out the best in the competitors and proven itself worthy of being the site of a major championship.

Southern hospitality and expansive resources had made for an enjoyable event for the 145,574 spectators who

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Jack Sargent, holding a photograph of his father, George, with his brother, Harold, at the 1981 PGA Championship.

Quote of the Day “We are playing the seventy-seventh United

States Open Championship at the Atlanta Athletic Club because of the fact that this golf course is an absolutely beautiful test of the game. . . . We are

here also because this club has a very, very special place in the history of this game and certainly in

the history of the United States Golf Association

because it was this club that was the home club of Bob Jones.”

—Frank D. “Sandy” Tatum, chairman of the USGA Championship Committee

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John P. Imlay Jr. and Charles R. Yates at the 1981 PGA Championship.

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attended. The golf course challenged the best players in the game, as the winning score was only 3 under par. Arnold Palmer wrote to the AAC following the 1976 event “to extend my congratulations to the members and all the volunteer workers at the Atlanta Athletic Club for staging what I thought was truly an outstanding Open Championship.”

Member Merriell Autrey remembered, “At that time, the Atlanta Athletic Club produced more revenue in ticket sales, concession sales, pro shop sales, and in advertising than had ever been produced at a U.S. Open. We handed to the USGA a sizable check. We took our portion and fenced our club, which took just about everything we made out there.

But we came out of it very good. It brought our members together. They worked hard, very hard.”

To honor Pate’s historic shot, on September 10, 1998, Joyce Pate, Jerry Pate’s mother, donated a painting of her son by Charlotte Erickson of Norcross. Joyce and Charlotte had been friends at Wesleyan College in Macon in the 1940s, and Joyce helped Charlotte with her first art show. To reciprocate, Charlotte painted Pate’s “Shot Heard ’Round the World” and gave it to Joyce, who in turn donated it to the Atlanta Athletic Club. It is currently on display at the entrance of the men’s locker room. The AAC placed a marker at the site of Pate’s historic shot, and today AAC members and guests try to replicate it, though few succeed.

Quote of the Day “I came to work at the Atlanta Athletic Club after the first PGA Championship in 1981. I

have been involved in every tournament since.

They are a lot of hard work, but you don’t worry

about the effort because it is worth it to be part of something great.”

—Jimmy Cole

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After the 1976 U.S. Open, the PGA of America approached the AAC about hosting the 1981 PGA Championship from August 6 to 9. Past president W. W. Gaston served as general chairman for the event, and Merriell Autrey was president of the Club at the time. Former AAC head professional Harold Sargent served as honorary chairman for the championship.

As with the 1976 Open, George Fazio once again led the renovations to the Highlands course, with assistance from his nephew, Tom. The 11th green was moved thirty-five yards to the right, and new bunkers were added around the green. The 12th green was rebuilt and moved closer to the water hazard, adding to the hole’s difficulty. The greens at

Larry Nelson (right) and his caddie at the 1981 PGA Championship.

Larry Nelson Born in 1947 Larry Nelson served as a cartographer in a light infantry unit in the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and was working as an illustrator at LockheedGeorgia when a close friend suggested that he learn to play golf. In 1969, at the age of twenty-one, he began hitting balls during his lunch hour at a range across the street from the plant. Nelson taught himself the game by studying Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf. Two years later, he left Lockheed to become an assistant golf professional under Bert Seagraves at Pinetree Golf Club in Marietta. He completed an associate degree at Kennesaw Junior College, turned professional in 1971, and began playing on the mini-tours in Florida. Nelson was the last player in a twenty-three-man class—which included Ben Crenshaw and Gil Morgan—to qualify for the PGA Tour in 1973. Prior to his 1981 victory in Atlanta, Nelson had four Tour wins, including the 1981 Greater Greensboro Open.

13, 14, 15, and 16 were all rebuilt. Two holes that were not altered, 17 and 18, became significant throughout the tournament. Playing to 7,070 yards and a par of 70, the course proved to be a good test. But in the months leading up to the 1981 championship, the course was in terrible shape. Former PGA president Mickey Powell remembered that the AAC had to put down “acres of sod,” the last of which was laid on Monday of championship week, because Atlanta had experienced a colder than usual winter. The winters of 1976–1977 and 1977–1978 were devastating to most of the golf courses in Atlanta. In August 1981 the hot, humid weather and periodic thunderstorms made the greens on the Highlands course play slow and the rough nearly impossible to navigate.

Larry Nelson celebrating his victory with his wife.

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Rarely in a major championship does a hometown favorite contend in the event, but that is just what happened in 1981. The eventual champion, Larry Nelson, lived only thirty minutes from the golf course, not unlike Jack Nicklaus living near PGA National in 1971 when he won the event. Nelson, who before the Championship was given 20-1 odds, acknowledged the significance of winning before friends and family.

“I’m not a very emotional player,” Nelson said after winning the PGA Tour’s Atlanta Classic in 1980, “but on the 18th, to look over and see my mother and father and my wife, it was a very emotional thing.”

Bob Murphy set the early pace with a 66 in round one, which was twice delayed by passing thunderstorms. Bob Eastwood and Mark Lye were at 67, and Vance Heafner, two-time U.S. Open Champion Andy North, and Rex Caldwell all shot 68 to follow Murphy by two strokes. Nelson opened with an even-par round on the Highlands course that had been set up to play 35-35—70 for the event.

Only 11 players in the field of 147 shot under par on the first day. Other notables in the field included Nicklaus and Jerry Pate with a 71 in round one.

Seve Ballesteros, who had won the Masters in 1980 at age twenty-three, shot a 71; 1977 PGA Champion Lanny Wadkins carded a 70; and perennial crowd attraction Arnold Palmer, still chasing the one major championship not on his record list, opened with a 74. Tom Watson had a good round going until the last four holes, which he finished bogey, par, bogey, double bogey for a 75. He shot a 73 in the second round and missed the cut by one stroke. Like Palmer, Watson never was able to capture a PGA Championship.

One unusual story on the first day of play involved the group of Tom Weiskopf, Lee Trevino, and Lanny Wadkins. The three men entered the scorer’s tent, and Trevino somehow failed to sign his scorecard. PGA rules chairman William Clarke had to disqualify Trevino for what he called an “innocent mistake.” Weiskopf had mistakenly signed Trevino’s card on the contestant line but was not disqualified.

When Weiskopf realized what he had done, he asked rhetorically, “Why can’t I make it through one year without being involved in something?”

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Nicklaus, the week’s favorite, was featured on the cover of the program for the 1981 PGA Championship, with a banner displaying his five victories in the event: 1963, 1971, 1973, 1975, and 1980. His win in 1980 tied Walter Hagen’s record of five wins and gave him his second major championship of that year. Earlier in June, he won his fourth U.S. Open.

Despite numerous magazine and newspaper articles that claimed that his best golf was behind him, he had proven that there was still some growl in the Golden Bear. But this was not his week.

With a 66 on Friday, Larry Nelson fired up the crowd. Just a year before, he had shot 66-69-68-68 to win the Atlanta Classic before many of the same fans. After coming on Tour in late 1973, he had been a journeyman golfer, playing an average of thirty events a year from 1976 through 1980, and averaging twentytwo cuts made every year. His quiet demeanor did not attract much recognition, but he was known for being a solid player. Nelson’s 66 on Friday was the best round of the day, but he still trailed Murphy by a stroke, who with a 69 held the lead for a second day. Nicklaus now trailed the leader by four after shooting a strong 68.

Fuzzy Zoeller began his climb up the leaderboard by following his Thursday round of 70 with a 68 on Friday.

Dan Pohl had opened with a 69 and then added a 67 to put him just one shot out of the lead.

Former U.S. Open champion Andy North had come into contention at 137, two back, with Tom Kite and Zoeller three behind, Nicklaus and Jerry Pate at four behind. Bob Eastwood put together a 67 and 69 to be one stroke out of the lead, but his rounds of 72 and 78 on the weekend took him out of contention. On Saturday, Nelson made another bold statement by shooting his second straight 66 to lead the tournament by four strokes. At one stretch in the third round he birdied four of five holes, from No. 9 through No. 13. “I think my nerves are great,” Nelson said after the round. “I’m tired, but the crowd helps the adrenalin and I need that to hit it farther.

I’m not looking beyond the first tee tomorrow. I can say that in all sincerity.”

Nelson might have been surprised by his performance, but his fellow competitors were not.

1981, 63rd PGA Championship official program.

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Nelson in the trees at No. 14 1981 PGA Championship.

during the

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Hosting the Majors The Riverside course during the 1990 U.S. Women’s Open.

“He never loses his cool,” said Zoeller. “If he had a temper I’d say we had a chance,” said Nicklaus.

“As straight as he hits the ball . . . and he is straight . . . I don’t see him shooting a bad round.” Nelson shared with Zoeller the best percentage of fairways hit at .857. For the season to date on Tour he was in fifth place. Zoeller maintained his pace on Saturday with another 68, leaving him four shots behind Nelson going into the final round. Pohl shot a 73 on Saturday and fell to seven behind. Greg Norman’s 68 on Saturday, combined with his 67 from Friday, left him six behind Nelson. It was his opening round of 73 that left him too far behind to be much of a threat, and on Sunday he shot a 71 to finish tied for fourth.

Three players shot 66 on Sunday, but it was not good enough to win. Bob Gilder’s 66 advanced him into a tie for fourth with six other players, six shots out of the lead. Nor did Tommy Valentine’s 66 or Curtis Strange’s 66 put any heat on Nelson. Valentine finished at 280 and Strange at 285. Nelson’s play on Sunday was the portrait of consistency. He did not miss a fairway until the 14th hole. He had played one-over-par through eight holes, with a birdie at 9 to go back to even par for the round. Another bogey at 11 was countered by a birdie at 13. A bogey at 14 would be the final margin for his one-over-par round of 71. Nelson played the 18th hole with a four-shot lead over Zoeller, a comforting cushion on a tough finishing hole. Walking toward the green on 18, Nelson remembered, “It was great to win my first PGA Championship in my hometown in front of a hometown crowd. I looked around, and I could call a lot of people by their first name.”

Zoeller appreciated how well Nelson had handled the Highlands course. “It was pretty to watch Larry because he played so well,” said Zoeller. “He played tremendous rounds of golf all four days.” Nelson collected $60,000 of the $401,600 purse for his win in the 1981 PGA Championship. By comparison, in 1973 in three events on the PGA Tour he won a total of $356.25. He would go on to win the 1983 U.S. Open and the 1987 PGA Championship and play on three Ryder Cup teams.

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Atlanta Athletic Club member Neal Hendee, who won the Georgia State Amateur in 1991, expressed what the event meant for the AAC: “When the PGA was here, they had me working on the scoreboards, putting up the numbers for the players. I worked on the 18th green. Being here right on the golf course watching some of those groups come through—Nicklaus, Palmer, Watson—just being involved in that as an eleven-

year-old kid, I was completely entranced.”

Member Bob Lester recalled, “It was really exciting, to say the least. It’s always great to see the pros come out and play your course. The crowd was big; the tournament was exciting. It was just a great time for everybody. We’d only been a member for about a year at that time, so it was a real experience for us to volunteer and work at the tournament.” The members The official logo of the 1990 U.S. Women’s Open.

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loved the event and were delighted by the $450,000 that it brought to their club.

The 1990 U.S. Women’s Open was a different story.

The February 1990 issue of the Club Times reported, “In less than six months, the grounds and courses will be alive with the activity of the most prestigious women’s golf tournament played. Before this can happen, though, an enormous amount of planning and preparation must occur. In this area, you as members can provide a great deal of help. With enthusiasm and support, we can produce the best U.S. Women’s Open ever.” The article’s intent was to encourage members to help with program advertising and ticket sales, but also primarily to recruit the twelve hundred volunteers needed to help run the event.

Past president Don Sands served as chairman of the event, and Martha Kirouac as cochair. Louise Suggs was honorary chair of the 1990 Women’s Open and also an honorary member of AAC. During the planning, the members convinced Kirouac to play in the Southern Women’s Open at the Polo Fields in Cumming, and though she had not played competitively for over twelve years, she promptly won it. The reigning U.S. Women’s Open Champion was thirty-four-year-old Betsy King, who in 1989 broke many LPGA all-time records and won $654,132 in a single season. She was named Golf World’s Player of the Year. At the press preview at the AAC, she admitted that her putting had not been strong that year, but reserved most of her concern for the AAC’s Bermuda rough. When asked about the heat in July, she replied, “Many previous Tour stops have been in the South. Most players should be ready for the heat.” She was excited about the layout of the Riverside course: “Open courses are so good that you don’t see many fluke winners.”

When asked to speculate about who might contend in the event, she cited Beth Daniel, Nancy Lopez, and, of course, herself.

From July 9 to July 15, the top amateur and professional women golfers, who had qualified regionally, came to Atlanta to participate in the championship. The winner was to receive a gold medal and a significant share of the half-million-dollar purse. That week, the AAC played host to Nancy Lopez, Jan Stephenson, Amy Alcott, Georgia’s Hollis Stacy, Laura Davies, Ayako Okamoto, and Liselotte

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Quote of the Day “I have seen every major tournament the

Club has held since the 1950 U.S. Women’s

Amateur. I loved the Women’s Open in 1990.

I’ve always said to friends that we can’t learn much from men’s golf because they play a

different game. Professional women, however, play with similar equipment, have a great

short game, and smooth swings. That’s how amateur golfers should play. You will learn

more if you come out and watch the women.”

—Bill Pierce

Betsy King Betsy King came to the 1990 U.S. Women’s Open at the AAC as the defending champion. In 1989 King won six times, including her first U.S. Women’s Open, the USX Golf Classic, and the Women’s Kemper Open. A member of the LPGA Tour since 1977, King was an accomplished player who learned the game from John Gerring, formerly of the Atlanta Country Club, and Ed Oldfield. Prior to joining the Tour, she enjoyed a distinguished amateur career. She was a semifinalist in the 1972 USGA Junior Girls Championship, and as a member of the 1976 National Collegiate Championship team at Furman University, she was the low amateur at the 1976 U.S. Women’s Open. In 1990, King won three events and became the third LPGA player to cross three million dollars in career earnings.

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The champion, Betsy King.

Nancy Lopez helped draw big crowds to the 1990 U.S. Women’s Open.

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Neumann.

The 1990 U.S. Women’s Open Championship was played over the AAC’s Riverside course, formed from the two Robert Trent Jones nines that bordered the Chattahoochee River. For the second year in a row, Betsy King won with a remarkable 4-under-par. Her seventy-two-hole total of 284 defeated Patty Sheehan by one stroke. Sheehan had led for two rounds with a 66 and 68, but dropped eight shots with twenty-three holes to play. She finished with rounds of 75 and 76 for a total of 285.

King was nine shots behind Sheehan after thirtysix holes and eleven behind with thirty-three holes to play. But her final rounds of 71 and 70 made her the fifth woman ever to win back-to-back U.S. Opens. A rain delay required a thirty-six-hole final, and she captured the $85,000 purse. The executive committee of the tournament agreed to donate a portion of the proceeds to the March of Dimes to assist in its fight against birth defects.

In retrospect, the AAC members remember the 1990 Women’s Open as one plagued by bad luck.

