Brewer's Cup Runneth Over
 

O. Gordon Brewer Receives USGA's Top Honor, 2009 Bob Jones Award 

October 29, 2008

By Scott Smith, USGA

You know you've made an impact in golf when they start naming tournaments after you. You know you're still a competitor when you win them.

The fact that the Golf Association of Philadelphia, the nation's oldest regional golf association, created the Brewer Cup, and that the tournament's namesake took the inaugural Super-Senior Division crown this past July, goes a long way toward explaining why O. Gordon Brewer Jr., a two-time USGA Senior Amateur champion, longtime volunteer and dedicated servant to the game of golf, has become the latest recipient of the United States Golf Association's Bob Jones Award.

 

O. Gordon Brewer claimed two USGA Senior Amateur titles. (USGA Museum)

Presented since 1955, the USGA's highest honor is given in recognition of sportsmanship in golf. The Award, selected from nominations across the golf community and chosen by a diverse and distinguished committee, seeks to recognize a person who emulates Jones' spirit, his personal qualities and his attitude toward the game and its players.

"When you think of receiving the highest honor awarded by the USGA, and then you look at the past winners, it's really a humbling experience," said the 71-year-old Brewer. "It's an awesome award, because of what Bob Jones stands for, for the many leaders in the game who have followed him and for the integrity with which the game has been preserved. To be recognized with the Bob Jones Award goes beyond anything I could have ever expected."

Brewer began his storied career as a top amateur golfer in 1967, when he won the Philadelphia Amateur Championship. He added a second Philadelphia Amateur in 1976 and a Pennsylvania Amateur title in 1984. Competing at the national level, Brewer played in more than 40 USGA championships, beginning with the 1968 U.S. Amateur. He finished runner-up to longtime fellow-competitor and friend Jay Sigel in the 1985 Mid-Amateur and won the USGA Senior Amateur in 1994 and 1996.

 "The award is about the way you conduct yourself and the good sportsmanship that occurs in golf," says Sigel, who won the Bob Jones Award in 1984. "It's the way you play the game, as a sportsman and a good sport. And on those counts, I think Gordon is absolutely perfect. I'm delighted for him to have won this honor."

Like Sigel and other past winners of the USGA's most prestigious award - a list that includes such inspirational sports figures as Byron Nelson, "Babe" Zaharias and Arnold Palmer - Brewer is more than just a great champion.

As a key figure in the Pennsylvania golf community over the past five decades, Brewer served as the president of the Pennsylvania Golf Association and chairman of the J. Wood Platt Caddie Scholarship Trust Fund. He served on the USGA Executive Committee from 1996 to 2001 and on the PGA Board of Directors from 2001 to 2003. Brewer also captained the USA Team in the 2002 World Amateur Team Championship, leading D.J. Trahan, Hunter Mahan and Ricky Barnes to victory in Kuala Lumpur, .

 

A former president at Huntingdon Valley (Pa.) Country Club - and seven-time club champion - Brewer has been president of Pine Valley Golf Club in New Jersey since 1998. Professionally, Brewer served as the vice president of finance for Alco Standard, Inc. and IKON Office Solutions in Philadelphia, before taking up residence in Pine Valley. 

Brewer served the USGA tirelessly while dealing with some of the organization's most complex issues.  As Chair of the Implements and Ball Committee, Brewer was a key player in the efforts to limit the spring-like effect of golf clubs. He was also a charter member of the Mid-Amateur Championship Committee, established in 1981.

Here's how Brewer compares his experience serving both the USGA and the PGA of America at the highest levels: "The PGA looks at golf from the industry perspective, focusing on the mission and role of the PGA Professional. The USGA also looks at golf from a business standpoint, but predominantly it looks at golf as a sport, conducting championships, establishing the rules. But in both cases you're serving the game of golf, whether you're a member of the USGA Executive Committee or a director of the PGA. What motivates you, in both cases, is giving something back to the game."

An accomplished sportsman in his youth who earned a basketball scholarship to Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., Brewer didn't play golf until he was 19 years old. He became fascinated with the sport after a few trips to the driving range, and soon was a devoted student of the golf swing and its mechanics. His diligence resulted in his making the golf team his final two years at Guilford.  "I wasn't very good at all starting out," Brewer said. "But once I started to play, I just absolutely fell head-over-heels in love with the game."

