(Advancing the game) Golf's noble pioneer

 

 

 

Jim McLoughlin

The continuing theme for this column is advancing the game. Accordingly, may I introduce Guido P. Cribari. He has advanced the game of golf in a manner and style that few others have.

Guido Cribari was born in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. (a suburb of New York City) and is a proud graduate of A.B. Davis High School in Mt. Vernon. Guido celebrated his 90th birthday and 60th anniversary in service to golf this past July. Although Guido’s base of operation has always been the greater New York City area, the benefits of his service to golf have been felt throughout the country.

It all started during the 1940s when Guido ascended through the ranks to become the executive sports editor for what is known today in Westchester County as the Gannett Suburban News collective newspapers. The original seed was planted when William F. Fanning, publisher of the Westchester newspapers, and Guido mutually agreed to promote golf as much as they could during a time when no other news outlet throughout the country was giving golf the time of day. Guido picked up the baton on golf’s behalf and carried it forward in a true Olympian manner, as the following events attest:

• As few know, today’s long-standing Westchester County PGA Tour stop began in 1947 in the form of a one-day Pro-Am charity fund-raiser at the Apawamis Club in Rye, N.Y. Guido delivered all the professional Tour talent, including golf’s then idol “Champaign” Tony Lima. Twelve years later, this popular and financially successful Pro-Am graduated to become the PGA Tour’s 72-hole Thunderbird Tournament (later to be successively entitled the Westchester Classic, the Buick Classic and today Barclay’s Classic) at a new site – the world-renowned Westchester Country Club where it resides to this day.

 

 

 

Guido Cribari

During the early days of the Thunderbird Tournament, when the newspapers covering golf throughout the country basically ignored PGA Tour events, Guido was dedicating two to three pages daily to the Thunderbird, right in the back yard of the New York Times. Quickly embarrassed, the New York Times followed suit and expanded its golf coverage to match that of Guido’s Westchester papers. Soon thereafter, all the major newspapers covering PGA Tour events across the country followed similar suit.

As a direct result of this expanded media coverage, the tournament’s popularity grew exponentially – to the point where the subsequently retitled “classics” have not only set the pace for PGA Tour purse sizes through the years, but also generated more than $32 million for local charities, more than any PGA Tour event other than the five-day Bob Hope Classic. Without question, the “classic” was born, grew, flourished and served as a constantly evolving PGA Tour model because it was cultivated within a fertile, unprecedented local media environment – thanks to Guido Cribari.

• During a time when nobody was giving women’s golf the attention it deserved, women’s golf was always given peer attention with men’s golf in Westchester’s newspapers. To help accomplish this parity, Guido founded the Westchester County Tournament of Champions for men and women club/course champions and gave it maximum newspaper coverage. This resulted in many clubs/courses adding women’s championship events to their annual schedules just to be eligible for the champions tournament. With the same commitment he had for everything he did, Guido’s newspapers reported women’s local tournaments with equal fervor and attention as the men’s events – a practice that also was noted and emulated beyond the New York area. As far as Guido was concerned, the game of golf always belonged to and included men and women on equal terms.

• Patty Berg generously and publicly credits Guido for his counsel and support for helping create the initial and sustaining atmosphere that would allow the LPGA to be born in 1951 in Westchester County’s backyard at the Knollwood Country Club.

• When it comes to fund raising and testimonials, Guido Cribari has set a standard that no one will approach, in terms of their frequency, special impact on people and the game of golf. It got so that no charity would approach a fund-raising activity without first asking for Guido’s invaluable assistance, i.e., seeking newspaper support and because Guido is a raconteur without peer – his services as the master of ceremonies for each event. Throughout all these years, it has been estimated that Guido has supported and participated in over 1,000 fund-raising and testimonial dinners and affairs that serviced golf and mankind.

• Because of limited space, I can only briefly reference Guido’s never-ending support for several of his favored golf programs: the Association of Disabled Golfers and its efforts that resulted (with USGA support) in the publication of “A Modification of the Rules of Golf for Golfers with Disabilities,” the U.S. Blind Golfers Association, and the Westchester County Caddie Scholarship Fund (where Guido still serves as a founding director) that has awarded more than 1,600 scholarships worth more than $6 million. The latter two organizations have named prominent annual awards in Guido’s honor.

• Not surprisingly, Guido has received many distinguished local and national awards that are too numerous to mention here. The interesting aspect of this is that Guido, more times than not, has been the initial recipient for many of these awards, which were created for the sole purpose of reflecting Guido’s unprecedented contributions to the game that others have only learned to follow.

Guido is more than an institution. He is the essence of what unselfish human behavior is all about. No one has brought more meaning and dignity to the game of golf in a lifetime than Guido Cribari. Thank you Guido for so much. GCN

Jim McLoughlin is the founder of TMG Golf (www.TMGgolfcounsel.com), a golf course development and consulting firm, and is a former executive director of the GCSAA. He can be reached at golfguide@adelphia.net or 760-804-7339. His previous columns can be found on www.golfcoursenews.com.