[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 1718-1720]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   CHAMPIONS OF GOLF--THE FORD FAMILY

 Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I want to share with my 
colleagues an article in Golf Journal about the Ford family from my 
hometown of Charleston, South Carolina. Since 1927, the Ford family has 
won a number of golf tournaments including 10 Azalea Invitationals, 10 
South Carolina or Carolina Amateur crowns, 20-some city titles and 50 
club championships. I am proud to recognize this talented family, and I 
ask that this article be reprinted in the Record.
  The article follows:

[[Page 1719]]



                  [From Golf Journal, Jan.-Feb., 2003]

                            Model Tee Fords

                          (By Rich Skyzinski)

       The Fords of Charleston, S.C., much like the Kennedys of 
     Massachusetts or the Baldwins of Hollywood, have a family 
     tradition. For nearly a century, one generation after another 
     has been reared by a philosophy handed down much like an old 
     family recipe. The motto on the family crest ought to read, 
     If you want to be good at something, play golf.
       Role models have never been lacking. If any Ford 
     demonstrated a desire for golf, he or she didn't need to look 
     far for inspiration or instruction. Good golf genes have 
     blessed generations, dating most notably to the second of 
     five men named Frank Cordes Ford. Now 98, Frank Sr. (actually 
     the second FCF) was the most accomplished of the Fords, and 
     he can prove it. He can still rattle off a lot of the 
     stories, in rapid-fire fashion: the games with Bob Jones, 
     Harry (Lighthorse) Cooper, Henry Picard and Craig Wood; how 
     he won a dollar bill (signed and framed) from Horton Smith; 
     the day he one-upped the great Ben Hogan by hitting a 4-wood 
     to within eight inches of the hole after Hogan hit a 3-wood 
     shot to eight feet from virtually the same fairway location.
       If ever a forebear set a standard for his progenies to 
     shoot at, it's Granddaddy (Frank Sr.). He made sure any 
     challenger was in it for the long haul. How else could you 
     top his record of seven South Carolina Amateur crowns (and 
     three runner-up finishes), four Azalea Invitational 
     victories, 11 Charleston City titles and 18 Country Club of 
     Charleston championships?
       ``The Ford family is known, certainly in the city and 
     probably around the state, because of golf,'' says Bert 
     Atkinson, 1991 U.S. Mid-Amateur runner-up and a C.C. of 
     Charleston member. ``I think it's probably always been that 
     way.''
       If you are a Charleston golfer, at one time or another, a 
     Ford has beaten you. Since 1927, family members have won 10 
     Azaleas, 10 South Carolina or Carolinas Ams, 20-some city 
     titles and 50 club championships, give or take a few. An 
     extra room would be needed for all the junior, mid-amateur 
     and team trophies.
       How did this all start? Tommy Ford, one of Granddaddy's 
     three sons, claims it was not planned.
       ``No family ever gets together and says, `Here is what 
     we're going to do,''' says the 58-year-old. ``It comes to 
     you; you deal with it. If you become good, you try to live up 
     to it. When you play well, the headlines start to reinforce 
     this idea that you're living up to your dad's records. And 
     all of a sudden you are, not that you ever tried. But you're 
     fulfilling a pattern that started 60 years ago.''
       Granddaddy speaks from the other side of the equation. ``I 
     think they saw the fun I got out of golf,'' he allows, ``and 
     maybe some of them wanted to play because they thought it 
     would be fun. Most of them worked pretty hard at it.''
       It isn't ``a guy thing,'' either. Granddaddy's mother, Anne 
     (Sissie) Ford, who moved to Charleston following her 
     husband's death in 1918, won the C.C. of Charleston Women's 
     championship in 1927. A year later, she lost in the final to 
     her daughter, Anne Ford Melton.
       And family members also are quick to credit Granddaddy's 
     wife, Betsy. She was a caring, nurturing mentor who made the 
     game what it should be for kids: fun. She also was an 
     accomplished player, collecting a half-dozen club 
     championships and two city titles.
       Betsy, who died in 1998, and her husband played different 
     roles in advancing the family tradition. She had a deep love 
     for the game and passed it down to scores of youngsters. She 
     helped her three sons and any grandchildren or great-
     grandchildren who wanted to play the game and was involved in 
     many club and city youth programs. Once a youngster became 
     proficient enough to break 80, Granddaddy would begin to 
     share his passion and try to light their competitive fires.
       ``I don't remember any pressure or push, other than the 
     brilliance of a mother, who believed that we should know a 
     little about the game at the age we were,'' Tommy says. 
     ``There was a nudge towards lessons during the summer, but it 
     was also, `Go hunting. Do whatever you want to do' from 
     her.''
       Sarah (Mahony) Ford Rijswijk, Frank Jr.'s widow, adds, 
     ``She said, `If you marry into the Ford family, dear, you'd 
     better play golf.' . . . I thought they were a little nuts 
     because I played tennis. But I took up golf and Betsy was the 
     one who led me into the game. She was the most wonderful 
     teacher. She had a beautiful swing, classic, and was one of 
     the few people I know who was really interested in your game, 
     everybody's game. She really helped everybody. She was the 
     consummate golfer.''
       Betsy's favorite classroom was the par-3 11th hole at the 
     Country Club of Charleston. The hole is a classic Seth Raynor 
     design with the green elevated some 10 or 12 feet and sharp 
