Golf Central

On this day in 1916, over steaks and cocktails at a posh club on Broadway in New York City, the PGA of America was born during a business lunch hosted by the department store heir Rodman Wanamaker. The host, realising the potential for America to have an association similar to Britain's Professional Golfers' Association of Great Britain, invited 35 pro and amateur golfers to a luncheon at the Taplow Club in the Hotel Martinique.

The food and drink must have been good, because at the end of the day, everybody said "what a jolly good idea this is", and Wanamaker donated $2,500 (a pretty healthy $48,000 in today's money) to establish the PGA of America, the prize money for the first PGA Championship, and it's great big whopping trophy (which needs to be big to fit Wanamaker's name on it) ...

Among the golfers present at the lunch were Walter Hagen, the barnstorming and flamboyant American pro; and leading amateurs Francis Ouimet (the heroic teenage 1913 US Open champ) and A.W. Tillinghast. Ouimet had apparently not been told he had been declared a "professional" (temporarily, as it turned out) the day before by the big, bad USGA. Tillinghast went on to become of one America's great golf course architects, designing Bethpage Park, Baltusrol GC, and Winged Foot GC.

We all know the upshot of the meeting. The PGA (not to be confused with the PGA Tour!) is the governing body for teaching golf professionals in America, oversees the annual fourth major championship of each year (won for the first time in 1916 by Cornwall-born naturalised American Jim Barnes at Siwanoy CC in New York), and looks after the bi-annual Ryder Cup competition between the US and Europe.

And the trophy is still as grand and massive as Wanamaker might have imagined it. Rumours that the large handles on the hefty prize were modelled after Francis Ouimet's ears are unfounded, however ...

January 16 has been a prime day for crowning, then, and on this day in 1547, Ivan the Terrible was crowned Czar of Russia. And on this day in 1970, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi took over as premier of Libya following a coup against the monarchy. OK, so maybe not such a great day for crowning ...

And on this day in 1920, prohibition of alcohol came into effect in America as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution took hold. You could probably still get some booze in swanky places like the Taplow club in New York, but it was another 13 years before drinkin' was legal in the US again with the repeal of the amendment.

That said, it's eid milaad saeed!, as they say in Tripoli, to the iconic supermodel from Croydon, Kate Moss, who is 34 today, has appeared on more than 300 magazine covers, dates junkies and probably still weighs less than the Wanamaker Trophy; to blind country singer Ronnie Milsap (65), who has had 40 No. 1 songs; and to Smooth Operator Nigerian/English contralto Helen Folasade (Sade) Adu (49) ...

And it's sporting birthdays to boxing's Roy Jones Jr, who is one of a few who can lay claim to the "best pound-for-pound" title and who fights Felix Trinidad at Madison Square Garden in three days' time; and to baseball slugger Albert Pujols (28) of the St Louis Cardinals, one of the few clean images in that unfortunately tainted game ...

And in football, it's happy 52nd to currently unemployed Dutch football manager Martin Jol, late of Spurs and hopefully not seriously considering Newcastle; happy 27th to West Ham striker Bobby Zamora; and happy 20th to scarily good Arsenal and Denmark youngster Nicklas Bendtner.

It also would have been a birthday for the heroic missionary runner Eric Liddell (b. 1902), the "Flying Scotsman" who won the gold medal in the 400 metres at the 1924 Paris Olympics with a world-record 47.6 seconds after withdrawing from the 100 for religious reasons, had he not taken the ultimate Chariot of Fire in 1945.