The Man Who Groomed The Game

by  John Paul Newport

When Deane Beman took over as its commissioner in 1974, the PGA Tour was a middling collection of tournaments, many hosted by celebrities like Bob Hope, Jackie Gleason and Dean Martin, flimsily synchronized by a headquarters staff of 27. The total purse that year was $8 million. On television, golf was less popular and less lucrative than bowling.

Over the ensuing 20 years, Beman reinvented virtually every aspect of professional tournament golf. Almost all of the signal attributes of today's prosperous PGA Tour—the corporate title sponsorships, the emphasis on charitable giving, the network of Tournament Players Clubs where many events are staged (including the Players Championship the week after next at the famous island-green TPC Sawgrass course in Florida)—were his innovations. When he retired in 1994 at the young age of 56, total annual Tour prize money had grown to about $100 million, on its way to $276 million last year.

How Beman pulled this off is the subject of a new book by Adam Schupak called "Deane Beman, Golf's Driving Force: The Inside Story of the Man Who Transformed Professional Golf Into a Billion-Dollar Business" (East Cottage Press). It's as much a business narrative as a sports book, and all the more fascinating for it.

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