Virginia’s
HONOR ING
A celebration of the inaugural
Virginia Golf Hall of Fame class,
and how the Hall became a
virtual reality by ARTHUR UTLEY
THE VIRGINIA GOLF HALL
OF FAME IS A REALITY.
It won’t have bricks and mortar, or
a street address. But the Hall of Fame
website will soon become a virtual reality,
a place for the world to visit and learn
about the players and history of golf in the
Commonwealth.
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The six-man inaugural class was selected
and announced last summer. The five golfers—Vinny Giles, Chandler Harper, Sam
Snead, Curtis Strange and Lanny Wadkins—
are legends in the game. So too, when it
comes to the Rules of Golf, is Clyde Luther,
a nationally-known volunteer rules official.
The website is still in the development
stage, but the plan is for it to be up and
running in conjunction with the induction
ceremony that will be held in May at The
Omni Homestead Resort in Hot Springs.
Here’s how the Virginia Golf Hall of Fame
grew from an idea to a reality.
Gib Palmer, immediate past president
of the Virginia State Golf Association,
V I R G I N I A G O L F E R | M A R C H /A P R I L 2 0 1 6
had an idea as he was working his way
through the ranks of the VSGA Board of
Directors. Other state golf associations
and organizations had halls of fame. He
wondered why Virginia, blessed with an
abundance of golf tradition and history,
didn’t have one.
Palmer took the idea to the VSGA board,
and it was incorporated in the VSGA’s LongRange Plan. Palmer put it on his to-do list
when he became president in January 2014.
“I have some ideas on how I think it
would work. I think at least by the end of
my two-year term, if not sooner, we will
have created this Hall of Fame to respect
the tradition and great history of the game
vsga.org
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