Sandy Tatum: The Man Who Saved Harding Park
Frank Donovan "Sandy" Tatum Jr. (1920–2017) never won a professional tournament, never designed a famous course, never held office in San Francisco. Yet no individual did more for the city's public golf. When Tatum died at 96, the USGA remembered him as "a life devoted to golf" — and Harding Park golfers walk past his statue on the way to the first tee.
Stanford, Oxford, and the USGA
Tatum won the NCAA individual championship in 1942 on Stanford teams that took back-to-back national titles in 1941 and 1942 (Stanford Men's Golf). A Rhodes Scholarship took him to Oxford; a Stanford law degree followed, and a long career as a Bay Area attorney (Wikipedia). He rose through the USGA Executive Committee to serve as president in 1978 and 1979.
His most quoted moment came earlier, at the 1974 U.S. Open — the "Massacre at Winged Foot," where Hale Irwin won at seven over par. Asked whether the USGA was trying to humiliate the best players in the world, Tatum, then championship committee chairman, answered: "We are not trying to humiliate the best golfers in the world. We are simply trying to identify who they are." The line has outlived nearly everyone who played that week (Golf Digest).
The parking lot
Approaching his 80th birthday, Tatum returned to Harding Park — the 1925 Watson/Whiting muni where Ken Venturi had learned the game — and found it in disrepair. During the 1998 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club, directly across the road, Harding had been used as a parking lot (TPC Harding Park). For a man who believed municipal golf was the soul of the game, that was intolerable.
The restoration
Tatum rallied local business and political leaders, the USGA, San Francisco Rec & Park and PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem behind a multimillion-dollar restoration, completed in 2003, that returned Harding to championship condition while keeping it a city-owned public course (TPC Harding Park). The project also rebuilt the nine-hole Fleming course as the permanent home of First Tee San Francisco, which Tatum chaired — his insurance that the next Venturi would have somewhere to start.
Vindication came quickly: the 2005 WGC-American Express Championship, the 2009 Presidents Cup, and the 2020 PGA Championship all came to Harding. Before that PGA, a bronze statue of Tatum by sculptor Zenos Frudakis was installed beside the course he saved (Frudakis Studio). The full arc is part of San Francisco's golf history.
