Golf’s First Sugar Daddy, Rodman Wanamaker And The Legacy of The PGA Championship

Ninety years ago, a Princeton man by the name of Rodman Wanamaker invited a group of golfers to lunch at the Taplow Club in New York. Although it wasn’t on the menu, by the end of the meal they had cooked up the Professional Golfers’ Association of America (PGA), and the rest is history.
As the richest guy at lunch, Rodman Wanamaker did more than pick up the check that day, he forked over 2,500 bucks and a slick looking trophy. Then, as if to prove that golfers are smarter than your average jock, some guy in the back of the room shouted, “Let’s call it the Wanamaker Trophy.” Seven months later an Englishman by the name of Jim Barnes grabbed the prize money and Wanamaker Trophy at Siwanoy Country Club in Bronxville, New York, then promptly asked his caddie to hold his 5-iron while he went off to fight the First World War.
I don’t know why this department store tycoon was interested enough in golf to lay out 2,500 bucks; perhaps he was a groupie, but he did the same thing for track and field when he started up the Millrose Games. He also inaugurated the Wanamaker Mile and reportedly began the tradition of playing The Star Spangled Banner at sporting events.
Golf’s first Sugar Daddy was also a pioneer in sponsoring record-breaking aviation projects and an early backer of transatlantic flight. Commander Richard Byrd grabbed a few of Wanamaker’s bucks and piloted Wanamaker's airship America across the Atlantic just days after Lindbergh’s historic solo crossing proving once again that second place is just the first loser.
Rodman Wanamaker checked out for good in 1928 leaving among other things the world’s largest pipe organ, a Landaulette Rolls-Royce used by General Pershing in the ticker-tape parade celebrating the end of World War One, and his Palm Beach, Florida winter home, La Guerida, that he had built in 1923. The home was later purchased by Joe Kennedy for a $120,000 and would later become President John Kennedy’s “Winter White House.” But you may remember the house from the William Kennedy Smith rape trial. Is that six degrees of Rodman Wanamaker, or what?
So, as you stroll down the fairways of Oakland Hills this week, the site of 16 national and major championships: 6 U.S. Opens, two U.S. Senior Opens, U.S. Women's Amateur, U.S. Men's Amateur, Western Open, and Carling World Open; the 35th Ryder Cup in 2004; and three PGA Championships, including the 90th PGA Championship in 2008, you can turn to your buddy and say, “That Rodman Wanamaker was a hell of a guy, wasn’t he?”
The same year that Rodman Wanamaker said, “Let’s do lunch to the PGA” the South Course at Oakland Hills was opened. The course was designed by the foremost golf course architect of his day, Donald Ross. That same year, the Club also engaged its first golf professional, Walter Hagen, who had attended lunch that day with Rodman Wanamaker, and more importantly had already won the U. S. Open.
Thirty some odd years later, in preparation for the 1951 U.S. Open, the club directors once again gave foremost golf course architect of his day, Robert Trent Jones, a mandate: create the toughest course the players had ever encountered. That year, no player broke par the first round and the scoring average was 78.4. However, on Sunday Ben Hogan’s incredible 67 stole the show and started another legend.
Almost sixty years later, Rees Jones, the son of Robert Trent Jones, has taken on a different challenge. Due to improvements in players' skills and the changes in both the golf ball and golf equipment, Jones decided to add almost 400 yards to the Oakland Hills layout, but he didn’t stop there. And, although he may not have been given the same specific mandate as his father, the changes that were made were designed specifically to challenge today's greatest players. That would be six of one and a half a dozen of the other, as they say.
Obviously, there was a certain “Return to Mayberry” aspect about the whole thing. Here was Rees Jones renovating the course that helped make his father, Robert Trent Jones, famous. All the while the membership at Oakland Hills anxiously waited to see if Rees had sharpened the teeth of the Donald Ross classic and once again made Oakland Hills the supreme test for the strongest field in golf.
Enjoy the 90th PGA Championship; it should be special.