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ALBANY, N.Y. – The New York State Golf Association (NYSGA) welcomed its latest class of trailblazers, community leaders and decorated players at the 2026 NYSGA Hall of Fame Ceremony at Wolferts Roost Country Club on Friday evening. 

The Class of 2026 is headlined by local stars Charlie Murphy, Gail Sykes Clayton, Gail Purdy Brophy and Billy Shields along with PGA Tour standouts Mike Hulbert & George Burns III and famed course architect Devereux Emmet. 

The inductees represent a group of individuals who’ve made a significant impact on the game of golf and helped shape its landscape across New York State. 

Related: Photo Gallery / 2026 Program / NYSGA HOF Home

Murphy spent three decades as one of the most consistent amateurs in New York State. He won the inaugural NYSGA Mid-Amateur in 1984, was runner-up in the State Amateur in 1977 and 1985, and played in 30 straight State Amateurs with more than a dozen top-10 finishes. A six-time Eastern New York champion and a multiple winner of the Tri-County, Troy and Country Club of Rochester events, he also qualified for the U.S. Amateur, U.S. Mid-Amateur and British Amateur. He did it all with one golf lesson in his life, a full-time career at the state Department of Health, and relentless preparation, then gave 15 years to NYSGA committees and 10 to the USGA Green Section Committee.

“Tonight is the honor of my golf life,” said Murphy. “After tonight, there’s going to be 40 members [overall] in the NYS Golf Hall of Fame. I have known, played golf with or worked with over half of them…What a life in golf.”

Sykes Clayton, inducted posthumously, was one of the finest golfers Schenectady has ever produced and one of the few from the Capital Region to win on the national amateur stage twice. In 1965 she became the first New Yorker to win the U.S. Girls’ Junior, taking the final 5 and 4 as a 17-year-old, after winning the NYS Girls’ Junior a year earlier. She added the 1968 National Intercollegiate Women’s Individual title for Odessa College, was one of six players named to the first Women’s Intercollegiate All-America team in 1969, and won three straight Northeastern Women’s Golf Association titles from 1964 to 1966. After moving to Ohio she won the state amateur in 1975 and again in 1976, the second time while six and a half months pregnant. She later spent her career as an educator and golf and track coach at East Forsyth High School in North Carolina, and the NEWGA named a better-ball event in her honor.

Purdy Brophy, inducted posthumously, was one of the most accomplished all-around athletes the Capital Region has produced. A national-caliber speed skater who twice came close to making the U.S. Olympic team, she won the NYSGA Women’s Amateur in 1961 as an 18-year-old, the youngest champion to that point, and again in 1963. She made the cut at the U.S. Women’s Open in both 1960 and 1961 as an amateur, then left college in 1963 to run her family’s business, Purdy’s Discount Wine & Liquor, and stepped away from competitive golf for more than four decades. In 2006 she came back and won the inaugural NYS Women’s Super Senior Amateur in 2007, defending it in 2008. She was the first woman inducted into the Glens Falls Hall of Fame, and the Northeastern Women’s Golf Association named a tournament in her honor in 2017.

Shields, inducted posthumously, his longtime home course, was the dominant force in New York amateur golf in the early 1950s. The Albany native won the NYSGA Amateur in 1951, 1952 and 1955, finished runner-up in 1953, and went 27-1 in match play in the championship. His run to the quarterfinals of the 1950 U.S. Amateur earned him an invitation to the 1951 Masters, which he called the highlight of his career. He reached the quarterfinals of both the British and French Amateurs in 1952, played in the 1956 U.S. Open at Oak Hill, and won four Eastern New York titles. At Siena College he became the first non-basketball athlete inducted into the school’s Athletics Hall of Fame. Decades later, no Capital Region player has matched his three State Amateur crowns.

Hulbert grew up in Horseheads, where he and lifelong friend Joey Sindelar, born 15 days apart, both went on to the PGA Tour. After walking on at East Tennessee State and earning All-America honors, he reached the Tour on his fifth Q-School attempt and spent 15 seasons there, winning three events: the 1986 St. Jude Classic, where he edged Sindelar by a shot with a pitching wedge to a foot on the final hole, the 1989 B.C. Open in front of his parents, and the 1991 Anheuser-Busch Classic. He finished with 43 top-10s and more than $4 million in earnings, and later served as a Ryder Cup assistant captain in 2002 and 2012.

“I never thought I’d be here,” Hulbert said. “I couldn’t be happier to come full circle with my best pal, Joey. We did it…I live in Florida, I’ve got a place in Tennessee, but this [New York] is home, and it’s made me into the person that I am today.”

Burns III is the greatest touring professional ever to come out of Long Island. A football and basketball standout at Manhasset High School, he landed on the Maryland golf team after a knee injury ended his football hopes. He went on to win the 1974 NYS Amateur, Porter Cup and North & South Amateur, then played in the U.S. Walker Cup team, and finally finished as low amateur at the 1975 Masters before turning pro. Over an 18-year career he won four PGA Tour events, including the 1980 Bing Crosby Pro-Am, and two European Tour titles, and he held a three-shot lead entering the final round of the 1981 U.S. Open at Merion.

“This is considered a great honor to my family and myself,” said Burns III. “I never expected this when I first started playing golf.”

Emmet, inducted posthumously, was one of the first American-born architects of golf’s Golden Age and the most prolific course designer New York has produced. Between 1897 and 1933 he laid out more than 150 courses worldwide, nearly 50 of them in New York State. His debut, the nine-hole Island Golf Links, grew into Garden City Golf Club in 1899, and he sat on the three-man design committee for C.B. Macdonald’s National Golf Links of America. His work spans Mohawk, Leatherstocking, the Red Course at Eisenhower Park, the Green Course at Bethpage, Schuyler Meadows and Huntington Crescent, plus the original Congressional Country Club in Maryland. A naturalist who fit his courses to the land, he was also a fine player, reaching the quarterfinals of the 1904 British Amateur, and his 1916 father-son win with his son prompted the USGA’s “architects rule.”

The NYSGA Hall of Fame was established in 2012 with the mission to identify, recognize, and enshrine the state's finest amateur and professional golf competitors, as well as those who have made outstanding contributions to the game throughout New York by their careers as golf teachers, coaches, mentors, and volunteers to the game. With the newest class of inductees, there are now 40 members of the NYSGA Hall of Fame.