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From Billy Casper to Tiger Woods - 50 Years of Buick Golf.

Fifty years later, everything has changed.
And nothing has changed.

By Vartan Kupelian.

Sounds like a contradiction but, in reality, it is perfectly logical. We’re talking about golf, a game with traditions etched deeply into its fabric. Golf evolves but its core values and instincts remain constant.

Tiger Woods grew up admiring the great golfers and their accomplishments. Walter Hagen. Bobby Jones. Ben Hogan. Byron Nelson. Arnold Palmer. Jack Nicklaus.

Woods studied them and he studied golf history. He used the knowledge like a road map to chart his own path. Now that Woods’ journey is in full flight – at age 32, he already has won 13 major championships and 61 PGA TOUR events entering 2008 – he knows something else.

The journey and the quest are endless.

“The whole idea is to win,” Woods said. “You go out to win, period. I give it everything I have to do that”.

“You never get there,” Woods said. “It’s a lifelong ambition to get better, and as an athlete, you’re always trying to get better no matter what.”

“You never feel like you have it. That’s one of the great things about this game of golf.”

For Buick Golf and Woods, the quest continues in 2008. It is the Golden Anniversary of Buick’s journey in golf. In 1958, Buick embarked on a new adventure when it became the PGA TOUR’s first corporate sponsor. Fifty years and dozens of tournaments later, the wisdom of that enterprise has been proven again and again.

The beat goes on this year with the Buick Invitational, now in its 17th year, as well as the Buick Open. Both have emerged as marquee events on the PGA TOUR schedule for a number of reasons. They occupy premium slots on the calendar. The Buick Invitational gets things started at Torrey Pines Golf Club in La Jolla, California, on the outskirts of San Diego, an unmatched destination in January. The Buick Open, based at Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club in Grand Blanc, Michigan, falls in the midst of the major championship season, in June, between the U.S. Open and the British Open.

And, of course, both the Buick Open and Buick Invitational have been regular stops for Woods, the world’s best golfer. It’s become a winning equation for Buick and that’s exactly as it should be. That’s the only way Woods would have it. It is his mantra.

“The whole idea is to win,” Woods said last year during another of his spectacular winning streaks. “You go out to win, period. I give it everything I have to do that. When it doesn’t turn out to be the case, which in our sport is far more likely to be the case where you don’t win. Yeah, it’s disappointing, it’s frustrating, and you have to learn from it and apply it to the very next one so that you can go ahead and get it done.”

A History Lesson

Buick has been getting it done in golf since 1958 when Billy Casper won the inaugural Buick Open.

“I just think the people at Buick had great foresight to come into the game of golf when they did,” Casper said.

“We hadn’t had any corporate sponsorsup until that time in ’58. Most all of your tournaments are now sponsored by corporations. In those days they were sponsored by service organizations, like the Chamber of Commerce.”

“The golfers embraced the changes,” Casper said, “ because we were stepping up in class.”

“We had been playing a lot of municipal and public courses and now we were starting to get a few really great golf courses, like Warwick Hills,” Casper continued. “When we went to Grand Blanc, we had a tremendous course, super-tough. It wasn’t like today when the players make the course look like it’s not difficult.”

The year 2008 marks several watershed events. It is the 105th anniversary of Buick, the 100th anniversary of General Motors and, of course, the Buick Open’s 50th birthday.

“There’s a tremendous history here,” said Larry Peck, Buick’s marketing manager for golf. “To have a company that has been a part of starting something in its infancy – appreciating the fact that somebody saw value in marketing golf in ’58 – and has grown in prominence every year, is significant. We’re going to do a lot of special things to mark the occasion,” Peck said.

The Buick Invitational

There’s plenty of buzz at Torrey Pines, home of the Buick Invitational. Torrey Pines will be a busy place in 2008 with the 108th U.S. Open in June following the Invitational into town.

“We have a U.S. Open field of players at the Buick Invitational,” said Tom Wilson, tournament director and executive director of the Century Club. “The international contingent will be here for a preview of Torrey Pines. That’s exciting for the fans of San Diego.” San Diego fans have come to expect that kind of heightened excitement, thanks to Woods’ regular attendance. This year, Woods is going for a fourth straight Buick Invitational title.

“He won it five times out of the 10 times he’s played in it,” Wilson said. “It’s terrific that he has supported us and supported Buick.”

Woods’ presence has spurred huge numbers of fans, television ratings and charitable contributions. This is his time, and the PGATOUR is enjoying the ride.

“What Tiger brings to the game you can’t measure, it is so unbelievably huge,” said Rocco Mediate, a former Buick Open winner.

