STEVE LOVE

Author,  Award-Winning Journalist and Proud Oklahoman

Brian Spurlock/USA TODAY Sports

What might have been a momentous moment in Akron sports history instead offered only another sobering reminder that Rubber City has been diminished and no longer ranks above similar-sized cities as it historically had.

The rungs on the ladder can be slippery and Akron has skidded down a few.

When Phil Mickelson won the 103rd PGA Championship to become the first player over 50—he’ll be 51 in June—to perform such an audacious feat, Akron could have been beside itself in celebration. The uproar might not have matched that raised by pandemic-freed hordes that all but trampled Lefty on the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, South Carolina, but it surely would have equaled the one I heard in my mind and knew must be playing out in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Akron’s redoubtable Firestone Country Club had had an opportunity to remind America and the broader golfing world of the lofty status the city used to hold. It, not Tulsa, could have been playing host next May 19-22 to the Mickelson’s defense of his newest major championship, a sixth that came at a time when 50-plus golfers used to be measured for canes and walkers, not fitted with new-and-improved clubs and told to play on.

A bipartisan Congressional committee—is there such a thing?—may never get to render a verdict on the Jan. 6, 2021, violence perpetrated in the Capitol by sycophantic Donald Trump-supporters who killed and maimed people and damaged the working symbol of American democracy. The PGA of America has proved less squeamish. It acted.

It stripped its 2022 PGA Championship from Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and awarded it to Tulsa’s Southern Hills Country Club, the eighth major championship that the club will have hosted. Firestone was Southern Hills’s competition. Unlike at Kiawah Island, Firestone and Southern Hills sand can be found only in their  bunkers and the wetter hazards don’t contain salt water in the shape of a middle finger.

Is Southern Hills a superior course to Firestone South? I know both courses well, having lived in Tulsa/suburbs twice and worked as a sports columnist for the Tulsa Tribune, lamentably gone now to its grave as have so many newspapers. I was born and mostly grew up 50 miles north of Tulsa in Nowata, the small-town love of my life. I wrote about tournaments at Southern Hills, from major to minor. As counterpoint, I have lived in the Akron area for 40 years and during more than 20 of those worked as a columnist at the Akron Beacon Journal. Firestone might as well have been my second home.

I love both courses, which are old classics with few tricks and great bones. Southern Hills may have moved ahead of Firestone, however, with an $11-million restoration of its championship course in 2018-19. Tulsa World columnist Bill Haisten wrote: “A 1936 model Rolls Royce of a golf course has been turned into a 2019 Rolls Royce.” There also have been many updates to make Firestone South even better since Harvey S. Firestone built the course in 1929 for employees of Firestone Tire & Rubber. I will say that originally the two courses catered to different community strata. A boy from Nowata knew he did not belong on Southern Hills, whereas Firestone working stiffs, including those right off the rubber shop floor, could in the early days test their skill on the best.

Firestone’s history with the PGA Championship dates back more years than does Southern Hills’; the first of three tournaments held at Firestone was played in 1960, the last in 1975, when the great Jack Nicklaus scored a celebrated home-state triumph. Southern Hills has played host not only to more PGA Championships (its fifth will be the 2022 event) but also three U.S. Opens, beginning with Tommy Bolt’s 1958 championship. For years, however, Firestone was a bright stop on the PGA Tour, beginning with the Rubber City Open (1954-1959) and continuing through the American Golf Classic (1961-1976), the World Series of Golf (1962-1998), WGC-Bridgestone Invitational (1999-2001, 2003-2018), and the Senior Players Championship  (2019-2022), which Akron was awarded as a nice consolation prize when Bridgestone moved its World Golf Championship event to Nashville, its headquarters city. The decision damaged Akron and its sports profile and added a perpetual cloud to the horizon.

I used to argue that while cities such as Tulsa, with Southern Hills; Rochester, New York, with Oak Hill; and Birmingham, Alabama with Shoal Creek find themselves in the national spotlight every few years by playing host to a PGA Championship or a U.S. Open, Akron had positioned itself enviably as an annual tournament host. I no longer know what to say. After a while, the body blows take their toll.

As I suggested in one of the 52-week “Wheels of Fortune” special sections that David Giffels and I wrote (and Deb Van Tassel edited) for the Beacon Journal: “For years, the rubber companies—especially Firestone—were the best sports in town. They made Akron not only the Rubber Capital of the World but also a fat dot on the national sports map. That has changed. The dot is smaller now.”

I would now revise that 1997 assessment to . . . the dot could disappear altogether. So much has. Again, from 1997 . . . with feeling that is ongoing:

  • Gone is Firestone Tournament of Champions bowling, most prestigious event on the Professional Bowlers Association Tour. (The PBA, founded in Akron, moved.)
  • Gone is Firestone as primary mover and shaker behind the World Series of Golf
  • Gone even is the Rubber Company’s ownership of Firestone Country Club. (Though ClubCorp, now Firestone C.C. owner, has worked to keep Akron viable.)

Because the PGA of America already had staff positioned in Tulsa to run this week’s KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship and a blueprint for that major that can be adapted to next year’s PGA Championship, Firestone never had a chance.

Even though the 2022 PGA Championship site quickly was a done deal for my real home—Oklahoma—with each excruciating moment of watching Phil Mickelson play himself into Southern Hills’ future caused me to see him stalking Firestone South next May, as he had done when he won the NEC World Series of Golf there in 1996. I couldn’t help but wonder if lightning could strike twice for Phil—and even give Akron a little spark.