GOLF-Originals is not a PBS production, but we’re going to steal a line from PBS anyway: “This series is made possible by the support of Callaway and its CEO Chip Brewer.”
To date, GOLF-Originals has allowed viewers like you to see David Feherty, Tom Doak, Mike Whan, Brandel Chamblee and Padraig Harrington in (hopefully!) new and interesting ways. And here, in Episode 6, we present to you O. Gordon Brewer Jr. along with his namesake son OHGORDON3, also known as Chip.
So, yes, we point our camera at our patron and, more directly, his father. We do so with pride. OGB is the OG. He is one of golf’s unsung legends, like the late Sandy Tatum or Adolphus (Golf Ball) Hull. Gordon is an original.
Gordon Brewer grew up in a yes, madam working family – little free time, few frills, church on Sundays – in Winston-Salem, NC. He found his way to golf by going to a small family-owned driving range while attending Guilford College in Greensboro on a basketball scholarship. A decade later, he was a husband, a father, an aspiring business executive – and one of the best amateurs in a city like Philadelphia, which is full of such players.
Gordon competed in 42 USGA events, including six US Senior Opens, and won the US Senior Amateur twice. He was president of Pine Valley for a decade and more. He served on the USGA board for years and won the Bob Jones Award, the USGA’s highest honor, in 2009. Tiger Woods won it this year for his playing performance and education-focused philanthropy. Gordon received it for his playing performance and golf integrity to the core. There’s a lot of Bob Jones in O. Gordon and a little Ben Hogan too. He doesn’t need many words.
I first met Mr. Brewer in 1988 at Pine Valley. His golf was exceptional and so was he, precise in every way. Gordon played par through hole 13. Even and calm. On hole 14, a long downhill par 3 over a pond, he washed his tee shot and spoke (pretty much) his first words of the round. It was a question to his caddy: “How much further was it?” Followed by “I hit the wrong club.”
Darren Riehl/GOLF
But the most telling thing about the round happened before we took our first shots. (No mulligans. PV is not a place for breakfast balls.) I was a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer back then. The day of our game, there was a cover story I had written about a 15-year-old Philadelphia high school football player who had been stabbed to death by another student outside his school, Frankford High. “It made me cry,” Mr. Brewer said.
Golf at its best affects your world. The world as it is and as it should be affects every aspect of Gordon’s life. You will hear the word integrity often in this 10-minute mini-documentary. It contains an insightful story: a father and son are playing at an event in Pine Valley, and the father punishes his son and teaches him a lesson that has affected every aspect of Chip’s life since.
In a way, Callaway’s support of this series is a small gift to this game, helping us discover interesting lives and interesting people in the game in interesting places. (We filmed Feherty in Las Vegas. We filmed the Brewers in Pine Valley, NJ.) I just wish Sandy Tatum and Golf Ball were still alive. They would have been great for this series. If you have any suggestions for people we should feature, please send them to me, famous or not. I’m trying to get retired left-hander CC Sabathia right now. I know from talking to him that 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 while watching him pitch in this video. He’s 88! The rhythm! It’s hard to imagine he could pitch with better rhythm. any Age.
Gordon loves baseball, basketball, golf and competition. His son and daughter, and his long, long marriage, have all been enriched and shaped by golf and its values. Some would chuckle at that sentence, but those people are not, as an old editor used to say: of golf. Gordon is. I once introduced Gordon to an apprentice baseball player named Joe Pignatano. He was a Brooklyn Dodger and a Los Angeles Dodger who hit a triple play in his last at-bat. When Gordon, the club president at the time, approached us, I thought we might get in trouble for slow play, loud play or something. Nothing like that. Gordon shook Joe’s hand and they talked about Koufax.
Topgolf is now a big part of Callaway’s business. I remember Chip telling me about Topgolf years ago under the tree in Augusta. It didn’t seem like a good fit for Callaway. That shows why I type for a living. Chip knew how his father got into golf through a driving range with a small supply of burned-out clubs. It worked. Now imagine a driving range with good balls, new clubs and cold beer?
The father had an eye on all of this. He knew from his own life and his time: If you can get people to play golf, that’s a good thing. Here is Gordon.
Michael Bamberger looks forward to your comments at [email protected].