The economy was faltering, Atlanta received seven inches of rain that week, and the Shoal Creek incident—which focused on that club’s refusal to admit African Americans as members—had just exploded, which took away a lot of media coverage.

Ken Mangum remembered that “everything that could go wrong did, but we worked with P. J. Boatwright and Judy Bell at the USGA, and we made the tournament happen in spite of all that rain.” It is no surprise, then, that the Club lost money on the event. Even with the loss, Bill O’Callaghan explained the intangible benefits: “The bottom line, however, is that the tournament permits us to retain, enhance, and promote our competitive advantage over other clubs in our area who are competing with us for the same people to become members.”

In the April 1991 issue of the Club Times, president Glenn Cornell explained one positive result of the public scrutiny of private facilities:

given to the issue of minority membership last summer during the PGA at Shoal Creek and the U.S. Women’s Open here. Prior to the championship, the Board of Directors reviewed our policy on minority membership, reconfirmed our policy on non-discrimination, and presented that statement to the press and to the USGA, and they seemed satisfied with our position. We are committed to broadening our base; we are committed to being open to all people of all persuasions, but we are also committed to maintaining the integrity of our membership process when doing that.

Most of you will recall the media attention which was

In 1993 O’Callaghan echoed Cornell’s perspective:

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2001, 83rd PGA Championship official program.

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Several thousand volunteers helped the 2001 PGA Championship run smoothly.

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“I would also remind you that we are actively soliciting minority members. Successful clubs of the future will have a broad membership base, and we seek to broaden that base while maintaining our high standards.” With the U.S. Women’s Open, the AAC became only the second golf club to host the men’s and women’s opens on two different courses.

The PGA Championship returned to the Highlands course at the Atlanta Athletic Club in 2001, and the golf course had once again undergone significant revisions. Six years prior to the event, Rees Jones made the contours more subtle on some of the greens to allow for more hole locations. Ron Whitten, writing then for Golf Digest, described the architect’s work: “Rees Jones totally rebuilt several holes, in particular the par-4 10th. For the PGA, it’ll play as a sharp dogleg right past a prominent fairway bunker to a still-small but more receptive green. He went easy on Highlands’ four par-3s, already the strongest holes on the course, with three of the four involving water. He reshaped the fourth and seventh greens, added a new back tee to the 15th and sprinkled bunkers behind the green of the 207-yard 17th.”

A new tee for the 18th hole extended the length of the par-4 hole to 490 yards, a hole that played to 460 in the 1976 U.S. Open. Playing to a par of 70, the 7,213yard course had plenty of length for the game’s longest hitters, who competed for a total purse of $5.2 million.

With thick Bermuda rough to complicate the lie of any errant shots, the course provided an excellent site for a major championship.

The club also spent a great deal of time preparing a landscape plan that would show off the best features of the course on television. The club took a hard look at the visual impact of the golf course from the perspective of the television cameras, before 140 million people around the world would see it. While Augusta National is known for the azaleas in the spring, in August, Atlanta’s crepe myrtles are in full bloom. The club created a landscape plan for the golf course and

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Toms celebrating his victory over Phil Mickelson.

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David Toms

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tested it on the same lifts that the television cameras do. This exercise, and a flyover in a helicopter, gave the AAC staff ideas about how the golf course would appear on television. Several things needed adjusting; the most notable was the rock wall around the lake. From that elevation, the rocks shone and became a focal point. To minimize their impact, the AAC used a concrete stain to darken the rocks and allow them to blend into the landscape.

The preparations for the 2001 PGA Championship and the operational requirements had grown significantly since 1981. Fifty miles of electrical cable, fourteen miles of television cable, over twenty-five hundred tons of air-conditioning, and more than 371,700 pounds of ice were used on-site.

Through the week of the event, 230,000 people came through the gates.

Though the AAC had hosted the same event two decades earlier, the PGA Championship had grown in size and complexity over those twenty years.

In 1981 the Club needed 900 volunteers; that number had grown to 2,500

David Toms making his acceptance speech after winning the 2001 PGA Championship.

When David Toms, a veteran of the Nike Tour and a former All-American from Louisiana State University, arrived at the AAC for the 2001 PGA Championship, he had topped the leaderboard once before in the 2000 British Open, which Tiger Woods won. He had missed the cut in three of his four previous PGA Championship appearances and was not considered a serious contender for the title. Toms grew up playing baseball with future major leaguers Ben McDonald and Albert Belle, and turned professional in 1989, joining the PGA Tour in 1992. In 2001, at the Highlands Course of the Atlanta Athletic Club, Toms faced one of the best fields in golf; ninety-five of the top one hundred ranked players were competing. His final score of 265, 15-under-par, was the lowest in the event’s history, until Jason Day shot 20-under at Whistling Straits in 2015. In 2001 Toms also won the Compaq Classic of New Orleans and the Michelob Championship at Kingsmill.

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by 2001. The PGA of America tournament staff was quite good. Andy Odenbach, the tournament director; Sharon Helbig, the tournament manager; Anji Eure, the merchandise administrator; and John Handley, the assistant to the tournament manager, were all very detail-oriented and professional. Gaylord Coan, chairman of the AAC’s PGA Championship committee, and Don Moss, AAC president, played a critical role in organizing the event for the Club.

To say that the whole world was watching what happened in Atlanta that week is not an exaggeration.

More than one thousand journalists and broadcasters representing twenty different countries were credentialed and worked out of the twenty-eightthousand-square-foot indoor tennis facility that was converted into the media center. Over twenty-seven hours of live broadcast television coverage were viewed in more than 160 countries. In the United States alone, the Sunday round broadcast reached an estimated 34.6 million viewers. Everyone, whether at the Club or watching at home, had a great golf tournament to view.

On Thursday nine players posted a 66, but Grant Waite from New Zealand carded a 64 that put him in the lead by two. Among those in second place were David Duval, a local favorite from his golf team days at Georgia Tech; David Toms, a thirty-four-year-old who had won six times on Tour in his career; and Phil Mickelson, still carrying the dubious crown at age thirty-one of best player never to have won a major. Dudley Hart, Stuart Appleby, Niclas Fasth, K. J. Choi, Brad Faxon, and Fred Funk also shot 66 on day one. As is always the case, the crowd at the top of the leaderboard thinned out a bit by Sunday.

Japan’s Shingo Katayama, sporting a white straw cowboy hat, became an instant crowd attraction with his big smiles reflecting the success of his round of 67 on Thursday. After a sizzling 64 on Friday, Katayama tied with Toms, who shot 65, for the lead in the tournament. Mickelson’s 66 put him strongly in contention one stroke back. Three behind the leaders were Jim Furyk, whose 64 on Friday advanced him on the leaderboard, a significant improvement on his opening round of 70; Steve Lowery, who posted back-

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to-back 67s; and Duval, who remained in contention with a 68 in the second round. Tiger Woods’s opening round of 73 put him at risk of missing the cut, but a Friday round of 67, featuring two putts over thirty feet that he sunk in the last three holes of the round, kept him in the tournament.

Davis Love III posted one of the two best scores on Saturday, a 65, but it was matched by Toms, and he maintained the lead in the event, a full eight strokes ahead of Love. Toms was now two shots ahead of Mickelson, whose third straight 66 didn’t gain him any ground on the steady Toms. Lowery and Mark Calcavecchia also posted 66. Though Calcavecchia improved each day, shooting 71-68 for the first two rounds, he started Sunday nine shots out of the lead, a seemingly insurmountable deficit. Lowery, now four shots behind Toms, would join Katayama, six behind after a 69 on Saturday, in the next-to-last group going out Sunday.

Katayama’s luck held during his Saturday round.

His long approach shot on 18 found the water in front of the green, but skipped out on one hop over the two-foot retaining wall and made it to the bank, from where he saved par amid cheers from the adoring large crowd surrounding the finishing hole.

He had gone for the green from 240 yards out, hitting from a downhill lie in deep rough. When asked why he chose to take such a risky shot, he referred to his shot on the 17th hole that hit the stone wall by the water and bounced forward, avoiding the hazard. “I thought it was my lucky day,” said Katayama with a broad grin. Indeed, it was. His 69 left him four shots behind.

In the third round, Toms chose a 5-wood and scored an ace on the par-3 15th hole. He is believed to be the only player to make a hole-in-one at a major championship in which he also won the event.

Records confirm that statistic for the Masters, the U.S. Open, and the PGA Championship. For the British Open, with a history dating back to 1860, the records are not as certain, but the consensus is that no one had achieved the feat in that event. “It was the coolest shot I’ve ever hit,” said Toms. “Just the way it happened, on the Saturday of a major in the last

Shingo Katayama stole the show at the 2001 PGA Championship.

group with everybody watching. And I hit a perfect shot. It’s not like it bounced off a tree or rolled short of the green or anything like that. I just hit a good, solid shot, and it went in.”

In the first three rounds, Toms posted scores of 6665-65. During the coverage of the event, broadcaster Ken Venturi remarked that Saturday’s round was

one of the most exciting he had ever witnessed. On Sunday, Toms would use sober judgment to assure his victory. Though he never fell behind on the final day, he was tied with Mickelson three times during Sunday’s round. On No. 15, Toms led by two, and Mickelson was losing his swing. Unlike Saturday’s tee shot that made a beeline for the hole, on Sunday

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Toms pulled the ball into a left greenside bunker.

Then Mickelson managed one of his short-game wonders, chipping in for a birdie from off the green.

When Toms two-putted after getting out of the bunker, the two players were tied with just three holes to play. The momentum seemed to have shifted to Mickelson, who was without doubt one of the best players in the game. Few players are expected to withstand the pressure going down to the wire in a major championship, especially when competing head-to-head with someone who counts as a prospect for victory in any event they enter. Toms, however, was not intimidated, and Mickelson continued to play erratically.

On No. 16, Mickelson’s tee shot fortunately bounced off a tree into the fairway, but his approach shot left him fifty feet from the hole. Going for the hole aggressively placed him eight feet above the hole for his par putt, which he missed. Toms two-putted for par and went to No. 17 with a one-shot lead.

Both players made par there and moved to No. 18.

Although several players finished with outstanding rounds, only two players were now really in contention. Lowery had carded a 68, shooting under par for all four rounds, but that had not been good enough to catch Toms and Mickelson. Lowery would place third, three strokes back. Mark Calcavecchia’s 65 on Sunday was the best round of the day, but he finished fourth, five strokes behind the champion.

Katayama’s 70 on Sunday tied Calcavecchia.

The AAC’s 18th hole favored Mickelson’s length off the tee, and on Sunday he hit an excellent drive, leaving him a middle-iron approach shot. Toms’s drive went through the fairway and found the first cut of rough 214 yards from the hole, with a sidehill lie. When he found his ball, Toms and his caddie Scott Gneiser immediately understood what the situation required. Gneiser later recalled their discussion: “We stood there for a minute, and I said, ‘Do you think you should lay up?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Good move.’ A 130-yard shot would put him at his ideal yardage for the lob wedge. The 5-wood wasn’t going to be airborne, and even if it did clear the water, it would have gone way over the green.”

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Toms’s second shot was a layup and put him in good position. Mickelson’s second shot made the green, some thirty feet from the hole. While Toms had to consider that a birdie by Mickelson or a bogey by him would tie the tournament, Mickelson had a difficult putt at best to make birdie. Toms put his third shot eight feet from the hole. Mickelson left the birdie putt short by four inches, dead on line. Now it was up to Toms, whose lay-up from the rough now looked like one of the best strategic moves in all of major championship golf. He made the putt, leaving Mickelson, once again, just short of a major victory.

After the tournament Mickelson acknowledged Toms’s good judgment: “He made a great play, a very intelligent play. He played right to his strength.”

Toms set a new PGA Championship scoring record with his total score of 265.

The success of the 2001 PGA Championship prompted the PGA of America to announce at the closing ceremonies that the AAC would host the event again in 2011, marking the first time the PGA made such an announcement on-site. Rick Anderson remembered that moment, “PGA president Jack Connelly announced that we would host again in ten years. The PGA of America and the AAC have a storied history, and that decision was due to the Club’s stellar performance in 2001.”

Ken Mangum reflected on the whole experience.

“We were so lucky because we had a fairly cool summer.

The golf course was perfect; the greens were relatively fast. There was a little rain on Monday, but clear skies the rest of the week. It was so exciting to be on such a big stage. Kerry Haigh from the PGA of America did a terrific job. It was one of the best-run events I have ever seen. Everything was like clockwork.”

On February 22, 2002, several months after the event, the Club hosted a PGA victory celebration to express gratitude to the membership for hosting the event. At the event, Don Moss announced that the AAC had made $3.3 million from the PGA. Most of the money, as with all golf championships, came from corporate hospitality, and AAC members Steve DeCarlo and Pete Walczuk helped ensure the success of the event. In the spring of 2002 the AAC

Phil Mickelson and David Toms walking off the 18th hole after the final round on Sunday.

invited Toms to the Club’s Sports Appreciation Night to honor the champion once again for his extraordinary accomplishment. He, along with Jerry Pate, Betsy King, and Larry Nelson, has become an important part of the AAC’s rich history.

The 2001 PGA Championship was a sold-out event.

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As planned, the AAC once again became host to the PGA Championship in 2011. This would be the third time the Club would be the site of golf’s fourth major golf championship, fondly known as “the season’s final major.” The AAC had hosted the 1981 and the 2001 PGA Championships with great fanfare; the 2011 event promised to be equally exciting. In anticipation of the event, the Club again hired architect Rees Jones to oversee an extensive renovation of the Highlands course.

Patrick Ford, chairman of the Golf Grounds Committee, explained additional preparation that was needed for the event, including installing the infrastructure to support the extensive needs of the gallery, media, and merchandising operation, not to mention the players. “A few examples of this work include preparing the media lot south of the range to accommodate their thirty tractor-trailer trucks and three-hundred-plus golf carts, preparing for parking across the street, refining some of the utility infrastructure, and moving plant material to make room for merchandising and hospitality.”

At a par-70, 7,467 yards, the AAC was poised to

Keegan Bradley Nephew of LPGA great and World Golf Hall of Fame member Pat Bradley, Keegan Bradley was born in 1986 in Vermont. He played during high school and was named the Massachusetts Golfer of the Year in 2004. He graduated from St. Johns University with a degree in sport management in 2008 and a successful collegiate golfing career. That same year he turned professional. In 2011 he won the HP Byron Nelson Championship as well as the PGA Championship.

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challenge the best golfers in the world from August 11 to August 14. It would become the playground of two of the game’s newest stars, Jason Dufner and Keegan Bradley. The field of 156 also included twenty club professionals who qualify by finishing in the top twenty of the PGA Professional National Championship. Craig Stevens from Sandy Springs became a local favorite. His son, Chase, who also worked as a club professional, caddied for him.

Friends and family tooled around the AAC with “Team Lumpy” T-shirts in reference to the “slightly rotund” Stevens. But the tournament belonged to the professionals. The winner would join an elite fraternity of those who’d earned their titles at AAC: 1981 PGA Championship winner Larry Nelson and 2001 victor David Toms.

In the March 2011 issue of the Club Times, Chris Borders wrote, “In 1981 when we hosted the PGA Championship for the first time, we supplied 900 volunteers (all from the Club), in 2001, we supplied 2,500 volunteers, and this year, we will need 3,500 volunteers. That statistic alone will tell you about the scope of this national event. No other private club in the South, save Augusta National, has hosted five national golf championships.”

