WE ARE GOLF, a coalition of golf’s leading organizations, will host its ninth annual National Golf Day on Wednesday, May 18, 2016 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. “With 2016 being an election year, it’s even more important for political leaders to understand the impact our industry has on local communities and millions of Americans,” said Steve Mona, Chief Executive Officer of World Golf Foundation, administrator of WE ARE GOLF.

“Since our first event in 2008, National Golf Day has educated our nation’s lawmakers about the countless benefits of the game and we look forward to continuing this agenda in May.”

The 2015 event featured industry leaders from the Club Managers Association of America, Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, Ladies Professional Golf Association, National Golf Course Owners Association, PGA of America, PGA TOUR, United States Golf Association, United States Golf Manufacturers Council, WGF and others were in attendance to discuss golf’s economic, environmental, charitable and fitness benefits to Congressional, executive branch and agency leaders. – See more at: http://wearegolf.org/capitol-hill/national-golf-day/#sthash.hicrpFN1.dpuf

Ryder Cup Points through The Players Championship

May 15, 2016

For the complete of U.S. Ryder Cup points click here.

European Ryder Cup Team Points

European World Points

Click here for European Ryder Cup Team Points

1. S. Ryder Cup Qualifications (Captain Davis Love III)

The United States points system will be determined as follows:

• Eight of the 12 members of the U.S. Team will be named on points earned following the conclusion of The Barclays, which is scheduled to conclude Sunday Aug. 28, 2016. This new timetable gives two additional weeks for players to earn Ryder Cup qualifying points.
• Captain’s Picks – Three of the four Captain’s Picks will be announced after the conclusion of the BMW Championship, which is scheduled to conclude on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016. The final Captain’s pick will take place Sunday evening after the TOUR Championship, Sept. 25, 2016.

Points are based upon the following:

• All U.S. players will earn points based upon the following criteria starting in 2015 and concluding Aug. 28, 2016:
• 2015 Major Championships – The Masters, U.S. Open, Open Championship and PGA Championship (1 Point per $1,000 earned).
• 2015 WGC Events – WGC Cadillac Championship, WGC Match Play Championship, WGC Bridgestone Invitational, WGC HSBC Champions and The Players Championship (1 Point per $2,000 earned).
• 2016 Regular PGA TOUR Events – beginning Jan. 1, 2016, through and including the Barclays on Sunday, Aug. 28, 2016 (1 point per $1,000 earned).
• 2016 Opposite Field PGA TOUR Events will not receive any points.
• 2016 Major Championships (2 points per $1,000 earned)

European Ryder Cup Qualifications (Captain Darren Clarke)

The European Team to compete in the 2016 Ryder Cup shall comprise of the following Members:

(a) The leading four Members ¹ on The Ryder Cup European Points List (1) on Sunday 28th August 2016, (or as at the conclusion of the Race to Dubai Tournament scheduled to conclude on that date, whichever is the latter).  In the event of a tie between Members (i.e. a number of Members having accumulated an equal number of points), placings will be decided by the Member1 with the higher ranking on the 2016 Race to Dubai Rankings on Sunday 28th August 2016, (or as at the conclusion of the Race to Dubai Tournament scheduled to conclude on that date, whichever is the latter);

(b) The leading five Members ¹ , not otherwise qualified under paragraph (a) above, on The Ryder Cup World Points List (2) on Sunday 28th August 2016, (or as at the conclusion of the Race to Dubai Tournament scheduled to conclude on that date, whichever is the latter). In the event of a tie between Members (i.e. a number of Members having accumulated an equal number of points), placings will be decided by the Member ¹ with the higher ranking on the Official World Golf Ranking as published on Monday 22nd August 2016; and

(c) The Captain, Darren Clarke, will choose (at his own discretion) the remaining three Members ¹ in the week commencing Monday 29th August 2016.

