About with rheumatic fever at age 10 turned young Bobby Knowles from tennis to golf, a fate he never minded. A native of Brookline, Mass., Knowles won the Eastern Interscholastic golf championship at age 16 and the Maine Amateur in 1937.

Buoyed by his triumphs, he turned professional the same year. The son of a well-to-do stockbroker, he had no problem pursuing his dreams. On the 1939 winter tour of the PGA (the forerunner of the PGA Tour), he traveled and played much of the time with Sam Snead, using Bobby’s Cadillac for transportation.

World War II and the 26th Infantry of the U.S. Army cut short his golf career. During the war, he was stationed in Augusta, Ga., and decided to remain in the South after the war. He relocated to Aiken, S.C. Knowles regained his amateur status and continued to travel the world in pursuit of golf. He won the Massachusetts Amateur in 1949, a championship for which he qualified ultimately 12 times. He won the New England Amateur in 1950 and was named to the 1951 U.S. Walker Cup team.

Bobby became the first resident of the Palmetto State to be named to a Walker Cup team, a victorious team at that. In 1951, he won the French Amateur at Chantilly Golf Club near Paris. These led to invitations to the 1952 and 1953 Masters Tournaments.

As a senior player, his talent did not diminish, winning the 1965 and 1966 Carolinas Senior Amateurs. He tied for second place in the 1967 and 1968 senior championships. He won the South Carolina Senior Amateur title in 1964 and 1967. Knowles other titles include the Tri-State Open three times and the Palmetto Golf Club seven times. He has been a member of Palmetto Golf Club since 1947.

Bobby returned to The Masters each year after his playing appearances and served on the tournament scoring committee for 28 years. He is a great-grandson of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Although a Massachusetts native, Bobby Knowles spent his adult years and earned his golf honors while living in Aiken, South Carolina. He was the first Palmetto State resident to be named to a Walker Cup team, and his 1951 side won the cup for the U.S.

At age 16, Knowles won the Eastern Interscholastic. He won the Maine Amateur in 1937, the Massachusetts Amateur in 1949 and the New England Amateur in 1950. A year later, he won the French Amateur near Paris, leading to a pair of Masters Tournament invitations.

 

Bobby Knowles was inducted in the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame in 2001.

Add Penfield roots in golf broadcasting likely developed the day he interviewed Sam Snead and Ben Hogan in Pinehurst. He was interning at WPTF Radio in Raleigh and a Duke University student at the time. From his Duke days in the late 1930 into the new millennium, his association with sports was unwavering and highlighted by accomplishments. A native of Meriden, Connecticut, his career embraced football, baseball, and basketball, among other sports, with a distinguished longevity as a broadcaster, writer, and publicist.

 

But it was in golf that his professional participation endured. His voice was familiar to golf fans tuned into broadcasts of the Greensboro Open from 1953 into the 1990 and of the Vantage Championship from its beginning. His live coverage, as well as analysis and general reporting, included the Masters. He was working when Ben Hogan donned the green jacket in 1953 and was on hand that fateful day in 1968 when Roberto DiVicenzo singed and incorrect scorecard.  His dedication to golf never waned. He continued staging tournaments for charitable causes and promoting the sport in general well into his 80s from his home in Asheboro. A charter member of the Carolinas Golf Reporters Association, he was later honored with a lifetime membership.

A Pennsylvania native son of a golf course superintendent, Palmer arrived in North Carolina at what was then Wake Forest College in 1947. From then to 1954, taking several years out for national service, he won two NCAA championships and the very first ACC championship. Today Wake Forest University recognizes Palmer’s contribution with an award in his name to the male student athlete of the year.  

Throughout his life, Palmer has maintained strong ties to Wake Forest, serving on its board of trustees from 1983 to 1986, 1988 to 1991 and 1993 to 1997. He was a tri-chair of the university's Heritage and Promise Capital Campaign, which raised more than $170 million for the university in the early 1990s. He was elected a lifetime trustee of the university in 1997. Palmer endowed Wake Forest with its first golf scholarship in 1960 in honor of his close friend and teammate Marvin "Buddy" Worsham, who died in a car accident in 1950.

Palmer is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, PGA Hall of Fame, American Golf Hall of Fame, the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, among others. His 96 professional career titles include 62 on the PGA Tour and 10 on the Champions Tour. He won the Masters four times in 50 appearances, the British Open twice and the U.S. Open once. He finished second three times in the PGA Championship. He captained the victorious 1963 U.S. Ryder Cup team. His victories also include the first PGA Tour event held at Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, putting the golf course, the tournament and the island on the golfing map. His golf course design business is responsible for more than 300 courses worldwide, including 11 in NC and five in SC.

