An interview with Walter Driver Jr., President of the United States Golf Association

“Dialogue with manufacturers does not guarantee agreement,” says USGA President Walter Driver Jr. “They are for-profit entities trying to maximize profits. The USGA is a non-profit organization with a mission to protect the principles of the game. Some tension will probably be inevitable.”

New York City, New York: A West Texas family was dealing with disappointment 45 years ago, feeling the brand of loss tightly knit families invariably experience when they confront disappointment. Bad news had been delivered by an examining doctor. It had to do with the family’s son and brother, Walter Driver Jr.—his tennis career had ended.

	Walter Driver Jr., President, United States Golf Association

“I can remember when tennis was out of the picture—kind of wandering around—it was almost like we’d had a pet die,” Walter Driver Jr. remembers today, as he sits in the Manhattan office of Goldman, Sachs & Co., the global investment firm he joined last year as Chairman- Southeast. “Everybody was upset. This was a great disappointment in the family.”

Time passes. Attitudes change. New paths are explored. Walter Driver Jr. turned a setback into an adventure.

His move to golf begot a splendid playing career, an offer of a golf scholarship to Stanford, trips to the British Amateur and to the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championships, followed by a steadily evolving experience in golf’s organizational galaxy, which led him to the United States Golf Association, and this year, to his capstone moment when Driver was elected USGA president.

He is a 61-year-old lawyer of significant achievement who now heads a golf body that oversees the United States Open, as well as 10 amateur championships. The USGA, we should be reminded, tracks the handicaps of more than five million golfers; has committed $65 million in the effort to make golf more accessible and affordable; establishes and enforces the Rules of Golf; is a leader in turf-grass research and is publishing a landmark study on golf’s environmental impact and how open spaces can best be preserved; employs more than 300 people; and is currently expanding Golf House, in Far Hills, New Jersey, to include the Arnold Palmer Center for Golf History. The Palmer Center is expected to open in 2008 and will double Golf House’s existing capacity.

	Walter Driver Jr. (left) with his son and caddie, Walter Driver III, at the AT&T Pro-Am in Pebble Beach.

Driver, a handsome man who dresses accordingly, is smiling on this winter morning in Lower Manhattan in spite of his merciless schedule and responsibilities. He regularly travels to New York from Atlanta, his hometown since he and his wife, Bettie, married 35 years ago. Atlanta was where his law career began as an attorney for King & Spalding, where he would eventually head a firm of 800 lawyers. It was in Atlanta where his golf career continued to flourish on the amateur level, first at East Lake Golf Club, and then at Peachtree Golf Club, where he would become a two-time club champion en route to his British Amateur and U.S. Mid-Amateur experiences.

He is an ambitious man determined to follow through on a progressive USGA agenda. Making golf the game of opportunity for many who feel excluded because of cost or golf-course access is a goal, as well as a target, for the USGA’s $65 million in seed money devoted to bringing golf to the masses.

“We need to provide better access at a lower price,” Driver says, realizing his personal golf story is one that could be repeated, in variations, throughout America and the world. “We need to encourage family support. If mom and dad don’t support their child’s interest in the game, odds are the child will not become a golfer.”

In listening to his words, you become party to a flashback. You grasp the origins of a man’s golf career, circa 1961, in a west Texas town separated from Mexico by the Rio Grande River.

It was an eminently smaller world then. El Paso, Texas, which is farther west than Denver, had wonderful character and charm in the view of a Driver family that had known El Paso as home for generations.

But in that desert town, at that time, when tennis had been such an integral part of a family and its identity, it could be difficult to see how another game could bring opportunity and gratification to a 16-year-old boy whose tennis career had just been declared dead.

Walter Driver Jr. had broken his arm playing football. The fracture was missed on an X-ray and when Driver continued to play tennis endlessly, as was the family habit, his arm became so inflamed the physician had no choice but to tell a teenage boy to stay away from his racquet. Perhaps forever.

