Ted Bishop has booked his trip for the PGA of America’s upcoming annual meeting, his first time back in a decade. The 38th president of the association of more than 30,000 golf club professionals is attending for one primary reason – to see Crystal Morse, the head professional at The Legends Golf Club, the course he operates in Franklin, Indiana, receive the PGA’s Player Development Award.
There’s a bit of delicious irony that just weeks removed from the 10-year anniversary of Bishop’s impeachment as president of the PGA for making sexist comments on social media that his female protege, who also doubles as Bishop’s co-head coach of the Franklin Community boys and girls golf teams, is being honored with a national award on Nov. 5 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. If that isn’t rich enough for you, Bishop is scheduled to receive the Sam Snead Award from the Metropolitan Section of the PGA on Nov. 14, recognizing his “exceptional contributions to the Met section and the broader golf community.”
“I was humbled beyond words when the Met PGA informed me of this great honor,” Bishop said in a release announcing the award. Speaking to Golfweek, he added, “This is one of the greatest honors ever bestowed upon me.”
Ten years ago, Bishop was humbled in a very different way, ousted from his volunteer job less than a month before his term was to end.
“It seems like it was 100 years,” Bishop said. “But there is not a single day that goes by that I don’t think about that and I don’t regret it. The biggest regret of my life is the way it all ended.”
On Oct. 23, 2014, Bishop said he felt compelled to defend the record of Hall of Famers Nick Faldo and Tom Watson, who had been disparaged in Ian Poulter’s recently-released autobiography. On Twitter, he wrote, “Faldo’s record stands by itself. Six majors and all-time RC points. Yours vs His? Lil Girl.”
If Bishop’s message was unclear due to the 140-character limit of Twitter, he elaborated on Facebook.
“Used to be athletes who had lesser records or accomplishments in a sport never criticized the icons. Tom Watson (8 majors and a 10-4-1 Ryder Cup record) and Nick Faldo (6 majors and all-time Ryder Cup points leader) get bashed by Ian James Poulter. Really? Sounds like a little school girl squealing during recess. C’MON MAN!”
PGA President Ted Bishop addresses attendees of the 96th PGA Annual Meeting.
It’s hard to fathom that Twitter (now X) has been around for a decade but Bishop’s politically incorrect tweet offended a wide swath of the game he purported to represent. Despite deleting the posts in short order, he was subsequently canceled before that term became in vogue.
Bishop apologized for abusing his position of power but the PGA’s board shifted into damage control mode and when Bishop refused to step down, it voted to impeach him. As a result, he wouldn’t be classified as an A-5 member, the designation of a past PGA president. He’s the only past PGA president required to pay dues and still earn his recertification. Nor has he been invited to PGA Championships and Ryder Cups, or bestowed any other courtesies extended to past presidents, including serving the customary role as honorary president as well as captain of the U.S. side at a PGA Cup and for a Junior Ryder Cup team.
The punishment never seemed to fit the crime for an individual who at closer glance had championed the women’s game, hosting every significant statewide women’s golf championship in Indiana at his facility since it opened in 1992. He helped create the Indiana Women’s Open and hosted the first 10 years of its existence. Both of his daughters – Asheley, who works at the Legends GC along with her husband, and Ambry, the women’s head golf coach at St. John’s University for the past two decades and an assistant pro at the Saint Andrews Golf Club in New York, had followed in his footsteps.
One of Bishop’s supporters told him that the PGA gave him the death penalty for shoplifting. Ken Willis of the Daytona Beach News-Journal wrote: “There’s reaction, there’s overreaction, and there’s the utter carpet-bombing exhibited by executives of the PGA of America, whose blitzkrieg actually took down just one man.”
What may have bruised Bishop most was that then-PGA CEO Pete Bevacqua stood by as the board cut him loose. (Only LPGA great and CBS Sports golf commentator Dottie Pepper, who was an independent director on the PGA board, abstained from the otherwise unanimous vote.)
“A guy I hired, promoted and formed a tremendously productive working relationship with,” is how Bishop described Bevacqua in a photo caption in his book “Unfriended,” of the two of them in happier times. “I can’t help but feel betrayed and unfriended by Pete more than anyone else.”
From left: PGA of America CEO Pete Bevacqua, Donald Trump and former PGA of America President Ted Bishop, shown at a news conference in 2014.
Bishop was elected to PGA membership in September 1985 and had served in a leadership capacity at either the section or national levels since 1989. He began his two-year term in office in 2013 and almost immediately, he became embroiled in the anchoring debate, thrust into the spotlight as the voice of the PGA’s controversial stance opposite the USGA and its proposed Rule 14-1b. He had been portrayed mostly as a hard-nosed, no-nonsense maverick who delighted in going against the grain – for example, when he unexpectedly chose Tom Watson as the next Ryder Cup captain.
Bishop did a lot of good in his role as PGA president – though some might argue he found hearing how own voice too intoxicating – and then one day it was all over due to a foolish few words he typed on social media. Bishop struggled with the adjustment.
