John Staver 1926-2018

Minnesota

John Staver 1926-2018
"One of Golf's Most Valuable Resources"

By Grant Alex, MGA/USGA P.J. Boatwright Intern


John Staver, 91, of Virginia, Minn., passed away June 20 from complications of Parkinson’s disease. A graduate of the University of Minnesota, Staver joined the family business, Staver Foundry, after a brief stint in the U.S. Army at the end of World War II. He was made partner in 1952 and president in 1956. Staver’s love of the game started as a toddler hitting balls at the Eshquaguma Country Club in Gilbert, Minn., where he won the club championship nine times and was said to have hit balls over a span of ten different decades. He was an avid walker and an accomplished player winning an important regional amateur championship, the Northland Invitational in Duluth in the 1950s. Staver would eventually join Northland Country Club and serve as its club president in 1994-1995. He was also a metallurgist and designed golf clubs as a hobby and had an ownership interest in several graphite shaft makers. Staver befriended Arnold Palmer and gave him a driver to use during the 1985 Skins Game where Palmer purportedly outdrove his younger opponent Tom Watson, who was not pleased, according to a contemporary news report in the Duluth News-Tribune & Herald. 

Staver made his mark on the game in more ways than one. He was a member at numerous prestigious golf clubs in addition to Northland including Interlachen Country Club, the Medalist Golf Club, Merion Golf Club, Pine Valley Golf Club, the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of Saint Andrews and Tryall Golf Club of Jamaica. He was elected a director of the Minnesota Golf Association in 1979 and became involved in running the Junior Golf Program. 

As a USGA volunteer, Staver served as a long-time Rules official working more than 50 championships including the U.S. Open and U.S. Senior Open, and The Masters Tournament. For his volunteer service, Staver was presented with the Ike Grainger award, given to those individuals who have served as USGA volunteers for more than 25 years. In addition, Staver served on numerous USGA committees spanning several decades including: The Sectional Affairs Committee, Green Section Committee, Equipment Standards Committee, Rules of Golf Committee, and the Mid-Amateur Committee. 

Aside from his rules officiating experience and his extensive knowledge on the Rules of Golf, Staver is most notably remembered for his contributions to modernize the Rules. 
 
“Simply stated, John was a wonderful and very generous man. He loved our game but really loved people. I will remember John on a variety of levels -- Rules expert, clubmaker… but, I will always think of him as the father of the modern-day Decisions on The Rules of Golf book,” wrote Jeff Hall, USGA senior director, Rules and Open Championships.  

“Previously, the Decisions on the Rules of Golf book was a three-ring binder, it wasn’t particularly portable and updating it required carefully changing out pages at each revision. Staver was convinced he could do better and make it a bound book and all but pocket sized. The USGA’s P.J. Boatwright, after many requests finally agreed to let John try to reformat the book, but P.J. wasn’t optimistic. John was always up for a challenge....and he succeeded,” Hall recalled in an email. 

Staver was the second recipient of the USGA’s Joe Dey Award in 1997, an award recognizing an individual’s meritorious service to the game as a volunteer. Upon receiving the award, former USGA president William C. Campbell said Staver was “a man of many parts and golf is only one of his hobbies… But it is his deep and wide-ranging interest in golf and his abiding generosity to golfers and golf institutions around the world that makes him an excellent choice for this honor.”

In 1993 Staver was inducted into the MGA-PGA Minnesota Golf Hall of Fame in recognition of his contributions to the modern Rules of Golf, for his volunteering as a rules official, and for his time as a member of the Golf Digest Top 100 Golf Course Selection Committee. Staver’s Minnesota Golf Hall of Fame plaque described him as “one of golf’s most valuable resources.”  

A celebration of Staver’s life will be announced at a later date. Arrangements are with the Landmark Funeral Home of Virginia, Minn. 

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