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He received the PGA Distinguished Service Award just last August. RIP.
CANTON, Ohio — Bill Powell, the first African American to build, own and operate a golf course, died Thursday. He was 93.
The PGA of America said Powell died at Aultman Hospital in Canton following complications from a stroke.
“Bill Powell will forever be one of golf’s most unforgettable American heroes,” PGA of America president Jim Remy said. “Bill made us appreciate the game and each other that much more by his gentle, yet firm example.
“He was born with a fire within his heart to build on his dream. In the process, he made golf a beacon for people of all color. The PGA of America is better today because of individuals like Bill Powell. We will miss him dearly. We extend our thoughts and prayers to his family as we remember a wonderful man.”
In August, Powell received the PGA Distinguished Service Award, the association’s highest annual honor. In November, he was inducted into the Northern Ohio PGA Hall of Fame and honored as the Person of the Year by the Ohio Golf Course Owners Association.
The Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce also recently presented the Powell family with its Community Salute Award.
“My father made a mark,” said daughter Renee Powell, the second black player to compete on the LPGA Tour. “And, I believe that God wanted people to know the mark that he made on this nation.”
The grandson of Alabama slaves, Powell created Clearview Golf Club after returning home following World War II. While serving in Europe, he earned the rank of Technical Sergeant in the U.S. Eighth Air Force Truck Battalion.
Powell worked 18-hour days to support his family and build Clearview. Denied a GI Loan, he found funding from two African American physicians, and his brother took out a second mortgage on his home.
Powell went on to carve Clearview out of former dairy farmland in 1946, clearing the land himself. In the process, Powell broke down racial barriers without fanfare by developing female and youth golf leagues.
Clearview opened its initial nine holes in 1948. Powell eventually repaid his benefactors to gain full ownership, and nine more holes were completed in 1978. Clearview is on the National Register of Historic Places, and nicknamed “America’s Course.”
“I didn’t build this course for any of the recognition,” Powell said in his 2000 autobiography, “Clearview: America’s Course.” “It was a labor of love. Golf is a part of society and I wanted to be included. I want you to be included, too. I’ve always felt that each individual should leave something behind of meaning. It feels good to know that I have done that with Clearview, at long last.”
In 1992, the Powells were honored by the National Golf Foundation as the Jack Nicklaus Golf Family of the Year. That year, Powell was awarded the “Cornerstone of Freedom Award” from the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commission.
Powell was inducted into the National Black Golf Hall of Fame in 1996, and became a PGA Life Member in 1999. Powell also received honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees from his alma mater, Wilberforce University, and from Baldwin-Wallace College.
Powell also played a role in The First Tee, which has distributed more than 1,100 William J. Powell Scholarships that allow youngsters to attend The First Tee Life Skills and Leadership Academies conducted on college campuses.
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My annual sports predictions for the upcoming year. Due to some unknown reason, I skipped doing this a year ago. What matters is I came back, right?
1 Cleveland beats the LA Lakers for the NBA Championship
2 Indianapolis defeats Arizona in the Super Bowl 
3 San Jose defeats Washington for the Stanley Cup
4 St. Louis beats the Los Angeles Angels in the World Series
5 Tiger Woods returns to golf, wins at least one tournament but no major championships. That is a risky prediction in light of the fact that Tiger has won majors on 3 of this year’s host courses.(Augusta National, Pebble Beach, St. Andrews)
6 Phil Mickelson wins the US Open
7 Michelle Wie wins at least two tournaments, one of which is a major championship
8 Ji Yai Shin is LPGA player of the year
9 A non-Korean golfer will be LPGA rookie of the year
10 Yu-Na Kim wins figure skating gold at the 2010 Olympics
11 The Miami Dolphins don’t make this year’s playoffs but have a winning 2010 season
12 The Miami Heat make the playoffs but lose in the 1st round
13 The Florida Marlins have a winning record but don’t make the playoffs
14 Urban Meyer doesn’t return as coach of the Florida Gators
15 Joe Paterno announces his retirement after the 2010 Penn State season is complete
16 The Florida Panthers don’t make the playoffs
17 The Florida Panthers trade Goalie Tomas Vokoun
18 Manny Pacquiao loses to Floyd Mayweather
19 Kansas defeats Purdue for the NCAA Basketball Championship
20 Texas defeats Alabama in the BCS Championship game
21 Army has a winning football season and gets a bowl invitation
22 Washington Redskins fire Coach Jim Zorn
23 Serena Williams wins at Wimbledon
24 Versus and Directv finally settle their dispute
25 A North American horse racing track closes its doors.
26 Sebastian Vettel wins the Formula World Drivers Championship
27 New York Rangers fire Coach John Tortorella
28 The New Jersey Nets don’t finish with the worst record in NBA history
29 Connecticut defeats Tennessee for the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship
30 At least half these predictions are wrong
We’ll come back on December 31st 2010 and see how I did.
