PGA Tour dedicates ‘Deane Beman Den’ to honor former commissioner

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – The British Amateur trophy, a check for his first payday earned on the PGA Tour for a whopping $500, a silver tray for winning the Masters Par-3 Contest in 1960, a key to the city of Fort Worth, Texas, the gold pen that signed deals big and small. Those were among the mementos from a life well lived in golf by Deane Beman as both a player and administrator on the PGA Tour.

On Tuesday, the Tour unveiled the Deane Beman Den, dedicating the previously known Den space inside Tour Headquarters in honor of the former Commissioner from 1974-1994, who transformed a loosely knit association of tournaments into the envy of the sports world.

“It’s incredibly meaningful to see these different periods of my life brought together in one place,” said Beman. “The PGA Tour has always been about people—players, staff, partners and fans—and I’m grateful to have been part of its growth. I hope this space reflects the spirit of collaboration and ambition that defined those years.”

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The moment also marked a significant occasion for the organization, as Beman, 87, stood alongside his successor Tim Finchem, current Commissioner Jay Monahan and PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp—bringing together the Tour’s leadership across four eras for the first time. During the all-staff gathering at Tour Headquarters, Rolapp and Monahan spoke about Beman’s impact and invited him to share stories from the three stages of his life. During his remarks, Beman got choked up with emotion.

It was a wonderful occasion that occurred at the tail end of the Tour’s Town Hall meeting with the entire staff flooding the main floor and standing in the hallways above. It brought back other key cogs from Beman’s era (and their spouses) including Dale Antrum, Mike Bodney, Duke Butler, Bill Calfee, Bob Dickson, Vernon Kelly, Ed Moorhouse, Mike Shea, Tim Smith, Bobby Weed, Sid Wilson and Charlie Zink.

“Deane set a standard for leadership that continues to guide this organization,” said Monahan in a prepared statement. “From establishing the Players Championship to building a competitive structure that created opportunities across generations, his vision fundamentally shaped the PGA Tour. The Deane Beman Den ensures that everyone who walks through our headquarters understands the foundation upon which we continue to build.”

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Even yours truly, who authored a book on Beman’s tenure as commissioner, learned some new things about him (or was reminded of things long forgotten). It’s important for the staff to know how the back story on how the Tour became the multi-billion-dollar business it is today. One of the coolest moments I witnessed was seeing a current employee come over to Beman and thank him for all that he had done to take the Tour from a minor sport that was less popular than bowling and develop that blueprint that lifted it to new heights and left it on solid footing.

At the conclusion of his remarks to the staff, Monahan said, “I encourage everyone here over the next several months to find your own personal time to go in there and marvel at every single artifact in there. Bring our partners, bring your friends, bring family, bring players, bring everybody in there,” said Monahan. “We’re not here today without this man’s extraordinary vision.”

Truer words haven’t been said, which is why despite the lovely alliteration of employees in future years saying, “Meet you at the Deane Den,” Deane deserved better than a space that doubles as a simulator room. Why stop at a den? But as his biographer, I’m biased. So I asked some of the people who know him best. Don’t you think the entire Tour Headquarters should be named for Beman I asked Antrum, who spent 22 years at the Tour.

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“Absolutely,” Antram said. “When Deane took over the Tour’s largest capital asset was an IBM Selectric typewriter worth $400.”

“In 1979,” he continued, “we were just throwing stuff against the wall, but out of that meeting came the genesis of the statistical program and the Senior Tour. Don January could leave his clubs in the closet all winter and pull them out and show up in Florida and win the first event. But equally as telling was the fact that Mike Souchak finished second and he won something like $14,000. It was the largest check he’d ever won. We knew we were on to something.”

I floated the same question to Sid Wilson, a 26-year executive at the Tour.

“This is all because of Deane,” said Wilson. “He had so many great ideas. If he said the same one twice at a meeting, we knew we better get to it.”

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When I asked course designer Bobby Weed, who was one of Pete Dye’s go-to-guys and had the unenviable task of softening the edges at TPC Stadium Course after it was deemed too tough by the Tour pros and was Dye’s lead designer on the Valley Course, if a den did Deane justice, he replied, “Why not a whole floor?”

“How about the whole building?” I said. He and his wife nodded in agreement with the same enthusiasm as if I had said let me buy you dinner.

Weed co-designed Cannon Ridge Golf Club in Virginia, which opened in 2003, with Beman. He left the Tour shortly after Beman retired and they remain close. “Deane is the patriarch of stadium golf, the patriarch of the Tournament Players Club network. He didn’t get the credit he deserved. He never has,” Weed once told me. “But in my mind he’s the patriarch to everything that has made the Tour successful from the ‘70s to today. That’s very difficult to dispute. And yet there are probably Tour players today that don’t know how to spell Deane’s name correctly.”

The Tour previously dedicated a room at the TPC Sawgrass clubhouse as the Tim Finchem Library. Seems as if they went a bit out of order but it’s another miss that Finchem’s room is open to the public at a place where golfers make a pilgrimage to play the famed island 17^th and the House of Horrors designed by Dye and Beman while you need security clearance to enter the Global Home. Will enough fans see this treasure trove of memorabilia that each come with a unique story? [TPC Potomac at Avenal Farms in Maryland, not far from where Beman grew up, has its own dedicated Beman display that is worth a visit if in the area.]

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Not to take anything away from Finchem but he kept running the Beman playbook during his tenure and was blessed to have Tiger Woods, the most famous athlete in the world if not the most recognized person on the planet come along shortly after he was Deane’s handpicked successor. As Peter Jacobsen so perfectly put it, “Deane left him a Mercedes with the tank a quarter full and all Tim has to do was keep putting gas in it.”

Next, I ran my belief that the Tour should’ve named the entire HQ for Beman by Butler, who went one step further. “And there should be a statue of Deane out front at TPC Sawgrass too,” he said.

Butler supplied many of my favorite recollections of Deane in my book, including this all-timer from a Jacksonville Jaguars game they both attended in the Tour box in 1999. Butler believed that Jacksonville wouldn’t have landed its NFL franchise in 1995 if not for Beman. It was the Tour, Butler contends, that put the city on the map.

“If you know Deane, you know he reluctantly accepts compliments,” Butler said. “He had a little smile on his face and he replied, ‘Could be.’

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“He thought about it for a moment and added, “I might be the reason the Mayo Clinic is here too.’ It’s the most braggadocio thing I ever heard him say. And he’s right.”

The man who put Jacksonville on the map deserves better than a den. But leave it to Smith, his former right-hand man who brought Finchem into the fold, to come up with the best explanation for the Tour’s homage to Deane being in a room that also houses a simulator: “Did they recognize you in here,” he kidded to Deane, “because you hit so many balls?”

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: PGA Tour honors Deane Beman with new headquarters den but deserves more