It was a blow to his father, Walter Driver Sr., who had been a standout competitive tennis player (Junior Davis Cup team, NCAA Doubles Champion, and an accomplished player in the Southwestern Tennis Assn.) and who was grooming his son to be a champion.

It forced an adolescent boy who loved sports to try the game his father had been playing for a year: golf.

His Discovery of a New World
Walter Driver Jr. was good, very good, at golf. He took no instruction other than reading Ben Hogan’s Five Easy Lessons, but within a year was a scratch player, which speaks of talent so natural we’re all entitled to a moment’s jealousy.

Then would come the offer of a golf scholarship to Stanford, and to a distinguished amateur career that paralleled his ascent in law (after receiving a degree in political science from Stanford he entered the University of Texas law school) and business. All of this because of a broken arm, a bad X-ray, and subsequent aggravation of an injury that became so bad Walter Driver Jr. could not even raise a fork to his mouth at dinnertime.

Driver (left) with Former USGA President Fred Ridley at the 2005 U.S. Amateur Championship.

Try and tell the USGA president today that opportunity has no relationship with setbacks.

Driver, on this winter morning, could sit in his comfortable 22nd-floor office on Wall Street and smile at fate and its capacity to surprise.

“I wanted to play something,” Driver said, whimsically, remembering his life-changing shift to golf. “It was a family crisis that I couldn’t play tennis anymore, because that meant I would never be as fine a player as my father was—which was going to be the case in any event.”

And, so, the broken arm and its repercussions became “a nice, graceful out of a circumstance” that was already creating some anxiety for a son who saw little hope that he would become the national tennis figure his father had dreamed about.

The younger Walter Driver—his father was a home builder—became so absorbed by the game of golf that he could be just as happy playing with teens his age, or by himself, regardless of the season or weather. There was that memorable New Year’s Day when he was still in high school. Snow covered the ground in El Paso, which was not the most common climactic event in West Texas. Driver grabbed his clubs and headed for the golf course anyway. Patches of snow were no hassle if you could still hit the ball and enjoy some sunshine.

Within a year of taking up the game he was shooting par—or better. Driver played in the Texas State Junior Championship scant months after turning 17, joining three young cohorts on a train ride to San Antonio where they would be lodged in a motel across the street from Breckenridge Municipal Park Golf Course, the tournament’s site. It was big-league stuff for a teenager in the summer of 1962.

Next for Driver was Stanford. There was enough of a golf scholarship offered to make undergraduate years possible at a San Francisco Bay-area educational landmark. Summer jobs in heavy construction paid other bills until law school, at the University of Texas, followed.

Driver had, by that time, experienced one of golf’s enduring graces. The game promotes friendship. After his parents joined El Paso Country Club—at about the time Walter Jr. discovered the game—a boy still in his teens saw how golf could function as the perfect venue for forging relationships.

He gained greater insight there as months and years passed, and as his skills made it steadily more comfortable for Walter Driver Jr. to join older men on the tee. It is easy to see, in 2006, how those days and times affected a young man’s future place in a game so intertwined with human relations.

He remembers, in the same way, a friendship enjoyed while playing golf with the son of El Paso Country Club’s PGA professional, Jack Hardin, the man who later crafted a folding golf club that astronaut Alan Shepard used to swat his famous shot on the moon.

And Then There Was Bettie
They met on a blind date during law school, her first week at Texas Law School, and dated until both had graduated and each was facing career choices: Bettie had a job waiting for her in Dallas. Walter had just joined King & Spalding.

	Walter and Bettie Driver pose for a candid shot in his office.

“Bettie told me she was going to go to Dallas unless we got married, and I said, ‘Okay, let’s get married.’” Driver recalls, laughing at the simplicity of a moment so profound. “It was a great thing for her to do. And I did it, and I’m very happy we got married.”