     drop-offs on each side. Betsy, a.k.a. Granny, would take a 
     youngster to the bottom of the slope in front of the green 
     and show them how to chip with a 7-iron. They would practice 
     that shot over and over until the youngster could bump a shot 
     into the hillside with an artisan's touch.
       It's been more than 40 years since Frank III was tutored 
     there by his grandmother but, he says, ``I remember that to 
     this day. She taught me to chip, and I've never chipped with 
     a wedge or a sand wedge like so many guys do. I'm going to 
     grab my 7-iron because that's what she taught me.''
       Even if a youngster had only a passing interest in the 
     game, Betsy made her mark. Billy Ford, her middle son, 
     recalls going out for a round with his son, Billy Jr., whom 
     he thought was a novice, but evoked a double take with his 
     confident practice swing on the first tee.
       ``Where'd you learn that?'' his father asked.
       ``Granny,'' he replied proudly. ``Granny taught me.''
       Betsy rarely commented on any of the youngsters' successes, 
     but they could sense her pride when they did well.
       ``She could instill desire, which I think is a hard thing 
     to do,'' says Sarah. ``I won my first club championship and I 
     beat her, and I think she was happier about it than I was.''
       Granddaddy himself was introduced to the game at age 15, by 
     his mother and an uncle who lived in Canada. But he learned 
     swing basics from a group of African-American caddies in 
     Summerville, S.C. ``They used to say, `This is how you hold 
     the club. This is the way you stand,''' he recalls.
       He developed a tendency to sway during his backswing 
     instead of pivoting, but there was little anyone could do to 
     change this; after all, the swing worked for him. There was a 
     time when the club's head professional was Henry Picard, 
     later a Masters and PGA Championship winner. Picard had what 
     was considered one of the finest swings in the game, but not 
     even he could convince Granddaddy.
       ``He said, `I'm going to get you out of this swaying,''' he 
     remembers. ``I said, `Now Henry, listen. Don't try to give me 
     any lessons because you can do whatever you want, but I'm not 
     going to change my swing.'
       ``He said, `Okay,' and never again told me how to do it.''
       Granddaddy carried that insistence with him to the cement 
     and concrete business. Tommy tells a story of his dad trying 
     to sell a prospective customer cement at 20 cents a bag, only 
     to be told, ``I don't need any cement.'' Ford lowered the 
     price to 15 cents a bag and, receiving the same reply, went 
     to 10 cents and then to a nickel.
       ``The customer finally said he couldn't afford not to buy 
     it at that price and Dad got a customer for life,'' Tommy 
     concludes. ``He was the same way in golf as in business. He 
     wanted to make every sale, and he wanted to win every time he 
     stepped onto the golf course.''
       Granddaddy confined most of his playing to a local and 
     regional level because he had a business to run. He qualified 
     for the only U.S. Amateur he entered, in 1934 at The Country 
     Club in Brookline, Mass., losing in the third round. He 
     played until he was 90, then gave away his clubs one day 
     after he shot 45 for nine holes. Atkinson, who played with 
     him that day, remembers the exchange afterward.
       ``I said, `That's pretty good playing, Mr. Ford.''' 
     Atkinson says. ``He put his arm around me and said, `Yeah, 
     but if I was 30 years younger I would have beaten you guys 
     butt good.'''
       None of Granddaddy's three sons were as passionate about 
     the game as their father. Tommy blossomed into an 
     accomplished player later in life, with seven club 
     championships and a handful of senior titles. Billy was a 
     good junior player and captain of the University of North 
     Carolina golf team in 1953, but hasn't competed much since. 
     Frank Jr., who died at age 44 in a 1974 Eastern Airlines 
     plane crash, played little competitive golf.
       If the old man's competitive fires were passed down, most 
     of them found their way to Frank III, who has qualified for 
     nearly a dozen U.S. Amateurs and four U.S. Mid-Amateurs, and 
     his son, Cordes (Frank Cordes Ford IV), a 26-year-old law 
     student at the University of South Carolina with his own 
     collection of trophies. In 1996, Cordes completed a rare 
     double when he won the Carolinas Amateur a week after Frank 
     III took the state am. ``They're the two that have the desire 
     to go out there,'' says Sarah, ``They want to win.''
       By contrast, Billy says, ``I'm not trying to win anything 
     anymore, just have a nice golf day.''
       Which isn't to say the patriarch's presence has not been 
     felt. Billy once was about to close out a match at Biltmore 
     Forest Country Club in Asheville, N.C., when Granddaddy came 
     up to him, put his arm around the teenager and said, ``Son, 
     this is where I won my war bond.''
       ``Everything's fine. I've got 20 feet for birdie, but I got 
     it back to here,'' says Billy, imitating a putting stroke, 
     ``and just locked; couldn't move it. It exploded in my hand, 
     went past the hole about 15 feet. I three-putted that, snap-
     hooked it on 16, hit a limb coming out of the woods on 17. 
     Before I knew it, I went from 5 up with five to play to 1 up 
     with one to play. It's funny now, but I was in tears then.''
       Because of the family's countless successes, there's an 
     assumption throughout the Carolinas that Fords should be 
     accomplished players simply because of their last name.
       ``I felt like I was supposed to play better than whatever I 
     did,'' says Billy. ``There was certain pressure on me, 
     sure.''