(1) The Ryder Cup European Points List will comprise points (1 point = 1 Euro of Official Money) earned by a Member ¹ from all Race to Dubai Tournaments in which he Participates that are scheduled to conclude between Thursday 3rd September 2015 and Sunday 28th August 2016. (Money earned by a Member from the 2015 Race to Dubai Bonus Pool (unofficial) does not count towards this points list).

(2) The Ryder Cup World Points List will comprise Official World Golf Ranking Points won by a Member ¹ from all OWGR tournaments in which he Participates, (unless otherwise stated below) that are scheduled to conclude as follows: –

(i)  Between Thursday 3rd September 2015 and Sunday 7th August 2016.

(ii) On Sunday 21st August 2016.

(iii) ONLY from the Race to Dubai Tournament on Sunday 28th August 2016.

Official World Golf Ranking Points are allocated to all officially sanctioned tournaments (on any Federated Tour) by the Official World Golf Ranking and are allocated according to the Event Rating of the tournament.

Definitions

¹ For the purposes of defining eligibility for selection for the 2016 European Ryder Cup team only, all references to Member(s) and Membership in the eligibility criteria referred to above shall mean only those European Members of the European Tour, whether Ranked Members, Affiliate Members, Honorary Life Members, Past Champions or other Members of distinction or Ranked European Members of the European Challenge Tour.

Notes

Note 1: Points won on The Ryder Cup World Points List and The Ryder Cup European Points List can only be earned by a Player whilst a Member ¹ of the European Tour (as defined in the preceding section).

Note 2: For points earned on either list to count within any one Official Season, a Ranked Member (including a Ranked Honorary Life Member) must fulfil his Membership obligations* (referred to in Regulation B1(c)) within that Official Season.

* In the Official Season in which The Ryder Cup is to be played, if any Ranked Member has not fulfilled these Membership obligations at the time when The European Ryder Cup team is selected, he must have committed to Participate in and there must remain sufficient Race to Dubai Tournaments in that Official Season for the Member to be able to do so.

Note 3:  A Non-Member taking up Membership ¹ of The European Tour for an Official Season that commences during the qualification period, (referred to in paragraph (1) above) can only earn points on either list from the date of the first Race to Dubai Tournament of that Official Season or the first Race to Dubai Tournament for which the Player is a Member ¹ of The European Tour, whichever is the latter.

All decisions and/or disputes relating to a Player’s eligibility for selection for a European Ryder Cup team including any issues relating to nationality, citizenship, domicile or residency of a Player will be determined by the European Tour’s Tournament Committee, subject to the ratification of any such decision by the board of directors of Ryder Cup Europe.

Lawrence, Kan. (May 17, 2016) —  Larry Powell, the 64-year-old golf course superintendent who has spent his life tending to the dream of his father, Bill, at Clearview Golf Club in East Canton, Ohio, will be one of four new inductees into the National Black Golf Hall of Fame (NBGHF) on May 21, at the Peachtree Hotel and Conference Center in Peachtree City, Ga.

Powell will join his well-known sister Renee, a former LPGA Tour golfer who still teaches at Clearview, and be inducted along with European Senior Tour player Jerry Bruner, and Ann and Tom Cousins, who share responsibility for rebuilding Atlanta’s historic East Lake Golf Course and the surrounding community. The Chicago Women’s Golf Club, the country’s second oldest African American women’s golf club (1937), will also be recognized.

Powell, who has been mowing fairways since he was eight, is into his fourth decade as caretaker for the 130-acre tract that has been elevated to the National Register of Historic Places. He has also been a proud member of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America since 1975, serving on the association’s diversity task group for five years.

“This a great honor, and one that I never expected,” said Powell. “It is nice to be appreciated and recognized. The people who have gone before me were outstanding people with heart and determination.”

Since its beginning in 1986, the NBGHF has inducted 113 members. Bill, who was famous for saying, “the only color that matters is the color of the greens,” was inducted in 1996. Renee joined her father in the Hall in 2006.

The NBGHF mission is to “recognize and honor the contributions of black golfers for their skills and to honor persons, regardless of race or ethnicity, who have done the most to promote golf in the black communities.”

