With the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow this month, a Charlotte native and longtime sportswriter reflects on the city’s growth as a sports town
On a warm Sunday in mid-June 1969, Arnold Palmer stood in the 18th fairway in the final round of the Kemper Open at Quail Hollow Country Club surrounded by what felt like every beating sports heart in Charlotte.
I was a starstruck 12-year-old, caught up in the tingle of the moment, Palmer having charged into contention at the very end, his gallery swelling through the early afternoon until it ringed the 18th hole, seven or eight deep in places.
My father, a sports columnist for the now long-gone Charlotte News at the time, took me to the Kemper Open every day and let me hopscotch around Quail Hollow, following my favorite players while marveling at how good they were at a game I was just learning. A few years later, I wore the official tournament volunteer uniform while doing my duty keeping the press tent neat by sportswriter standards. The tent really was a tent back then, with whirling fans to move the summer heat around.
The professional golfers I watched—Palmer, Tom Weiskopf, Miller Barber, and Gary Player among them— were stars, but the sports universe was just a fraction of what it would become.
The 18th hole at Quail Hollow was in the same place it is today, but it’s since been redesigned to be more dramatic, more of a theater. The creek that runs down the 18th hole now wasn’t there in 1969; that’s what happens when a course designer with a healthy budget is given the freedom to create.
There were no corporate chalets lining the left side of the 18th hole then, just a lumpy, grassy slope where hundreds crowded together, hoping for an umbrella of shade from the oak trees while straining to see Palmer finish.
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