There was something full circle about the news of Colorado Springs legend Paul Ransom’s death on April 5, nine days before the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame will celebrate its 50th year with the grand opening of its swank new museum at the Broadmoor Golf Club on Friday.

Ransom, Colorado’s first state junior champion back in 1951 at what is now Palmer High School, went on to become the longtime head pro at Patty Jewett and Valley Hi golf courses. In 1989, he won the Colorado PGA’s top honor — Golf Professional of the Year.

Ransom and my father, the late, longtime Denver Post sports writer Ralph Moore, were inducted together as part of  the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame’s Class of 1999. Among my father’s many contributions to golf beyond his Royal typewriter: He used his influence to help two golf caddie scholarships – the Eisenhower in Colorado and the Evans in Chicago – merge into one that has now sent 12,000 caddies to college. And speaking of namesake Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ransom caddied for the future U.S. President as a teenager at The Broadmoor.

Ralph would have loved telling you that story.

As Colorado’s first dedicated golf beat reporter, my dad told hundreds of stories about wormburners, sandbaggers and snowmen. From 1954-83, “Ralph Moore put golf on a quarter-million doorsteps every day,” former Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph sports writer Steve Trivett once scribed. And what he produced became a history of golf in Colorado for all who followed.

“If you research anything on golf in Colorado, you pretty much have to do it through stories that were written by Ralph Moore,” Valley Country Club superintendent John Hoofnagle once said.

Most famously, Ralph covered the historic 1960 U.S. Open, when Arnold Palmer came from seven strokes off the lead at the start of the final round to pass Jack Nicklaus for the win. In all, he covered 21 U.S. Opens, 21 Masters and hundreds more local tournaments at every level. He played a round with the King of Morocco, and once noticed that Colorado Gov. Dan Thornton played golf in cowboy boots fitted with golf spikes. 

But his favorite golf stories were far off (the) course. Like the one about when he played his first round of golf in Shanghai, China. It was during World War II, on a day he went ashore as a Navy Lieutenant J-G in 1944. The nine-hole course was cut inside a horse-race track – and it doubled as the chopping block for sold-out public beheadings between races. Ralph witnessed a few, and wrote about it later. The executioner’s swing, he objectively observed, was much more fluid than his own. “Nice, clean cut,” he said. “Good backswing. Nice follow-through.” Blissfully mixing his sports metaphors, he added, “The big guy with the huge sword generally batted a thousand.”

Another favorite was the time my brother Kevin set fire to a neighbor’s tree in 80-degree summer heat because, he later said with a straight face, “It was cold, and I didn’t have a coat.”

Dad was out of town covering a golf tournament for The Post in Bethesda, Md. In an era when spanking was considered discipline rather than abuse, Kevin had three interminable days to ponder his eventual punishment – a prospect much more harrowing than any justice my father might actually mete out with a belt.

When Ralph finally got home, he approached his quivering son on the couch. He simply slipped the golf cap he was wearing off his head and put it atop Kevin’s. “Join the club,” is all my father said – and walked away. Kevin removed the cap and read its logo. It was from the golf course that dad had just reported from: The Burning Tree Club. Mic drop.

The payoff from that delicious irony far exceeded any satisfaction that could come from any belt.

Ralph was far more than a newspaper guy writing about golf. He dearly loved the game. He loved reporting on it, and he loved talking about it. His favorite part of any tournament was a rain delay, because that gave him more time to talk to the players about all things golf.

Ralph took seriously his position as a writer with significant distribution. He relentlessly promoted the growth of men’s, women’s, junior and amateur golf, as well as the annual Colorado Open, which he not only covered – he helped to organize.

Throughout his career, Ralph railed against social and economic inequities in the game. His 1961 columns criticizing the Colorado Golf Association for conducting state championships that excluded Black, Asian and Hispanic golfers helped put an end to the practice.

“No tournament advertised as a city or state championship should have a format that bars the entry of a qualified player,” he wrote – in bold type. The racial barrier, he added, “was distasteful to any true sportsman.”

For Ralph, “his medium was a bully pulpit – and he used it,” said the late Jim Bailey, four-time Colorado Section PGA Professional of the Year. One of his proudest accomplishments was working with his newspaper employer and the city’s department of parks and recreation to establish summer match-play youth tournaments at City Park. For many young people of color in the 1960s and ’70s, it was their only opportunity to experience tournament golf. 

For his convictions, his consistency and his tireless commitment to the game, the Colorado Golf Association established the Colorado Open Ralph Moore Golf Journalism Award in 1989.

He covered his first women’s tournament for the newspaper in 1955 at Lakewood Country Club. He already was a fan. That was sealed when he witnessed Babe Zaharias win the 1950 Women’s Western Open at Cherry Hills Country Club.

In a 1981 column, Ralph posited that average male golfers like himself could learn far more from watching the best women golfers than the booming male “huskies” of the day. This was at a time when men so regularly complained about having “weak” women slowing down play that many courses only allowed women to play one designated day per week. Not my dad. He was in awe of what athletes like Amy Alcott and JoAnne Carner could do with a golf club. He studied them – and he learned from them.

