Paying homage to Firestone Country Club

Perhaps no golf facility in the United States – or even the world – has been more utilitarian to the professional ranks than Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio. The list of events held at Firestone is formidable, starting with the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, which this week is being held on the famed South Course for the 19th time.

Home to 54 holes of championship golf, Firestone first appeared on the PGA TOUR’s schedule in 1954, when the Rubber City Open Invitational, primarily a regional event that for three years was staged at Breathnach Country Club in nearby Cuyahoga Falls, was moved to the highly respected – though not yet fearsome – South Course. Since then, Firestone has hosted a professional tournament every year, including three PGA Championships, in 1960, ’66 and ’75. At the time of the third edition in 1975, won by Ohio native Jack Nicklaus, Firestone’s South Course was the first layout to host the PGA three times.

In all, there have been 88 tournaments at Firestone. Just three PGA TOUR venues have had a longer run – Pebble Beach Golf Links, home of the annual AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am; Colonial Country Club, home of the Charles Schwab Challenge; and Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters Tournament.

This week will be a time of reflection and appreciation for Firestone, as the WGC event moves to Memphis, Tennessee, next season. While Firestone will not be on the regular PGA TOUR’s calendar, it will become the new venue for the flagship event on PGA TOUR Champions -- the Bridgestone SENIOR PLAYERS Championship, one of five majors on the Champions schedule.

Said PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan at the time of the announcement: “With Firestone Country Club’s South Course as the host venue, golf’s 65-year tradition in Akron will continue.”

Don Padgett III, executive director of the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, has witnessed Firestone’s impact on golf and the local community for many years, having grown up around the course while his father served as head professional for 24 years.

“Through the years, Firestone has been a part of one of the great Northeast Ohio sports traditions, and around the world it has to be one of the most televised venues,” Padgett said. “It’s the legacy of the rubber companies here, great companies that decided that golf was something they wanted to get behind. It goes way back, almost 100 years.”

The American Golf Classic, the CBS Golf Classic and the World Series of Golf preceded the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, which began in 1999. So revered is Firestone that the aforementioned trio all were held on the South Course in 1974, making it the only facility in the world to have hosted three televised golf events in one calendar year. It also was the site for another made-for-television event in 1964, “Big Three Golf” featuring Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player.

In 2002, when the TOUR took the WGC event to Sahalee Golf Club in Seattle, Firestone’s South Course hosted the oldest major on the PGA TOUR Champions, the Senior PGA Championship. Fittingly, it now returns to the Champions schedule.

While Firestone’s North Course also has been tapped by the TOUR, hosting the 1976 American Golf Classic and the 1994 NEC World Series of Golf, it’s the South Course on which the reputation of the club rests.

Opened Aug. 10, 1928 – founder Harvey Firestone hit the ceremonial first shot – the South Course was designed by Englishman William Herbert “Bert” Way, whose design credits prior to his work at Firestone included Detroit Golf Club among other Midwestern layouts. Way was brought to America by Willie Dunn of Shinnecock Hills fame after learning course design in his home country. In 1899, he was one of three players who finished runner-up to Willie Smith in the U.S. Open at Baltimore Country Club.

Way’s work on what was at first known as the No. 1 Course at Firestone was a par-71 creation of 6,306 yards, notable for a routing that survives to this day. The South Course features 16 holes that trundle north and south. Only the fifth and sixth holes run east-west.

Rated among the top courses in the country by various golf publications, the South Course earned its reputation when Robert Trent Jones infused it with a lot of sharp edges for the 1960 PGA Championship. He built seven new tees, added 50 bunkers, two ponds and more than 500 yards, increasing the layout from 6,620 yards to 7,165 yards while knocking it down to par 70. He had hoped no player that week would break par – and sure enough, no one did, as Jay Hebert triumphed at 1-over 281.

“The change to the golf course was as dramatic as you could imagine. It went from a pretty decent test of golf to a real beast,” said Paul Lazoran, who has witnessed every event in Firestone’s history, having worked at the course cleaning clubs when he was 9 years old. It’s apropos that Lazoran, now 76, conjures such a descriptive term.

In the process of his redesign, Jones gave the course its signature hole, the 625-yard par-5 16th. After adding 50 yards to it and installing a pond in front, he proudly called it the “Waterloo Hole.” Palmer found out why when he made triple-bogey to fall out of contention in that year’s PGA. He referred to the hole as “a monster,” and the name stuck. Subsequently the South Course as a whole often has been referred to as “a monster course,” one that today is a burly 7,400 yards.

When Palmer returned for the 1975 PGA Championship and was asked what he remembered about his 16th hole misadventure, he replied gruffly, “I remember all eight shots.”

By then Arnie had made peace with the place, having won the 1962 and ’67 American Golf Classic to go along with his 1957 victory in the Rubber City Open. Last year, the late Palmer was honored with a plaque on the stone bridge that crosses a creek near the pond in front of the 16th green. The structure is now known as the Arnold Palmer Bridge.