Arnold Palmer was inducted into the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame in 2007.

Born in Charleston, SC, Beth Daniel had won 29 tournaments on the LPGA Tour in a 16 year career at the time of her induction.  She needed only one more win in a major championship, or six more victories of any type to qualify for the LPGA Hall of Fame.

 

Daniel was an All-American at Furman in the early 1970s and went on to win the US Women’s Amateur in 1975 and 1977.  She was a member of the US Curtis Cup Teams in 1976 and 1978.

 

Everyone was confident that Daniel would be a major success on the LPGA Tour, and she disappointed no one.

 

Turning professional in 1979, Daniel made an immediate impact on the LPGA Tour.  She won five events in 1980 and three in 1981, leading the tour’s money list in both of those years.  Again in 1990, she led the LPGA Tour in money winnings, capturing her only major victory to date, The LPGA Championship, in that same year.

 

Beth Daniel was inducted into the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame in 1994.

Born in Spartanburg, SC, Betsy Rawls grew up in Texas.  During her amateur years in the Lone Star State, she won the Texas Amateur twice, the Trans-National in 1949 and the Broadmoor (Colorado) Invitational in 1950.

 

Miss Rawls turned professional in 1951 and was elected secretary of the Ladies’ Professional Golf Association when the group was chartered.  She won 55 tournaments, putting her third on the all-time winners' list behind Kathy Whitworth and Mickey Wright.

 

Miss Rawls holds the unique distinction of having won the Women’s US Open four times.  Only one other player, Mickey Wright, shares this prestigious feat.  In her first clash with the pros in 1950, she finished 2nd in the Open 9 strokes behind the winner, Babe Zaharias.  The following year, her first full year on tour, she won the Open.  She was leading money winner in 1952 and 1959.  As an indication of the size of the tour at that time her earnings in 1959 were under $27,000, in spite of winning 10 tournaments and capturing the Vare Trophy for lowest stroke average.  During her tournament career, she was elected president of the LPGA in 1961 and ‘62.

 

Rawls retired as a player in 1975 but remained with the LPGA tour as tournament director.  More of her time was then devoted toward administrative golf and in 1980 she became the first woman ever named to serve on the rules committee of the Men’s US Open.

 

She was elected on the LPGA Hall of Fame in 1960 and to the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame in 1982.

Bill Harvey was born and raised in Greensboro, NC, where he resides today and operates a driving range near Sedgefield CC, his home club. Although he has been a golfer most of his life, he didnt start to play serious competitive golf until 1956 at age 26, when he qualified for his first USGA Amateur Championship. That year, playing at the Knollwood Club in Lake Forest, Illinois, Bill drew a bye in the first round, then lost one down after 20 holes to the internationally known Dick Chapman. The loss, however, prompted Bill to improve his game and participate in more competition. This he did and with astounding results. In the next twenty-five years, he would win over three hundred titles. Ironically, he met Chapman again in the third round of the National Amateur at St. Louis in 1960 and revenged his loss with a 4 and 3 victory.

Harvey qualified for the US Amateur 18 times and was named Golfer of the Year by the Carolinas Golf Reporters Association in 1973 after winning the Carolinas Amateur, the Lakewood Invitational in Florida, and the Amateur Tournament of Champions. He was runner-up in the North and South Amateur that year, losing on the 38th hole. In that final match on the second extra hole, Bill played what he later admitted might have been the best shot he ever hit. Having pushed his tee shot into the right woods, he found his ball lying between two trees about two feet apart. With more trees between his ball and the green, he had to manufacture a restricted, cut-shot with a four wood. It came off beautifully, to the great delight of the gallery; however, in all too often Harvey fashion, he three-putted the green to lose.

His best year was 1966 when he entered 38 tournaments and won 18. He played in 25 consecutive Porter Cups and 26 Eastern Amateurs. As much as he loved tournament play, he never tried to qualify for the US Open, thinking that if successful he would deprive some professional the opportunity to play in their championship. A tournament, he felt, belonged only to the pros.

 

1963

Porter Cup, Niagara Falls, NY

1965

NC State Open

1965, 1966 & 1973

Carolinas Open

1966

Dixie Amateur and North and South Amateur

1967

NC Amateur Runner-Up

1973

American Classic

 

5-time Winner Amateur Tournament of Champions

As one might expect from a man who has made a good living in the promotion business, Bill Hensley is a font of one-liners.

