Hootie, Boo, Happ and Haas. Repeat that list swiftly enough and the outcome sounds like something you might hear from a Dutchman with carpenter bees in his clogs. Instead, they are names that, in their own ways, made for yet another memorable April in South Carolina golf. It is a month that has served as the game’s annual coming out parade for many years now.
As far back as 1983, April took on special significance when the PGA tour’s only tournament in the state, the Heritage at Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, moved to a permanent spring slot. Fuzzy Zoeller won that year. This year’s title went to a young man with the similarly whimsical name of Boo Weekley. The tournament began in 1969 and has been the catalyst not just for Hilton Head’s emergence as a high-end golf haven, but, through daily television coverage, also for a good deal of the state’s profile across the nation.
The Heritage has generated more than $15-million for charities over the years but that figure surely pales against the economic influx from tournament visitors, to golf tourists, to residents relocating from other states.
That’s the big end. At the other, some kids who had never touched a golf club in their lives were introduced to the game at Columbia Country Club. The annual Kids on Greens Day is a project of the Carolinas Golf Course Superintendents Association. Elementary school children learn about the game from the grass roots up. “Some might take up the game at some point, but even those that don’t at least get an idea of what it does for the state, economically, environmentally and socially,” says Jeff Connell, the host superintendent.
That same message is at the heart of a joint project of the Carolinas GCSA and the South Carolina Golf Association. In April, the two associations launched a poster project that they hope will eventually be on display at every golf facility in the state. The poster spells out just how much golf contributes to the state economy - $2.3-billion annually; how many jobs it generates – more than 31,000; and how it offers green space, habitat and a stage for people to get together.
More than 500 people got together in the first week of the month for the annual Columbia Golf Ball raising close to $60,000 for junior golf programs. The ball is one of a range of fund-raisers that underpin South Carolina’s nationally-renowned junior development system. This is where the Happ comes in. Happ Lathrop is executive director of the SCGA and in many ways the Pied Piper for junior golfers. Countless thousands of kids have grown into the game as a direct result of Lathrop’s work and that of the likes of the late Charles Rountree II.
The Hootie enters the picture a week later through another of the junior golf fundraisers, the annual Hootie and the Blowfish Monday After the Masters tournament in Myrtle Beach. The Columbia-based band has served as title sponsor of the event since 1995. Star golfers, celebrities and average Joes get together for an auction and golf event that has generated more than $2-million for junior golf in the state.
The third week of April is designated by the legislature as South Carolina Golf Week, to formally recognize and celebrate the economic benefit the game brings. In addition to the Kids on Greens Day, a mid-week cocktail reception and other events, Golf Week includes the annual Legislative Classic golf tournament. Once the House session breaks, legislators team up with golf industry supporters for the one-day event that also puts resources into the junior golf coffers.
The last round of the Heritage tournament launches Golf Week and this April the week received a welcome Palmetto book-end when long-favored son, Jay Haas, won the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf championship in Savannah, GA on the Champions Tour. Haas, from Greer, has been a fixture on the national golf stage across four decades. A son, Bill, is now making inroads on the PGA Tour, ensuring that the Haas name will remain in the South Carolina spotlight for years to come.
So that was April for golf in the state. But it was hardly the end. In May, Kiawah Island Resort was to host the first major championship on South Carolina soil with the Senior PGA Championship at the Ocean Course. The result was undecided at press time but rest assured Palmetto pride was front and center because Haas, Jay, was defending champion. SCM