Because of its demanding broad-shouldered profile, Firestone’s South Course tends to favor the game’s celebrated ball strikers, and the list of winners exhibits as much, starting with Tommy Bolt in 1954. Al Geiberger emerged with his only major title in the 1966 PGA Championship. Other champions include Nick Price, Greg Norman, Tom Watson and Tom Weiskopf. In all, 38 winners are major champions and 18 are in the World Golf Hall of Fame.

“It’s difficult but it’s fair,” Padgett said. “Even though the holes go back and forth, there’s great variety to the holes with a great deal of elevation change. It’s a ball-striker’s golf course. Players know that whoever is striking the ball best is probably going to finish on top. You can’t fake it around Firestone. The cream always rises to the top.”

“Good shots are rewarded at Firestone and bad shots are punished. It’s the ultimate layout for gauging the quality of your play,” said John Cook, whose father Jim worked in the corporate office of Firestone Rubber Co., giving him access to the junior golf program at the club when he was 6 years old. “It’s classic Midwestern golf. Not every course stands the test of time, but Firestone has for 60-plus years.”

No surprise that the two players who have most dominated the landscape are the game’s most successful major championship performers – Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.

A Columbus, Ohio, native, Nicklaus won seven times on the South Course under an array of competitive formats. Coincidentally, the place won him over first, when he made his debut in a PGA TOUR event in the 1958 Rubber City Open as an 18-year-old amateur.

The burly Ohio State golfer, who was coming off a victory in the Trans-Mississippi Amateur, was predicted to “give the pros a tussle,” when he showed up at Firestone. And did he ever, opening with rounds of 67 and 66, 9 under par, to sit tied for second one stroke behind eventual winner Art Wall. He eventually ended with a share of 15th place.

Thus began a beautiful relationship. Nicklaus captured the inaugural World Series of Golf in 1962, when it was a four-man exhibition, and he won again in 1976 when it became an official TOUR event. In between were five other titles, the biggest being the 1975 PGA Championship when he essentially won by converting “your basic miracle par” on the famed 16th hole in the third round.

From the right rough 137 yards from the green, the Golden Bear launched a 9-iron over a tree directly in his path – the late Bob Rosburg used his oft-repeated line, “he’s got no shot,” for the first time when he sized up Jack’s prospects – and then buried a 30-footer from the back fringe.

The Golden Bear’s ties to the facility also include a renovation of the South Course by his design company in the mid-1980s.

“This has been a pretty special place for me,” Nicklaus said after receiving the Ambassador of Golf Award from Northern Ohio Golf Charities at Firestone during the 2013 World Golf Championship-Bridgestone Invitational—23 years after his wife Barbara was similarly recognized. “I have so many great memories of Firestone and all the years I played here. I loved coming up here. I loved playing the golf course. It suited my eye. It suited my game. I always said, ‘I don't care what's going on. I’m going to get to Firestone, and I’ll be able to play well there.’”

Woods expressed a nearly identical sentiment before his record eighth victory that same year. It remains the most recent of his 79 PGA TOUR wins.

“I've come into this event not playing great, and I've come into this event playing great, but it's one of those golf courses I always feel comfortable,” said Woods, who this week makes his first appearance at Firestone since withdrawing in the middle of the final round in 2015 because of back spasms. Woods qualified for the event thanks after moving into the world’s top 50 following his tie for sixth at The Open Championship.

“The neat thing is there are certain venues, whether it's here or Torrey Pines or Bay Hill, I somehow see the sight lines,” Woods continued. “This golf course is just amazing. It's very straight forward. It's right in front of you. And there are some years where it is just impossible to hit these fairways; they're so hard and so fast. And other years, everything plugs, and it plays long, and you've got to make a bunch of birdies. It goes to show you that you don't need elephant burial grounds out there to make a golf course fair, difficult, and enjoyable.”

In addition to his eight victories, tied with Sam Snead for most in a single TOUR event and which he has equaled at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Woods holds a share of the South Course record, a 9-under 61, with Spaniards Jose Maria Olazabal and Sergio Garcia. Olazabal, by the way, holds the distinction of winning the World Series of Golf on both the South Course, in 1991, and the North in ’94.

When you’ve seen all 88 events at Firestone, it’s difficult to choose a favorite highlight. Lazoran immediately can recall two – one shot each by Nicklaus and Woods that define the duo’s magical and entrenched preeminence, though his favorite personal moment came in the 1965 World Series of Golf, when he caddied for winner Gary Player.

On the 71st hole, Player was sizing up a birdie putt with a foot of break moving right to left. Lazoran corrected the reigning U.S. Open champion, instructing him that the putt curved twice as much. Player took his advice and made the putt. He rewarded Lazoran with a $2,500 payday, huge at the time.

The first of the two shots was the aforementioned Nicklaus sky ball to save par at 16. The second was the 8-iron from 167 yards Woods planted two feet from the flagstick at the par-4 18th in twilight in the 2000 WGC edition. “I’ve never seen the likes of it,” Sir Nick Faldo remarked after Woods buried the putt and then was bathed in staccato bursts of flashbulbs.

“Yeah, that was a cool moment,” Woods said.

At Firestone, there have been many.