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Spiegel
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Bob Lewis Re-appointed Team USA
Walker Cup Captain For 2005
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Far
Hills, N.J. – Bob Lewis Jr. of Pepper Pike,
Ohio, a four-time USA Walker Cup team member and
captain of the 2003 USA
squad, has been re-appointed captain of the United
States squad for the 2005 Walker Cup Match, the
United States Golf Association announced. The
2005 Walker Cup Match will be played Aug. 13-14
at Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton, Ill.Two teams
of male amateur golfers, one from the USA and
the other from Great Britain and Ireland, compete
in the Walker Cup Match every two years, alternately
in the United States and Great Britain/Ireland.
The teams consist of not more than 10 players
each.Lewis, 59, played
on victorious USA teams in 1981, 1983, 1985 and
1987 and compiled a 10-4 overall individual record.
Only eight golfers have been named to more USA
Walker Cup teams than Lewis. He also was the captain
of the 2003 USA team that lost to its GB&I
counterparts in September at Ganton Golf Club
in England, 12½ - 11½. A successful
amateur golfer since his reinstatement in 1974,
Lewis was the runner-up at three USGA championships
and reached the semifinals twice more. In 1980,
at age 35, he lost to Hal Sutton in the U.S. Amateur
final.
He was also the runner-up at
the 1981 U.S. Mid-Amateur to Jim Holtgrieve, a
former Walker Cup player and now a PGA Champions
Tour player, and the 1984 Mid-Amateur to Mike
Podolak. He was the co-medalist at the 1984 Mid-Amateur
along with two-time Walker Cup captain Danny Yates.
Also a semifinalist at the 1981 and 1986 Amateur
championships, Lewis lost to eventual champion
Buddy Alexander in 1986. |
In addition, he advanced to the third and fourth
rounds of match play at the 1985 and 1984 Amateurs,
respectively. He played in seven Masters Tournaments
during the 1980s and was the low amateur in the
1987 field. He also has qualified for three U.S.
Opens, in 1978, 1983 and 1986. In addition to
his four international appearances as a Walker
Cup team member, Lewis played on two U.S. World
Amateur teams. The 1982 squad won the world title
and the 1986 team finished second. As a foursomes
partner with Holtgrieve, Lewis shares the record
for largest margin of victory (7 and 6) in a Walker
Cup match. Most recently, he has qualified for
the three recent USGA Senior Amateurs (2000-2002),
the national championship for golfers age 55 and
older. He did not enter the championship in 2003
because of his Walker Cup Match duties. Lewis
was graduated from Rollins College in Winter Park,
Fla., in 1967, and added his MBA from The Crummer
Business School at Rollins in 1969. He played
on the PGA Tour from 1970-1974, before returning
to a business career. He is president and chief
operating officer of Welded Tubes, Inc., a manufacturer
of welded steel tubing, in Cleveland, a company
founded by his father in 1958. He and his wife,
Patricia, a native of France, have two grown children:
a
daughter, Tiffany, and a son, Tristan. |
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Graham Says Farewell
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Far
Hills, N.J. -- In some way, shape or form since
1986, Kendra Graham has made the USGA her home away
from home. Fresh out of Wake Forest, the baby-faced
Graham began her career as a development officer,
which was only a temporary full-time position. As
the job was nearing an end, fate led her to a position
in championship administration
It's where she's been ever since. So much for staying
here temporarily.
Through the years Graham, 40, rose through the ranks,
touching off with her current title as Director
of Rules and Competitions Women's Open Championship,
meaning she had final decision-making power on all
Women's Open inside-the-ropes issues. She gave the
championship a voice and, over the years, was one
of the game's behind-the-scenes players who made
an irrefutable impact on the sport.
During her tenure at the USGA, Graham served as
an influential voice on the Rules Committee. Her
mastering of the Rules of Golf led her to receive
an invitation to officiate at The Masters in 1995,
becoming the first female besides a USGA non-executive
committee woman to do so. Graham also appeared on
Rules videos and on The Golf Channel as a Rules
of Golf expert. Always
committed, Graham did these things while balancing
a family life and persevering through personal adversity,
such as breast cancer in 1999. But now it's time
say goodbye. On Oct. 3, Graham will bid farewell
to what she called her "dream job."
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Out of the chute,
why are you retiring?
Kendra Graham: I think it was
from coming to this that realization that I've been
juggling, hopefully, being a full-time mom, and
being a good wife, doing a great job here -- and
I've been that now for five years. I love what I
do, but I thought, 'Omigosh, am I going to keep
on this merry-go-round?' And 10 years from now am
I going to wake up and say, 'Where'd the time go?'I
want to roll back the clock. I don't want to have
any regrets. I don't want anything to pass me by,
especially when it has to do with my home life,
with being a great mom, a good wife. So I started
mulling over the idea [to retire]. One of my friends
retired, and she talked to me about it. It didn't
sound so bad. I thought, 'Do I work one more year
and say I worked 10 Women's Open championships?
