At Colonial, members recall heady days when they hosted PGA’S best
Twenty- f ive summers ago, Jim Russell worked the scorer’s tent behind the 18th green at the final PGA Tour event played at his home club, Colonial Country Club. He remembers a pro — Curtis Strange, he’s pretty sure — signing his card and saying it was the last time the tournament would be played on a “real” golf course.
Course judgments aside, it was the last time the FedEx St. Jude Classic — in those days known as the Federal Express St. Jude Classic — would be played at the private club near Germantown Parkway and Interstate 40. In 1989, it moved to the Tournament Players Club at Southwind, where it has been contested since. The tournament has continued to solidify its place on the summer sports calendar of the area over the past quarter-century, and the facility itself is surely more suited to handling large crowds and the ancillary functions required to host a modern-day event on the modern-day Tour.
Yet Saturday at Colonial, in between putts and drives and cigar smoke and the occasional cart with music blaring out of it, the veteran members fondly recalled the days that the Tour set up shop in their backyard, on their tough-as-nails South Course.
Russell, pausing after a few practice putts before his Saturday group, recalled the throngs that came to the event each summer. It was a different sports scene in Memphis then, with
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the PGA Tour’s annual stop being about as big as it was, pro sports-wise.
Jodie Mudd won the final event at Colonial, holding off Peter Jacobsen and Nick Price by a stroke for a $171,692 payday. Gary Player won at the South Course (1973); Strange (1987), too. But the local PGA Tour stop wasn’t just a tenant at Colonial; it was born and raised there. In 1958, the plan for the event was hatched in the grill of the old course in East Memphis, which no longer exists. Cary Middlecoff and Jack Nicklaus were among the winners at the old place.
In 1972, the event moved with Colonial to its new grounds in Cordova.
Colonial’s South course was the home of the event’s 1977 zenith, when President Gerald Ford nailed a hole-in-one on No. 5 in a pro-am event on Wednesday of tournament week and Al Geiberger shot a 59.
Colonial hasn’t faded into oblivion as a serious golf venue; U.S. Open sectional qualifying was held there just last week. Its course rating and slope are as high as you’d find, meaning it remains as tough a test of golf as exists in the area.
Like many private country clubs these days, Colonial is facing the challenges of finding new members in a more competitive market, needing buy-in from a generation that doesn’t hold the country club idea as lofty as their parents did. The club has about 475 members, said head pro David Hallford — who was an assistant pro at Colonial in 1977, and remembers watching Geiberger sink his putt for 59.
The club is celebrating its centennial this year; a flag flies near the clubhouse commemorating it and a celebration is planned later this year.
To Russell and playing partner Haywood Smith, the club’s psyche took a blow when it lost the prestige of the Tour event.
“It brought in members, and a lot of notoriety for the club,” Smith said.
More than anything, though, it was pure fun.
On one tee, the men laughed as they recalled the — how can we say it — summertime clothing of women who came to watch the tournament. And one recalled how an enterprising young member would ferry drinks from the clubhouse bar to fans in the stands who didn’t have that access — all for a small fee, of course.
“It was a fun time, for sure,” said member Lee Walker, with a smile, before going to make a putt of his own on the North Course.
Said Russell: “It was a great big party here every year.”