PGA of America

A retailer who wasn’t even a golfer

It is hard to believe today, but in the early 1900s professional golfers were second-class citizens: making a living at golf was considered an unrespectable occupation, amateur golf ruled, and pros were on a par with caddies — not allowed in most clubhouses. The man who changed their lot was not a reformer. Department-store heir Rodman Wanamaker “wasn’t being altruistic: he helped them because they could help him make more money. In fact, Wanamaker wasn’t even a golfer. But he thought golf professionals would increase sales of endorsed clubs at his namesake store in New York City if they were part of an association with a national championship that would help elevate their status.”

On January 17, 1916, Wanamaker invited prominent pros — including the celebrated Walter Hagen — plus top amateurs and industry leaders to a luncheon at the Taplow Club inside his store on Broadway. Wanamaker, the son of the pioneering founder of Wanamaker’s department stores (now Macy’s) and a Princeton graduate who had joined the family business in 1886, believed golf needed an official organization to promote interest in the growing game.

The luncheon set off months of organizing meetings, and on April 10, 1916, the PGA was officially established with 35 charter members. Wanamaker proposed the new body hold an annual tournament and offered to donate money for a trophy and prize fund. That October, the first PGA Championship took place at Siwanoy Country Club in Bronxville, New York, where James M. Barnes defeated Jock Hutchinson in the championship match for a $2,580 purse — and the trophy that still bears Wanamaker’s name.

The man behind the trophy

Wanamaker’s fingerprints on American sport run far beyond golf. His support of athletics created track-and-field’s Millrose Games in 1908 — named for his country estate in Pennsylvania, still held each February, featuring the Wanamaker Mile — and even the tradition of opening sporting events with the Star Spangled Banner came out of the Millrose Games. He funded early expeditions to the North Pole and built the first multi-engine plane to fly across the Atlantic, piloted by Admiral Richard Byrd days after Lindbergh’s 1927 flight. He died the next year at 65 — but every summer, one fortunate golfer still lifts the 27-pound Wanamaker Trophy.

What this profile does not claim

• The relationship between the PGA of America and the PGA Tour; that topic was not researched for this profile.
• Current membership numbers or headquarters location; those were not verified from fully-read sources.
• That Wanamaker founded the association single-handedly; the sources credit him as the instigator and funder of a multi-meeting organizing effort.