It was December 1970. Bettie and Walter were young professionals so broke they had to buy their wedding rings at a pawn shop. It wasn’t much better as they settled into home in Atlanta—a rented, two-room apartment in a house basement.

Bettie was clerking for a federal judge. Walter was busy with King & Spalding, which represents international clients involved in all types of legal matters.

Golf Was Never Far Away
Even on his wedding day, Walter and his groomsmen and some friends squeezed in 18 holes a few hours before vows were exchanged. Not long after the honeymoon, Driver joined East Lake Golf Club, the home of Bobby Jones, which was having such financial trouble Driver was able to join for a few hundred dollars.

He became the club’s lawyer and entire greens committee and for one year functioned as East Lake’s answer to a golf course superintendent.

“They got about what they paid for,” Driver cracks.

He also was introduced, seriously, to golf’s executive world. First up: a five-year stint as general counsel to the Georgia State Golf Association, which carried a spot on the executive committee.

Brian Harman walking left of Walter Driver who greets player Anthony Kim at the 2005 Walker Cup.

Next in line was the 1989 Walker Cup, played at Peachtree Golf Club, which Driver had joined. He was on the event’s steering committee, charged with taking care of the competing teams. This was the place where he would meet golf leaders from overseas and would gain his first introductions to USGA officials. It was also an experience that taught him how essential and valuable were the volunteers who make golf tournaments such exquisite examples of teamwork and pride.

There was only one casualty as Driver began balancing family obligations (he and Bettie have three children: daughters Eleanor Post, 31, and Anna Wick, 28; and a 24-year-old son, Walter III) with increasingly broad duties in golf’s administrative world.

He was playing less golf.

A man who competed in the British Amateur in 1973 and ’85, and in the U.S. Mid-Amateur in 1982 and ’84, was saying goodbye to tournaments and to a gratifying amateur experience.

“Work kept accelerating, family needs kept accelerating,” Driver remembers. “Then, there was the volunteer work for the Georgia State Golf Association, and I just found that competitive golf was going to be toward the bottom of the list.”

Driver makes it clear the decision to scale back was his—not Bettie’s. There are countless golfing husbands who long to hear the words Walter heard from his wife.

“She’s been very tolerant of golf all the way through,” he says, with a grateful smile. “She’s my biggest supporter and cheerleader, and she’s always said that golf made me happy and, therefore, that was a good thing for me.”

United States Golf Association
The same could be said for Driver’s developing experience with the USGA. He worked as USGA general counsel from 1997-98, and was later appointed to the executive committee. Tenures as treasurer, and as vice president, followed before last year’s election as president.

He is USGA president at a time when equipment issues are significant, sensitive, and challenging. There are long-standing concerns about golf balls and distance. There are debates about driver heads and their construction. There are manufacturers who make impassioned cases for keeping the USGA out of technology’s way, and there is an organization charged with maintaining golf’s integrity, the USGA, which believes it must hold a different view.

Into this discussion steps Walter Driver Jr., who has his own philosophy crafted from 45 years of playing the game, and from three decades of being involved in golf’s organizational galaxy.

“We have good and effective communications with the manufacturers,” Driver says. “We work very hard at maintaining this communication. And any time we have a proposed rules change, we always have a notice and comment period so that all the manufacturers can have a chance for input. We take those comments seriously—and we have changed proposals based on those comments. So there’s always an open dialogue with the manufacturers.

“Dialogue does not guarantee agreement. It is, ultimately, the USGA’s job to decide where lines are drawn. Golf is an eclectic game but a sport that has never been good at ambiguity.”

Walter Driver at the final round of the 2005 U.S. Open.

Driver, though, can appreciate the manufacturers and their points of view.

“They are for-profit entities trying to maximize their return to their shareholders,” he says, speaking of basic business concerns. “And to do that, they need to sell as much golf equipment as they can at profitable prices. And we are a non-profit organization whose sole mission is to protect the integrity and the principles of the game.

