After three years of planning and construction, we eagerly await the opening of the Arnold Palmer Center for Golf History in the late spring of 2008. Construction, which began on site in January 2007, remains on schedule to conclude in January 2008. Meanwhile, the project's exhibit designers and A/V and interactive designers have completed their work on schedule, and will spend the early months of 2008 working with the company that will fabricate and install the exhibits. 

When it opens, the Palmer Center will provide state-of-the-art storage for the collections, a research center to facilitate access to the collections, and new permanent exhibition galleries focusing on the history of USGA championships and champions. Grand-opening events are currently scheduled for June 2008.

As the museum facility remained closed throughout 2007, we continued to focus our efforts on programs designed to reach audiences beyond Far Hills. In partnership with American Express, the Museum created a special exhibition of artifacts and historic film footage - the "U.S. Open Experience" - that was located just inside the main spectator gate during the 2007 U.S. Open and attracted more than 40,000 visitors during the week of the championship. Likewise, a small exhibit honoring the life and character of Patty Berg was presented in the "Catch the Spirit" tent at the 2007 U.S. Women's Open. To ensure visibility of our collections during the time we are closed, we continue to make significant loans to other museums, including the George (H.W.) Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, and the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kan. Additional outreach programs were presented in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the 1957 U.S. Open at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, as well as the 70th anniversary of Prairie Dunes Country Club in Hutchinson, Kan. Finally, we should note the publication earlier this year of our second book with National Geographic, "Classic Shots: The Greatest Images from the United States Golf Association," which featured hundreds of photographs from the Museum's collection. 

In addition to traditional outreach activities, the Museum continues to explore new technologies and new opportunities for sharing its world-class collections with a global audience. Significant improvements were made to the Seagle Electronic Golf Library in 2007, most notably upgrades to the user interface to enable more detailed and more precise searches. In a similar manner, we implemented significant improvements to the digital asset management system (MediaBank) that we use to store and share our collection of digital photography. We are also seeing significant growth in the licensing of film and video footage from our collections, reflecting an expanded marketing relationship with TWI Archive of London. Looking ahead to 2008, we hope to expand our online activities through the development of a digital archive of golf course architecture materials, as well as the development of an e-commerce Web site for the photography collection.

As reaffirmed by the Museum's Strategic Plan, the collections remain at the core of our mission. This past year saw numerous additions to the collections, but none more significant than the set of irons used by Francis Ouimet to win the 1913 U.S. Open, one of the most important acquisitions in the Museum's history.