Deane Beman - "OK, I'll Do It" SHORT TRACK

Intro Music 0:07

Straight down the middle. It went straight down the middle.

Mike Gonzalez 0:13

Then it started to hook just as in 1973 you won the Shrine Robinson Open Golf Classic. That was the last uh last playing of that event. You must have really liked Crawford County Country Club.

Deane Beman 0:30

Well, I don't know. Um that that's an interesting story because uh that spring in May uh I was on the board of the uh the the policy board. Uh the then Commissioner Joe Dye and uh uh and Paul Austin, who was chairman of Coca-Cola Company, who was our chairman of the board, asked me to go to the golf course. This was in Memphis and drive to the golf course with them and he did. And during that uh car ride they uh announced to me personally and confidentially that Joe Die was going to retire um in in the the n the next year, uh when the end of his five year contract was up. And uh what then they asked me, uh they said that we we want you to become commissional. And of course I had just come off of my second surgery on my on my left hand uh in the in November of or uh late October, beginning of November of the f the previous year. I didn't get to play any golf until March or April. And uh I uh I I told uh I told them that uh I'd never I'd never done anything that I that I quit when I wasn't uh doing well. And I wasn't doing well. I I I'd had a hard time getting back and getting my game back. I was struggling. And I said I I just couldn't walk away after my uh lifetime in golf and walk away uh defeated. So I told them to go ahead and and uh form a committee and and look for somebody to commission because I wasn't gonna do it. I was gonna I was gonna keep competing until I was successful. So uh they they put a committee together to look for a new commissioner, started interviewing people, and then uh later that year I won that tournament, uh which made me exempt for everything. British Open and US Open and Masters and two year exemption on the tour. And uh I went from there to uh to uh California to play, uh I think we were playing uh uh up in uh Napa Valley. And I remember sitting down and had an uh had one of those uh apartments up there that they rented to players by myself and uh and thought about uh what what I do the rest of my life here and now I'm um I'm um uh I got started ten years late on the tour. Um had the injury and had all kinds of uh of uh intrigue in in where I where I was then where where what I was gonna spend the rest of my life. And I decided that I could contribute more to golf. Uh I was never going to be, based on, you know, based on what I had done up to now and what other players had done, I was never going to be the best player in the world. Uh and uh that uh I I decided that uh I called uh Paul Austin and Coca-Cola Company and Joe Dye and told them if they now wanted me to consider me to be commissioner, I'd do that. I'd won a tournament, I could walk away with my head high and feel that uh I hadn't walked away defeated. And so that's when uh that's when they uh had a big meeting in December and interviewed, I think, six people for commissioner, and that's that's when they appointed me as commissioner.

Mike Gonzalez 4:25

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Intro Music 4:46

Whack down the fairway. It went smack down the fairway. When it started this place, just smitch offline. It headed for two, but it bounced off nine. My cat is as long as you're still in the stage, you're okay.