 

"I once won the 10th flight of a club championship and was runner-up a year later."

"I was expelled from Dana Rader’s golf school."

"I have made four holes-in-one and at least that many birdies."

"I have taken my classic three-piece, over-the-top swing to 14 foreign countries and hold the record for double bogeys in eight of those countries."

"I probably hold the world’s record for bets lost in foreign currencies."

 

It’s a good thing that Hensley, now 75, can laugh and self-deprecate about a golf game that leaves a lot to be desired and is a source of almost constant ridicule from his peers in the golf writing and promotion business, not, it must be noted, that those peers can necessarily produce anything better.

 

Hensley graduated from Wake Forest when it was still located north of Raleigh. Carol, before she became Mrs. Hensley, went out with a young WFU golfer with a first name of Arnold and a last name of Palmer.

 

"She dated the world’s best golfer and married the worst," says Hensley.

 

Feeling he was not going to get anywhere with sports as a participant, the tall and athletic looking Hensley decided to become a sports writer with the Asheville Citizen-Times. However, after writing a piece about the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Hensley joined the FBI for a couple of years until Jim Weaver, who would ultimately become the commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, asked him to become sports information director at Wake Forest. He eventually took the same position at North Carolina State. His salary at the time was $7,000. On Hensley's departure from the FBI he noted, "It didn't take me long to realize the bad guys I was chasing had guns too."

 

After N.C. State, Hensley took positions with R.S. Dickson Company, Wachovia Bank, and Paramount’s Carowinds, the massive amusement park just south of Charlotte. After several years promoting roller coasters and their adjuncts, Hensley opened his own shop, providing services for a variety of clients - but he always felt a pull towards the game he loved.

 

"I suppose I just started to take on more and more golf and tourism clients to the point where promoting golf became my business," Hensley says. "Since that point, it’s never seemed like work."

 

Hensley also served for six years as North Carolina’s director of tourism from 1965-1971. In that capacity, he organized the state’s first golf guide and initiated a national advertising campaign designed to attract golfers to North Carolina . He routinely invited golf writers to the state from around the country. The fact that so many golfers visit North Carolina today can be attributed to Hensley’s work in the early 1970s.

 

Hensley’s clients from his private practice include the Old North State Club on Badin Lake , Ballantyne Resort in Charlotte , Elk River near Boone, Pinehurst Resort and Country Club, Pebble Beach Golf Links, Hound Ears, plus Pine Needles and Mid Pines.

 

"I don’t take bad clients," Hensley recently told Ron Green, former sports columnist for the Charlotte Observer. "One reason I’ve been successful in public relations is that I’ve only promoted courses and resorts that were worth promoting."

 

Hensley will once again help Pine Needles this year when the U.S. Women’s Open returns to the famed resort. He has also helped with promotions and press relations for several championships including last year’s U.S. Senior Men’s Championship at Charlotte Country Club.

 

One of Hensley’s more noted and important contributions to the game has been the initiation of the North Carolina Golf Panel for North Carolina Magazine. The panel, which includes golf writers, business people, and others in the golf industry, rates private, resort, and public golf courses in North Carolina and produces a top 100 list each year. Even though he claims to be semi-retired, new and established golf courses continually call on Hensley to help them with promotion.

 

"Bill brings extensive knowledge of the golf travel industry to the table," says Holly Spofford Bell, Director of Sales and Marketing with Pine Needles and Mid Pines. "With all his contacts around the country, he helps us communicate changes and other important events that happen at these properties. Plus all the work he does to promote golf in North Carolina helps everyone in the golf industry."

 

Bell adds that even the crack cadre of PGA and LPGA teaching professionals at Pine Needles have so far been unable to fix Hensley’s golf game.

 

And so it was for his significant contributions to the promotion of the game that Hensley was recently admitted to the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame.

 

Fellow members of the hall include talented and accomplished golfers like Harvie Ward and Peggy Kirk Bell. But despite Hensley’s relative lack of skill with a golf club in his hands, Hensley’s induction is definitely deserved. It’s not a stretch to say that North Carolina would not be one of the top golf destinations in the United States without the efforts of the husband of Arnold Palmer’s former girlfriend.

 

Bill Hensley was inducted into the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame in 2000.

By Dave Droschak

 

Bob Farren has never won a championship, never hoisted a trophy for a global photo op or sank a clutch putt for hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, many causal golfers may have never even heard of his name, let alone know his title at one of golf’s most glorious venues.