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OTB Sports linked with January 10th NFL Wildcard playoff game predictions...
My first advice to him. Check pro golf schedules before making suggestions how to improve a LPGA schedule. Andrews wrote-
It’s hard to believe, even in the current economic downturn, that there are no LPGA events scheduled between the end of February and the last week in March here in the U.S. Ideally, those weeks would be filled with tournaments in Florida and other warm-weather states.
The LPGA would not come to Florida during the dates Dave is suggesting. You know why? Because the PGA Tour is dominating the Sunshine State golf scene at that time. Tournaments known as Doral, Honda, Bay Hill, and the Tampa tournament or the The Players Championship are or were played in usually 4 consecutive weeks. If Dave used that Harvard educated brain of his instead of being lazy or careless in not putting to use Golfobserver.com’s stat section, he would have noticed the LPGA avoids the Sunshine State when the men are playing here. Traditionally late February and March have been months for LPGA events in Arizona, California, and Hawaii. NOT FLORIDA and I checked back to 1980. No LPGA event has been played in Florida from the last weekend in February through all of March from 1980-2009. The latest a LPGA pre April Florida based tournament has ended in any of those years is February 21st.
He would also have known that the LPGA not starting its US based tournaments till mid March is new either. The LPGA Tour in 2003 didn’t finish its first event till March 16th.
If Dave answers my page, I’d tell him to do some research in the future.
Women’s professional golf is all wrapped up for 2009. From AP-
Honolulu’s Michelle Wie put on a show and a strong rally to finish second in the Omega Dubai Ladies Masters at the Emirates Golf Club in Dubai.
Wie, who started the day six shots back of leader and eventual winner In Kyung Kim, shot a bogey-free 7-under-par 65 to finish with a 15-under 273.
Kim of South Korea shot a 4-under 68 for a four-round total of 18-under 270 to win by three shots.
Wie had three birdies on the front and four on the back, including three in a row on Nos. 12-14.
She got within two shots of Kim with a hole — the par-5 18th — left. But Wie parred the hole and Kim birdied it.
Kim, who plays her golf with an almost perpetual smile on her face, has quietly played some of the best golf in the last 15 months. She won for the first time in late 2008 and then followed that up with a more than solid 2009. A win at the State Farm Classic, $1,238,396.00 in earnings, and 8th on the LPGA money list. Kim could be the #2 South Korean player in the world right now. It is either her or Na Yeon Choi. Of course, Ji Yai Shin is #1.
Michelle Wie finished 2009 on a strong note. I expect her to be in the winner’s circle at least once during the 2010 LPGA tour campaign.
He was in an auto accident two weeks ago. From TigerWoods.com -
I am deeply aware of the disappointment and hurt that my infidelity has caused to so many people, most of all my wife and children. I want to say again to everyone that I am profoundly sorry and that I ask forgiveness. It may not be possible to repair the damage I’ve done, but I want to do my best to try.
I would like to ask everyone, including my fans, the good people at my foundation, business partners, the PGA Tour, and my fellow competitors, for their understanding. What’s most important now is that my family has the time, privacy, and safe haven we will need for personal healing.
After much soul searching, I have decided to take an indefinite break from professional golf. I need to focus my attention on being a better husband, father, and person.
Tiger asked for privacy for he and his family. I don’t expect the media or bloggers to stop the silly gossiping they have indulged in over the last two weeks. Rumors and innuendo have been reported as news, and they have been wrong as often as they were right. This just being one such example. I love certain sports but care little about celebrities and that includes what sports stars do when not on the playing fields. There are some standards for what I will blog about.
Hat tip- Ryan at Waggleroom
It will be the Tour’s first visit to the Caribbean in 20 years. From AP-
The LPGA will be trying out a new format in Jamaica next year called “Raceway Golf,†which organizers hope will appeal to the purists and attract new fans to golf.
The Mojo 6 has a $1 million purse and will be held April 15-16 at Cinnamon Hill Golf Course in Montego Bay, the first time in two decades that the LPGA has an event in the Caribbean.
Suzann Pettersen, Paula Creamer and Christina Kim already have signed up for the event.