But it’s definable and tangible. The numbers inspire awe and respect. “There’s been a ten-fold increase in charitable contributions – from $275,000 in the first year of the Tiger era to $2.3 million last year,” Wilson said.

Having an early-season event like the Buick Invitational sets off the company’s annual foray into golf. That the event is the Buick Invitational is a bonus.

“The Buick Invitational is about as strong as a tournament gets,” Peck said.

The Buick Open

The inaugural Buick Open in 1958 had a purse of $52,000, the second most lucrative on the PGA TOUR a half-century ago.

“There’s so much that’s unique about the Buick Open,” Peck said. “We own and operate the event, unlike other events run by charitable organizations, and it gives us maximum flexibility in terms of marketing.”

“This is an interesting time in the evolution of professional golf,” said Casper, the first Buick Open champion.

“When we started back in the ‘50s, many of the golfers were club professionals,” he said. “They would close their clubs in the winter, two or three would get in a car and go to California to play the tour. In March, they would go back home to work the shop.”

“Players were not athletes. They were players who had just come out of college after a couple of years, some came from the caddie ranks, some from the military. Psychology? We used it but we didn’t use it from a psychologist. We created our own. Caddies were the psychologists.” Warwick Hills was among the courses that changed the standard for conditioning.

“Conditioning of golf courses has changed drastically,” Casper said. “One of the reasons players play so well today is the superb course conditions. Equipment was not what it is today. We had four shafts to choose from - regular, stiff, x-stiff and then an X shaft. Today there are probably 200 shafts to choose from.”

The Champions

Casper was the first Buick champion and Woods’ performance at the Invitational and Open speaks for itself. He is the dominant force today. In between, there have been many great champions at Torrey Pines, Warwick Hills and the other venues visited by Buick events. For many, the victories marked career breakthroughs.

The Buick events were always high on the list of Peter Jacobsen’s favorite destinations on the PGA TOUR. That’s only natural. Jacobsen is a winner of both and his victory at the Buick-Goodwrench Open in 1980 was the first of his career. In 1995, he added the Buick Invitational to his list of triumphs.

“I remember 1980 very, very well, when I made a putt on the last hole to win the tournament,” Jacobsen said. “My fourweek old first child was here with me. I held her up and was bouncing around, and then during the check presentation, she threw up all over my back as I held her in my arms. I’ve got a great picture of that.”

“Off course, back then everything was black and white. So no color pictures.”

A year later, in 1981, Jacobsen lost a fourway playoff for the Buick Open title to Hale Irwin. Bobby Clampett and Gil Morgan were the other contestants in the playoff.

“Everything seems like it was yesterday,” said Jacobsen, who returned for his final Buick Open in 2003.

“We all tied the first playoff hole, which was No. 16. On the 17th, the hole with the crowd in Flint, Hale made about a 40 foot putt for a birdie. Gil and Bobby and I hit it in there closer than that but we all missed.”

The victory for Tom Pernice Jr. at the 1999 Buick Open proved to him it was all worthwhile.

“The satisfaction of being out here forever and practicing and working hard to know that you finally did what you were trying to accomplish,” Pernice said. “You see that the opportunity is there and to continue to work hard.”

For Rocco Mediate, his victory in 2000 at Warwick Hills was the fourth of his career and it was as much about karma as golf. He arrived in Grand Blanc with his game in disarray and a putter which absolutely had refused to cooperate the week before.

It had Mediate baffled and, yes, almost speechless, an affliction most rare for the affable golfer. His caddie, Pete Bender, told Mediate not to worry because “you complain all week about your putting, you are going to make everything next week.” It’s conventional caddie wisdom and the psychological aspect of the job description that Casper is talking about.

“That’s what happened,” said Mediate, always a favorite of the Buick Open galleries. “It sure was a lot of fun.”

To the history, the superstars, the journey and the quest, that’s one more thing you can add. For a half-century, Buick’s ride in golf has been a lot of fun.

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About Buick Golf Buick is now in its fifth decade as the PGA TOUR’s original corporate sponsor. Buick is the title-sponsor of two PGA TOUR events in 2007. In addition to the Buick Invitational, Buick sponsors the Buick Open at Warwick Hills Golf and Country Club in Grand Blanc, Mich. (June 25-July 1). Through its PGA TOUR events Buick has donated more than $35 million dollars to local charities in its tournament cities since 1982.

Buick, the official car of the PGA TOUR since 1984, has a sponsorship agreement with the world’s number one golfer, Tiger Woods.