Davis Stewart (AAC president) and Tom Adderhold (ninety-third PGA Championship general chairman) worked hard to oversee the event, which would become its own city for forty thousand people each day of August 8 to August 14. Leading up to the opening round, the AAC was filled with trucks, forklifts, cranes, construction workers, and service vehicles. The club’s facilities were closed during the week; the Highlands course was closed from July 25 to August 19, the Riverside course closed from August 5 to August 19, and most of the rest of the facilities—from the Athletic Center to the Aquatic Center—were used for the event.

To mitigate the inconvenience to the members, the AAC negotiated reciprocal agreements with Country Club of the South, St. Ives Country Club, the Standard Club, LA Fitness, the Forum Athletic Club, the River Club, and Berkeley Hills.

On the first day, Steve Stricker shot a 7-under-

Tommy Wagner, Cole Rogers, and Mark Brown, children of AAC members, enjoying the PGA.

par 63 to tie the lowest eighteen-hole round in a major championship in history. Jerry Kelly opened with a 65. Two of the game’s best players, Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods, did not begin with the same fanfare.

McIlroy injured his right wrist on No. 3 when he hit a root; he ended the day with a 70. Woods opened with a 77, the worst opening-round performance in his major championship history. Defending champion Martin Kaymer started with a 2-over-par 72, putting him nine shots off the lead.

Keegan Bradley made headlines on Friday. He shot a 64 to tie Jason Dufner, who shot a 65. That afternoon, the 36-hole cut was +4, and Tiger Woods missed the cut for the first time in fourteen PGA Championship appearances. On Saturday, Dufner shot a 68 to tie Brendan Steele, who carded an impressive 66. Bradley was one behind with a 69, putting him at 6-under. He was followed by Scott Verplank (at 5-under), Steve Stricker (at 4-under),

and Anders Hansen and D. A. Points (at 3-under).

On Sunday, Steele was off his game, finishing with a 77 in a tie for nineteenth place. Stricker double bogeyed on No. 4 and ended with a 73. Robert Karlsson, David Toms, and Anders Hansen were within striking distance of the lead, but were not able to reach it. After chipping into the pond, Bradley took a triple bogey on the par-3 No. 15, but Dufner hit his tee shot into the water and bogeyed No. 15 to reduce his lead to four strokes. Bradley’s birdies on Nos. 16 and 17 were matched by Dufner’s bogeys on both holes, including a three-putt on No. 17. After both golfers made par at No. 18, they were tied at 8-under in regulation play.

Bradley and Dufner then moved into a threehole aggregate score playoff to determine the 2011 PGA champion. Beginning at No. 16, they both opened with strong drives. Dufner hit his second shot six feet above the hole; Bradley’s second shot

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was four feet away, below the hole. Dufner missed the birdie putt, while Bradley made his to take the lead. At No. 17, Dufner again three-putted and Bradley made par, going to No. 18 with a two-shot lead. Dufner birdied No. 18, but it was not enough to stop Bradley from claiming victory. With the Wanamaker Trophy securely in his grasp, he said, “It seems like a dream. I’m afraid I’m going to wake up here in the next five minutes and it’s not going to be real.” Noted golf writer Furman Bisher wrote in his column that “this PGA Championship had the most exhilarating golf tournament finish I have ever seen.” Two years later, Dufner would go on to win the PGA Championship in 2013 at Oakland Hills with a 10-under 270.

During the week, the clubhouse served ten thousand meals to members and eighteen hundred meals for players and their families. Many of the staff members put in over 140 hours during the nineday period surrounding the championship. Ken Mangum’s golf maintenance staff was supported by many former assistant superintendents, and a number of visiting superintendents lent a hand. It felt like old-home week at the maintenance facility.

When asked about his favorite memory of the week, Ken recalled, “When Bradley won, everybody crowded around him, and I walked to the edge of the green. I had a quiet moment. It was a mixture of pride and gratitude. I treasure that memory.”

In the September issue of the Club Times, Chris Borders reflected on the event: I’m sure that each of you has a memorable moment or two from the event that you will pass on to friends and family. Some that come to mind include the unexpected backup on the pedestrian bridge on Saturday when spectators all arrived at once, the naming of the final four holes of the Highlands golf course to “Calamity Lane,” the players praising the fairways as the best they had ever played, Rory’s infamous “root” shot on number 3 that injured his wrist tendon, the observation that a lot of very good players could not hit our fairways, that it was just plain hot all week until

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Keegan Bradley with Executive Committee.

a glorious breezy 86 degrees on Sunday, and record crowds in the clubhouse compared to 2001.

Three years later, the AAC was back in the news. In August 2014 the AAC became host to the

2014 U.S. Amateur Championship, a tournament that Bobby Jones won as the last leg of his Grand Slam at Merion Cricket Club in 1930. With the addition of this event, the AAC became the only club in the nation to host the U.S. Open, the U.S. Women’s Open, the U.S. Women’s Amateur, the U.S. Junior Amateur, the U.S. Mid-Amateur, and the U.S. Amateur, as well as the Ryder Cup

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2011, 93rd PGA Championship official program.

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and three PGA Championships. As former USGA Executive Committee member and AAC member Gene McClure explained in February of that year, Having our nation’s oldest golf championship played at the Atlanta Athletic Club in August 2014 will be such an exciting time. The story of the U.S. Amateur is truly the story and history of golf in America, the beginnings of the game, and the emergence of players who became the legendary stars of the game.

This story will unfold in a unique way at Bob Jones’s home Club, over the course and property he personally selected, with players who will be inspired by the traditions and achievements of Bob Jones and the Atlanta Athletic Club.

Member John Stakel predicted what the character of the event would be: “When people arrive here for the U.S. Amateur, they’ll see our Club’s pride and determination to provide an unprecedented player experience. From the locker rooms to caddies to tee refreshments, they’ll see that we’re committed to raising the bar and making this

The U.S. Amateur: A Family Affair As well as volunteering for the U.S. Amateur, Bob and Elke Sharpenberg volunteered to host a player. They were assigned Andrew Lawson from Texas. The day before he was supposed to arrive, Lawson called to ask if his two brothers could also stay with them because they were going to caddy for him. The Sharpenbergs agreed. Unfortunately, Lawson did not qualify for match play but the brothers asked if they could stay longer so they could watch and encourage their friend, Bryson DeChambeau. DeChambeau went on to win the 2015 U.S. Amateur and the NCAA Championship. Bob explained, “We had a great time, and it was fun getting to know these wonderful people. We continue to follow them as they participate in other amateur events.”

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Championship truly unforgettable.” The numerous AAC members who volunteered for the event made this achievement happen. Three social events—an event held to recruit volunteers and host families, an opening gala, and a celebration for the players and their families—set the tone for the Amateur.

The U.S. Amateur—which helped launch the careers of Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Matt Kuchar—attracted some of golf’s most notable young players, including Matt Fitzpatrick, Cory Whitsett, Patrick Rodgers,

2014 U.S. Amateur Executive Committee.

Calamity Jane U.S. Amateur golf club.

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Michael Kim, Sebastian Cappelen, Chang-woo Lee, and Oliver Gross. One player was not even on the media’s radar— Gunn Yang, who was ranked 776 in the world rankings. Players from forty-two different states (including fifteen from Georgia) and twenty-three different countries checked in on Friday afternoon.

Many attended a gala reception hosted by the USGA on Saturday evening. The players were welcomed by Dr. Bob Jones IV, grandson of Bobby Jones, and the keynote speaker was Jerry Pate, who won the 1976

U.S. Open at the AAC. Gunn Yang’s surprise victory over a competitive field became the golf world’s Cinderella story. He qualified for the event at Hacienda Golf Club in La Habra Heights, California, after recovering from back surgery. In fact, he had been playing so poorly that his coach at San Diego State University pulled his golf scholarship. Three weeks before the Amateur he withdrew from the California State Open, and he arrived in Atlanta with no coach, no family, and no

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caddie. Yang was hosted by AAC members Scott and Gretchen Levy. He had packed three pairs of shorts, four shirts, and two belts because he did not plan to stay for the week. His only goal was to make it to match play. To save money, he was going to carry his own bag—until he met Richard Grice.

Grice, a member of the AAC board of directors who joined the Club in 1990, had offered to caddie for any player in need, and Yang certainly qualified in that regard. Grice explained, “I volunteered in the 2011 PGA because I wanted a little bit more of an interactive experience. I had caddied for my daughter, a collegiate player at Dartmouth, so I had some experience.” The club had set a rule that players were to pay caddies eighty-five dollars per day, and after the first day, Yang did not pay Richard. “The next morning, he was embarrassed and said, ‘I forgot to pay you.’ I replied, ‘Gunn, I’m not doing this for the money.

You don’t have to pay me. If we win it all, I’ll caddie for you at the Masters.’”

Yang overcame five top-100 players to win the championship. The week began with two days of stroke-play competition—eighteen holes played each day on both the Highlands and Riverside courses. Yang played well and finished in the middle of the field, which was then reduced from 312 players to 64. In match play, Yang first defeated Georgia Tech player Seth Reeves (now an AAC member), 1-up. The next day, he played two matches and beat Paul Howard 1-up in the morning and Ollie Schniederjans, also from Georgia Tech and the topranked amateur in the world, in the afternoon. In the quarterfinals, Yang defeated Cameron Young, the youngest player in the field.

In the semifinals, Yang and Fred Wedel found themselves in a hard-fought battle; only six holes were halved, and the lead shifted back and forth several times. Holes 17 and 18 provided the most drama. Wedel lost No. 17 when he pulled his putt after an amazing chip off the stone wall. On No. 18, both golfers hit into the bunker. Yang went for the hole and put his second shot into the water.

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Gunn Yang with trophy.

Wedel’s 5-iron shot landed within eight feet of the cup, giving him the win and forcing the players to another hole. On No. 10, Yang hit his approach shot four feet below the cup and birdied the hole for the win. He quipped to his caddie, Richard Grice, “Can’t I ever end a match before the eighteenth hole?” On Sunday, his wish was granted.

In the finals Yang faced Canadian golfer Corey Conners, who was ranked in the top 50 in world. The two golfers faced a thirty-six-hole championship match, which reflected some of his best golf of the week. Yang opened by winning the

Gunn Yang and Richard Grice.

first two holes and held a 1-up lead going into the seventyminute break between rounds. Conners came back and tied the match for the first time with a twelve-foot par on No. 1 to begin the second eighteen holes. For the next four holes, the two players traded halves until Yang’s birdie on No. 6 gave him the lead. He never lost it. As Conners noted, “It’s hard to win holes. Birdies are hard to come by out here, and Gunn played fantastic golf. He didn’t really offer me many opportunities to take holes from him.” But the victory was not yet in hand. Conners won the tenth hole, cutting Yang’s lead to 1-up just before rain sent players running for their courtesy cars behind the green at No. 14. The storm stopped

Quote of the Day “We have participated in all the recent major championships. Of all the events, the U.S.

Amateur was golf in its purest sense. It has

the strongest connection to Bobby Jones. So for many members it felt like the Club had come full circle in hosting that event.”

—Dave and Kathy Tholen

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play for ninety-seven minutes, which gave Yang time to take a short nap. The rain and the rest made all the difference. As Richard Grice explained, “He hits the ball a long way, and with the rain that’s going to make the course play to Gunn’s advantage.” As predicted, Yang outdrove Conners on Nos. 12, 14, and 16. At the beginning of the week, Yang was awestruck at the mere idea of having his name on the Havemeyer trophy. Upon winning, he joked, “I don’t know where to put it.”

Yang was thrilled by his victory, and Grice indeed went on to caddy for him at the Masters.

Grice recalled, “Friends offered to caddy, but Gunn said, ‘Richard and I are undefeated in Georgia. He will caddy for me at the Masters.’ Unfortunately, we missed the cut along with all of the other amateurs.

But it was a great experience; we played with Bubba Watson and Justin Rose.”

Many of the players complimented the AAC during the 2014 U.S. Amateur. During the event, the Heritage Committee created a book titled History Happens Here that members and guests use to tour the clubhouse and learn about the AAC’s rich history.

Corey Conners reflected on his experience: “It’s a first-class place. There were so many volunteers, so helpful, wishing you luck, saying nice things to you.

The courses are both nice, both challenging and in immaculate shape. It’s a pretty special place with the history of Bobby Jones and major championships. I feel pretty honored and lucky to be here.” In honor of Jones, the AAC gave all of the competitors a replica of Jones’s famous Calamity Jane putter. The original is housed at Augusta National Golf Club.

Club manager Peter Lovelace, who joined the AAC in 2013, reflected on how the Club welcomed the players and spectators: We attempted to tell the story of the AAC to an international audience through food, beverage, and the overall experience. We used local ingredients and served peach cobbler, pimento cheese (in tribute to Augusta National Golf Club), and created a drink called the Chattahoochee Shooter. The feedback from the USGA, the players, and our members was very positive. But what really made the difference was the Club’s volunteer spirit. We had a very good hospitality committee that worked hard to make the experience warm, authentic, and personal. Because the U.S. Amateur is less corporate than the majors, the Club can really put its stamp on it. I still receive notes from people who were here and remember the event.

Gunn Yang

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Born in 1993 and a native of South Korea, Gunn Yang was a student at San Diego State University when he won the 2014 U.S. Amateur. He became the second South Korean to claim the U.S. Amateur title, after An Byeong-hun won in 2009, and San Diego State University’s second U.S. Amateur champion since Gene Littler in 1953. Yang made his first collegiate appearance in an individual tournament at the Kikkor Golf Husky Invitational in the fall of 2012, and the 2014 U.S. Amateur has been the highlight of his career to date.

2014, U.S. Amateur Championship official program.

Ken Mangum, Gunn Yang, and Richard Grice on the 17th hole.

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Co-Chairs Charlie Anderson and Glenn Cornell with Gunn Yang and Club president Patrick Ford.

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Lucille Ashley, Jim Carlton, Warren Tiller, and Ouida Tiller at the AAC New Year’s Eve party, 1963.

CONCLUSION

A Place to

Build and Renew

Friendships

F

or over a century, the Atlanta Athletic Club has been recognized as one of the best clubs in the nation, evidenced by its selection as a venue for tennis tournaments, major golf championships, and dozens of regional sporting events. The AAC has been named the top athletic club in the country by Club Leaders Forum and listed in Business Week magazine. In 2004, after its renovation, Golf Digest named the AAC’s Riverside course one of the “Top Ten New Private Courses” in America. Every year since 2009 an independent survey group has ranked the Atlanta Athletic Club in the top ten of country clubs in the United States. Though impressive, these accolades are not what make the Club great. The AAC’s legacy is rooted in the collegiality of the membership, and the decision to join the AAC reveals something important about the essence of the Club.

In the November 1938 issue of the Club Times, T. Guy Woolford explained his first encounter with the Club: “A few days after I first came to Atlanta in 1899, a member of the Atlanta Athletic Club, to whom I had a letter of introduction, took me around to the Club, which was then on Edgewood Avenue. There I met my first considerable group of Atlanta people. Their friendship and cordiality made a lasting impression, and shortly after the Club moved to Auburn Avenue I joined and have been a member ever since.” Most AAC members have similar stories.

