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FAYETTEVILLE, N.Y. -- It was an evening to remember on Saturday, November 4th at Onondaga Golf & Country Club, as committee members and close friends of the NYSGA gathered in Fayetteville to celebrate the first 100 years of the New York State Golf Association.

Related: Photo Gallery / Centennial Booklet / Program / History Page

The special evening began with a cocktail reception and dinner, followed by the centennial celebration program.

The program included presentations from NYSGA President Henry Fust, golf writer Kevin Casey, who authored a substantial amount of written content for the centennial booklet, along with NYSGA Hall of Fame member Dottie Pepper, who was inducted in 2018. She also is the only player to win the NYS Girls' Junior Am and NYS Women's Am in the same year (1981), and totaled three NYSGA titles in the early 80s before turning professional and moving on to a succesful playing, and now broadcasting career. The Master of Ceremonies was the NYSGA's Director of Marketing & Partnerships, Dan Thompson, who was the staff liaison for the centennial sub-committee. Closing remarks were also made by NYSGA Executive Director Bill Moore to close the special evening. 

NYSGA Centennial - 100 Years of Amateur Golf (Watch Below)

Centennial Celebration

NYSGA Centennial Sub-Committee

John Blain, Chair
Pete Dougherty
Doug Vergith
Dan Thompson, Staff Liaison


NYSGA Centennial Sub-Committee: Dan Thompson (Staff), Pete Dougherty (Golf Writer), Doug Vergith (Exec. Committee), John Blain (Historian, Chair)

Founding of the NYSGA in 1923

The New York State Golf Association was officially founded on August 9, 1923, at Yahnundasis Golf Club in New Hartford, N.Y. It was founded as an Association of Member Clubs represented by elected officers (President, First Vice President, Second Vice President, Secretary-Treasurer), an Executive Committee and Member Club delegates. The founding was intended to foster closer and more intimate relations in and among the great body of golfers in New York State and to create an opportunity for an annual tournament which would have an official sanction as a (men's) state championship. The Garden City Golf Club volunteered to host the first tournament and 61 entries teed off on October 24, 1923, with the majority of golfers from the metropolitan area.

The history of the New York State Golf Association has been among the most interesting in the United States. Given the state’s outsized role in the beginning of golf in the U.S, one would expect that the NYSGA to have been right there at the beginning. But it took three decades and a high-profile nudge for New York to form its own governing golf association.

The American golf boom teed off in the 1880s in various parts of the country. Like ripples caused by pebbles tossed across a pond, golf expanded first in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states and made its way across the country.

Nowhere were those footholds more solid than in New York, with pockets of golf blooming on Long Island, outside New York City and in a few cities and towns throughout the state. 

It took an early 1923 column by Grantland Rice, generally regarded as America’s premier sportswriter, with an assist by Walter J. Travis, a leader of the Garden City Golf Club and proud disruptor of the already staid world of golf, to get things going. Rice loudly opined in Travis’ American Golfer magazine that New York state should have its own state association and championship. He followed that up with calls to prominent New York golfers.

Invitations went out to 150 clubs across New York, describing an association whose objective would be to “foster closer and more intimate relations in and among the great body of golfers in this state than is now possible.”

That Aug. 9, at New Hartford’s Yahnundasis Golf Club, delegates from across New York unanimously voted to form the NYSGA, and — wasting no time — hold the first men’s championship later that year. 

Travis and Rice’s home club, Garden City, one of the nation’s most respected courses, offered to be the site of the late October match-play championship.

The first 100 years of the NYSGA were under way. 

NYSGA Leadership in 1923

Officers:
Sherrill Sherman, Utica – President
Irving S. Robeson, Rochester  – 1st Vice President
Ganson Depew, Buffalo – 2nd Vice President
Don W. Parker, Garden City – Secretary-Treasurer

Executive Committee: John M. Ward, Garden City; Grantland Rice, New York City; John F. Nash, Syracuse; Richard B. Emmett, Schenectady; Gardiner White, Glen Cove; Alfred Bourne, Garden City; Clarence Wheeler, Rochester; and Harry Davis, Buffalo.