Read more from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America

The philosophies of Alfred (Tup) Holmes and Georgia governor Marvin Griffin collided in the mid-1950’s when Holmes and his family challenged segregation in Atlanta: not in the schools or work places, but on the golf course.

In 1951, Tup, his brother Oliver and their father, Dr. Hamilton M. Holmes, were turned away from the Bobby Jones course, one of seven public golf courses in Atlanta at the time, because they were black. Then, they launched what their lawyer, Roscoe E. Thomas, recently recalled was “the first desegregation suit in Atlanta.”

The suit began in United States District Court in 1953 and reached the Supreme Court two years later. Tuesday marks the 40th anniversary of the Court’s decision in Holmes v. Atlanta, the case that desegregated public golf. (Discrimination still exists at many private country clubs, which continue to practice exclusionary membership policies based on race and religion.)

When most people think of desegregation, they think of Brown v. Board of Education. Brown was rendered a full year earlier, but the case filed by the Holmeses, all now deceased, had a more immediate effect. “The first scene of court-ordered desegregation in Georgia was a golf course rather than a school house,” wrote the Atlanta historians Norman Shavin and Bruce Galpin in “Atlanta: Triumph of a People.”

Holmes v. Atlanta began in the aftermath of the incident at the Jones course when Tup Holmes and a community committee decided to bring suit against the city. They won a hollow victory in 1954 when District Court Judge Boyd Sloan ruled that blacks had a Constitutional right to play golf, but only in accordance with the city’s “separate but equal” doctrine. He ordered the city to devise a system to accommodate blacks while “preserving segregation.”

The city offered to let blacks use the public courses Mondays and Tuesdays which was agreeable to some. “They said this was enough, we don’t need to go further because it could jeopardize our jobs,” Gary Holmes, one of Tup Holmes’s sons, recalled last week.

But Tup Holmes “didn’t have that fear,” Gary Holmes said of his father, who died in 1967. “He was a mover and shaker, bold enough to do that kind of stuff.” An amateur golf champion and a black union steward at his job at Lockheed Aircraft, Holmes was determined to fight on to win full use of city courses.

The case moved to an Appeals Court in New Orleans, where Thurgood Marshall and the N.A.A.C.P. intervened. But when the Court ruled the original decision had given the plaintiffs “all the relief they asked for,” the Holmeses were forced to take their fight further, all the way to the Supreme Court.

The Court accepted the case in the 1955 fall term, a year after Brown, when it was “knocking down all kinds of things,” according to Jack Greenberg, a Columbia University Law School professor who was the long-time director of the N.A.A.C.P’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Greenberg worked with Thurgood Marshall on the Holmes case. “The Court was saying, ‘Haven’t you got the message?’ ” In fact, the Court quickly overturned the previous rulings in Holmes, sending it back to District Court for a decree in favor of the plaintiffs.

The decision was applauded in an editorial in The New York Times of Nov. 9, 1955: “The court’s perfectly logical position is that desegregation means desegregation, not segregation on an equal basis.” But the Atlanta Constitution wrote, “A majority of Southerners will be shocked and angered by this decision.”

Griffin and other segregationist politicians condemned the decision and vowed to fight it. The Mayor urged the city to sell its course to private individuals who presumably could have kept them segregated. The town of Leland, Miss., sold its course to the Lions Club for $1 to avoid the challenge of integration.

But when Judge Sloan got the case again, he ordered the city to desegregate its courses “immediately.” The Holmeses took their game public the very next day.

Dec. 24, 1955, was “a happy day in town for black folks,” said Gary Holmes, who was 12 at the time. But the joy in the community was tempered by a fear of white retaliation. There were threatening calls to the Holmes household, prompting “talk in the community of a bloodbath or race war,” Holmes remembered. Some blacks considered stuffing guns in their golf bags, he said, before heading to the course.

Read more of this story by By Ken Liebeskind at NewYorkTimes.com