Sam Kiker, who joined the AAC in 1977, recently recalled what prompted him to join: “I took customers

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out to the AAC for the 1976 U.S. Open and left thinking about how much I’d love to belong to such a club. I moved to Houston for a short time, but came back, and the Athletic Club happened to be in the midst of a membership drive. In September 1977, the initiation fee was forty-five hundred dollars, so I went through the membership process and joined.”

Lynn and Janelle Nunley tell a similar story about their decision to join: “We lived in Dallas and decided to move our business to a warmer climate so we could play more golf. We selected Atlanta because it was closer to Hilton Head and began looking for a club.

We considered another club and even bought a lot out there. Then our real estate agent, Todd Yates, asked us if we had visited the Atlanta Athletic Club. When we said that we had not, he immediately invited us out. Well, when we saw the caliber and quality of the two golf courses and the rest of the facilities, we immediately said, ‘This is where we need to be.’ So we cancelled our original plans, and in November 1994, we were accepted for membership. We moved in December. Today, Janelle plays five times a week, and I try to play about three times a week. We even hold our Bible study at the Club.” In 2004 Lynn won the Georgia Senior Golfers Association annual championship at Sea Palms in St. Simons by one stroke over fellow AAC member Bob Sharpenberg.

For members who grew up in the Club as children, they all tell a similar story about how the Club’s activities influenced them. Cole Van Houten’s grandfather was a member in the early years, his parents were members, and he became a junior member in 1966 at the age of sixteen. Van Houten reflected on his experience growing up in the AAC under the tutelage of Carlos de Cubas: “My years on the swim team taught me a lesson that if you apply yourself and you have good coaching, you can be good at anything. My time at the Club has helped me in everything I do in life.” Guy Gunter Jr. agreed: “I have two sons and a daughter, and Buz McGriff did a terrific job of training those kids how to treat people and how to grow up to be a gentleman and

Quote of the Day “I’ve visited clubs all over the United States. Our club is head and shoulders above the rest.”

—Lynn Nunley

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Tommy Barnes with his sons.

Tommy Barnes with son and Adair trophy.

A Family Affair Numerous families have made the Atlanta Athletic Club part of their lives for several generations, but none is more beloved than the Barnes family. Thomas W. Barnes was born in Monroe, Georgia, in 1915, and joined the AAC in 1932. He qualified for the U.S. Amateur sixteen straight times; won the Southern Four-Ball in 1940, 1941, 1946, and 1947; and captured the Georgia Amateur in 1941. He would go on to win the Southern Amateur in 1947 and 1949.

He was named an alternate to the 1949 Walker Cup Team and competed the next year in the Masters Tournament. In 1948 Barnes played in a foursome at East Lake with his friend Bobby Jones that sadly proved to be Jones’s last round of golf.

At the age of seventy-three, Barnes broke Jones’s record by shooting a 62 at East Lake.

Writing for the Atlanta Constitution, Charlie Roberts declared that Barnes has “run the gamut from nine-year-old wunderkind to Atlanta’s Grand Old Man of Golf.” Barnes has been a lifelong member of the AAC and made sure that his children followed in his footsteps. He once joked, “My kids all, I mean every one of them, grew up at East Lake. In fact, I said many times to my wife, Rachel, she had the best babysitter in the world.” Today, two of their five sons are AAC members and are fine amateur golfers. Tommy Jr., who joined the Club in 1960, played in the Masters and in the U.S. Open. His second eldest, Dockie, once asked his father, “Do I have to play golf because my name is Barnes?” Dockie was a member of the Club for many years, moved out of Atlanta, and returned to the AAC in 2004 to continue the family tradition.

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Tommy Barnes article.

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The Tennants enjoying lunch with their grandchildren at the Pool Pavilion.

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Abrego family enjoying dinner on the Terrace.

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Wine on the Terrace.

Dining at the AAC As Richard Grice, chairman of the House Committee, wrote in the Club Times: “AAC is not merely the home of two great golf courses or simply a collection of some of the finest tennis, aquatic and athletic amenities in a single campus in the Southeast. It is also a collection of vibrant members sharing a common social bond with camaraderie and good cheer. . . .”

Truly, the Club excels at hosting great events where families can come together with friends and create special memories.

Some of the Club’s most popular signature events include Easter, Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve, and of course, the children’s favorites: Christmas Spectacular and the July 4th Fireworks Spectacular. The Club offers dining and entertainment events throughout the year with a wide array of social activities to meet the needs and interests of all members: From the formal Wine Dinners to the Interactive Cooking Classes, from the Seafood Extravaganzas to the Carnegie Progressive dinners; and from the Chef’s Table to the spring and summer outdoor music concerts. As Peter Lovelace, Club manager, says, “The Club has embraced a more casual dining trend with the success of the Pool Pavilion and Center Court Café, while still fulfilling the members’ desire for upscale, sophisticated experiences in the Merion Room and at our Wine Dinners. Whether you are celebrating a special occasion with a loved one, enjoying one of the many family-focused signature events at the Club, or just meeting up with friends for a drink in the Interlachen or a casual dinner in the Royal Troon Grill, a warm, relaxed, yet refined atmosphere signifies the true pulse of the Club today as it relates to dining and events.”

Old Merion Room.

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The Wine Room.

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A Place to Build and Renew Friendships Banks & Shane concert.

a lady.” Patrick Ford expressed a sentiment heard by so many members, “My kids grew up here. It was a key part of their childhood.” Lindsay Jones reflected, “We loved the Club as children, and now we see on Facebook all of our friends with kids who are here now.” Engagement with the Club evolves at every stage of life, and the AAC has a very successful Carnegie Group, comprising members under the age of forty-five.

But the Club was not without its challenges, most recently the recession of 2008. Chris Borders recalled that “we started to see the banquet business decline, and that’s often a good indicator of the health of the economy.” In consultation with the senior staff, Chris recommended not expanding the budget and reducing staff costs. He recalled that “the board was surprised when we told them what we had in mind.

They did not see it coming. In the end, we were right.

We had a number of resignations. Some members had been with us for twenty-five years or more; we were all devastated. But good planning and the creation of new membership categories to attract younger candidates helped get us through. I retired in 2013, just as we were moving into the recovery.”

Kevin Carroll replaced Borders in 2013 and has helped the Club continue to thrive and grow. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, he had been the general manager of Bellerive Country Club and Loxahatchee Club before coming to AAC in May 2013. In two short years, Kevin has made a positive impact on both the membership and management of AAC. In January 2014 Atlanta Athletic Club was

Quote of the Day “We have so many employees who have been here for years—Susie Thiel, Rod David, Roxanne Wilson.

They love the Club and the members. We see so many families grow; I remember when Josh Crawford was

just a boy. Now he’s in college. For some members, like

Claude Huey, I don’t even need to ask what he wants for breakfast. I know it’s either a number 1 (eggs Benedict) or a number 2 (scrambled eggs with grits).”

—Geneva Jiles

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Our Family Tradition The Waterhouse family is representative of the multigenerational nature of the Club. Herb and Mildred Waterhouse joined in 1964 when the Club was still at East Lake. When the Club moved north, their daughter Maria Licata remembered, “It was like packing to go to Tennessee.

There was just nothing out here.” Her brother, Jonathan, became a member. Her four daughters, Lindsay, Mary Lisa, Morgan, and Madison, were all active in junior golf and swimming. Lindsay and Mary Lisa are both members. The family shares a tradition of celebrating Christmas at the Club, and now hosts about forty to fifty family members.

Lindsay’s daughter, Millie Jones, is now the newest member of the family to enjoy the Club experience. As Herb explained, “The club is a family. Our close friends are members, and it is part of our family story. We cannot imagine going anywhere else.”

From left to right: Chris Mcquire (Lisa’s fiancé), Lisa Licata, Jim Licata, Maria Licata holding Millie Dodd Jones; sitting: Herbert Waterhouse, Mildred Waterhouse, Madison Licata; Standing to right of bench from left to right: Morgan Licata, Lindsay Licata Jones, Kurt Jones.

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Pat and Chris Borders, Jim Thorne, and Bob Dutlinger at Borders’s retirement party.

Chris Borders Alan Christopher (Chris) Borders was hired in 1975 by then general manager Jim Petzing to serve as an assistant manager and help prepare clubhouse staff for the 1976 U.S. Open. He held degrees from both Mercer University and Florida State University, and prior to his arrival at AAC had served his country in Vietnam and managed golf clubs in the army and in Georgia. In his first ten years at AAC, Borders oversaw clubhouse operations for the 1976 U.S. Open, the 1981 PGA Championship, the 1982 Junior World Cup, and the 1984 U.S. Mid-Amateur. In 1982 he helped coordinate a major interior renovation of the clubhouse and the creation of the Hoylake Room and the Casual Corner (now the Troon Grill). Borders was recruited in 1986 to become general manager at Horseshoe Bend Country Club. He would return to the AAC in 1989 as general manager, leading the Club in hosting the 1990 U.S. Women’s Open and the 2001 and 2011 PGA Championships. In addition, Borders was successful in bringing seven years of professional tennis events to the AAC through the hosting of the AT&T Tennis Championships from 1993 to 1999. During his tenure, the Club redesigned the Highlands and Riverside courses, built a par-3 course, redesigned the tennis center, added a tennis stadium, renovated the clubhouse, opened a spa at the Athletic Center, and significantly expanded the Aquatic Center. Borders recalled that his memorable times at the Club involved directing the 1998 Club Centennial that included the building of the Centennial Garden and the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of Bobby Jones’s Grand Slam in 2005. Borders was twice named president of the Georgia Club Managers Association, was National Club Manager of the Year in 1992, and in 2014 he became the first manager in Georgia to be inducted into the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame.

At his retirement ceremony in 2013 he said, “The Atlanta Athletic Club has provided me with an amazing platform with which to build a successful career and serve our membership. There simply is no better place to have worked.”

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Inset: Chris Borders with his Georgia Golf Hall of Fame award.

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named as one of the Top 100 Workplaces in Atlanta by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Part of the success formula Kevin brings to the Club is his own service philosophy of “everything matters.” That philosophy has helped bring many new members to the AAC since Kevin’s arrival.

As the recession indicated, a club, even with AAC’s illustrious history, cannot rest on its laurels.

As current president Patrick Ford explained, I think the goal of each president is to take a longrange view of the Club’s health, not three years into the future but in 20 years. That philosophy has served us well. We have really focused in the past few decades on making this a family-friendly club and bringing in new members. That will continue, but we will have to continually update facilities, consider the issues related to transportation for members and events, and understand the trends that will shape our operations.

We want this club to be a destination where the whole family is accommodated.

The AAC is mainly, however, a place to build and renew friendships, often through the Club’s social events. There are informal events and groups organized by the members themselves, as Geneva Berry explained in 1998: “I play bridge every Thursday, and I have for fifteen years, with the same foursome.” But there are also formal events run by the Club. When asked about their favorite

social events throughout the year, the members fondly speak of dressing up for the New Year’s Eve party, enjoying the buffet after the annual meeting in February, bringing their whole family out to the Club for the Fourth of July fireworks, celebrating Thanksgiving in the Merion Room, and watching their grandchildren greet Santa Claus at the Old Fashioned Christmas celebration.

Angie Wells, who joined with her husband, Leo, in 1971, explained how all these events contributed to the family feel of the Club: “From the moment I became involved with the Athletic Club, I immediately noticed that it’s very family oriented, that children feel very comfortable, and the members are very receptive to the atmosphere that children provide. And I have always really appreciated that about the Athletic Club, as a wife and mother.”

The combination of history and vision, a celebration of tradition, and a willingness to change with the times sets the Atlanta Athletic Club apart.

Sonny Ackerman looks toward the future: “I think the legacy we should leave, that I hope would be left, would be that people would take tremendous pride in wanting to belong to this club and keep it up. And continue to do what they’re doing today.”

Jack Embry concurred: “I would hope people one hundred years from now who join the Atlanta Athletic Club would look back on it and pick up part of the history and talk about what a great place it was, and I hope still will be.”

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Ladies Tennis Member Guest lunch at the pool pavilion.

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Quote of the Day “I don’t know of any other club, especially in the South, that has the tradition behind the Club that the Athletic Club has.”

—Tom Smith The Hoylake Room, 2005.

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Bobby Jones and the Red Jacket This particular jacket belonged to a very distinguished captain of the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, Kenneth Stoker, who was in office in 1929. Thus he was the immediate past captain of the club when Bobby Jones won the Open at Hoylake in 1930. At a dinner at the club prior to the Open, Stoker sat next to Bobby Jones. Jones admired his red jacket with dark green lapels that identified him as a captain, or past captain.

Ann Rowlands, the granddaughter of Kenneth Stoker, recalled that Bobby Jones had brought a present for the club in 1930 and unfortunately, his English counterparts were left without a gift to present to Jones in exchange, so Stoker donated his jacket as a present—to be given to Jones if he won the Open Championship at Hoylake that week. When Jones was presented his 1930 trophy at Hoylake, Stoker also presented the red jacket to him—the same jacket that now adorns the wall of the Hoylake Room. Bobby Jones, who later went on to be cofounder of the Augusta National Golf Club, was touched

by Stoker’s gift, which served as the inspiration for the distinctive and coveted green Masters jacket.

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Group portrait of the 75th Anniversary of the Grand Slam Celebration Committee. Sitting members are from left: Sarah Yates, Tony White, Chairman John Koontz, Don Moss, and AAC president Don Scartz. standing members are from left, golf department director Rick Anderson, Jim Teate, Dave Johnson, Sam Kiker, Davis Stewart, Charles Pittard, Jim Thorne, Larry Turner, AAC general manager Chris Borders, Bill O’Callaghan, and Catherine Lewis.

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The Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Grand Slam In September 2005 the Atlanta Athletic Club began a series of celebrations of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Grand Slam. Bobby Jones’s achievement was commemorated in a three-part celebration, chaired by past president John Koontz. A Fall Invitational was held September 8–9, and the Robert T. Jones 4-Ball was held October 22–23.

The centerpiece of the celebration coincided with Jones’s victory in the U.S. Amateur at Merion Cricket Club (now Merion Golf Club). From September 29 to October 1, the Club hosted an international celebration.

Sixteen representatives from each of the four clubs where Jones won the Grand Slam—the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews in Scotland; the Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, England; Interlachen Country Club in Edina, Minnesota; and Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pennsylvania—attended. In addition, several special guests, including the presidents of the USGA and PGA, joined the celebration. The opening ceremonies began on Thursday evening at the Club. On Friday, AAC members and guests played golf and then in the evening gathered at the Atlanta History Center for cocktails, dinner, and guided tours of their signature exhibitions, including Down the Fairway with Bobby Jones. After a second day of golf on Saturday, the Club hosted a formal dinner, where each of the four guest clubs made a presentation about Jones’s role in their history.

75th Anniversary Grand Slam, 2005 Tuscan dinner.

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Quote of the Day “I think my favorite day was my first one. I left a great job to come out here, and found that I

had made the right choice. The AAC is a family, and I’m proud to be part of it every day. I take a personal pride in the Club, and when I retire I just might come back to work for free.”

—Jimmy Cole, director of facilities

Father and son playing golf on the Riverside course.

