Island Packet Verizon Heritage 2008 Coverage | Harbour Town, Sea Pines Resort, Hilton Head Island, SC

jeff Kidd
jkidd@islandpacket.com
843-706-8121

OK, I’ve managed to kill the suspense.

If you look at the headline above, the photo below or the list to the right, you won’t have to read to the final paragraphs of this story to know what The Island Packet has deemed the biggest headline in Verizon Heritage history.

Hope you enjoy the list, just the same.

Hilton Head Island’s annual PGA Tour stop has been such an important part of this community’s fabric — and has been around about a year longer than this newspaper — that it seemed most appropriate to pick “The 40 Biggest Headlines in Heritage History” to mark the tournament’s 40th playing this year.

We consulted written histories, other golf writers and tournament officials to compile the list and began counting it down, 10 at a time, in Monday’s newspaper. What you see here is the finale — headlines 10-1, as well as a list of all 40 stories.

How impressive is Heritage history?

Consider that the tournament’s champions roll call includes major championship winners Tom Watson, Hubert Green, Fuzzy Zoeller and Bill Rogers ... none of whom made this list.

In fact, we could have come up with another list of 40 to include such stories as the effects of Sept. 11 on tournament security, the first major renovation of Harbour Town or the departure after the 2006 tournament of Joe Fraser and Angus Cotton, who had long, distinguished tenures as Heritage Classic Foundation board members.

Who knows? Maybe in 10 years when we do the 50 Biggest Headlines in Heritage History ...

10. “Cink wins controversial playoff, comes from nine back to win second Heritage title”: Stewart Cink came from nine shots back in the final round to win the 2004 Heritage, the biggest comeback on the PGA Tour since Paul Lawrie’s victory from 10 down in the 1999 British Open.
But that’s not what Cink’s win will be remembered for.

Cink also became just the eighth golfer to win the Heritage more than once.

His win won’t be remembered for that, either.

Golf fans might recall that Cink and Ted Purdy battled in a five-hole playoff, matching the longest in the tournament’s history, but what they’ll definitely remember is the shot Cink hit on the par-4 16th to clinch his victory and the controversy that followed it.

After driving into a waste bunker tucked in the turn of a dogleg right, Cink hit a miraculous wedge shot to within feet of the pin to set up the winning birdie and secure his second tartan jacket.

However, after the closing ceremonies, and unknown to fans leaving Harbour Town Golf Links, Cink was whisked away to a CBS television production truck to watch replays of his bunker shot. The legitimacy of Cink’s win was in question after several fans watching on television called the tournament office because they suspected the golfer of illegally removing debris from behind his ball, illegally marking the line of his shot or illegally grounding his club in a hazard.

Cink’s victory stood when tournament rules official Slugger White determined he wasn’t guilty of the first offense. And although Cink did indeed ground his club and remove loose impediments from around his ball before hitting the bunker shot, both of those actions are allowable in any of Harbour Town’s “waste” areas. That’s because those areas are not ordinary sand bunkers but hard-packed, crushed lime that are not marked as hazards.

Although waste areas are still a prominent feature of Harbour Town Golf Links, two years after Cink’s victory, Sea Pines converted the bunker on No. 16 to a hazard, filling it with softer sand like any other greenside or fairway trap. The rules governing the hole changed in accordance, and the tournament and Harbour Town officials hoped it would bring an end to any similar controversies.

9. “Wilmot becomes tournament director”: The Heritage wasn’t in the greatest of shape when Steve Wilmot arrived. The Sea Pines Company was in bankruptcy, and the tournament’s future on the island was in jeopardy.
The event was on more solid footing 10 years later, when Wilmot succeeded his former boss, Mike Stevens, as tournament director in 1997.
What he learned in those formative years would prove valuable as he shepherded the tournament through other crisis, the most notable of which was in 2002-03, when the accounting scandal and subsequent bankruptcy of title sponsor WorldCom threatened the tournament’s finances. Wilmot’s tenure also has spanned the advent of the Tiger Woods era, new security procedures in the wake of 9/11, the FedEx Cup and, now, drug testing on the PGA Tour.

Through it all, growth has been a constant under Wilmot’s direction. The Heritage purse has increased each of the past 16 seasons, the Heritage Classic Foundation has doled out more than $1.5 million annually the past few years and the tournament’s television, venue, title sponsor and PGA Tour contracts are secure through 2010. The Heritage also has expanded its influence, taking over the Players Amateur event conducted each summer at Belfair and adding sponsorship of an AJGA event to complement a junior portfolio that already includes the prominent Junior Heritage.

