Mister Richard - former president of United States Golf Association, Richard S. Tufts

Golf Digest, July, 1999 by Frank Hannigan

Pinehurst man was USGA's most effective president

Richard S. Tufts, like so many of us, led a life of quiet contradiction. He was the exemplar of a long-lost attitude that golf should not be soiled by commerce. At the same time, he made his living from Pinehurst-America's first destination golf resort.

As a manager of the game, which was a secular religion for him, Richard Tufts attracted nothing short of reverence. He was soft-spoken, intelligent, thoughtful, and a touch on the shy side. He was "Mister Richard" to both the residents of Pinehurst and the generations of golfers who made pilgrimages to his domain.

On a national scale, the U.S. Golf Association became his pulpit. Since its founding in 1895, the USGA has had 55 presidents. Richard Tufts was its most effective-in 1956 and 1957. His fingerprints are all over just about everything the USGA became after World War II, except the recent amassing of a vast money surplus ($130 million at the end of 1998), which he would not have understood at all.

Here's a partial list of what Richard Tufts gave the USGA:

* He was one of the Rules of Golf grand masters. He played a central part in a 1951 summit conference at which the USGA and R&A agreed to unifor-mity. Today there are too many people described as rules experts whose reputations are based on being able to spit out the numbers of the basic rules and decisions. Tufts understood the code as a philosophical statement, which he summarized in a book, The Principles Behind the Rules of Golf. His two great principles: (1) Play the course as you find it; (2) Play your own ball and do not touch it until you lift it from the hole.

* In concert with USGA Executive Director Joe Dey, Tufts formulated the standard USGA setup for champion-ships-tight fairways, and graduated rough both off fairways and near fast, firm greens. They did this in the 1950s in reaction to a series of wildly dis- parate U.S. Open setups contrived by host clubs. Riviera in 1948 was too easy; Oakland Hills in 1951 was absurd-ly hard. (Ben Hogan, by the way, won both.) The Tufts-Dey system has been tweaked occasionally, but the method remains fundamentally as it was 40 years ago (Pinehurst notwithstanding).

* He was the primary creator of the modern USGA handicapping system, which broke away from the old basic method in which only the most recent scores were considered, to one that uses an average of many rounds. Today it's the 10 best of the last 20.

* He made the radical decision to convert the USGA Green Section into a national array of agronomists who visit courses to diagnose turf problems and prescribe cures. Before 1953, the USGA Green Section was only a modest support of research projects. More than any other single factor, the USGA visiting service has changed the look and feel of American golf. Its 20 agronomists made 1,750 visits in 1998, about 60,000 since 1953.

* He was the creator of the USGA junior and senior championships. Mr. Richard was not that crazy about the USGA branching out beyond its basic Open and Amateurs, but other groups were running what were regarded as national events for juniors and seniors. He figured if they were inevitable, they might as well be done right.

At home, he and his family were like benign monarchs. Their realm was 6,000 acres-Pinehurst Inc.-purchased in 1895 by Mr. Richard's grandfather, James W. Tufts, for a dollar an acre.

Richard Tufts, born in 1896, learned golf at Pinehurst from Donald Ross, the Pinehurst pro who later became a mythological figure as a course designer. (Tufts, when he headed the firm, was both Ross' boss and close friend.) For real education, Richard was sent north, to Harvard, where he earned a degree in engineering. After service as a naval officer in World War I, he entered the family business.

Tufts was president of Pinehurst Inc. during its halcyon years after World War II, when there was a rush of money and not much in the way of golf resort competition to Pinehurst.

Those were also the glory days of the North & South series of tournaments, all played at Pinehurst. In an era when all the best young golfers did not automatically turn pro, the North & South events were behind only USGA championships in repute.

Winners of the men's North & South Amateur include Francis Ouimet, Walter J. Travis, Frank Stranahan, Curtis Strange and Davis Love III. Jack Nicklaus of Ohio State even skipped the 1959 NCAA Championships to enter, and naturally win, the 1959 North & South Amateur. (He got a bigger thrill, though, when he witnessed his son, Jack Nicklaus II, win the event in 1985.) Among the female winners are Glenna Collett, Louise Suggs, Babe Zaharias and Kelly Robbins.

There was also a North & South Open-a big deal, because it was played on a great course when the tour was a nickel-and-dime operation playing in scruffy conditions. Hogan's first tour victory was the 1940 North & South Open.

In 1951, Richard Tufts agreed to stage the Ryder Cup as a gesture of support for the PGA of America, for which the match was then a financial burden. The North & South Open tournament was to follow hard on the heels of the Ryder Cup. Some of the players, including Hogan, did not stay because they regarded the prize money as too small. Mr. Richard thereupon canceled the North & South Open forever. His influence on other golf leaders was profound. Dey, who personified the USGA, could brush aside USGA presidents like so many loose impediments-but he listened to and esteemed Richard Tufts-even when ordered not to officiate at the Masters Tournament at a time when Mr. Richard was unhappy with gambling tolerated by Augusta National.