PINEHURST, NORTH CAROLINA | Pádraig Harrington stood at a lectern, his head cocked characteristically to one side, a smile playing on his face. It wasn’t the first time that all eyes were trained on the Irishman, three times a major champion, but this time not because he was facing a slippery 4-foot downhill putt on a green as smooth as glass. This time it was because Harrington was speaking at his induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame, having been introduced to the several hundred guests in an amusing speech by Paddy, his older son. He spoke with humour, modesty and passion and, as always, at length. In this he caught the tone of the evening, the induction of the WGHOF’s Class of 2024, a ceremony that took place on Monday night of U.S. Open week in Pinehurst.
It was there on a summer’s night in 1974 that the hall had been inaugurated, and President Gerald Ford was in attendance. The 50th anniversary, honoring Harrington, Sandra Palmer, the late Johnny Farrell, Beverly Hanson, Tom Weiskopf and the seven of the 13 LPGA founders not previously enshrined, was a glittering occasion, the greatest gathering of male and female professional golfers since, well, since the last ceremony, in March 2022. It was held in the storied Carolina Hotel, and the old girl and its glorious golden dome set among the village’s eponymous pine trees was at its best.
Proceedings began with the alphabetical introduction of the 29 hall members in attendance, from A (Isao Aoki) to W (Dennis Walters). Then Anne Murray, the Canadian singer, spoke about her friend Sandra Palmer, whose excitement and exuberant personality were obvious from the moment she burst onto the stage as if catapulted from a cannon. “Sandra may be tiny [she is 5 feet, 1½ inches],” Murray said, “but in golf she is mighty.”
In 2014 Michelle Wie West won the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open at Pinehurst. Who better, a decade on at the same venue, to talk of female athletes in introducing the founders of the LPGA who formed the organisation in 1950. Nancy Lopez accepted their induction on their behalf. “It is a time to be a female athlete,” Wie West said. In a video tribute, Mollie Marcoux Samaan, the LPGA’s commissioner, said: “These women were playing the best golf they possibly could, but they were also running the whole league. And they were doing it at a time when people weren’t sure they should be doing it.”
Mike Whan, chief executive of the USGA and a director of the WGHOF, described the hall’s coming home to Pinehurst as “… returning to the cradle of golf. There is history in this room, in this village,” Whan said. It fell to Harrington to have the last word, and it was appropriate. No one who knows him cannot be struck by his loquacity.
There was only one way for Jim Nantz, the CBS TV announcer who is considered to be the voice of golf, to begin his introduction of Tom Weiskopf, the 1973 Open champion who won 16 times on the PGA Tour, and had four Masters runners-up – two of them to Nicklaus. It had to be Nantz’s famous phrase “Hello, friends,” his signature greeting, and it was. Nantz said Weiskopf went on to be a TV colleague and later made a distinct mark as a golf course architect, noting that it was “remarkable, considering … that he did not begin golf until he was 16.”
