Virginia Golfer May/June 2014 | Page 42

MyTURN Virginia’s finest amateur, Vinny Giles, is among a distinguished list of players who’ve made an indelible impact on the game. Giles won the 1972 U.S. Amateur Championship at Charlotte Country Club. List of Commonwealth Greats Form Impressive ‘Mount Rushmore’ of Virginia Golf I t’s the hot social media question. Amazingly, it has nothing to do with the “evils” of Obamacare (I’m not touching that one), or which Star Trek character your test answers make you most like (Uhura? Me? Really?). Nope, this burning issue begins when someone throws out a subject and the rest of us fill in who we’d put on its Mount Rushmore. For example, I say: Hollywood leading men. You say: Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Paul Newman and Harrison Ford. Virginia golf’s Rushmore appears cut and dry, except that it’s not, which is the beauty of the whole exercise. That, and the fact that there are no wrong answers. Anyway, the chalk response: Sam Snead, Vinny Giles, Curtis Strange and Lanny Wadkins. Snead, of Hot Springs, won 82 official PGA Tour events and claimed seven majors. Even when he failed, it was often spectacularly—take his four runner-up fin \