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Clubhouse panorama.

The Georgia Golf Hall of Fame The Georgia General Assembly created the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame in 1982.

Initially headquartered in Augusta, the first members were inducted in 1989, a tradition that continued in Augusta until 2009. The next year, the GGHOF Authority and Commission was abolished, and the Georgia State Golf Association then entered into an agreement with the Georgia Department of Economic Development to oversee the Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony was revived in 2011 at the Atlanta Athletic Club and is now held annually in January. The following Atlanta Athletic Club members have been honored by induction into the Hall of Fame: Perry Adair Tommy Barnes Furman Bisher Charles H. Black Jr. Chris Borders Tom Forkner Alexa Stirling Fraser Watts Gunn Charles Harrison Bob Jones Dot Kirby Martha W. Kirouac Stewart Maiden Ken Mangum Gene McClure Larry Nelson Johnny Paulk George Sargent Harold Sargent Jack Sargent Louise Suggs Charles Yates P. Dan Yates Danny Yates * denotes deceased

(2009) * (1989) (2007) * (2000) * (2014) (2007) (1989) * (1989) * (1992) (1989) * (1989) * (2006) (2016) * (2015) (2015) (1990) (2009) (1995) * (1989) * (1992) * (1989) * (1989) * (1996) (1994)

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The Pavilion at night.

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Terrace view of the courses.

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Fireworks on the Fourth of July.

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Appendix

U.S. Amateur Display and Golf Honor Roll In anticipation of the 2014 U.S. Amateur, the Heritage Committee created a U.S. Amateur display across from the golf shop to promote the AAC’s slogan for the championships: “Remember the Legacy . . . Grow the Game.” The display highlights several of the Club’s past champions—Bob Jones, Alexa Stirling, Watts Gunn, Charlie Yates, Dot Kirby, Charlie Harrison, Louise Suggs, Mike Podolak (Remember the Legacy)—and recognizes our junior golf program with photos of AAC notable players: Courtney Swaim, Bailey Tardy, Will Meason, Preston Heyward, and 184 others A Host to Hthe istory many (Grow Game).

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The Honor Boards located in the Hall of Champions recognize the outstanding accomplishments of AAC players and leaders.

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Appendix

AAC Members and Family

USGA Amateur Championship Players U.S. Amateur

Perry Adair Davis Adams Jr. (3) Bo Andrews (2) Tommy Barnes Sr. (17) Tommy Barnes Jr. (5) Zane Goldthorp Ryan Grant Watts Gunn (1 Runner-Up to Bobby Jones) Charlie Harrison (16) Neal Hendee Bobby Jones (13–5 Wins, 2 Runner-Up) Robert T. Jones III (3) David Kleckner Michael Podolak (10) Chan Reeves Seth Reeves (3) Paul Ryan (2) Don Scartz West Streib C. L. Straughan Charlie Yates (9) P. Dan Yates Jr. Danny Yates (1 Runner-Up)

U.S. Open—As Amateur

Tommy Barnes Jr. Charlie Harrison (2) Bobby Jones (11–4 Wins, 5 Runner-Up) Danny Yates

U.S. Women’s Open—As Amateur Brenda Corrie Kuehn (9) Louise Suggs (2 Wins) Courtney Swaim Bailey Tardy

U.S. Senior Amateur Tommy Barnes Jr. Paul Cobb Tom Forkner (7) Buck Hightower (3) Brian Johnston Ed Updegraff (1 Win)

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U.S. Senior Open—As Amateur Tom Forkner (2) Chris Pethley

U.S. Women’s Amateur

Alexa Stirling Fraser (7–3 Wins, 3 Runner-Up, 3 Medalist, first to win 3 consecutive titles) Dot Kirby (5–1 Win, 2 Runner-Up, 2 Medalist) Martha Kirouac (1 Win, 1 Medalist) Brenda Corrie Kuehn (16) Margaret Maddox (4) Emilie Meason (Burger) (3) Louise Suggs (1 Win, 1 Medalist) Courtney Swaim (1 Runner-Up, 1 Medalist) Bailey Tardy (2)

U.S. Junior Amateur Davis Adams Jr. Tommy Barnes Jr. (2) Tom Freese Tim Freund Neal Hendee Preston Heyward West Streib

U.S. Girls Junior Amateur Ashley Webb Adelman Joyce Denson Emilie Meason (Burger) Bailey Tardy (3–1 Medalist)

U.S. Mid-Amateur

Rob Adams Larry Buchwald Zane Goldthorp Michael Podolak (10–1 Win) Mark Rheudasil West Streib DeWitt Weaver III (2) Danny Yates (1 win)

U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur

Donna Moore Gonsalves (4) Brenda Corrie Kuehn (14, 1 Runner-Up)

AAC Members and Family

Players in Non-USGA Championships Western Amateur

Masters

Tommy Barnes Sr. Tommy Barnes Jr. Charlie Harrison (2) Bobby Jones (11) Michael Podolak Charlie Yates (11—Low Amateur 5 times) Danny Yates (2)

British Open

Bobby Jones (4–3 Wins, 3 Low Amateur) George Sargent

British Amateur

Rob Adams Larry Buchwald Zane Goldthorp Charlie Harrison Bobby Jones (3–1 Win) Charlie Yates (1 Win)

Georgia Amateur (continued)

Bo Andrews Steve Herman (3) Charlie Yates (1 Win) Seth Reeves

Western Women’s Amateur Louise Suggs (2 Wins) Bailey Tardy

Western Women’s Open Dot Kirby (2 Runner-Up) Louise Suggs (2 Wins)

Eastern Amateur Bo Andrews Hal Hobgood

North & South Women’s Amateur Bailey Tardy (1 Win)

Atlanta City Junior

Neal Hendee (1 win) Robert Pierce (3 Consecutive Wins)

British Women’s Amateur

Canadian Open

Southern Amateur

Canadian Women’s Amateur

Louise Suggs (1 Win)

Perry Adair (2 Wins) Davis Adams III Rob Adams (3) Bo Andrews (2) Tommy Barnes Sr. (2 Wins) F. G. Byrd (1 Win) Watts Gunn (1 Win) David Hailey Charlie Harrison (1 Win) Neal Hendee Hal Hobgood (5) Bobby Jones (3 Wins) Matt Mierzejewski (2) Danny Yates (1 Win)

Southern Women’s Amateur Alexa Stirling Fraser (3 Wins) Dot Kirby (1 Win, 3 Runner-Up) Martha Kirouac (1 Win) Helen Lowndes (2 Wins, 2 Runner-Up) Margaret Maddox (1 Win) Louise Suggs (2 Wins)

Bobby Jones (1 Runner-Up)

Alexa Stirling Fraser (2 Wins, 2 Runner-Up)

Georgia Open

Davis Adams III Rob Adams (7) Neal Hendee Hal Hobgood (7) DeWitt Weaver III (1 Win)

Georgia Women’s Amateur Joyce Denson (2 Runner-Up) Cornelia Doak (1 Win) Dot Kirby (6 Wins) Martha Kirouac (1 Win) Margaret Maddox (3 Wins) Louise Suggs (2 Wins)

Georgia Women’s Open Emilie Meason (Burger)

Georgia Amateur

Charles Black Jr. (1 Win, 2 Runner-Up) David Black (1 Win, 1 Runner-Up) John Bodin (1 Win) Eugene Cook (2 Wins) Watts Gunn (2 Wins, 2 Runner-Up) David Hailey Charlie Harrison (1 Win, 3 Runner-Up) Neal Hendee (1 Win) Preston Heyward Hal Hobgood (4) Julius Hughes (1 Win, 2 Runner-Up) Brian Johnston Bobby Jones (1 Win in First Ever Georgia Amateur) David Kleckner (3) Jeff Koontz Matt Mierzejewski (4) Bill O’Callaghan Robert Pierce Charles V. Rainwater (1 Win, 1 Runner-Up) Mark Rheudasil Carl “Chick” Ridley (1 Win, 1 Runner-Up) Don Scartz West Streib Jeff Warren Charlie Yates (2 Wins) P. Dan Yates Jr. (1 Win, 1 Runner-Up) Danny Yates (3 Wins, 3 Runner-Up)

Perry Adair (1 Win, 1 Runner-Up to Bobby Jones in First Ever Georgia Amateur) Davis Adams Jr. Davis Adams III (4) Rob Adams Tommy Barnes Sr. (20–1 Win) Tommy Barnes Jr. (10) Mark Benefield (3)

Southeast Amateur

Davis Adams III (4) Rob Adams (12) Bo Andrews Tommy Barnes Sr. (2 wins) Watts Gunn (1 win) David Kleckner Neal Hendee Matt Mierzejewski (3) Robert Pierce

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Appendix

AAC Members and Family

Amateur Golf Leadership Roles USGA Executive Committee—National Board

Milton Dargan T. R. “Dick” Garlington Bobby Jones (3 years including Grand Slam year of 1930) Gene McClure Thomas Paine Charles Rainwater

National Women’s Committee Martha Kirouac

National Junior Golf Committee Danny Yates

Southeastern Section Committee Director Tommy Barnes Sr.

Green Section Committee Ken Mangum

Major Amateur Championships at AAC General Chairmen

2014 U.S. Amateur Charlie Anderson/Glenn Cornell 2002 U.S. Junior Amateur Dennis Patterson 1994 U.S. Mid-Amateur Neal Purcell 1982 Junior World Cup Charles Brown 1950 U.S. Women’s Amateur W.B. “Bip” Farnsworth

Golf Course Superintendents Association of America Board of Directors Ken Mangum

American Junior Golf Association

Rolex Tournament of Champions Director Robert Boyd

Georgia State Golf Association

President Glenn Cornell

Gene McClure Executive Director Martha Kirouac

(First Woman) Board of Directors Charlie Anderson Charlie Harrison Tommy Barnes Sr. Martha Kirouac Chris Borders (First Woman) Glenn Cornell P. Dan Yates Jr. Don Hamelink Danny Yates

Southern Golf Association Board of Directors

Georgia Senior Golfers Association Presidents

A Host to History

Lamar Bell Grady Coleman Tom Forkner Bob Sharpenberg

Atlanta Junior Golf Association President

Board of Directors

Bill O’Callaghan

Bill O’Callaghan Danny Yates

Bobby Jones Advisory Committee (St. Andrews Student Exchange) Francis Bird Marty Elgison John Imlay Rob Johnston Bob Jones IV

Bill O’Callaghan Malcolm Powell Neal Purcell Charlie Yates Charlie Yates Jr.

Club Managers Association of America National President

Georgia President

188

Tommy Barnes Sr. Charlie Harrison Jeff Warren

Kevin Carroll Clyde Mingledorf Jim Petzing Chris Borders Jerry McCoy

AAC Members and Family Georgia Golf Hall of Fame

Individual Honors

(24 of 102 Inductees) Perry Adair Tommy Barnes Sr. Furman Bisher Charles Black Chris Borders Tom Forkner Alexa Stirling Fraser Watts Gunn Charlie Harrison Bobby Jones Dot Kirby Martha Kirouac Stewart Maiden Ken Mangum Gene McClure Larry Nelson Johnny Paulk George Sargent Harold Sargent Jack Sargent Louise Suggs Charlie Yates P. Dan Yates Jr. Danny Yates

Georgia Sports Hall of Fame (10 of 27 Golfers Inducted) Tommy Barnes Sr. Alexa Stirling Fraser Watts Gunn Charlie Harrison Bobby Jones Dot Kirby Harold Sargent Louise Suggs Charlie Yates Danny Yates Non-Golf Categories: Bob Boylston Bitsy Grant John Heisman Mark Price Dan Reeves

Superintendents Hall of Fame/USGA Ken Mangum

Ike Grainger Award Gene MClure

Walker Cup Players Tommy Barnes Sr. Watts Gunn (2) Charlie Harrison Bobby Jones (5) Michael Podolak Charlie Yates (2) Danny Yates (2)

Walker Cup Captains

Bobby Jones (2–Playing Captain) Charlie Yates Danny Yates (2)

Curtis Cup Players

Dot Kirby (4) Martha Kirouac (2) Brenda Corrie Kuehn (2) Louise Suggs Courtney Swaim Bailey Tardy

Curtis Cup Captains Martha Kirouac

World Golf Association Hall of Fame Bobby Jones Louise Suggs

Southern Golf Association Hall of Fame Tommy Barnes Sr. Watts Gunn Bobby Jones Charlie Yates Danny Yates

USGA Bob Jones Award Winners Louise Suggs Ed Updegraff Charlie Yates

Awards Named for AAC Members

USGA Bob Jones Award GSGA Tommy Barnes Player of the Year Award GSGA Charlie Yates Scholarship Program Southern Amateur George Adair Trophy

GSGA Tommy Barnes Player of the Year Award Emilie Meason (Burger)

National Club Manager of the Year Chris Borders

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Appendix

AAC Members and Family

Collegiate Players

National Intercollegiate Individual Champions Simpson Dean Watts Gunn Martha Kirouac Charlie Yates

190

Princeton Georgia Tech Cal State–Fullerton Georgia Tech

Colleges and Team Members

Arkansas Armstrong State Auburn Boston College Cal State–Fullerton Clemson Dartmouth Darton Elon Florida State Furman (4)

Georgia (10)

Will Meason Reid Rathburn Courtney Swaim Donna Moore Gonsalves Martha Kirouac Michael Fleming Savannah Grice Michael Smyth Virginia Byron Don Scartz Preston Heyward Beth Couture Litterer Paul Ryan Lee Turner Davis Adams Jr. Rob Adams Tommy Barnes Jr. Justin Bolli Neal Hendee Emilie Meason (Burger)

Georgia State (2)

Georgia Southern Georgia Tech (18)

Bailey Tardy Mychelle Travis Richard Williams Danny Yates Patrick Ford Tim Freund Matt Mierzejewski Perry Adair Bo Andrews Tommy Barnes Sr. Jeff Brown W. B. “Bip” Farnsworth

A Host to History

All American National Intercollegiate Champion Team National Champions

All American (4) USGA State Team Champions Curtis Cup

Team Captain Co-Captain GT Hall of Fame Team Captain, GT Hall of Fame Team Captain

Collegiate Players

Colleges and Team Members (continued)

Georgia Tech (continued)

Watts Gunn

David Hailey Charlie Harrison Mike Johnson Bobby Jones Jon Martin Mike Nicklaus Sam Nunn Chan Reeves Seth Reeves Mike Spears Charlie Yates

Illinois Lipscomb (2)

Longwood Louisville Mercer (2)

Miami of Ohio Michigan State Oglethorpe (2)

Ohio State Princeton

P. Dan Yates Jr. Ashley Webb Adelman Jonathan Beck Parker Beck Robert Boyd Courtney Swaim Trimble Chris Borders Ryan Blackburn Steve Herman Brian Johnston Charlie Anderson David Kleckner Mike Torrence Simpson Dean

Rhodes College Rice South Carolina Southern Methodist University of Maryland Valdosta State Vanderbilt Wake Forest Washington & Lee Western Carolina West Georgia Wheeling Jesuit

Barrett Binion Travis Hancuff West Streib DeWitt Weaver III Randy Hoffman Hal Hobgood Ryan Grant Brenda Corrie Kuehn Cody Solomon Jeff Teague Bill Pierce Bob Sharpenberg

