Original GOLF it’s not a PBS production, but we’ll steal a PBS line here anyway: This series is made possible by the support of Callaway and its CEO, Chip Brewer.
To date, Original GOLF has allowed viewers like you to see David Feherty, Tom Doak, Mike Wan, Brandel Chamblee AND Padraig Harrington in (hopefully!) new and interesting ways. And here, in Episode 6, we bring you O. Gordon Brewer Jr., along with his namesake son, OHGORDON3, aka Chip.
So yes, we are pointing our camera at our client and, more directly, his father. We do this with pride. OGB is OG. He is one of golf’s secret legends, like the late Sandy Tatum or Adolphus (Golf Ball) Hull. Gordon is an original.
Gordon Brewer grew to one yes ma’am work family – little free time, few fancy things, church on Sundays – in Winston-Salem, NC He found his way to golf by going down a mom-and-pop highway while attending Guilford College in Greensboro with a basketball scholarship. A decade later, he was a husband, a father, a rising corporate executive — and one of the best amateurs in a city, Philadelphia, that is loaded with them.
Gordon played in 42 USGA events, including six US Senior Opens, and won the US Senior Amateur twice. He was Valley of the Pines president for a decade and then some. He was on the USGA board of directors for years and won The Bob Jones Awardthe USGA’s highest honor, in 2009. Tiger Woods won it this year, for his playing record and his education-centered philanthropy. Gordon took him for his playing record and his golfing integrity to the core. There’s a lot of Bob Jones in O. Gordon, and some Ben Hogan too. He doesn’t need many words.
I first met Mr. Brewer in 1988, in Pine Valley. His golf was outstanding and so was he, accurate in every direction. Gordon was even at 13. Even and calm. On the 14th, a long, downhill par-3 over a pond, he washed his ball and uttered (roughly) his first words of the round. It was a question for his caddy: “What did you say the yard was?” Followed by, “I hit the wrong club.”
Darren Riehl/GOLF
But the most significant thing about the round came before we played our first shots. (No mulligans. PV is not a morning ball kind of place.) I was a reporter on it The Philadelphia Inquirer then. The day of our game, there was a front-page story I had written about a 15-year-old Philadelphia high school student and football player who had been stabbed to death by another student outside their school, Frankford High. “It made me cry,” Mr Brewer said.
Golf at its best informs your world. The world as it is and as it should be informs every aspect of Gordon’s life. You will hear the word integrity often in this 10-minute mini-doc. There’s a story telling, of a father and son playing in an event in Pine Valley, and the father calling a penalty on his son and teaching him a lesson, a lesson that has informed every aspect of Chip’s life since.
In a way of speaking, Callaway’s support of this series is a small gift to this game, helping us explore interesting lives and interesting people in the game, in interesting places. (We shot Feherty in Las Vegas. We shot the Brewers in Pine Valley, NJ) I only wish Sandy Tatum and Golf Ball were still alive. They would be great for this series. If you have suggestions of people we should feature, please send them my way, famous or not. Now I’m trying to get retired lefty CC Sabathia. I know this from talking to him Golf has improved every aspect of his life. Gordon Brewer would say the same thing. It’s a starting point for many things, including a place in this series.
Try to hold back as you watch him play the field goal in this video. He is 88! The rhythm! Hard to imagine presenting it at a better pace any age.
Gordon likes baseball, basketball, golf, competition. His son and daughter and his long, long marriage have all been enriched and shaped by golf and its values. Some would scoff at that sentence, but those people are not, as an old editor said, of golf. Gordon is. I once introduced Gordon to a baseball lifer named Joe Pignatano. He was a Brooklyn Dodger and Los Angeles Dodger who hit into a triple play in his last at-bat. When Gordon, then the president of the club, approached us, I thought we might be in trouble for slow play, for loud play, for something. Nothing like that. Gordon shook Joe’s hand and they talked about Koufax.
Top golf it’s a big part of Callaway’s business today. I remember Chip telling me about Topgolf years ago, under tree in Augusta. It didn’t seem right for Callaway. It tells you why I write for a living. Chip knew how his father found his way to golf, via a highway with a small amount of baked clubs. It did the job. Now imagine a driving range with good balls, new clubs and cold beer?
Father could see it all. He knew from his own life and times: If you can get people to golf, it’s a good thing. Here is Gordon.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.
