B-CC’s Deane Beman: The Man Who Reinvented the World of Golf

Deane Beman, who turned the world of golf upside down during his 20 years as PGA Commissioner, chuckles a bit about his local memories in the late 1950s when he was a "whiz kid" golfer at

“I think I played here at Congressional for the first time when I was a junior at B-CC,” he told a visitor in the Merchandise Tent during opening round play at the U.S. Open Thursday. “It was a tremendous experience for a young kid.”

The memories start to fade a bit after over 60 years or more, so it’s fortunate that Adam Schupak was sharp enough to talk Beman into helping him write his fascinating new book: Deane Beman, Golf’s Driving Force: The Inside Story of the Man Who Transformed Professional Golf Into a Billion Dollar Business.

 “It was a great story ready to be told but it just took a little convincing here (pointing to Beman).  “I’m really glad we did it,” said Schupak, who lives in Orlando. “Sales are going pretty well.”

Deane Beman, B-CC High School Class of 1956, just smiled and chuckled a bit. “I got my start right here in Bethesda and Chevy Chase,” he told Patch. “I went to B-CC and Leland Junior High.”

While he was at Leland, Beman starred on the Bethesda Chevy Chase Rec Center’s 125-pound football team and was known as a vicious tackler. He was also a slippery running back scoring 125 of his team’s 158 points one season, according to a 1961 article in Sports Illustrated. 

He took up golf at the age of 12 when his father, Delmar, bought a $35 set of clubs for each of his six kids and joined the Bethesda Country Club. A few years later Deane stunned the world by winning the British Amateur.

But Deane’s winning attribute career-wise is summed up in this quip from Jack Nicklaus: “Deane can be great talker. When he starts telling some of his stories, you’ve got to take the square root of what he says and divide by eight to anywhere near to the truth.”

Undoubtedly, it was that talking—and negotiating ability—that propelled Beman to the top of the sports world to the point where is it’s widely acknowledged that he reshaped golf even more dramatically than former NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle overhauled pro football.

All you have to do to document Beman’s impact on the golf world is take a comprehensive look around Congressional this weekend or any big-time golf event worldwide these days.

Beman, now 74, played an instrumental role in shaping virtually everything you see in his 20 years as PGA Commissioner (1974 to 1994) from the massive air-conditioned merchandise tent (where he was signing copies of his new book) to the corporate sponsorships, the multimillion dollar network TV contracts to the small army of volunteers on call, and the design of the golf course itself.

Beman’s imprint is all over all aspects of the business of golf … everywhere you look.

Yet many even here in Bethesda and Chevy Chase including even some ardent golfers, probably have never heard of Beman. Or, if they do recall the name, they don’t fully recognize his amazing accomplishments over the course of a career in golf that was so successful that he was able to retire at age 56 in 1994.

Schupak lays out Beman’s full story in the book. The key to his success, according to the book, was his hard-headed and practical approach in putting the game on a sound financial footing. “I was not a commissioner who was loved,” Beman says in the book. “I do believe I was respected. I wasn’t trying to run a popularity contest. I was trying to break new ground.”

A major accomplishment came in separating the interests of the tour players on the PGA from those of the club pros, a challenging task to say the least.

Perhaps over the longer haul, however, Beman will be best remembered for the $1.5 billion the PGA Tour has raised for various charities, most of them local charities, following passage in 1979 of a resolution that all tournaments be run for charities.

That decision sweeps well beyond the local precincts of exclusive clubs and golf courses and impacts ordinary lives everywhere.