The Golf Association of Michigan (GAM) is celebrating its Centennial Anniversary this year after being founded in metro Detroit in 1919. These short pieces are just a glimpse of the middle years, from 1960 through the 1980s (content provided by Greg Johnson):
1960-1969: Oakland Hills Country Club is Michigan’s Most Famous
By 1960 Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Hills, a charter member of the Golf Association of Michigan, had become Michigan’s most famous club for having hosted multiple major championships, including three of its six U.S. Open Championships, and having top international players as head golf professionals, most notably Walter Hagen and Al Watrous.
The club reached its 50th birthday in 1966. The North Course, like the South, is a Donald Ross original design. It opened for play in May of 1924, three weeks before the South Course hosted the club’s first U.S. Open.
On the heels of the Great Depression in 1933 the club opted to operate the North Course as a daily fee public course under the name North Hills Golf Course. It operated that way until the membership voted in 1967 to open it after renovation as the club’s second private course. That work was completed in 1969.
1970-1979: Pete Green, GAM’s Chairman of the Scoreboard
Franklin’s Pete Green is one of Michigan’s most accomplished golfers, and the father of Suzy Green-Roebuck, another of Michigan Golf Hall of Famer. They are the only father-daughter duo in the Hall.
“I’m proud of my golf, but proud that I played golf with my father, and played with my kids and now grandkids, and really proud of all of them, what they do and who they are,” Green said.
He gets most animated when he talks about having won the GAM Father-Son Championship with his father Edward, then winning it twice with his son Michael, and watching Suzy as she made her way through the amateur ranks, the LPGA Tour and into the Michigan Hall of Fame with him.
Pete, who first shot his age at 66 and still maintains a single-digit handicap, was among the state’s best players over four decades, as evidenced by his four Michigan Amateur Championships being claimed in 1969, ’79, ’86 and ’95 (at age 55).
He first qualified for the Michigan Amateur at age 15, in 1955. Nine times he was named GAM Player of the Year, and also took his game to the national stage. He qualified for and played in 15 U.S. Amateur Championships and three U.S. Open Championships and won the 1967 Middle Atlantic Amateur Championship.
1980-1989: Michigan Native Jeff Rivard Guides Changing Association
Jeff Rivard came to the GAM as its third executive director in 1984, served through 1992 and was on the scene for the most significant change in the association’s history.
In 1985 the GAM changed its bylaws to include public golf facilities in the GAM family and services. Previously, and for 66 years, it has been an organization of private golf clubs only.
Another significant change during Rivard’s Michigan tenure involved the Michigan Amateur Championship. Rivard thought it needed site changes and a format change to maximize it as the flagship tournament. In terms of format for the Michigan Amateur, Rivard lobbied for a change to the qualifying. Fast forward to 2012, a record 1,034 golfers entered the Michigan Amateur. It was hosted that year by Oakland Hills on the North Course and won by Drew Preston.
