Born in Washington, D.C., Deane Beman attended Bethesda Chevy Chase High School and the University of Maryland in nearby College Park. He was a two-time All-American on the Terrapins golf team.
During his playing career, he first qualified for the U.S. Open at age 17 in 1955. He won the British Amateur in 1959 and the U.S. Amateur in 1960 and 1963. He was a member of four Walker Cup teams, 1959, 1961, 1963, and 1965, winning the first three, retaining the Cup in 1965, and qualified for the Masters Tournament fourteen times.
Beman turned professional in 1967 at age 29 and won four times on the PGA Tour between 1969 and 1973. He retired as a player and became the second PGA Tour Commissioner, succeeding Joe Dey in 1974, and served for twenty years. He introduced The Players Championship concept during this time and developed the Tournament Players Club network of courses around the United States.
He is the architect of the Tour’s successful television model, which still exists today. Under his watch, the Tour’s board passed a policy requiring all tournaments to support a charitable initiative. Tour charitable contributions grew from less than $1 million a year in 1974 to more than $30 million in 1994. To date, the PGA Tour has supported local charities with more than $3.2 billion.
He formed the Senior PGA Tour, now the PGA Tour Champions, for players 50 and older in 1980 and the Ben Hogan Tour (now Korn Ferry Tour) as golf’s developmental circuit in 1990.
Deane Beman is a member of the Washington, D.C. Sports Hall of Fame, Maryland State Athletic Hall of Fame, All American Collegiate Golf Hall of Fame, Florida Sports Hall of Fame, University of Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame, the Montgomery County Sports Hall of Fame and the World Golf Hall of Fame. In 2007 Mr. Beman was awarded the seventh PGA Tour Lifetime Achievement Award.
Comentarios