Happy Birthday Golf Channel!!

28 years ago, co-founders Joe Gibbs and Arnold Palmer threw the ceremonial switch to turn on the television channel that would enrich the lives of golfers and golf fans everywhere.

Go celebrate. As golf icon Al Czervik would say: "Let's Dance."

Golf fans finally had a channel they could call their own. Back then, not every round of the PGA Tour, LPGA Tour and the Senior Tour PGA Tour Champions was televised. The American audience had never seen live coverage of the European DP World Tour. But The Golf Channel provided it all.
Intrepid reporters and herculean cameramen were dispatched to every major American golf tour. For the first time ever, golf devotees could enjoy early round highlights and stories from every tour, every week.

Up close and personal interviews with players before, during and after competition provided insights which fans could only hope for previously.

Golf Channel provided coverage of the many USGA National Championships that had been ignored woefully for decades. There was live play-by-play coverage of the WAPL. Do you remember -- had you ever heard of -- the US Women's Amateur Public Links Championship?

In June, 1995, Jo Jo Robertson defeated Elizabeth Drambour, 3 and 1 to win her first of two WAPL Championships. Yours truly was on the call of Golf Channel's live coverage at Hominy Hill Golf Club in New Jersey.

The world of golf was so different more than 28 years ago. Now there is an entire generation of golfers who have never known life without Golf Channel.

On the PGA Tour, 53 of the circuit's fully exempt players are 28-years-old or younger. Four members of that Golf Channel Generation have won major championships.

The numbers on the LPGA Tour are even more eye-opening. Every single woman who finished in the top 10 of last year's Race to the CME Globe was born after the birth of Golf Channel. Of those top ten ladies, 6 are major championship winners. They obviously have an unfair advantage over older players who weren't weaned on Golf Central.

32 of the LPGA's top 50 players in 2022 are 28-years-old or younger -- 11 major champions in total. Golf Channel has been part of all of their lives for all of their lives.

So much talk surrounding golf recently has been about "growing the game." In the last 28 years, no one or no thing has come close to growing the game as much as Golf Channel.

Joe Gibbs -- the man who conceived the Golf Channel and then made it a reality with the help of his good friend Arnold Palmer -- deserves the honor of being a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame. That would be a lovely birthday present.


**The original 6 anchors/reporters who started on Golf Central 28 years ago: Lynda Cardwell, Brian Hammons, Kraig Kann, Jennifer Mills, Tom Nettles, Mike Ritz

This is Golf as You've Always Imagined!

Daniel is the Head of Golf Instruction at IMAGEN Golf the area's leading golf instruction and advisory firm, host of the IMAGEN Golf Podcast and Best-Selling Author of "Unleash The Golfer Within".

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