Raceway Golf pits 16 top players against each other in a series of six-hole matches. On the first day, each player has three six-hole matches to accumulate points. The top eight players advance to the second day and compete in single-elimination, with three matches required to win.
A full field event would have more ideal than a gimmicky invitational. Then beggars can’t be choosers.
Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald sums up the last 36 hours of Tiger Woods news.
The news-gathering landscape has mutated so quickly and so absolutely, at once enhanced and contaminated by the immediacy of everything from texts to Twitter to TMZ, that America’s most famous athlete this weekend went from suffering a serious injury in a car accident . . . to suffering a minor injury in a car accident . . . to being “fine,” according to his agent . . . to reportedly being unfaithful to his wife . . . to maybe having his face scratched by his angry wife . . . to being rescued by his helpful wife from his crashed car with a golf club . . . to having his car smashed up by his betrayed wife and her golf club . . . to not being any kind of “fine” at all.
Not all of that can be true, obviously, but who cares?
Truth is one of the many things that gets trampled today when boring facts can’t keep up with the media’s need to feed instantly and the public’s appetite to be fed faster than that.
Actually sports celebrity news bores me. I blogged about the news of Woods accident but refrained on speculating about its cause. That kind of restraint is not normal in either the news business or blogging now. I rather not make a fool out of myself by talking about 2nd or 3rd hand error prone news.
If someone wants to make the case I’m a fool, there’s over 4 years of blog posts out on the internet ready and waiting for them.
He hit a fire hydrant near his Orlando Florida home early Friday morning. From the Orlando Sentinel-
Professional golfer Tiger Woods was seriously injured in a car accident early this morning, the Florida Highway Patrol reported.
Woods, 33, pulled out of his driveway in the Isleworth community about 2:25 a.m. when he struck a fire hydrant, and then drove into a tree at his neighbor’s property, FHP reported.
Alcohol is not related to the accident, FHP said.
Woods was transported to Health Central Hospital in Ocoee in serious condition, FHP said. No other information about his condition has been released.
A Health Central hospital employee said at 2:30 p.m. that Woods was not a patient. A hospital operator would not say if Woods had been treated and released.
Hippa prevents hospitals from giving out patient information. I’ll update the post when more information is made available.
Update- Woods agent says he is fine.
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OTB Sports linked with Tiger Woods taking hiatus from golf...
After two days of rain that caused Friday’s 2nd round to finish on Monday morning, the rain shortened LPGA Tour Championship was completed today. Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist won by two shots over Lorena Ochoa. Kristy McPherson finished in a tie for 3rd with Na Yeon Choi.
The LPGA Tour Championship was the second win of the year for Nordqvist. Nordqvist, who was a rookie at the beginning of the year, won the LPGA Championship in June. Both of Nordqvist’s wins were impressive against stellar fields. She looks to have a very bright future on the tour.
The biggest news today, more than who won the tournament, was the determination of who would be LPGA Player of the Year for 2009. For most of the summer, Jiyai had the lead and looked posed to win POY and Rookie of the Year honors. Something only Nancy Lopez has done previously. However 2006-08 POY Lorena Ochoa after slumping through much of the summer, got hot once more starting about late to Mid-September. Coming into this week’s tournament, Shin had a 8 point lead over Ochoa.
That meant the only sure way Ochoa could be player of the year was with a win this weekend. She could also get the honor with a 2nd or 3rd place finish but she would need help from Shin.
Going into today’s final round, Shin looked to be in perfect position to be POY. She was in solo second place, one shot behind leader Kristy McPherson. Ochoa was tied for 3rd. Shin hasn’t been real sharp for the last two months, but still a top 5 looked inevitable for her.
Ochoa finished 2nd today. She did so in spite of a poor tee shot on 17(a par 3) that left her with a horrendous lie in the sand trap. A lie that caused her to not even get her 2nd shot on the green. Ochoa’s 3rd ran over ten feet past the hole but she drained the putt for bogey. Ochoa then birdied 18 which all but guaranteed her a 2nd place finish.
Shin never got it rolling today. She played the front nine in one over par and didn’t make a birdie till the 11th hole. Then Shin made five more straight pars. As she prepared to tee off on the 17th hole, Shin was in a 4-way tie for 5th. All 3 of the players Shin was tied with, were through for the day. That meant Shin needed to par the last two holes. Should she take even one bogey, Shin would fall to a tie for 8th. That would leave her with one less point than Ochoa in the POY race.