8. “Irwin becomes oldest Heritage winner, record 21 years after his last victory at Harbour Town”: A full 21 years after his last title at Harbour town, the 48-year-old Irwin amazingly accomplished the feat again in 1994, marking his third Heritage victory. At the time, that made him just the second player with three Heritage titles, joining Davis Love III. He remains the tournament’s oldest winner, with a performance that presaged his decade of dominance on the Champions Tour.

And Irwin didn’t just squeak by, either — he shot two 65s and two 68s to set what was then a tournament scoring record of 18 under par. He defeated runner-up Greg Norman by two shots and earned a $225,00 paycheck, $100,000 more than the total amount of the purse in his last Heritage win in 1973.

7. “Heritage makes its first television appearance”: When the Heritage first began, some doubted the tournament could survive as an autumn event, competing with the World Series, the NFL and college football for sports fans’ attention. Though the event did well in its burgeoning years, there’s no doubt its long-term future was secured by national television exposure that came for the first time in 1974, the year the tournament moved from September to March and was picked up for broadcast by NBC.

Not only did a national audience get to see young superstar Johnny Miller win his second Heritage title, coverage made the image of the Harbour Town lighthouse — which wasn’t even completed when Arnold Palmer won the first Heritage in 1969 — a familiar icon to golf fans across the country and Hilton Head Island a recognizable resort destination.

6. “Stewart becomes first to win back-to-back Heritage titles”: It was inarguably the most dominant stretch of golf by a professional golfer at Harbour Town Golf Links — Payne Stewart, who eschewed the course for five years because of what he deemed to be poor conditioning, returned to the Heritage in 1989 only because the course it is played upon would host the season-ending Nabisco Championships later in the year.

The golfer in the tam o’ shanter and knickers broke the tournament scoring record and won in his return in 1989. Stewart won again in 1990 and between those victories dropped a playoff to Tom Kite to finish second in the Nabisco. For good measure, he tied for fourth in the 1991 Heritage.

Stewart’s victory in 1990 might have been the most thrilling performance of that stretch — he never lost his lead in the final round, but former Masters champ Larry Mize and future U.S. Open winner Steve Jones managed to pull even by the end of regulation. Stewart’s 18-foot birdie putt on the par-4 18th, the second extra hole, dispatched Mize (Jones was eliminated on the first hole) and made Stewart the tournament’s first back-to-back champion.

5. “Love makes miraculous chip to win record fifth Heritage”: Davis Love III was as inconspicuous on the final-round leaderboard of the 2003 Heritage as a four-time past champion could be. He hadn’t led after any of the first three rounds — though he was one off the pace after an opening 66 — and seemed out of contention when his approach on the par-4 18th hole, the 72nd of the tournament, landed well right of the green.

But from 66 feet away, Love chipped in for birdie, setting off a wild celebration and setting up a playoff with Woody Austin. Love shot a 4-under-par 67 on a day in which, at one point, there was an eight-way tie for first.

An hour after his miraculous shot, Love and Austin arrived back at the 18th hole for the third time that day, and Love pulled off another near-miracle — his 6-iron approach hit the flag stick and landed a stopped within feet of the hole. He made and easy birdie, and Austin missed a 19-footer to extend the playoffs.

It was that kind of day for Austin, who twice missed putts to win a 6-footer on the second playoff hole and a 3-footer on the third extra hole.

4. “Langer becomes first to win Masters, Heritage in consecutive weeks”: As former Island Packet sports editor Terry Bunton wrote in his 1989 history of the Heritage, Bernhard Langer arrived in Sea Pines in April, 1985 as so many island tourists do — seeking a little rest a relaxation.

Just a week earlier, Langer had become the first German national to win on the PGA Tour, and he did it on golf’s grandest stage — the Masters.
The press had been relentless in the days after Langer’s win at Augusta National, but he found refuge on the golf course, shooting rounds of 68-66-69-70 in his first Heritage appearance since tying for 59th in his 1982 debut.

Langer three-putted just once en route to a green jacket and didn’t three-putt at all in slipping into a tartan jacket. However, he hit a few squirrelly shots and needed a 5-footer for par on the 72nd hole to force a playoff with Bobby Wadkins, who closed with a 68. On the first extra hole, Wadkins pushed his 8-iron approach into the bunker on the par-4 16th, and he suffered a bogey to make Langer the first golfer — and thus far the only one — to win the Masters in Heritage in consecutive weeks.

3. “Norman dedicates victory to cancer-stricken teen”: Seventeen-year-old Jamie Hutton was scheduled for a bone marrow transplant the day after the 1988 Heritage, but before the leukemia-stricken boy went to the hospital, he came to Harbour Town Golf Links hoping to see his favorite golfer, Greg Norman, and perhaps even meet his idol.