 

However, it’s an understatement to say Farren has virtually touched every piece of lush fairway grass, smooth putting surface, native grass or narrow blade of pine straw across the sprawling, iconic golfing destination known as Pinehurst Resort. 

 

In one form or another for 37 years Farren has been the steward of the resort’s agronomy program and USGA golf championships, beginning as an assistant superintendant on courses No. 1 and 4 in the early 1980s to his current position for a decade as of director of golf course maintenance, earning him induction into the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame in 2019.

 

“I say this tongue-and-cheek but to a certain extent it is true that my department at Pinehurst Resort is responsible for everything green but the money, pretty much everything that grows and flows, everything from a tree falling on a green to our nutrition programs,” Farren says.

 

Farren, 61, has worked on eight USGA Championships at Pinehurst, including three U.S. Opens and the U.S. Women’s Open. In 2014, the men’s and women’s Opens were played on consecutive weeks on Pinehurst No. 2 – a first in golf history, and a huge accomplishment in the field of agronomy. Farren was honored with the President’s Award for Environmental Stewardship from the Golf Course Superintendents of America in 2007 and Golf Digest magazine’s Green Star Award for outstanding environmental practices in 2014.

 

Farren grew up the son of a greens keeper in rural West Virginia, the golf course a half mile from his house. He graduated from Marshall University in 1979 and found his way to the Tar Heel State. 

 

“I never considered another career,” he says. “From middle school through high school people would ask what I wanted to do and I would tell them I wanted to be a golf course superintendent. Ironically I would say -- and still to this day it puzzles me -- that I wanted to be a golf course superintendent in North Carolina, and I had never even been to North Carolina. That’s weird.”

 

Farren’s expertise in balancing the science and “feel” of modern-day golf course agronomy is key, but his big-picture outlook at such a massive resort like Pinehurst is also a major component to his success.

 

“It is never all perfect. It is interesting, and that drives me,” Farren says. “You can kind of put people in my profession into silos. Some want to work at a championship venue and not all are fortunate enough to be able to do that; some want to work at a really high end private club and not to be bothered with championship noise and some want to work at a public venue. Some, especially in the early 1970s and 1980s, wanted to build a golf course, and then move on and do another one. I have been very fortunate and blessed to be here and do all of that and not have to move my family around, relocate and have to keep establishing different relationships in different communities. And I’ve been able to execute major championships at the highest level and construction as well.”

 

More recently at the resort, Farren has been credited with helping bring the Thistle Dhu putting course and The Cradle par-3 short course to life. He also worked alongside Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw during the restoration of Pinehurst No. 2, and with Gil Hanse this past year on redo of Course No. 4. He also helped legendary architect Tom Fazio clear the land for Pinehurst No. 8 more than two decades ago.

 

Farren has been committed to minimizing over-seeding through the cooler months while investing in efficient turfgrass cultivars that reduce the use of water and nutrients over the long term of the golf courses at Pinehurst.

 

“And through Bob’s vision, the Pinehurst Resort property continues to serve as a turfgrass testing site to the benefit of all golf courses globally,” says Mike Davis, the CEO of the USGA. “We can only continue to watch and see what comes next from his greenhouse and committed staff.”

Farren laughs when asked about golfers mostly noticing when a golf course is in need of some TLC and taking for granted when conditions are pristine.

 

“I guess I really haven’t known it any differently,” Farren says. “It’s acceptable to me because I’ve been doing it for 40 years. But I do have an appreciation for and I acknowledge how course conditions affect the golf shop people. I get it, I understand what we do, and they are the ones that hear it from members or resort guests if it’s bad. I can see that connection and acknowledge that. What we enjoy as a staff when we leave at the end of the day is we have tangible results, regardless of what it may be. And it changes every day, sometimes we never know from one day to the next what we may be faced with. This past summer was an example with storms and hurricanes, and in the winter ice storms.”

 

Fellow inductee Jim Hyler has had the pleasure of working alongside Farren during several USGA championships at the resort.

 

“I think the world of Bob and am so honored to be in the same Hall of Fame class as he is,” Hyler says. “You talk about salt of the earth; that is Bob. He is a humble guy and he is very knowledgeable and is an incredible golf course guy. He’s a can-do guy; a what do we need to do to get this right type of guy. I just have the utmost respect for him in every way – just a high character guy, high integrity and the consummate professional.”  

 

Maybe the biggest compliment came from Coore and Crenshaw.

 

“We learned a great deal from Bob, and he has been such an important and integral part of protecting and nurturing Pinehurst’s legacy,” the two architects said.

