He is much more than simply one of the world’s most successful golf administrators
By John hopkins
The offer was sealed with a handshake on a March night in 1999.
Ian Webb, chairman of the General Committee of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club and chairman of the committee formed to find a successor to then-secretary Sir Michael Bonallack, stretched out his hand to Peter Dawson. “Well done, Peter,” Webb said in his soft voice tinged with a Northern Ireland accent. “But remember one thing. In accepting this job, you are my epitaph. If you make a balls of this, I go down with you. I don’t want you to forget that.”
Dawson, 77, didn’t make a balls of it. His 16-year reign as secretary and then chief executive of the R&A made him one of the world’s most successful golf administrators. He led an organisation that ordains golf’s rules throughout the world except for the USA and Mexico, and administers the Open Championship.
He supervised the introduction of new rules, oversaw club size alterations, made changes to Open courses, delivered rulings at the Masters, addressed the issue of bifurcation of golf, explained the coefficient of restitution (bounce from a driver face) and dealt with the broom handle putter. In 2016 he became chairman of the Official World Golf Ranking, a position he gave up in April of this year.
Johann Rupert, the billionaire chairman of South Africa’s Sunshine Tour, was asked where he would place Dawson in a list of sports administrators. “At the top,” Rupert replied.
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