National Intercollegiate Champion All American, Team Captain, GT HOF

GT Hall of Fame GT Hall of Fame

All American All American National Intercollegiate Champion, All American, GT Hall of Fame Team Captain, GT Hall of Fame Team Captain Team Captain Head Coach

Team Captain, All American National Intercollegiate Champion, Team Captain

Co-Captain Team Captain Team Captain All American, WF Hall of Fame

Team Captain

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IAndex ppendix

Numbers in italics represent photos. ___________ A A. G. Spalding & Bros., 47 Aaron, Hank, 111 AAU (National Amateur Athletic Union), 10, 12 AAU Basketball Tournament, 10 AAU Southern Swimming Championship, 12 Abrego family, 166 Ackerman Jr., Oliver P. “Sonny,” 79, 109, 171 Adair, George, xxii, 23, 122–123 Adair, Perry, 26–28, 27, 41, 98, 177 Adair Jr., Forrest, 30 Adair Sr., Forrest, 23 Adair Trophy, 84, 164 Adams, Wayman, 52 Addams, Bert, xxii Adderhold, Tom, 152 Agassi, Andre, 89–90, 94, 94 Al Doonan Hall, 10 Alcott, Amy, 144 Alexander, John, 89 Alexander the Great, 36 Allen Jr., H. C. “Hikie,” 59, 64, 123 Allis, Peter, 59 Alston & Bird LLP, 35 ALTA (Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association), 89, 94 Alvarado, Benjamin, 86 amateur athlete, building a club in the age of the, 1–21 Ambassador Members, 55 American Golfer, 36 American Junior Golf Association, 102 American Magazine, 24 American Society of Golf Course Architects, 69 Anderson, Beth, 53 Anderson, Charles, 52, 53, 110, 118, 123, 161 Anderson, Rick, 51, 103, 119, 150, 174 Anderson, Ruth, 84 Andrew, Prince, 52, 53 Andrews, Dick, 78 Annual Meeting Buffet, 63 Annual Town Match, 47 Ansley Park Golf Club, 16 Appleby, Stuart, 148 Aquatic Center, 152, 170 Armour, Darin, 6 Armour, Tommy, 40 Arnold Palmer Cup, 87 article about Tommy Barnes, 165 Ashley, Lucille, 162 Assenmacher, Paul, 109 AT&T, 93 AT&T Challenge, 89–90, 90–91, 94, 94–95, 96, 170 Athletic Center, 152, 170 Atkins, Mayo, 4, 74 Atkins, Pat, 4, 74 Atkinson, Henry (Harry) Morrell, 23–24, 25 Atlanta and Environs, 30

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Atlanta City Tournament, 124 Atlanta Classic, 138 Atlanta Constitution, 35, 165 Atlanta Country Club, 143 Atlanta Crackers, 72 Atlanta History Center, 52, 54, 175 Atlanta Housing Authority, 66 Atlanta Journal, 24, 38, 72 Atlanta Journal Magazine, 11 Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 70, 102, 171 Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association (ALTA), 89, 94 Atlanta National, 113 Atlanta Open, 84 Atlanta Steel Hoop Company, 1 Atlanta Tennis Challenge, 93–94 Atlanta Tennis Championship, 94 Atlanta Tennis Classic, 96 Atlanta Theater Company, 2 Atlanta Women’s Golf Association, 124 Atlantic Steel, 1 ATP Tour, 89 ATP Tour/Fanfest, 89 ATP World Tour, 94 Auburn Avenue facility, 1–2, 163 Auchmutey, Jim, 70 Augusta Country Club, 100 Augusta National Golf Club, 47, 50, 70, 73, 146, 152, 160, 173 Australian Open, 90 Autrey Jr., Merriell, 18, 20, 46, 80, 123, 136 award, Georgia Golf Hall of Fame, 170 Awtrey, Jim, 106 B Bachman, John W., 123 badminton at AAC, 78 Badminton Week, 78 Baldwin Jr., J. Chandler, 4, 20, 118 Ball, Frank, 36, 51 Ballesteros, Seve, 138 Baltusrol Golf Club, 113 Banks & Shane concert, 168–169 barbershop, Carnegie Way, 20–21 Barnes, Dockie, 165 Barnes, Jim, 40 Barnes, Rachel, 108, 165 Barnes Jr., Tommy, 26, 109, 165 Barnes Sr., Tommy, 26, 85, 108, 109, 164, 165, 177 Barracudas, 98 Barron, Brett, 26 Bartkowski, Steve, 111 baseball team, 1908, xxii–1 basketball team, 1913-1914, 4–5 basketball team game, 12–13 basketball team medal, 15 Bay Hill Club, 87 Bean, Joe, 5, 6, 12 Bean Boys, 109 Beharrell, John, 106

Bekkers, John, 50 Beljan, Charlie, 86, 86, 88 Bell, Alexander Graham, 2 Bell, Judy, 144 Belle, Albert, 147 Bellerive Country Club, 82, 168 BellSouth Classic, 100 Bendelow, Tom, 16, 24 Benedict, Charles, 88, 96 Bennett, Leeman, 111 Berggren, Lisa, 98 Berkeley Hills Country Club, 152 Berry, Geneva, 171 Berry, Reuben, 4, 64 Big Creek, 60 Bird, Frances M., 81, 123 Birmingham Athletic Club, 8, 9 Bisher, Furman, 109, 154, 177 Black Jr., Charles H., 177 Blake, James, 96 Bleckley and Tyler, 2 Blum, Arnold, 84 boathouse, AAC, 25 Boatwright Jr., P. J., 131, 144 Bob Jones Award, 32 Bobby Jones Executive Committee, 54 Bobby Jones Room, 47–48, 49, 50, 54, 84, 104 Bobby Jones Special, 38 Bolli, Justin, 26, 100 Boo Bash, 98 Bopanna, Rohan, 96 Borders, Chris, 79, 94, 106, 119, 128, 152, 154, 168, 170, 170, 174, 177 Borders, Pat, 170 Boros, Julius, 59 Bowden, Bobby, 111 Boylston, Robert Wheeler, 109 Boylston Jr., Alfred D., 123 Bradford, Lee, 12 Bradley, Keegan, 152–154, 155 Bradley, Pat, 152 Bradshaw, Tess, 30 Branch, Eugene, 18, 73, 74, 80, 80, 122–123, 129, 131 Branch, Ruth, 104 Branch, William, 59 Brannen, Tommy, 100 Brassfield & Gorrie, 116 Braswell, Bill, 78 Brett, Jim, 46, 128, 128 British Amateur, 35–37, 47 British Open, 35, 38, 44, 47, 147–148 Brocksmith, John “Jack,” 109 Brodnax III, George H., 4, 49, 109, 123 Brookhaven Country Club, 16 Brooks, Eugene E., 26 Brooks, Jean, 64 Brookwood Station, 30 Brown, Charles, 80 Brown, Hubie, 111

Brown, J. Chandler, 44 Brown, Mark, 153 Broyles, Arnold, 123 Bryan, Bob, 96, 97 Bryan, Mike, 96, 97 Bryan, Wayne, 96 BTI, 93 Buford Dam, 58 building a championship venue, 76–125 building a club in the age of the amateur athlete, 1–21 building and renewing friendships, a place for, 162–185 Business Week, 163 Byeong-hun, An, 160 Byrd, F. G., xxii Byrd, William, 73 C C&S Bank, 18 Cady, Phil, 6 Calamity Jane Post Office, 130, 131 Calcavecchia, Mark, 148, 150 Caldwell, Rex, 138 California State Open, 157 Canadian Open, 51, 133–134 Canadian Women’s Amateur, 124 Candler Jr., Asa G., 2, 123 Capital City Club, 28, 73 Capitol Electric Company, 2 Cappelen, Sebastian, 157 Cardio Theater, 78 Carlton, Jim, 78, 162 Carnegie Group, 168 Carnegie Progressive dinner, 167 Carnegie Way facility, 2, 4, 11, 17–18, 21, 47, 74 Carnog, Slick, 9 Carpenter, W. C., 24 Carr, Joe, 47, 55 Carroll, Kevin, 10, 168, 171 Carter Jr., E. V., 8 Cartoon Network Smash Tour, 89 Cashin, Harry, 72 Casper Jr., Billy, 59 Cast-Off Party, 60 Casual Corner, 170 celebration of the Grand Slam, 50th anniversary, 46 Centennial Celebration, 104, 106–107, 170 Centennial Garden, 50, 104, 104–105, 170 Centennial Health Run, 106 Centennial Juniors Tournament, 106 Centennial Labor Day Adult Mixer, 106 Centennial Member Picnic, 106 Centennial Mystery Island Party, 60, 104 Centennial Room, 104, 106 Center Court Cafe, 93, 167 Central Parking, 74 Cerniglia, Tony, 86, 88 Ceto, Nick, 92 champions, cradle of, 22–55 Champions Tennis Tournament, 93

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IAndex ppendix

Championship, AAC Club, 93 championship venue, building a, 76–125 Chandley, Jeff, 6, 94, 97 Chang, Michael, 89–90 Chapman, Coyle, Chapman, 116 Chapman, Jim, 116 Charity Exhibition Match, 89 Charles M. Graves Company, 60 Chattahoochee River, 58, 64, 132, 144 Chattahoochee Shooter, 160 Cheadle, Frank “Rick,” 106 Chef’s Table, 167 Cherokee Town & Country Club, 106 Cherry Hills Country Club, 82 Chestatee River, 58 Chevy Chase Golf Club, 51 children’s programs at AAC, 10–11, 98, 99, 100, 101 Choi, K. J., 148 Christian, Kendal, 98 Christian, Tim, 109, 116 Christmas Spectacular, 98, 167, 171 Cink, Stewart, 111 City Builder, 10 Clarke, William, 138 Claussen, Henry, 100 Cleveland Athletic Club, 8 Clifton Jr., Walter L., 123 club, building in the age of the amateur athlete, 1–21 club, Calamity Jane U.S. Amateur golf, 157 Club Leaders Forum, 163 Club Life, 30 club rules, early, 3 Club Times, 4, 12, 18, 20, 24, 33, 58, 64, 77, 86, 104, 112, 122, 142, 144, 152, 154, 163, 167 clubhouse, photos of the, 7, 28–29, 68–69, 70–71, 112–113, 116–117, 176–177, 180–181 Coan, Gaylord, 106, 108, 123, 148 Coca-Cola Bottling Company, 1 The Coca-Cola Company, 48 Cole, Jimmy, 68, 90, 103, 106, 119, 136, 176 Coleman, Fay, 42 Coles, Neil, 59 Collier, G. W., 23 Colonial Country Club, 73 Colville, Fulton, 28 Commercial Union Insurance Company, 80 Commercial Union Junior World Cup, 80 Compaq Classic, 147 Compston, Archie, 38 concert, Banks & Shane, 168–169 Concord Resort, 73 Connelly, Jack, 150 Conners, Corey, 158–160 Connors, Jimmy, 89–90, 93 Constitution, AAC, 1 Cook, Hal A., 60 Cook, Mike, 84 Cooper, Charles, 6 Cooper, Harry, 40 Cornell, W. Glenn, 83, 123, 144, 146, 161

194

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Cote, Rene, 83, 104, 106, 107, 123 Country Club of the South, 152 Courier, Jim, 89–90 Cousins, Tom, 72 Coyle, Barry, 116 cradle of champions, 22–55 Crawford, Josh, 26, 168 Cremins, Bobby, 111 Crenshaw, Ben, 131, 137 Crocker, Fay, 33 Cruickshank, Bobby, 30 Crystal Room, 64–65 Culinary Institute of America, 168 Curtis Cup, 33, 84, 124–125 Cypress Lakes Golf Club, 73 D Daniel, Beth, 142 Danning, Walter, 24 Dargan, Milton, 52 Darwin, Bernard, 36 David, Rod, 168 Davidson’s, 33 Davies, Laura, 144 Davis, Jack, 17 Davis Cup, 8 Davis-Freeman Company, 82 Davis-Freeman Tournament, 82 Day, Jason, 147 de Cubas, Carlos, 164 Deaver, Frank, 62 DeCarlo, Steve, 150 DeChambeau, Bryson, 156 Demaret, Jimmy, 73 Dennis, Bradley, 10 Dennis, Rose Mary, 10 Denson, Gladys, 26, 33, 62, 108, 109 Denson, Joyce, 26, 67, 108 Dent, Taylor, 96 Depression, Great, 13, 16, 18–20, 69, 122 Dewberry Jr., L. Glenn, 79, 123 Dey, Joseph C., 50 dining at the AAC, 167 Dixie Whiz Kids, 26–27 Dodd, R. L. “Bobby,” 111 Doldo, Neil, 6, 98, 103 Donald Ross Award, 69 Dooley, Vince, 111 Doonan, Al A., 6, 10 Dorsey Jr., Hugh M., 64, 123 Doublegate Country Club, 106 Dougherty, Edward E., 24 Douglas, Charlie, 80 Douglass III, Louis J., 62 Doverspike, David, 96 Doverspike, Debbie, 96 Doverspike, Ricky, 96, 96 Down the Fairway (Jones), 26, 35, 175 Doyle, Allen, 82 Driver, Walter, 82

Druid Hills Golf Club, 16, 28, 78, 84 Dufner, Jason, 152–154 Dunn, Warrick, 111 Durham, Hugh, 111 Dutlinger, Robert P., 123, 170 Duval, David, 86, 148 Dye, Pat, 111 E East Lake Country Club History (Elliott), 6 East Lake facility building a championship venue, 98, 112, 116, 122, 124 building a club in the age of the amateur athlete, 10, 16–17, 20 cradle of champions, 23–26, 28–30, 33, 35–36, 40–41, 44, 46–48, 50–51 hosting the majors, 127–128 photos, 62–63 a place for building and renewing friendships, 165, 169 a visionary move, 57–60, 62, 64, 66, 70, 72, 74–75 East Lake Meadows, 66 East Lake Rotunda, 104 Easter Ball Hunt, 96 Easter Egg Hunt, 98 Easterly, Harry W., 50 Eastern Women’s Amateur, 84, 100 Eastwood, Bob, 138 Edgewood Avenue facility, 1, 163 Eiffel Tower, 23 Eisenhower, President Dwight D., 57 Elliott, Charlie, 6, 46, 58 Ellis Island, 24 Eltingh, Jacco, 90 Embry, Jack, 171 Erickson, Charlotte, 136 Eure, Anji, 148 Europa, 38 Evans, Chuck, 41 Ewing, R. C., 35 executive committee, PGA, 154–155 executive committee, U.S. Amateur, 156–157 exercise class, 1950s women’s, 2–3 exhibit, Nat Thornton, 10 F Fairbanks, Douglas, 36 Fallon, John, 59 Farnsworth, W. B. “Bip,” 33, 123 Fasth, Niclas, 148 Faxon, Brad, 148 Fazio, George, 112, 131, 136 Fazio, Tom, 112, 131, 136 Federal Housing Authority, 66 Finger, Joe, 68, 73, 112, 131 Finsterwald, Dow, 59 fireworks, 4th of July, 171, 180–181 First Atlanta Pro/Am Doubles Tournament, 89 Fish, Mardy, 96 Fitzpatrick, Matt, 156

Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf (Hogan), 137 Five Points, 1 flag, centennial, 107 Florio, Terri, 89 Flowery Branch Creek, 60 Floyd, Raymond, 131 Ford, Patrick, 48, 75, 115, 123, 152, 161, 168, 171 Forkner, Tom, 60, 66, 109, 177 Forum Athletic Club, 152 Foster, John T., 6 Fourth of July Barbeque, 60 Franklin, Benjamin, 47 Fraser, Alexa Stirling. see Stirling, Alexa Fraser, Gilbert, 12 Fratello, Mike, 111 Freedom of St. Andrews, 47 French Open, 89–90 Friends of Bobby Jones Dinner, 27, 54 friendships, a place for building and renewing, 162–185 Funk, Fred, 148 Funne, Bill, 54 Funseth, Rod, 131 Furyk, Jim, 148 Futures Tour, 102 G Ganley, Jim, 83 Garcia-Jersild, Carmen, 97 garden, roof, 16–17 Gardner, Jerry, 66 Gardner, Robert, 28 Garlington, T. R. “Dick,” 58, 123 Garner, Randall, 89 Garrards of London, 50 Garrett, Franklin, 30 Garrett, Larry H., 81 Gaston, W. W., 123, 136 Geiberger, Al, 131–134 George, Eddie, 111 Georgia Amateur, 165 Georgia Club Managers Association, 170 Georgia Department of Economic Development, 177 Georgia Electric Light Company, 1 Georgia Games, 98 Georgia General Assembly, 177 Georgia Golf Hall of Fame, 170, 177 Georgia Power, 1, 23 Georgia Professional Tennis Association, 88, 94, 96 Georgia Railway and Power Company, 23 Georgia Senior Golfers Association, 164 Georgia State Amateur, 28, 85, 100, 140 Georgia State Golf Association, 52, 82, 124, 177 Georgia State Women’s Amateur, 124 Georgia Women’s Open, 102 Gerring, John, 143 Gervas, Nacho, 80 GGHOF Authority and Commission, 177 Ghost Hole, 35 Gilder, Bob, 140

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IAndex ppendix

Gilliam, Ed, 66 Ginepri, Robby, 96 Glancy, Harrison, 109 Glenn, Will H., xxii, 123 Gneiser, Scott, 150 Goalby, Bob, 59 Goff, Ray, 111 Golden, John, 40 Golden Crescent, 57 Goldsmith (Knox), Mariana, 12 golf, AAC in the 1950s, 30–31 Golf Club of Georgia, 113 golf course at River Bend, 76–77 Golf Digest, 146, 163 Golf Grounds Committee, 152 Golf Shop ribbon cutting, 80–81 A Golf Story (Price), 30 Golf World, 142 Gonzales, Jimmy, 62 Gordon, Lew, 5, 18 Gould, Jim, 55 Governor’s Mansion, 80 Grand Slam, 37–38, 40, 42, 44, 46–48, 50–52, 90, 104, 155, 170, 175 Grand Slam 75th anniversary dinner, 174–175, 175 Grand Slam Celebration Committee, 174 Grant, Bitsy, 8, 13, 109 Grant Field, 15 Grant Sr., Bryan M., 8 Gray, Charlie, 51 Greater Greensboro Open, 137 Grice, Richard, 100, 158, 159, 160, 161, 167 Grice, Savannah, 124 Griffin, Ellen, 93 Griffin, L. Hill, 89, 92, 93–94, 109 Griffith, George, 74 Grigsby, Paul, 70 Gross, Oliver, 157 Gunn, Jane, 108, 117 Gunn, Watts, 26, 32, 34, 35, 48, 48, 66, 85, 104, 109, 116, 123, 177, 184 Gunter Jr., Guy, 164 H Haack, Chris, 86 Hacienda Gold Club, 157 Hagen, Walter, 40, 138 Haigh, Kerry, 150 Hale, Bill, 77 Hale, Mike, 60 Hale Jr., William L., 77, 79 Haliburton, Tom, 59 Hall, Graydon, 123 Hall of Champions, AAC, 104, 186–187 Hall of Fame, AAC, 48, 67, 93, 108–109, 109 Hall of Presidents, AAC, 104, 122–123, 123 Hanahan, J. Ross, 18 Handley, John, 148 Hansen, Anders, 153 Hanson, Beverly, 33, 33

196

A Host to History

Happoldt, Albert, 9, 62, 74 Happoldt, Mary, 74 Hardin, Allen, 66, 109, 123 Hardin, Ira H., 58, 123 Harris, Jimmy, 100 Harris, Joe Frank, 78 Harrison, Charlie, 10, 26, 32, 59, 85, 100, 108, 109, 177, 184 Hart, Dudley, 148 Harvey, Lukus, 120 Havemeyer trophy, 24, 160 Haymes, Alvin, xxii Heafner, Vance, 138 health club prices, AAC, 15 Heard, Jim, 80 Heinz, Charlotte, 62 Heinz, Henry, 18, 123 Heinz Jr., Billy, 12 Heisman, John, 5–6, 8, 8 Heisman Trophy, 5 Helbig, Sharon, 148 Hendee, Neal, 26, 85, 100, 140 Hendley, Stuart, 80 Henry Grady Hotel, 19 Hentz, Reid & Adler, 24 Heritage Committee, 50, 160, 184 Herron, Davy, 35 Hewitt, Lleyton, 96 Heyward, Preston, 184 High School Athlete of the Year award, 102 High School Invitational Golf Tournament, 84 Highlands Golf Course, 62, 69, 73, 80, 84, 86, 112–113, 116, 118, 120, 127, 131, 136–138, 140, 146–147, 152, 154, 158, 170 Highlands No. 1, 114–115 Highlands No. 8, 132–133 Highlands No. 14, 120–121 Highlands No. 17, 114–115 Highlands No. 18, 112–113 Hightower, C. C. “Buck,” 109 History Happens Here, 160 Hoblitzel, Fred, 42 Hoffer, Bill, 82 Hogan, Ben, 131, 137 Holbrook, William, 82 Holding, Harvey, 83 Holland, A. H., 58 Holtgrieve, Jim, 82 Holyfield, Evander, 111 Homans, Eugene, 42, 44 honor roll, AAC, 184, 186–187 Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, 107 Horseshoe Bend Country Club, 89, 170 hosting the majors, 126–161 hotel, AAC as a, 18–19 House Committee, 167 Howard, Paul, 158 Howell, Arthur, xxii, 8 Hoylake Room, 104, 170, 172–173, 173 HP Byron Nelson Championship, 152

Huber, Jim, 109 Hudson, Scott, 16, 18, 18, 20, 44, 122–123 Hudson Room, 18 Huey, Claude, 168 Huggett, Brian, 59 Hunt, Bernard, 59 Hunt, Geoffrey, 59 Hunter, John, 107 Hurston, Charles F., 109 Hurt, Joel, 1 Hybl, Ryan, 84 I IBM/ATP Tour, 89 Imlay Jr., John P., 54, 79, 81, 106, 123, 131, 135 Indoor Tennis Center, 89 Industrial Aid Association, 1 interior, the clubhouse, 9, 44–45 Interlachen Country Club, 38, 40, 46, 51, 175 Interlachen Lounge, 50, 104, 167 International Foursomes Competition, 52 Inwood Country Club, 30 Isner, John, 96, 97 J J. A. Jones Construction Company, 20 jacket, Bobby Jones’s red, 173 Jackson, Bo, 111 Jackson, John G., 36 Jenson, Luke, 93 Jiles, Geneva, 168 John Heisman Room, 5, 8, 104 Johnson, Dave, 174 Johnson, Guy, 78 Johnson, Robert L., 78, 109 Jones, Chipper, 111 Jones, Clara, 35 Jones, Colonel Robert P., 18, 30, 122–123 Jones, Kurt, 169 Jones, Lindsay Licata, 168–169, 169 Jones, Mary Ellen, 35 Jones, Mary Rice Malone, 35–36, 38, 48, 79 Jones, Millie Dodd, 169, 169 Jones, Rees, 69, 112–113, 118, 120, 146, 152 Jones III, Robert Tyre, 35 Jones IV, Bob, 157 Jones Jr., Robert Trent, 69 Jones Jr., Robert Tyre “Bobby” building a championship venue, 82, 98, 104, 106, 109, 122–124 building a club in the age of the amateur athlete, 12, 15, 18, 20 cradle of champions, 24, 26–30, 32–33, 35–36, 38–40, 42, 44, 46–48, 50–55 hosting the majors, 127, 131, 135, 155–157, 159–160 photos, 25, 27, 30, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 59 a place for building and renewing friendships, 165, 170, 173, 175, 177, 184 a visionary move, 59, 70, 72

Jones Museum, 48–49 Jones Room Foundation, 50, 52 Jones Sr., Robert Trent, 66, 68–69, 112, 131, 144 July 4th Fireworks Spectacular, 167, 180–181 Junior Amateur, 84 Junior Championship, AAC, 28 Junior Ryder Cup, 100 Junior World Cup, 80, 170 K Kaney, Lee, 84 Karlsson, Robert, 153 Katayama, Shingo, 148, 149, 150 Kaye, Sammy, 64 Kaymer, Martin, 153 Keeler, O. B., 35–38, 38 Kelly, Jerry, 153 Kennedy, Lee, 2 Kiker, Sam, 163, 174 Kikkor Golf Husky Invitational, 160 Kim, Michael, 157 King, Betsy, 142–144, 143, 151 Kirby, Dot, 33, 33, 109, 124, 124–125, 177, 184 Kirouac, Amy, 125 Kirouac, Ginny, 125 Kirouac, Martha, 33, 109, 124, 125, 127, 142, 177 Kite, Tom, 138 Knight, Seth, 82 Knollwood Country Club, 82 Knox, Mariana Goldsmith, 12 Koontz, John B., 123, 174, 175 Kuchar, Matt, 156 Kurland, Robert, 109 L LA Fitness, 152 Labor Day Country Dinner and Square Dance, 60 Lacey, Charles, 40 Ladies’ 9-Hole Association, 124 Ladies’ 18-Hole Golf Association, 124 Ladies’ Professional Golf Association (LPGA), 142–143, 152 Lake Lanier, 47, 58, 60 Lane, William H., 50 Lanoue, Fred, 6 Las Colinas Country Club, 73 Lassiter, Bob, 78 Lawson, Andrew, 156 Lechner, Tech, xxii Lee, Chang-woo, 157 Legends at Chateau Élan, 113, 116 Lema, Tony, 59 Lendl, Ivan, 89 Lester, Bob, 141 Levy, Gretchen, 158 Levy, Scott, 158 Lewis, Catherine, 174 Lewis Jr., Bob, 82, 83 Liaw, Henry, 86

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IAndex ppendix

Licata, Jim, 169 Licata, Madison, 169, 169 Licata, Maria, 169, 169 Licata, Mary Lisa, 169, 169 Licata, Morgan, 169, 169 Life Insurance Company of Georgia, 1 Lind, Dean, 84 Lipsky, Scott, 96 Littler, Gene, 59, 160 Liverpool Post and Mercury, 38 Lloyd’s of London, 35 Lockheed-Georgia, 137 logo, U.S. Women’s Open, 141 Lopez, Nancy, 111, 142, 142–143 Love III, Davis, 110, 111, 148 Lovelace, Peter, 160, 167 Lowery, Steve, 148, 150 Loxahatchee Club, 168 LPGA (Ladies’ Professional Golf Association), 142–143, 152 LPGA Tour, 143 lunch, ladies’ tennis member guest, 171 Lundquist, Steve, 111 Lye, Mark, 138 Lyons, Gwen, 72 Lyric Theater, 2, 11 M Maddox, Margaret, 26, 124 Maddox, Paul C., 18 Magill, Dan, 111 Mahaffey, John, 131–134 Maiden, James, 24, 26, 28 Maiden, Stewart “Kiltie,” 26, 28, 29, 51, 177 majors, hosting the, 126–161 Mangum, Ken, 112, 118–120, 144, 150, 154, 161, 177 Mann, Willie, 28 map of area around AAC, 22–23 March of Dimes, 144 Marcus, Brian, 90, 94, 119 Marik, Richard, 80 Martin, Larry, 70, 72, 123 Martin, Todd, 90, 93–94 massage facilities, 2 Massengale, Rick, 131 Master Building Committee, 116 Masters Tournament, 44, 47, 59, 138, 148, 158, 160, 165 Mauretania, 36 Maxwell, Alva, 20 Maxwell, Billy, 59 Maynard, Rex, 94 McCarthy, Shannon, 96 McCarthy, Shawn, 96 McClure, Gene, 52, 156, 177 McDonald, Ben, 147 McElroy, Pete, 90, 93 McEnroe, John, 94 McGhee, Allen, 78 McGill, Ralph, 35 McGinnis, Richard, 47

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McGriff, W. R. “Buz,” 2, 6, 73–74, 77, 79, 111, 164 McGriff Trophy, 111 McIlroy, Rory, 153 McKinnon, Betty, 33 Mcquire, Chris, 169 McRae, William, 9 Meador, Frank, 28, 98 Meador, Mrs. Frank, 26, 28 Meadow Brook Club, 124 Meason, Will, 184 medal, AAC basketball team, 15 Medinah Country Club, 16 Men’s Grill, 116 Merion Golf (Cricket) Club, 28, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 155, 175 Merion Room, 104, 167, 171 Michelob Championship, 147 Mickelson, Phil, 146, 148–150, 151 Mid-Amateur Championship, 80, 82 Miller, Johnny, 86, 133 Mingledorff, Clyde, 9 Minnetonka Country Club, 16 Miracle Match, 94 Miracle Match Foundation, 94 Mitchell, Margaret, 11 Mitchell, Marilyn, 109 Mitchell, W. Cameron, 78, 109, 109 Monster Course, 73 Moore, Chris, 100 Morgan, Gil, 137 Moss, Don, 62, 110, 116, 118, 123, 148, 150, 174 move, a visionary, 56–75 Munson, Larry, 111 Murphy, Bob, 138 Murphy, Dale, 111 Murray, Mae, 32, 33 N nap room, AAC, 14 Nassau Country Club, 26 National 55, 94 National Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). see AAU (National Amateur Athletic Union) National Collegiate Championship, 143 National Men’s 40 Clay Court Championship, 96 National Senior Racquetball Tournament, 78 National Tennis Facility of the Year award, 94 NCAA Championship, 156 Neave, Douglas, 107 Neely, Armistead, 89 Neill, Stephanie, 84 Nelson, Byron, 73 Nelson, Larry, 111, 137–138, 137, 139, 140, 151–152, 177 Neumann, Liselotte, 144 New Golf Club, 47, 54 New Year’s Eve party, AAC, 162–163, 171 New York Giants, 6 Nicklaus, Jack, 110, 111, 111, 131, 133, 138, 140, 156 Niekro, Phil, 111 NIKE Playground, 89