Shin, like Ochoa, hit her tee shot at 17 into a sand trap. The good news, Shin didn’t have a bad lie like Ochoa. The bad news- She had a very awkward stance. Like Ochoa, Shin didn’t get her sand shot on the green. Her 3rd shot didn’t go in the hole, but Shin didn’t have to make a lengthy bogey putt like Ochoa. Still she had bogied the hole and had fallen to a tie for 8th. A birdie at 18 would now be needed if Shin was to be POY.
It wasn’t to be. After a solid drive, Shin’s 2nd shot came up short. Shin did make par, but the tournament and POY race were over. A disappointing finish for certain, but at this point in time, I’d have to pick Shin as my favorite for 2010 POY. Ochoa is getting married next month, and she has stated in the past, that she would not have a lengthy golf career. The signs are already apparent that Ochoa is making LPGA Golf a secondary part of her life.
It was a great 2009 LPGA campaign even if it was a roller coaster at times. Now the Tour’s fans have to wait 3 months for the 2010 season opener in Thailand. Boy am I going to be suffering from withdrawal by then.
Update- Also blogging on the LPGA Tour Championship and the POY race are Ryan at Waggle Room, Sal at Golf Observer, The Constructivist, Hound Dog, and Jamie.
That is the only conclusion I can draw from this diatribe of his.
The LPGA, in yet another sideways bit of marketing savvy, elected to stage Evans’ press conference on Wednesday at the Sugar Land City Hall, off-campus from the site of its season finale. Maybe they hoped players wouldn’t notice the details of the schedule if they handed it out elsewhere.
Unless you’re dumb or a non-jealous LPGA fan living in a cave, you would know already that the LPGA schedule was given to players at a meeting on Tuesday night. That’s why it was reported by the likes of Ron Sirak, Beth Ann Baldry, and Associated Press on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Some LPGA players leaked the new schedule out to certain members of the media.
It sounds to me as if Elling wasn’t one of them and that’s why he wrote what he did.
I got a couple of other problems with what Elling wrote.
Setting aside the bombast and bluster, the LPGA season next year will likely consist of 24 tournaments, the fewest since 21 were staged in both 1970 and ’71, a rollback spanning nearly four decades as the tour prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary next year.
More alarmingly, only 13 of the tournaments will be staged in the United States, the smallest number ever. If it wasn’t the LPGA, with that kind of minimalist American presence, they’d be calling it a mini-tour. A mini-tour with major underpinning issues.
*****
Out of sight, out of mind? Playing abroad means even less media attention in the States and mostly tape-delayed TV coverage as the Golf Channel becomes the tour’s primary broadcaster in 2010.
Before a golf writer complains about the tape delay coverage of the LPGA or its foreign based schedule, they out have something drummed into their heads. Firstly GC’s contract with the PGA Tour which includes Nationwide events. They get first placement on the broadcast schedule over the LPGA.
Secondly, and more pertinently to Elling’s remarks, of the 11 foreign LPGA tournaments four of them are still played in North American time zones. Yes Virginia, Canada and Mexico are on the same clock as the United States of America.
As for the other 7, the Women’s British Open is broadcast by ABC who puts it on tape delayed. Which I have repeatedly complained about in the past.What’s your solution Steve? Play the British Open in Newport RI or Portsmouth NH?
Of the last six events, if they aren’t on tape delay, look at the hours they would be broadcast. Three, Four a.m. in the morning. How many golf fans are going to rise for that? The 2003 Solheim Cup went on the air at 4 a.m. in the morning but since it was without Michelle Wie almost nobody in the golf media noticed.
The tour instead created a season-ending LPGA Championship, signed Stanford Financial as the title sponsor, made it a full-field event and moved it to Houston, where it will be played for the first time this week. Now the radioactive part.
Allen Stanford, who wanted the tournament played in Houston, where his company has a large corporate presence, was tossed in jail. No replacement has been found to foot the title sponsorship bill, the format of the tournament has been criticized, and the event is running opposite the European Tour’s big-money Race to Dubai finale. Nice timing.
The ADT has been played the same weekend in November going back to 2003.(At least. I didn’t check 2001 and 2002 because I’m in a hurry.) Which is the same weekend the 2009 Tour Championship is played. When do you suggest they play the tournament? Next weekend is Thanksgiving.
One last bit of Elling derangement.
Twelve months ago, Bivens announced that the popular ADT event outside Miami,
Steve, you’re from Florida. The City of West Palm Beach where the ADT was played is not considered outside of Miami. When you were working at the Orlando Sentinel, were your offices outside Daytona Beach or Ocala? Those are Florida cities closer to Orlando than West Palm Beach is to Miami.
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