Brundred's Legacy Leaves Permanent Mark

Tiger Will Be Missed, But Brundred Should Not Be Forgotten as Champion of Golf in Washington

There will be thousands of words spilled this week about the absence of Tiger Woods at his signature golf tournament. The second annual AT&T National -- Hosted by Tiger Woods -- will go on without the host at Congressional Country Club and people will wonder: If a golf tournament crowns a champion and he isn't Tiger Woods, is it really a golf tournament?

In truth, it is, and those who wring their hands about Woods' absence might want to remember the fact that golf tournaments were played here for 27 years before Woods deigned to put his name on the event and, thus, come and play.

If not for those first 27 years, if not for the fact that a tournament with few glamour players competing year in and year out prospered anyway, Woods and the PGA Tour probably would not have come here in 2007. The thinking was this: if a tournament that has produced champions like Tom Byrum, Grant Waite, Tom Scherrer and Frank Lickliter -- none of whom had won before or have won since, all of whom have been back to qualifying school -- could draw huge crowds, then this must be a pretty good golf town.

One man, more than anyone else, deserves the credit for keeping the tour thriving in Washington during those years when players mocked the golf course, the tour jerked it from one lousy date to another, and few stars bothered to show.

That man is Ben Brundred Jr.

Ben won't be at Congressional this week either. He died, very suddenly, in late March at the age of 83. The crowds at Congressional will moan about Woods's absence. They should mourn Brundred's. A plaque, with his name on it, will be unveiled on the first tee on Wednesday -- a fitting tribute, one that would no doubt embarrass Ben. He was never someone who liked to call attention to himself.

"I'm like a referee or an umpire," he once said. "If we get through the week without anyone wanting to talk to me, that means things are going pretty well."

Ben was the tournament director for the Kemper Open; the FBR Open and the Booz Allen Classic -- the names the Washington event went through from 1980 through 2006. When Kemper had to pull its support as title sponsor in 2003, it was Ben who convinced FBR to step in. Then, when FBR decided it preferred a winter event in a warm climate (Phoenix), he went out and found Booz-Allen.

The tour's decision to pull out of Washington in 2006 had nothing to do with the way the event was being run or with attendance or corporate support. It had to do with Booz Allen being unwilling to commit $48 million (over six years) when the tour was unwilling to commit to a decent date or even a consistent date. Ralph Shrader, the CEO of Booz Allen, wouldn't be blackmailed, so the tour walked. It was only the fact that the tournament in Denver lost ITS title sponsor that brought about the marriage of Woods, the tour, AT&T and Congressional in 2007.

On the surface, Ben had little to do with the arrival of Woods and company in Washington. But in reality, he played a major role -- albeit behind the scenes. Woods did not want to hold an event with his name on it at Avenel, the tour-owned TPC course where the Kemper-FBR-Booz-Allen was held every year (except 2005) from 1987 to 2006.

Avenel's reputation with the pros was probably best described years ago by Davis Love III when he said: "It isn't a bad golf course ¿ unless you have to drive by Congressional to get there."

Which you do -- the golf courses are less than two miles apart. The tour moved what was then the Kemper Open from Congressional to Avenel in 1987 in part because it was rent-free but also because the members at Congressional weren't all that thrilled with giving up their club for a week every year.