“The most significant aspect of the overall game the women play is the distance they generate without a bunch of muscles bulging,” he wrote. “Their timing is excellent, proving you don’t have to overpower the ball to get it riding high, long and usually straight.”

At the time, Denver’s “swing doctor” was a revered pro named Paul Runyan. Visiting pros, both men and women, would seek Bunyan out whenever they came through town. So did my dad.

“Paul once put a Band-Aid on my grip and convinced me I am better off watching Amy Alcott than I am trying to emulate Jack Nicklaus,” he wrote.

Ralph served on the organizing committees that launched both the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame and the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame. But his greatest achievement, he would say, was chairing the committee that authored the bond issue that got Arvada’s Indian Tree Golf Course built in 1970. It was a pipe dream that began, he admitted, with covetousness. Dad yearningly eyed the 147-acre Schneider family farm along six blocks of Wadsworth Boulevard as his own Walden Pond – only he saw it as a water hazard protecting a dogleg par-4. He wrote an open letter in the paper imploring patriarch Emil Schneider not to sell his land to developers.

Turns out, Schneider had a dream, too, and it was to be remembered for preventing that six-block stretch of Wadsworth from turning into another Colfax Avenue, lined with car dealerships and franchised sandwich shops. Schneider ultimately sold his land to the local recreation district that Ralph served as an elected board member – and when the course finally opened, Ralph was invited to tee off in the very first foursome.

“Now, how many grown men do you know who have a boyish dream like that come true?” he later wrote in the paper.

“Golf never had a better friend or champion in the media than Ralph Moore,” said the late Kaye Kessler, who headed media relations for the PGA’s annual tour stop called The International at Castle Pines from 1986-2006.

Ralph died in 1997, two years before he was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame he helped to found in 1973. He would be jazzed about Friday’s grand opening of its first permanent home at the Broadmoor, the same resort where he honeymooned with my mother.

As part of Friday’s festivities, the Hall will honor Connor Jones, Jennifer Kupcho, Jill McGill, Matt Schalk and Yannik Paul as Colorado’s “Golf Persons of the Year,” and dub Madeline Bante and Kyle Leydon as “Future Famers” (no pressure!). To keep the focus on the museum opening, no new Hall of Famers will be added this year.

“The emphasis this year is on our organization, our new home, our 147 (existing) inductees and the rich history of golf in Colorado,” said Gary Potter, class of 2012.

If my dad were alive to be there, I’m sure he’d see the new Colorado Golf Hall of Fame Museum as another dream come true.

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Local Links

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Information: CityofDenverGolf.com

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This week in golf

PGA

RBC Heritage

When: Thursday-Sunday

Site: Harbour Town Golf Links – Hilton Head Island, SC

Defending champ: Jordan Spieth

Purse: $20 million

TV:  Thursday-Friday, Noon-4 p.m. (Golf Channel); Saturday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. (Golf Channel), 1-4 p.m. (CBS)

LPGA

LOTTE Championship

When: Wednesday-Saturday

Site: Hoakalei Country Club – Ewa Beach, Hawaii

Defending champ: Hyo Joo Kim

Purse: $2 million

TV: Wednesday-Saturday, 7-11 p.m. (Golf Channel)

Skins game

Odds to win RBC Heritage

Scottie Scheffler +800

Jon Rahm +900

Patrick Cantlay +1000

Collin Morikawa +2000

Jordan Spieth +2000

—Odds from SuperBook Colorado

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World Golf Rankings

Player, points

1. Jon Rahm, 499.87 

2. Scottie Scheffler, 538.79

3. Rory McIlroy, 395.49

4. Patrick Cantlay, 284.73

5. Cameron Smith, 233.80

6. Xander Schauffele, 260.986

7. Max Homa, 269.90

8. Will Zalatoris, 222.02

9. Viktor Hovland, 266.70

10. Sam Burns, 240.97

Ryder Cup standings

United States

Captain: Zach Johnson

Player, points

1. Scottie Scheffler, 17,129.423

2. Max Homa, 6,736.710

3. Cameron Young, 6,535.753

4. Sam Burns, 5,567.294

5. Will Zalatoris, 5,529.134

6. Collin Morikawa, 5,475.095

7. Justin Thomas, 5,261.750

8. Kurt Kitayama, 4,525.605

9. Patrick Cantlay, 4,297.425

10. Jordan Spieth, 4,212.092

11. Chris Kirk, 3,743.127

12. Xander Schauffele, 3,549.727

Note: The U.S. team will be made up from the top six eligible players in the points rankings with six captain’s picks.

Europe

Captain: Luke Donald

European points

1. Jon Rahm, 2,883.53

2. Rory McIlroy, 2,189.2

3. Victor Perez, 1,286.02

4. Yannik Paul, 1,269.97

5. Alex Noren, 1,037.5

6. Adrian Otaegui, 1,020.51

 World points

1. Jon Rahm, 206.74

2. Rory McIlroy, 176.86

3. Tyrrell Hatton, 108.72

4. Viktor Hovland, 103.92

5. Shane Lowry, 62.71

6. Tommy Fleetwood, 61.26

Note: The European team will be made up from the top three eligible players from the European points List, the top three eligible players from the World Points List and six captain’s picks.