PGA Tour dedicates ‘Dean Beaman Den’ in honor of former commissioner

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – A British Amateur trophy, the first $500 check won on the PGA Tour, a silver tray from winning the 1960 Masters Par 3 Contest, a key to the city of Fort Worth, Texas, and a gold pen with contracts big and small. They were among the memorabilia of Dean Beaman’s golf career as a player and administrator on the PGA Tour.

On Tuesday, the Tour unveiled the Dean Beaman Den, dedicating the previously known Den space inside Tour headquarters in honor of the former commissioner who made the loose tournament association the envy of the sport from 1974 to 1994.

“It’s very meaningful to see different periods of my life come together in one place,” Beeman said. “The PGA Tour has always been about people – players, staff, partners and fans – and we are grateful to have been a part of its growth. We hope this space reflects the spirit of collaboration and ambition that defined it back then.”

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The moment was also significant for the organization, as the 87-year-old Beeman joins his successor Tim Finchem, current commissioner Jay Monahan and PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolup to unite the tour’s leadership for the first time in four eras. At an all-staff gathering at tour headquarters, Rolup and Monaghan talked about Beeman’s influence and invited them to share stories from three stages of Beeman’s life. Beeman choked up with emotion during his speech.

It was a great occasion, held at the end of the tour’s Town Hall meeting, with all the staff packed onto the main floor and standing in the hallway above. Key cogs (and their spouses) from the Beeman era returned, including Dale Antrum, Mike Bodney, Duke Butler, Bill Calfee, Bob Dixon, Vernon Kelly, Ed Moorhouse, Mike Shea, Tim Smith, Bobby Weed, Sid Wilson, and Charlie Zink.

“Dean has set a standard of leadership that continues to guide this organization,” Monahan said in a prepared statement. “From founding the Players Championship to building a competitive structure that creates opportunities for generations, his vision has fundamentally shaped the PGA Tour. The Dean Beaman Den will help everyone who visits our headquarters understand the foundation on which we continue to build.”

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Even the truest of you who wrote a book about Beeman’s tenure as commissioner learned some new things about him (or remembered something long forgotten). It’s important for our staff to know how touring became the multi-billion dollar business it is today. One of the coolest moments I witnessed was when a current employee visited Beeman and thanked them for everything they had done to develop the blueprint that took the tour from a minor sport that wasn’t as popular as bowling, took it to new heights, and laid it on solid footing.

“I encourage everyone here to find some time over the next few months for themselves to get in there and marvel at all the artifacts there. Bring our partners, bring our friends, bring our families, bring our players, bring everyone there,” Monaghan said at the end of his address to staff. “Without this man’s extraordinary vision, we wouldn’t be here today.”

Truer words have never been spoken. That’s why Dean had better places than the space that doubled as a simulator room, even though in later years an employee would say, in nice alliteration, “See you in the Dean Den.” Why stop at a hideout? But as his biographer, I’m biased. So I asked some of the people who knew him best. Don’t you think the entire tour headquarters should be named after Beeman, I asked Antrum, who spent 22 years on tour.

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“That’s right,” said Mr. Antrum. “When Dean took over the tour’s largest capital asset, it was an IBM Selectric typewriter worth $400.”

“In 1979, we were just throwing things at the wall, and out of that meeting the statistics program and the origins of the senior tour were born. Don January kept his clubs in the closet all winter, pulled them out, showed up in Florida, and was able to win his first event. But just as impressive was the fact that Mike Suchak finished second and won about $14,000. That was the biggest check he’d ever gotten. We knew we were on to something.”

I asked the same question to Sid Wilson, who has been an executive on tour for 26 years.

“This is all thanks to Dean,” Wilson said. “He had a lot of great ideas. If he said the same thing twice in a meeting, we decided we had better run with it.”

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When I asked course designer Bobby Weed, one of Pete Dye’s go-to guys and Dye’s lead designer on the Valley course, who was tasked with the unenviable task of softening the edges of the TPC Stadium course, deemed too harsh by tour pros, he said if Dean was going to do his thing, why not the entire floor?

“What about the whole building?” I said. He and his wife nodded in agreement with the same enthusiasm they had when I asked them to buy me dinner.

Weed co-designed Cannon Ridge Golf Club in Virginia, which opened in 2003, with Beeman. Although he left the tour shortly after Beeman retired, they remain close. “Dean was the father of stadium golf, the father of the Tournament Players Club Network. He didn’t get the credit he deserved. He was never praised,” Weed once told me. “But in my mind, he is the father of everything that has made the tour successful from the ’70s to today. It’s very hard to argue with that. Still, some of today’s tour players probably don’t know how to spell Dean’s name correctly.”

The tour previously offered a room in the TPC Sawgrass clubhouse as the Tim Finchem Library. It seems a little out of order, but it’s also a shame that Finchem’s room is open to the public in a place where golfers make pilgrimages to play on the famous island.^th Security clearance is required to enter the Global Home, but there is also a house of horrors designed by Dye and Beeman. Will enough fans come across this treasure trove of memorabilia, each with its own unique story? (There’s a dedicated Beeman exhibit at TPC Potomac in Avenal Farms, Maryland, not far from where Beeman grew up, and it’s worth checking out if you’re in the area.)

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Not to take anything away from Finchem, but he continued to implement Beaman’s strategy during his tenure, and was fortunate to quickly have Tiger Woods, the world’s most famous athlete, if not the most recognized man on the planet, as Dean’s hand-picked successor. As Peter Jacobsen perfectly put it, “Dean left him a Mercedes with a quarter full tank, so all Tim had to do was keep filling it up.”

I then implemented my idea that the tour should have gone a step further and named the entire Beeman headquarters by Butler. “And there should be a statue of Dean in front of TPC Sawgrass, too,” he said.

Butler provided many of my favorite memories of Dean in my book. That includes the All-Timer at a 1999 Jacksonville Jaguars game that both players watched in the Tour Box. Butler believed that without Beaman, Jacksonville would not have won an NFL franchise in 1995. Butler claims it was the tour that put the city on the map.

“Anyone who knows Dean knows that he accepts compliments reluctantly,” Butler said. “He had a little smile on his face and said, ‘Maybe.’

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“He thought for a moment and added, “Maybe it’s because of me that the Mayo Clinic is here.” That’s the proudest thing I’ve ever heard him say. And he’s right. ”

The man who put Jacksonville on the map deserves better than a hideout. But let’s leave it to Smith, Finchem’s former right-hand man who brought him into the team, to come up with the best explanation for the tour’s homage to Dean, who is also in a room with a simulator. “Did they even realize they were here?” he joked to Dean.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: PGA Tour honors Dean Beaman with new headquarters, but he deserves more