He did more than that.

A group called “Thursday’s Child,” similar to the Make a Wish Foundation, sponsored a trip for Hutton and his family from their home in Wisconsin and also arranged for the teenager to meet Norman on the Saturday of the tournament.

The two enjoyed an instant rapport, and although the Huttons had planned to leave town Sunday on a commercial flight, Norman chartered a jet for them so that they could stay long enough to watch the final round.

Trailing by four shots going into the final round, Norman at breakfast with Jamie, who gave him this advice: “Shoot a 64.” With Hutton following him in the gallery and CBS telling the touching story of his new friend, Norman shot a 66, and that was enough to edge David Frost and Gil Morgan by a single shot.

Norman presented the winner’s trophy to Hutton, who wore the tartan blazer of tournament committee member Paula Bethea to the closing ceremonies.

2. “Heritage Classic Foundation takes over tournament in 1987, averts financial disaster” — In 1986, Hilton Head Holdings, the parent company of the Sea Pines Co. and seven other subsidiaries, filed for bankruptcy and threatened to take the Heritage down with them.

The bankruptcy involved Sea Pines, Shipyard Plantation, Wexford Plantation, Port Royal Plantation and Indigo Run. More than $100 million was owed to about 2,000 creditors, many of them local companies. What’s more, Harbour Town Golf Links had fallen into disrepair, and the PGA Tour considered pulling the tournament from the circuit’s smallest market.
That’s when a group of community leaders, including former South Carolina governor John West; Joe Fraser, the brother of Sea Pines founder Charles Fraser; and Sea Pines executive John Curry, formed the Heritage Classic Foundation, a charitable organization that would take over administration of the tournament and shore up its financial future.

The foundation soon secured a $1 million, a line of credit and a title sponsor in long distance company MCI.

Today, the non-profit organization collects the revenue from sponsorships and ticket and concession sales and distributes it throughout the year to organizations that have submitted grant requests. It has distributed more than $15 million since its inception.

1. “Palmer wins first Heritage”: John Gettys Smith could barely stand to watch.

With the first Heritage Classic approaching a nail-biting finish on Thanksgiving weekend, 1969, Arnold Palmer threaten to cough up his third-round lead on the tournament’s final day, as lesser names Richard Crawford and Bert Yancey gained ground.

So Smith, the Heritage’s first tournament chairman, stood nervously beside a mucky hole that would become Harbour Town’s Yacht Basin, kicking dirt clods into the water as Palmer’s group played its way up the final fairway a few hundred yards away.

“When Palmer was coming down 18 with the lead I was so nervous,” said Smith, who worked for Sea Pines for 10 years as vice president of public relations. “(There) was no star behind him, no one who approached his caliber.”

Just then, Charles Fraser, Sea Pines’ developer, came strolling past. Fraser had commissioned a study on American golf’s South Carolina roots, but Smith said the man who founded the Heritage wasn’t as well-versed in the modern game.

“He asked me, ‘Is something wrong?’ ” Smith recalled. “I said, ‘Do you have any idea that if he wins what a super story it will be ... and what will happen if he loses and the winner is not a superstar?’

“He just said, ‘Oh,’ and wandered away.”

Braving the suspense, Smith made his way to the 18th green for a closer look and watched Palmer sink a putt to secure the championship.

“Palmer made a putt to take the first Heritage crown and saved us,” Smith said.

Looking back 39 years, it might seem hyperbole for Smith to declare Palmer the tournament’s savior.

After all, the Heritage now is entrenched in a plum spot on the PGA Tour schedule. It sports a champions list that includes Jack Nicklaus, Hale Irwin, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, Nick Faldo and Greg Norman. And it is played on one of the nation’s most renowned courses, which is situated on one of the nation’s most renowned resort destinations.

But there’s no doubt Palmer’s victory underpinned many of the fawning tributes paid to the PGA Tour’s newest event in national publications.

And Palmer’s victory was big news for another reason.

The obituary for Palmer’s career was written before he arrived at Sea Pines in 1969. Smith recalled that the November, 1969, issue of one national golf publication featured a cover story on the King entitled “The End of an Era.” Indeed, after averaging four victories a season over a 13-year period, Palmer had gone 14 months without a win, at the time the longest drought of his career.

So when Palmer led the Heritage wire-to-wire, it became worldwide news.
(Palmer also won the Danny Thomas Diplomat Classic the next week and capped his year by being named the Associated Press Athlete of the Decade, the first professional golfer to win the award).

In other words, Harbour Town was ground-zero for one of the biggest “feel-good” stories of the year.

Besides, despite all the compelling tournament events that would follow, it’s hard to beat the thrills of your first big headline.