Bobby Long is a Greensboro businessman whose leadership and vision played a pivotal role in preserving and revitalizing the PGA Tour’s longtime stop in Greensboro. As chairman of the Piedmont Triad Charitable Foundation, Long helped secure the future of the tournament in 2007 by assembling a regional coalition of business leaders and convincing Wyndham to step in as title sponsor, a move backed by a $25 million letter of credit. His efforts helped reposition the event as a regional asset, leading to its successful return to Sedgefield Country Club and the continued growth of what is now the Wyndham Championship.

Beyond the tournament’s success, Long’s impact is felt through the charitable reach of the event and his personal philanthropy. A longtime supporter of youth golf, he is among the leading donors to The First Tee of the Triad and a major benefactor of The First Tee of Wilmington. Known for his humility and behind-the-scenes leadership, Long has helped ensure that one of the nation’s oldest PGA Tour events continues to benefit the Piedmont Triad region and golf communities across the Carolinas.

A long-time resident of Myrtle Beach, Carolyn Cudone dominated golf on the national scene and won numerous championships in three states.  The New Jersey native won that state’s stroke play championship 11 times and the Metropolitan New York title five times.  After moving to Myrtle Beach, she was a five-time winner of the Carolinas Women’s Amateur and a five-time winner of the South Carolina Women’s Amateur.  Nationally, she recorded five straight victories in the USGA Senior Women’s Amateur from 1968-72 and took the women’s North and South Senior six times.

 

Other achievements included selection to the 1956 Curtis Cup team and serving as the team’s non-playing captain in 1970.  She also won the 1960 Women’s Eastern and the 1968 Women’s North and South Amateur.

 

Mrs. Cudone was not only a fine player.  She contributed mightily to the game as a promoter of junior golf.  She was instrumental in the formation of a fine junior program in the Myrtle Beach area.

 

Carolyn Cudone was inducted into the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame in 1987, following induction into the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame in 1975 and the South Carolina Golf Hall of Fame in 1979.

Instead of following his father’s career into the tobacco industry, Cecil Brandon pursued one in golf.  And even that path was different from most in the game, following his graduation from Davidson College, a stint in the U.S. Army (and Korea) and two years as an insurance salesman.

Brandon could have been a club professional and might even have pursued a playing career with a career-low handicap of plus two.  Instead, at age 29, he moved to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where he produced and sold advertising postcards, leaving behind a potential banking career. 

 

Eight years later, he and a trusted few friends started a company that would drive Myrtle Beach into the “golf capital of the world.”  He was part of Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday from its inception in 1967, serving as executive director for 30 years.  Brandon is credited with spearheading the golf package marketing effort that has seen the area grow from eight courses and 10 motels to more than 100 of each. 

 

Brandon was instrumental in attracting the Senior PGA Tour Championship to the area in 1993 and 1994.  Golf Holiday hosts the World Amateur Handicap tournament each year, the largest single-site gathering of amateur players in the world, attracting nearly 5,000 competitors from all over the world. 

 

Brandon also worked closely with the PGA Tour to develop the Tournament Players Club of Myrtle Beach.  His efforts on behalf of Myrtle Beach have brought worldwide attention not only to his home but also to golf in the state of South Carolina. Brandon Advertising is a successful agency in Myrtle Beach.

 

He has been honored by South Carolina with the Order of the Palmetto, Tourism Ambassador of the Year, Citizen of the Year, the state tourism award and –special to him – Parent of the Year.

 

Cecil Brandon was inducted into the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame in 2001

In his heyday, Charles B. (Charlie) Smith Sr. of Gastonia, North Carolina was ranked the No. 3 amateur in the country, trailing only Jack Nicklaus and Deane Beman. He was Carolinas Golf of the year in 1961 and 1963. He took up the game with a borrowed set of clubs of left-handed clubs in high school, his farther passed down a right handed set and his game flourished. Smith won the inaugural Donald Ross Invitational in 1948 and the Southern Conference championship in 1952, as a senior at The Citadel.

 

In 1960, he won the North & South and Southern Amateur titles, and played on the U.S. Walker Cup teams in 1961 and 63. In 1962, Smith added the Eastern Amateur to his list of victories and won the Carolina Amateur two years after older brother Dave lost in the final. The brothers won The Dunes Club National 4-Ball titles in 1962 and in 1964, the year Charlie added a second Azalea Amateur to his first from 1958. He played in the The Masters Tournament four straight years (1962-65) missing the cut three times by a single stroke. He also played in the U.S. Open at Oakmont Hills in 1961 and Oakmont in 1962. He was a three-time quarter-finalist in the U.S. Amateur.