I regret to announce the death of Bob Sommers in late July, 200 following complications from a brain tumour.
Born on Aug. 6, 1926, Bob was 81 and had been a member of the Association since 1980. Bob worked for the USGA for 25 years as editor of Golf Journal and was the author of The US Open: Golf’s Ultimate Challenge, as well as many other titles such as Golf Anecdotes. A member of the R and A, he wrote the main text of the Open Annual for 14 years until 2005. In 2001 he received the Memorial Golf Journalism Award at the Memorial Tournament. He is survived by his wife, Helen, in Port St. Lucie, Florida, where they moved in retirement after 1991.
Michael McDonnell, our former president, writes:
Throughout his distinguished career Bob Sommers remained a staunch traditionalist who first played golf at the age of six and when, in his own words, he realised he couldn’t beat anybody at it, made a living from writing about it which he did for many years on several US newspapers and then as Editor and Publisher of Golf Journal ,the official publication of the United States Golf Association.
As such, he had an insider’s view of all the great events in the United States and I urged him to put his reminiscences in book form. Indeed he had started the project when illness halted his efforts and he confessed wryly: “I have trouble writing and indeed thinking which, as you know, was never my strong suit.”
But his opening words in the prologue of the book that sadly will never be completed summed up his attitude to the modern game. He happened to be watching television and saw Tiger Woods play his approach to the seventh green at Augusta during the Masters.
“Now Augusta’s seventh,” he wrote, “never struck fear into the hearts of competent tour players but nonetheless here was Woods playing little more than a flick wedge. Woods’ casual pitch struck me as absurd and upsetting. Our heroes of earlier years had to play SOME kind of shot and certainly more than an effortless lob. Then I realised once again that the game I enjoy watching- and playing- exists no more. Golf, as I knew it, is gone.”
He blamed manufacturers and “timid governing bodies” for what he regarded as its decline. He was a regular competitor at the Autumn Meeting in St Andrews and once captured the Dundee Courier headlines with his partner ahead of Sir Sean Connery but only because the pair had been beaten in the first round by the defending champions.
Some personal memories. I invited him to play Royal St David’s in Harlech but when he looked at the map, this man who was accustomed to multi-lane American highways, growled: “How in hell d’you get there? I can’t see any roads.”
Once when we played at Ballybunion in a fierce storm he asked me to watch his shots because the rain drops on his spectacles blurred his vision. I obliged and thus he was able to focus solely on hitting the ball and not surprisingly beat me comfortably. To this day, I am not sure whether it was a tactical ploy or a genuine request but it certainly worked.
Moreover he was a qualified and strict rules referee who would argue points of golf law for hours. When I partnered him in an invitational event on his home course at Port St Lucie in Florida and found trouble in a bush, the drop he gave me made the next shot even more impossible.
He was a golf nut. He parked his golf buggy in his garage with the clubs loaded and ready for action then set off each morning for the course telling his wife Helen: “I’m off to do God’s work.” Just some of the moments that made it a joy to have known Bob. – MMcD
For a tribute from Marty Parkes, the former director of communications of the USGA, please see: http://www.usga.org/news/2008/july/sommers_tribute.html. In Forgive us our Press Passes, Bob Sommers wrote of meeting the British press for the first time at the 1965 Walker Cup in Baltimore: “My imagination ran wild. I pictured a stately, well-bred troupe who had the manners of Gielgud and spoke the language of Shakespeare like Olivier.
I trembled at how these models of decorum must feel about our working quarters in a dark basement usually reserved for mowers and carts. Timidly I crept to the door and stepped through. Then I froze. There, inside, I watched, stunned, as a moustachioed madman in scarlet slacks, navy blue blazer bearing a crimson British lion, and wearing a cowboy hat prowled the room dousing his countrymen with a water pistol. May I introduce Leonard Crawley. Thus, there went preconceived illusions. At the same time, here came a bundle of friends.”
SEE – https://www.pressreader.com/canada/truro-news/20080801/281878704153564 and https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/palmbeachpost/obituary.aspx?n=robert-sommers&pid=114519707&cf_chl_captcha_tk=f357d3c3ba38aa010d4a3a810d138f5614edc872-1613168881-0-ARRh4CVHQZN1Gqa17YmWYQ_e_fVc-DMJwBf2FlpHZ0OJNdSbYwMY45Bqbjo4XuHbH8BdF2zpaLjaH5caqFmhNgmB3-JhhZgakDtzHLcGv7b6PgM2hDgIxMPS79S61duN6TQsb4oH7Ce64jZNnwa_t2hBfY-cSKByRIKdFisJFBqh5SxFzztxc55rgwyC9G45Jq54k2r5LahBJxqphcCEDtEcHzIxZExXw5VR9JV3wlXqBC-7_whGs2fnch1HgBjBWAAzq54rrS2SpfiRE4jt6jPaJVo338IaHrbEKI2FQ3rEjYxGq16YRjX4Sm2m3bEiY8P-lJajm8ltYUsxFgY7IUZ8BLDOeXW15ZdC6aDufJPoRhPtzsAI03WasTUL0tgAH20XUG1as-r_YJpr22oJjrU_T0V3oknYR_u-I7z8zk3FKBisYVim1ZobfVtmtCSOXQzvutEv5xebGkMSE49Vw0kTcIPbAEul8Oo1WsHXWU6CegPN-TRg9RUtjvgN1xSIpKXLtArIMkLtSM5-U9HNxPjLlmgkJ7NRWLfOYYQhMEewYPCIuxR-UwKw9Fy5u8yv67dmkqU45hvv2osnoF4zBNXJAXdsVx6J0yEzGVJF7Kt5RPgG9uBQX8rQUgOiI9GjmbpWrHHJwUviAraJJF_JpT8xiPp2ESVjuAqTF8kgeRw7
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