[[Page 1720]]

       Tommy, who's a decade younger than his brother, adds: 
     ``Your identity is golf, because you grew up seeing golf and 
     that's what you gravitated to. But I maintain you do the best 
     you can for your own expectations, not necessarily for this 
     family tradition thing. I never wanted to win tournaments to 
     extend my father's streak.''
       Tommy is said to have the best swing in the family. People 
     in Charleston often call him ``sweet-swingin' Tommy Ford.''
       ``The `sweet-swingin' does not always live up to people's 
     expectations,'' he says. ``They know I'm Frank Ford's son so 
     they think I am good. They remember what you've accomplished. 
     You carry that expectation with you more so because of Daddy, 
     Billy, Frank--the trickle-down effect of the background of 
     winning. People view us as winners because that's what they 
     remember Daddy doing, Frank doing, Billy doing. They expect 
     us to be hard to beat. That's a little bit difficult 
     sometimes.''
       Frank III's sister, Anne Ford Strickland, lived near 
     Winston-Salem, N.C., for years and says the difference in the 
     pressure she felt was palpable. ``I never felt anything up 
     there,'' she insists. ``Part of it may have been because I 
     had my married name. people didn't know me by Ford.''
       The Fords have never called attention to their exploits. 
     Sometimes, even family members are unaware of them. Anne 
     played in a C.C. of Charleston girls' program with Beth 
     Daniel, who went on to become an LPGA Hall of Famer and a 
     favorite of Anne's son David. Looking through Anne's 
     scrapbooks, David came upon a newspaper clipping about his 
     mom's victory over Daniel in a junior club championship in 
     the mid-1960s.
       ``You beat Beth Daniel?'' he asked, eyes widening.
       What do you expect? She is a Ford.

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