“Now, to some extent, some tension is probably inevitable between those two fundamental goals. The other point is that each manufacturer has its own position, based on its relative strength or weakness in the market. If they are strong in one category, they want to protect that category, and they don’t care so much about the others, and vice-versa for other manufacturers in the market. So it is not common for the manufacturers to be unanimous in any position, because it depends upon what they perceive to be in their own commercial best interest. That’s their job.”

He also knows what manufacturers—and plenty of ardent golfers—say to notions that technology has distorted the game. Handicaps have dropped by one stroke during the past decade, a minimal decrease in the minds of pro-technology advocates who may argue that the USGA has become overly concerned about golf-ball distances and driver-head capabilities.

Walter Driver counters by saying that it is not the five-times-a-year golfer who is gaining advantages that could, potentially, impinge upon golf’s integrity. The threat lies with the more accomplished amateur, he says, as well as with the player on Tour, where driving distances have increased 4.4 yards since 2002.

“What you saw is the average distance on Tour gained about a yard a year for a long period of time, and then, in the late ‘90s, when large-headed metal woods came in, there was a jump, and then there was an even larger jump when the Tour players switched from wound balata balls to multi-layer solid balls,” Driver explains. “And the third major component is faster swing-speed by the players. They started working out, they became more fit. This all happened at the same time agronomy had become better, leading to fairways that were cut shorter.

“The upshot is that there are now many more people on the PGA Tour who are averaging more than 300 yards in distance. And there is a concern that many of the courses which have traditionally been regarded as the best courses in the country cannot stand up to people driving the ball over 300 yards.” Equipment is a hot-button issue, Driver realizes, more conducive to grille-room debates than other issues the USGA must address in acting as steward over a game so vast.

He aspires to “see the USGA continue to run the very best championships in golf,” not only with respect to the three U.S. Opens, but extending throughout the 10 amateur championships the USGA oversees. In that spirit, Driver says the USGA will attempt to better-compensate host clubs.

Helping a largely volunteer staff generate heavier revenues is the thought behind a best-practices book and CD—a championship operations manual—which is forwarded to host clubs years before a tournament arrives.

	Driver with Jim Reinhart at last year's U.S. Senior Open.

Driver also wants to work more closely with the USGA’s allies such as: the PGA of America, and the Royal and Ancient, both of which can benefit in step with the USGA in making their work and efforts better understood by golfers worldwide.

He wants the USGA to grow even more rapidly than it has in recent years, when its membership expanded from 700,000 to more than 1 million. A $25 membership brings a nifty return to golfers who sign on: a U.S. Open cap, as well as the USGA’s frequent newsletters, which replaced the previous quarterly magazine. Take a look at the 2005 year-ending newsletter on equipment to understand how well the new communication vehicle is working.

Driver comes by a natural appreciation for the newsletter. He is a reader. He has his own golf library, more than 100 golf books—he has read each one—received as gifts, or volumes that have been personally purchased through the years. The collection is bound to grow, he says with a chuckle, as long as Bettie puts up with the expansion.

It is through reading, studying, and absorbing, Driver says, that his role, and the USGA’s, can be enhanced as golf’s challenges become increasingly sophisticated and complex. He realizes there are opinions as numerous as the people who tuck a tee into the ground and whack at a golf ball. It is the qualifying thought he is concerned about—that opinions and facts enjoy a relationship at once harmonious and independent.

Driver smiles wanly as he remembers one famous American’s words. They resonated in a particular way with an oncoming USGA president.

“There’s a quote from Alan Greenspan, the retired chairman of the Federal Reserve,” Driver recalled. “He said every American is entitled to his or her own opinion, but everyone is not entitled to his or her own facts.

“Our job is to make sure that we, as the USGA, have all the facts, and that we can use all those facts to make really good decisions for the game of golf.”

Look for more facts to fuel more decisions during Driver’s two years as USGA president. On that dusty Texas golf course 45 years ago, a man endeavored to hit it straight. The personal credo continues.