Although it’s certainly early days to be picking a winner for any Sports Book of the Year Awards, golf writer Adam Schupak stands a terrific chance of having to clear out space in his trophy case for some end of the year hardware. His his excellent new book “Deane Beman – Golf’s Driving Force” – a detailed review of the monumental accomplishments of the PGA Tour Commissioner who transformed the Tour from an also-ran in the sports world to a powerhouse – is the best review of the business side of the PGA Tour, or any sport for that matter, ever written.
Golf certainly has come a long way from the days of hickories and gutta percha, ties and tweed, and brassies and niblicks. For decades pros and caddies drove with each other en masse between tournaments, criss-crossing the nation from one tour stop to the other like caravans of Grateful Dead fans. Heck, sometimes they even let the journalists ride with them.
Describing those heady halcyon days, James Bond creator Ian Fleming wrote that pro golfers were among the most stoic of men, neither smoking or drinking, knowing the cold sweat of the poor house on their own and their families backs, and that’s why the player with the least imagination usually wins.
Times certainly have changed. Back in the day, you never saw pro golfers with caviar, champagne, and masseuses. Now you never find pro golfers without them. G5s and 6s are the transportation of choice, and players can live their entire life without winning a golf tournament, yet still own mansions and live the high life.
They have Deane Beman to thank. When Beman took over, the total purses for a season amounted to roughly $8 million. Twenty years later, that figure swelled to an eye-popping $58 million. But his legacy is much more than just money. He completely transformed the PGA from merely the Tour players arm of the PGA of America into its own business entity, with divisions for marketing, a network of golf courses around the country, and the ability to negotiate highly lucrative TV deals.
Everyone knew of Beman’s achievements, but it’s Schupak’s painstaking attention to detail and the depth of his story-telling, tapping hundreds of first person accounts from players to captains of golf industry to rivals at the various sports organizations that result in not just a rich tapestry of a story, but a blueprint of each business battle fought by Beman. The details are so intricate colleges, business schools, and law schools could use the book as a text for the study of sports business and law, yet golf fans can read the book easily as bedtime and bathroom reading and come out with a remarkably astute understanding of the inside workings of business dealings in the sports world. Far more than just a biography of a great sports commissioner, this is the critically important book that the sports world has needed to see inside the inner workings of the industry. No book in golf history breaks down the business of any sport so succinctly.
Additionally, the book is particularly well written. Schupak takes a dry subject, sports business, and makes it a fun and fascinating read, with poignant insights, salient interviews, and great personalities with hilarious remembrances. Well organized, yet stylish, without being over-written, Schupak shows talent well beyond his years.
Moreover, we get a glimpse into the heart, mind, and soul of the duality of the man entrusted with the protection, indeed survival of the Tour, but who also struggled to maintain hi8s legacy as a good and kind-hearted man – a man who deftly combined business tycoon with kind, considerate human being, and Victorian-souled golfer. They just don’t make them like Deane Beman any more – a man who could “get to yes” under the most trying of situations with the most hard-hearted egotistical opponents.
Heck, the story of how he beat back a furious mutiny led by no less personages than Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer is worth the price alone. Moreover, his chapters devoted to the creation of Sawgrass, (including Old Prunes the Goat and the other animals who cut the grass the old fashioned way), break down the creation of one of the World’s greatest golf courses like a fraction.
If there is a drawback, perhaps Schupak could have explored some tough questions such as why none of the other TPC courses rises to the level of Sawgrass and whether there was another solution to the club grooves debate with Karsten rather than capitulation which has changed the face of professional golf for the worse. Still, no other sports book in history takes as detailed an inside look at the contractual, business, and television side of the PGA Tour.
The only book that may stand a chance of vying for the Sports Journalism awards may be the ESPN tell-all, which we’ll review later this year. Until then, Adam Schupak is the leader in the clubhouse…and the greens just got faster, the wind kicked up, and a Tiger Woods is nowhere in sight. Get the engraver ready and warm up the fat lady. She may be singing soon.