"Gordon doesn't do anything lightly when it comes to golf. He loves the game and gives a lot back, because of the gentleman and the sportsman that he is," said Jack Connelly, longtime head professional at Huntingdon Valley CC and a former president of the PGA of America. "He was my first golf chairman when I became head professional 35 years ago, and I learned a lot from him. And as a PGA board member, he contributed immensely, because of his knowledge of the game and his business acumen."

Another legendary amateur golfer from Pennsylvania, albeit from the other end of the state, Carol Thompson, said she has long drawn inspiration from Brewer. "He's just a great guy and a tremendous golfer. I would always read about him and he would inspire me to keep playing in the state championships. And then when he won the Senior [Amateur] twice in '94 and '96, I thought, "I think I can do that, too."

Thompson, a former Bob Jones Award recipient herself, went on to win four consecutive USGA Senior Women's Amateur titles, from 1999 to 2002. She also served on the USGA Executive Committee with Brewer. "I expected him to be smart, and he was. I was always jealous that he was able to articulate as well as he did," laughed Thompson. "He had a great golf background and he certainly cared about the game."

As Sigel said, this is a man "who has done more than his share for golf," but less this turn into a love fest among golf stalwarts from the city of brotherly love, let Sigel continue: "I don't want to say he'd cut your heart out, because everything he does is fair and square, but Gordon's also a guy who is probably as competitive as anyone you want to meet."

Which brings us back to the Brewer Cup, one of three Super-Senior titles in the Philadelphia area that Brewer captured this past summer. Though Brewer said he went into the three-day event not even sure he had the game to qualify, he quickly found his form. Indeed, he was under par in all three of his matches, including 3-under through 15 holes of the final, played against his old friend Charles McClaskey. He birdied the par-5 15 ^th after his second shot with a hybrid from 254 yards clanged off the flagstick, then hit a wedge to a foot and a half on the par-4 16 ^th to close out the match with a tap-in birdie.

Said Huntingdon Valley's David Brookreson, the Senior flight victor: "Winning the championship is great. When it's at your home course and when the trophy's got Gordon's name on it, it makes it special. I've known Gordon for 40 years. It seems to me he's gotten better with age."

Surely, Brewer's cup runneth over not only with praise from his friends and fellow-competitors but also with the hard-won accomplishments of his own doing. And that's the mark of a true sportsman.

As Bob Jones once wrote, "It is the very essence of golf that it should be played in a completely sociable atmosphere conducive to the utmost in courtesy and consideration of one player for the others, and upon the very highest level in matters of sportsmanship, observing of the rules, and fair play." That is what the Bob Jones Award is all about, and that is why Gordon Brewer is its latest recipient.

About TheBobJonesAward

Presented annually since 1955, the Bob Jones Award is the USGA's highest honor and is given in recognition of sportsmanship in golf. The Bob Jones Award winner is selected from nominations from across the golf community and chosen by a diverse and distinguished committee that includes the Commissioners of the PGA and LPGA Tours, members of the press, and leaders of affiliated golf organizations such as PGA of America and the Golf Course Superintendents Association, as well as the USGA.

The complete list of past recipients of the USGA's Bob Jones Award is available at http://www.usga.org/news/2008/February/jones_award_winners.html .

Recent winners of the award include three-time major winner Nick Price (2005), nine-time PGA Tour winner and former Walker Cupper Jay Haas (2006), two-time U.S. Women's Open champion Louise Suggs (2007) and George H.W. Bush (2008), whose grandfather, Herbert Walker, and father, Prescott Bush, were both former USGA presidents. The Walker Cup is named for Herbert Walker, who donated the trophy for the biennial team competition between male amateur golfers from the USA and Great Britain and Ireland.


About The USGA

The USGA is the national governing body of golf in this country and , a combined territory that includes more than half the world's golfers and golf courses. The Association's most visible role is played out each season in conducting 13 national championships, including the U.S. Open, U.S. Women's Open and U.S. Senior Open.  Ten additional USGA national championships are exclusively for amateurs, and include the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Women's Amateur. The USGA also writes the Rules of Golf, conducts equipment testing, provides expert course maintenance consultations, funds research for better turf and a better environment, maintains a Handicap System and administers an ongoing "For the Good of the Game" grants program, which has allocated more than $59 million over 11 years to successful programs that bring the game's values to youths from disadvantaged backgrounds and people with disabilities.

Scott Smith is the USGA's Director of Communications, Editor. E-mail him with questions or comments at ssmith@usga.org.