Or do I work three more years so I can say I worked
20 years for the USGA?'I thought, 'What do I really,
really want to do?' And what I really want to do
is be there for my son and my husband. I want to
be fresh and ready to do homework, because unfortunately
in kindergarten it's starting. I wanted to go at
a slower pace and not miss anything. Not that they
were earth shattering things over the past three
years, but I've missed my son's birthday party the
last three years; I've missed field trips; I've
missed his moving-up ceremony. And I don't want
to miss those things. We've made it work and I've
seen lots of videos and pictures and we celebrate
his birthday on a different day. But I just felt
I didn't want to do that anymore. By retiring from
here but hopefully staying involved in the game,
I'll be able to do both. Getting out of golf cold
turkey would be like cutting off my right arm. I've
been involved in golf for so long and basically
worked for the USGA since I got out of college.
I do hope to stay involved. I'm going to teach three
Rules of Golf workshops over the winter, which I'm
excited about. I'm hoping there might be some other
opportunities in golf, or with the USGA, things
that I can do from home. Not that we have something
lined up, but if there's some project that the USGA
had where I could come in for three days a week
for four weeks in a row, and there could be a start
and finish to it, and it doesn't mean I'd have to
get on a plane and go away, I'd like to do it. I
just wanted things to be on my terms. And maybe
that doesn't sound right, because the USGA has been
great. That was another factor. The fact that my
son was starting kindergarten, you can't take him
out of school for a week here and a week there to
come with me when I teach a workshop or go to the
USGA annual meeting. We had to be conscious of him
not missing too much school, because this is a real
building year for him. It'll start his educational
life. |
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| Spacemen
Cometh Again
Duffy And Terry Speak To Groups At
Golf House
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Far
Hills, N.J. -- Brian Duffy and Tim Terry are avid
golfers, but they did not visit Golf House on Tuesday
to discuss birdies, chip shots or the proper way
to extract a ball from a bunker.
Duffy, a retired NASA astronaut with four Space
Shuttle missions to his resume, and Terry, who is
a flight simulation supervisor with United Space
Alliance, came to Far Hills, N.J., to talk to sixth-
and seventh-graders about life lessons learned while
involved in the space program. The duo entertained
two separate groups of students – 105 in the
morning and 100 in the afternoon – from Somerset
(N.J.) County schools with a pair of videos and
a question-and-answer session. Later that evening,
Duffy and Terry talked to 50 or so adults. Duffy,
now a vice president for Lockheed Martin Space Operations
in Florida, and Terry first became involved with
the USGA through the notorious “shuttle putter”
incident. Prior to the 1996 Endeavour voyage, known
in the space program as NASA mission STS-72, Terry,
knowing Duffy’s affliction with golf, arranged
for a putter to be smuggled on board Endeavour.
The crew surprised Duffy by presenting him the putter
on the flight deck as the shuttle was orbiting Earth.
A photo of Duffy holding the putter, with Earth
in the background, was snapped. Following the mission,
Terry and Duffy decided to donate the putter to
the USGA, which already had the “Moon Club”
used by astronaut Alan Shepard on display in its
Museum. Now the putter sits alongside Shepard’s
6-iron. “We want
the kids to know that it’s important to follow
their dreams, no matter what they choose to do with
their lives,” said Duffy.As part of the program,
Terry showed the students a high-energy video about
the space program. It was followed by a highlight
video of Duffy’s final mission aboard Discovery
in October of 2000.
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was the duo’s second visit to Golf House, following
the initial trip in May of 2002.
“The kids asked some great
questions,” said Duffy. “They wanted
to know what it felt like to be in space or if
we were scared.”
Duffy explained that the crew
saw 16 sunsets and 16 sunrises every day.
While Terry never ventured
into space, he met Duffy during the many training
sessions the crews had prior to the missions.
Although the two now live in different parts of
the country – Terry in the Houston, Texas,
area and Duffy in Cape Canaveral, Fla. –
they stay in touch and occasionally get together
on the golf course. The two managed to get in
54 holes of golf during this recent trip to Golf
House.
“It’s a lot of fun
talking to these kids,” said Terry, “especially
at this age (11 and 12) because they haven’t
made up their minds of what they want to do (with
their lives). We try to tell them if you have
a passion, pursue it and that it’s OK to
fail along the way. You don’t have to be
a straight-A student or the best athlete. You
have to have dreams and follow them to wherever
it takes you.”
And who knows, maybe one of
these kids will someday carry their own golf club
into space. |
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