“I mean, I was bitter. I just had a bad attitude. I was kind of getting focused on maybe some of the wrong things,” he said.
“I felt many emotions after my impeachment,” he wrote in his autobiography “Unfriended.” “Embarrassment, despair, rejection, betrayal, anger and depression would best describe my mental state in the weeks that followed my unceremonious fall from grace in golf. It was an extremely tough time for my family and me.”
Time has healed some of the wounds. Tom Watson, who Bishop championed as U.S. Ryder Cup in 2014, former PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem, and Donald Trump, before he shifted into politics, were among his friends who lent their support. A few weeks after Bishop was removed from his post, past USGA president Glen Nager, who departed a similar volunteer job on not-the-best-of-terms, reached out to Bishop and offered what proved to be some wise words of wisdom.
“He told me something at the time that I didn’t really realize how true it was, but he couldn’t have been any more accurate. And he said, ‘You know the difference between you and me? You basically spent your entire life serving the PGA of America.’ And he said, ‘I served USGA, but in a much shorter capacity.’ And he said it took him about a year to get over everything that kind of happened at the end of his term with the USGA. And he said, ‘It will take you probably five years to get over this.’ You know what? He was right, almost to the day.”
But that changed in the fall of 2019 when Bishop made a trip to the PGA’s then-headquarters in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, at the encouragement of Tony Pancake, the director of golf at Crooked Stick in Carmel, Indiana, and the 2024 PGA Club Professional of the Year, and Mike David, the executive director of the Indiana PGA Section. The two longtime Bishop supporters orchestrated behind the scenes for Bishop to be given an opportunity to address the board and say his peace. David and Pancake accompanied Bishop on the trip but weren’t permitted to sit in on the meeting. It was the first time Bishop had stood in front of the board since he’d been impeached and he asked for forgiveness and for his rights as a PGA president to be reinstated.
“I remember walking out of there, and I told Tony and Mike, “You know what? I don’t know what’s going to happen from here, but I’ll tell you this, I feel like I’ve had the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders, and I feel like this finally brings closure to this situation.”
In 2017 or 2018 – he couldn’t be sure – Bishop already had made amends with Bevacqua. (Multiple calls and texts requesting an interview with Bevacqua weren’t answered before this story was published.)
“We reconciled everything, and I feel like we’re good friends today,” Bishop said.
In fact, Bevacqua sent an email on Bishop’s behalf asking for his PGA rights to be reinstated, but that request and Bishop’s efforts at the board meeting fell on deaf ears. That decision reeks of hypocrisy given how the PGA’s leadership handled a more recent situation. In 2018, Paul Levy was in the middle of his presidency with the PGA when he was arrested and charged with suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol. Despite the fact that Levy could have injured or killed innocent motorists while behind the wheel in his condition, the PGA stood by him and Levy served out the rest of his term and retained all the privileges of a past president when his term in office concluded.
David, for one, continues to campaign to the national officers on Bishop’s behalf, and mused that his unceremonious exit as PGA president still bothers him more than he will admit.
“I’m dumbfounded that we have not reinstated him,” David said. “A 10-year sentence is long enough. From the standpoint of the Indiana PGA, we feel he deserves better than this. He has served his time and the continued ban at this point is ridiculous.”
Rory McIlroy catches the lid of the Wanamaker trophy as PGA of America president Ted Bishop passes it to him after he won the 2014 PGA Championship.
Bishop could’ve crawled into a hole and disassociated himself from the PGA but instead he dove into his work as general manager and director of golf at The Legends Golf Club in Franklin, Ind., a daily-fee facility where he oversaw the construction and development of what originally was a 45-hole complex. He’s assumed the role of full-time superintendent, too, and often can be found behind the front desk or answering the phone. He also poured his energy into his local section and became involved in several committees for the Indiana PGA section, and in the last five years he’s found his greatest fulfillment in coaching and mentoring high school teams.
Bishop bursts with pride when he talks about the Franklin Grizzly Cubs women’s team, which has won the mid-state championship six straight years and just won the first sectional since 2005, the first regional since 1999 and finished fifth in the state.
“I’ve gotten as much pleasure coaching the girls as I have the boys,” Bishop said.
He’s simply trying to keep up with wife Cindy, who coached the school to several titles when daughters Asheley and Ambry starred for the team.
“It’s like my career almost has come a complete 360,” Bishop said.
And while the PGA’s board has yet to see the light, it couldn’t ignore the success that Morse, Bishop’s co-coach, has made on the development side of the game at his facility; moreover, the Met PGA honor proves that many PGA professionals are willing to forgive one mistake and look at Bishop’s full body of work.
He was hard at work with his son-in-law in the back kitchen at his club while Asheley was prepping for a catering job when the Met PGA phoned him with the news of the Sam Snead Award. Bishop didn’t need to be given an award to know he’s been making a difference both near and far, but it did feel like validation.
“He broke down and was so emotional when he hung up the phone,” Asheley recalled.
Ten years later, Bishop’s career deserves to be remembered for more than two words. He’s demonstrated in his second act that golf is better with him in it.