Leaving a lasting legacy

When we decided a few years ago to put a name on the trophy for the best amateur golfer in Central Virginia, an award this newspaper hands out annually, we wanted it to be special, to have true meaning, something the players would be proud to be associated with.
Choosing the name was a no-brainer. It had to be Bill Battle, who graciously granted a request to name the trophy and the points race associated with it in his honor.
Fond memories
Over the years, Battle would follow the local tournaments and would do his best to show up at Birdwood every August to catch some of the action in the final tournament of the year, the Jefferson Cup, and seemed to enjoy talking to the players and presenting the trophy to that season’s best local amateur.
The first time he presented the Battle Trophy, it was a short, but memorable speech he made.
“The last time I presented a trophy was in 1989,” Battle said. “That was when Curtis Strange won his second U.S. Open.”
That’s when Battle was president of the United States Golf Association, a most memorable term in that office that we’ll get to later.
Battle had made the Open championship trophy presentation to Strange in both 1988 and ‘89, the last time anyone won back-to-back U.S. Open titles. The fact that both Battle and Strange were Virginians made it significant, but there was much more.
Battle had teamed with Strange’s father, Tom, back in the ‘50s as a formidable two-man team in state events and the two became good friends until Tom Strange died of cancer in 1969.
So, to be there and to hand Tom’s son the national championship trophy nearly two decades later was quite special.
“Both times I got choked up,” Battle said years later in an interview with this columnist. “We were both very excited, but I was trying to contain my emotions.”
Well, that’s what everyone who knew Bill Battle is trying to do today — contain their emotions. A man who achieved greatness in so many facets of his life died Saturday night.
A man of many talents
While many of his accomplishments, coming to John Kennedy and PT 109’s rescue during World War II, helping Kennedy win the presidential election, serving as ambassador to Australia, running a major corporation, running for governor of Virginia, and many other deeds, have been well-documented in this newspaper the past two days, we knew Battle more from the golfing perspective.
Certainly golf was a pleasant diversion to a man with so much on his mind. It was a game, but he was attuned to preserving the integrity of the game.
I once asked him what he loved about golf.
“The challenge, the outdoors, the beauty,” he said. “The companionship, the camaraderie. What I don’t like is my inability to play it.”
He was being modest, of course. Battle belonged to Farmington, but he also belonged to Augusta National, Seminole Golf Club, Jupiter Island Club and Jack Nicklaus’ Captain’s Club at Muirfield. He was a member of the USGA and the Royal & Ancient of St. Andrews, Scotland.
While he admired manufacturers who pushed the advancement of golf equipment right up to the limit, he also felt it imperative to enforce the limits. That was never more apparent than during his USGA presidency when the PING corporation took the golf traditionalists to tasks over the squared grooves controversy.
Battle’s legal background came into play when he and the USGA defended the equipment issue in PING’s lawsuit over the distance between grooves on the clubface of the company’s irons, the Ping Eye 2.
“Both sides were wrong and it was very difficult for me to get the USGA to admit that it had made a mistake,” Battle said. “It was also pretty hard to get Karsten Solheim (Ping’s CEO), who had a pretty good ego, to admit that he had made mistakes. I just wanted to
resolve the issue in the best interest of the game of golf.”
In Battle’s view, the Solheim’s lawsuit threatened to undermine all of the USGA’s and the R&A’s authority. After a two-year ordeal, the Solheim family withdrew the lawsuit only five minutes before Battle was to conduct his final meeting as president of the USGA.
It was a great victory for the two golf institutions in Solheim acknowledging that the USGA and R&A should be the governing bodies of the game and that manufacturers shouldn’t have any say.
Had the Solheim’s not relinquished, the USGA could have lost the suit, millions of dollars, and who knows what restrictions or lack thereof would have been placed on the manufacturing of golf equipment. Several of his USGA colleagues, including his predecessor, wanted to fight the Solheim family to the bitter end, which would have been a colossal mistake.
The PGA failed to take heed and did lose millions of dollars in a similar suit, in which Battle was later called as a witness. It was a moment that produced a classic line from Battle that will live forever.
“I was called and put under oath to testify in that case,” Battle said. “The first question that the Solheim’s lawyer asked me was, ‘Mr. Battle, do you think Karsten Solheim is a genius?’
“Well, there I sat under oath. And this just popped out: ‘I don’t know, but he sure as hell acts like one.’ That was the last of that question.”
Battle’s wit was legendary, and perhaps what landed him on the USGA’s executive committee in the first place. When the organization came to ask him to serve, he told them he thought the group was somewhat silly, parading around at golf tournaments in neckties and blue blazers in 100-degree heat.
“(USGA president) Bill Campbell told me that’s the reason we want you,” Battle recalled.
Needless to say, the group changed its wardrobe for tournaments contested in the warmer climate conditions to an open neck shirt and short sleeves as the stodginess of the group became a little more user friendly to the common golfer.
“That may have been my major contribution,” Battle chuckled.
Yes, Bill Battle loved his golf.
“If you do it right, it’s a very refreshing experience,” he said of the game. “Frustration isn’t refreshing, but it removes a lot of cobwebs.”
Those who play the game can relate to everything the man said.
We shall miss Bill Battle coming to the Jefferson Cup and handing out the trophy that bears his name to some wide-eyed young champion. Anyone who was on the receiving end of a trophy presentation from Battle should treasure the moment.
We will take solace, however, in that if there’s a golf course in the heavens, then Bill Battle has probably already joined a foursome.
And, if there’s any trophies to be handed out, then Bill was the man to call upon. He had some pretty good experience.