Nike Tour, 147 Norman, Greg, 140 North, Andy, 138 North & South Amateur Championship, 102–103 Nunley, Janelle, 164 Nunley, Lynn, 164 Nuveen, 93 O Oakmont Country Club, 32 Oakmont Room, 104, 117 O’Callaghan, Bill, 2, 16, 47, 52, 52, 55, 82, 82, 112, 116, 122–123, 144, 146, 174 O’Callaghan, Faye, 52 O’Connor, Christie, 59 Odenbach, Andy, 148 Ogg, Willie, 51 Okamoto, Ayako, 144 Olazabal, Jose Maria, 80 Old Merion Room, 167 Older Clay Court Championship, 94 Oldfield, Ed, 143 Olympics, 12 Omni, 89 Open National Championship, 78 Ouimet, Frances, 28 Oversight Committee, 116 Owens, Frank “Hop,” 8 P P. J. Wesley and Sons, 24 Pakenham, Timothy J., 123 Palmer, Arnold, 59, 59, 87, 110, 111–112, 131, 136, 138, 140, 156 Panzeri, Joe, 88 Par-3 Ladies’ Group, 103 Pass-in-Review, 60 Pate, Bobby, 111 Pate, Jerry, 111, 130, 131, 133–134, 136, 138, 151, 157 Pate, Joyce, 136 Patterson, Dennis M., 86 Patterson, Fred, 1 Patterson, Wendi, 84 Patton, Ed, 78 Paulk, Johnny, 177 Pavilion, 178–179 Payne, Billy, 111 Peachtree Center, 74 Peachtree Golf Club, 47, 71, 73 Peek, Caroline, 84 Pencil Committee, 18 Pendleton, Terry, 111 Pepler, Derrick, 132 Petzing, Jim, 73, 78, 170 PGA (Professional Golfers Association), 96, 103, 106, 137–138, 140, 144, 150, 158, 175 PGA Championship, 44, 50, 112, 120, 134–140, 144–154, 156, 170 PGA National, 138

PGA of America, 51, 59, 127, 136, 148, 150 PGA Professional National Championship, 152 PGA Tour, 84, 86, 96, 100, 131, 134, 137–138, 140, 142, 147–148 Pictor, Brenda, 84 Piedmont Driving Club, 71 Pierce, Bill, 41, 50, 80, 98, 142 Pikes Peak, 23 pilates at AAC, 102 Pilgrimage Commemoration, 46 Pinetree Golf Club, 137 Pittard, Charles, 66, 104, 106, 107, 123, 132, 174 plaque, Grand Slam, 47 plaque, Highlands championships, 113 plaque, Highlands No. 18, 133 Player, Gary, 126, 128 Ploeger, William, 82 Podolak, Mike, 82, 83, 184 Pohl, Dan, 138, 140 Points, D. A., 153 Polo Fields, 142 Pool Pavilion, 166, 167, 171 Poole, Tom, 23 Porter, J. H., 123 Pott, Johnny, 59 Powell, Mickey, 137 Price, Caroline, 96, 96 Price, Charles, 30, 36, 40 Price, Mark, 109, 111 prices, AAC health club, 15 Pro-Am, 96 Professional Golfers Association (PGA). see PGA (Professional Golfers Association) program, PGA Championship, 139, 145, 155 program, U.S. Amateur, 160 program, U.S. Open, 129 ProServ, 89, 93 Purcell, Neal, 59, 81, 82, 88, 112, 116, 123 Q Queen Victoria Jubilee Vase, 47 Querrey, Sam, 97 R Ragan Jr., Dave, 59 Ragsdale, Mayor I. N., 40 Ram, Rajeev, 96 Ray, Ted, 28 Red Cross, 20, 26 Reeves, Chan, 100, 103 Reeves, Daniel E., 109, 111 Reeves, Seth, 158 Reid, Mike, 131 The Retreat, 78 Reynolds, Frank, xxii Reynolds, Zac, 86, 87 River Bend facility, 66, 68, 70, 72, 77, 79 River Club, 152 Riverside Golf Course, 69, 118, 120, 131, 140–141, 142,

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144, 152, 158, 163, 170, 176–177 Riverside No. 2, 118–119 Rizzo, Patti, 84 Robert T. Jones 4-Ball, 175 Robert T. Jones Golf Instruction Center, 100 Robert T. Jones Jr. Memorial Mid-Amateur Trophy, 82 Robert T. Jones, Jr. Scholarship Program, 54 Robert T. Jones Trust, 54 Roberts, Charlie, 165 Roberts, Clifford, 47 Roberts, Jimmy, 110 Robertson, Mike, 97 Rocker, W. P. “Bill,” 78 Roddick, Andy, 96 Rodgers, Patrick, 156 Rogers, Cole, 153 Rogers, George, 111 Rogers, Joe, 66, 79 roof garden, 16–17 Rosburg, Bob, 59 Rose, Justin, 160 Rosenthal, Elaine, 27, 27 Ross, Bobby, 111 Ross, Donald, 16, 24 Rowlands, Ann, 173 Royal & Ancient Golf Club, 46–48, 50, 52, 54, 106, 175 Royal Liverpool Golf Club, 38, 46, 173, 175 Royal St. George’s Club, 36 Royal Troon Grill, 104, 116, 167, 170 rules, early club, 3 Russell, Erskine, 111 Ryder Cup, 50–51, 58–59, 59, 64, 127, 140, 155 Ryder Cup Pro-Am, 59 S Saggus, Oliver, 66 Sampras, Pete, 89–90, 94, 95 Sands, Don, 117, 123, 142 Sarazen, Gene, 30 Sargent, George, 35, 50, 51, 134, 177 Sargent, Harold, 46, 48, 48, 51, 51, 59, 59, 72, 100, 111, 128, 135, 136, 177 Sargent, Jack, 50–51, 82, 134, 177 Savannah Inn and Country Club, 84 Savannah Open, 36 Sawyer, Ned, 41 Scartz, Don, 52, 53, 118, 123, 174 Scartz, Nita, 53 Scheck, Matt, 100 Schniederjans, Ollie, 158 Scioto Country Club, 51 Scott, Walter, 15 Scott Hudson Study, 104 Sea Palms, 164 Seafood Extravaganza, 167 Seagraves, Bert, 137 Seaver, Charlie, 42 Seaver, Tom, 42 Seay, Ed, 112 Senior National Championship, 78

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Sharpenberg, Bob, 156, 164 Sharpenberg, Elke, 156 Shea, Ed, 6 Shea, John, 59 Sheehan, Patty, 144 Sheffield, Karl S., 106 Shipwreck Party, 60 Shirley Jr., Don, 84 Shoal Creek, 144 Shumate, Jim, 66 Siegel, Jay, 82 Sims, Mayor Walter A., 30 Site Committee, 116 Slaton, John M., 6 Smiley, Bess, 83 Smith, Alex, 24 Smith, Burton, 2, 5, 123 Smith, Carlton Y., 1, 8 Smith, Chip, 6 Smith, Horton, 36, 40 Smith, J. David, 123 Smith, Kay, 62 Smith, Macdonald, 40 Smith, S., 2 Smith, Tom, 172 Smoltz, John, 111 Solomon, Nathan, 102 Somerville, Charles Ross “Sandy,” 42 Sore, George, 1 Southeastern Open, 36, 38 Southern Amateur, 8, 32, 84, 165 Southern Badminton Association Tournament, 80 Southern Badminton Tournament, 78 Southern Basketball Tournament, 10 Southern Bell, 2 Southern Belle Cloggers, 106 Southern Championship, 15 Southern Four-Ball, 165 Southern Open, 32 Southern Tennis Singles Championship, 8 Southern Women’s Amateur, 124 Southern Women’s Open, 142 spa, AAC, 103 Spence, George, xxii Spooktacular, 96 Sports Appreciation Night, 110–112, 151 squash at AAC, 74–75 St. Andrews Golf Club, 15, 24, 47, 54, 133 St. Andrews Room, 70, 104, 106 St. Ives Country Club, 152 Stack, Jeff, 97 Stacy, Hollis, 144 Stafford, Matthew, 109, 111 Stakel, John, 156 Standard Club, 112, 116, 152 Steele, Brendan, 153 Stephenson, Jan, 142 Stevens, Chase, 152 Stevens, Craig, 152 Stevens and Wilkerson, 20

Stewart, Davis, 10, 123, 152, 174 Stirling, Alexa, 24, 26–28, 27, 33, 48, 48, 50, 98, 109, 124, 124–125, 177, 184 Stoker, Kenneth, 173 Stone Mountain, 80 Strange, Curtis, 140 Streib, West, 100 Stricker, Steve, 152–153 Suggs, Louise, 142, 177, 184 Summerour, Ben, 66 Summerour, J. Heard, 131 Sutton, Hal, 133 Swaim, Courtney, 125, 184 Swann, A. J. “Duck,” 111 Swann, Eleanor S., 109 Sweetser, Jess, 30, 42 swimming at AAC, 6–7, 100, 101 T Taft, President William Howard, 51 Tardy, Bailey, 26, 26, 84, 102–103, 102, 124, 184 Tarkenton, Fran, 111 Tatum, Frank D. “Sandy,” 135 Taylor, F. Morgan “Buzz,” 106 Taylor, Jim, 78 Taylor, Mimi, 26 Teate, Jim, 88, 174 Ted Dexter & Associates, 80 Tennant family, 166 Tennis 101, 96 tennis courts, indoor, 97 terrace, AAC, 42–43, 166, 167, 178–179 Thiel, Susie, 168 Tholen, Dave, 71, 159 Tholen, Kathy, 71, 159 Thomas, Dave, 59 Thompson, Hector, 35 Thompson, Homer, 12 Thompson, Mark, 78 Thompson, Stanley, 69 Thorne, Howard, 28 Thorne, James A., 123, 170, 174 Thornton, Henry, 8 Thornton, Nat, 1, 8–10, 11, 109 Thornwell, E. A., 123 Tiffany & Company, 47 Tiller, Ouida, 163 Tiller, Warren, 162–163 Times of London, 36, 38 Titleholders Championship, 124 Toepel, Theodore “Ted,” 4 Tolley, Cyril, 35–36, 38, 40 Tommy Barnes Sr. Room, 104 Toms, David, 111, 146, 147–153, 151 Torre, Joe, 111 Travers, Jerome, 24 Treadway Inn, 74 The Treehouse, 98 Trevino, Lee, 138

Trimble, Courtney Swaim, 26, 100, 124 Troon, 35 Turkey Trot, 78 Turner, Larry, 174 Turner, Leigh, 124 Turner, Ted, 111 U Under Armour North-South All American game, 102 United States Badminton Association, 78 United States Clay Court Championship, 8 United States Golf Association (USGA). see USGA (United States Golf Association) United States Tennis Association (USTA), 94, 96 U.S. Amateur 1916, 28, 31, 42 1922, 30 1924, 42 1925, 24, 32, 34 1930, 40, 175 1974, 133–134 1999, 100 2001, 100 2014, 155–157, 159–160, 184 2015, 156 U.S. Corps of Engineers, 47, 58 U.S. Junior Amateur, 86–87, 100, 155 U.S. Junior Girls Championship, 102 US Kids Golf Top 50 Instructor award, 100 U.S. Mid-Amateur, 155, 170 U.S. Open 1898, 24 1901, 24 1906, 24 1909, 51 1910, 24 1913, 28 1923, 30 1925, 30 1926, 35 1930, 37–38, 40, 44 1976, 48, 66, 80, 112, 127–128, 131–133, 135–136, 146, 155, 157, 164, 170 1978, 138 1980, 138 1983, 140 1985, 138 1993, 113 2010, 94 U.S. Open National Playoffs, 96 U.S. Women’s Amateur 1895, 124 1916, 33, 124, 125 1919, 33, 124 1920, 33, 124 1950, 20, 32–33, 33, 50, 127, 142, 155 1951, 124 1970, 33 U.S. Women’s Open

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1976, 143 1989, 142–144 1990, 140–144, 146, 155, 170 2004, 102 2015, 103 USGA (United States Golf Association) building a championship venue, 80, 82, 84, 96, 106, 112 building a club in the age of the amateur athlete, 15 cradle of champions, 24, 30, 32–33, 36, 48, 50, 52 hosting the majors, 127, 131, 135–136, 144, 156–157, 160 a place for building and renewing friendships, 175 USGA Junior Girls Championship, 143 USTA (United States Tennis Association), 94, 96 USX Golf Classic, 143 V Valentine, Tommy, 140 Van Houten, Cole, 63, 164 Van Note, Jeff, 111 Vardon, Harry, 28, 51 Varela, Jason, 97 Venturi, Ken, 84, 149 venue, building a championship, 76–125 Verplank, Scott, 153 Vietnam War, 137, 170 visionary move, a, 56–75 Vliegen, Kristof, 96 Voigt, George, 36 volleyball team, 1967, 56–57 W Wadkins, Lanny, 138 Wagner, Tommy, 153 Waite, Grant, 148 Wakefield, Lamar, 116 Walczuk, Pete, 150 Walker, Charlotte, 19 Walker, Eleanor, 84 Walker, Harry Leslie, 24 Walker, Herschel, 111 Walker, Jim, 19 Walker, Mayor Jimmy, 38 Walker Cup, 32, 36, 38, 46, 133, 165 wall, sports appreciation, 110–111 Walters, William H. “Bud,” 60 Wanamaker Trophy, 154 Warner Brothers, 47 Washington, MaliVali, 90 Washington Park, 24 Waterhouse, Herbert, 169, 169 Waterhouse, Mildred, 169, 169 Watson, Bubba, 160 Watson, Tom, 133–134, 138, 140 Weaver III, DeWitt, 100, 120 Wedel, Fred, 158 Weetman, Harry, 59 weight room at AAC, 102

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A Host to History

Weiskopf, Tom, 133–134, 138 Wells, Angie, 79, 171 Wells, Leo, 171 Western Union, 2 Wethered, Roger, 36 Whistling Straits, 147 White, Tony, 174 Whitsett, Cory, 156 Whitten, Ron, 146 Wiedeman, Joan, 108 Wilander, Mats, 94 Wilkins, Dominique, 111 Will, George, 59 Williams, David, 17 Williams, Harold, 16, 66 Wilson, Billy, 51 Wilson, Roxanne, 168 Wilson, Tom, 83 Wimbledon, 90 Wind, Herbert Warren, 42 Wine Dinner, 167 Wine Room, 167 Women’s Curtis Cup, 100 women’s golf at AAC, 124 Women’s Kemper Open, 143 Women’s North & South, 102 Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking, 103 Woodruff, Robert, 48 Woods, Tiger, 86, 147–148, 153, 156 Woolford, T. Guy, 163 Worcester Country Club, 30 Works Project Administration (WPA), 69 World Amateur Team Championship, 124 World Golf Hall of Fame, 152 World of Tennis Championshp, 93 World War I, 26 World War II, 20, 47 World’s Fair, 1889, 23 WPA (Works Project Administration), 69 Y Yacht Club, 47, 58, 60, 60–61, 62, 74, 104 Yang, Gunn, 157–160, 158, 159, 161 Yates, Charlie, 26, 35, 46, 48, 48, 55, 72, 80, 104, 109, 112, 135, 177, 184 Yates, Danny, 82, 177 Yates, Dorothy, 104 Yates, P. Dan, 177 Yates, Sarah, 112, 174 Yates, Todd, 164 Yoculan, Suzanne, 111 Young, Cameron, 158 Young, H. Lane, 15 Young, Robert, 82 Youngblood, Mary Jane, 20–21 Z Zoeller, Fuzzy, 138, 140