Fred Corcoran

Fred J. Corcoran (April 4, 1905 – June 23, 1977) was a golf tournament director, publicist, agent and business manager. Known around the world as "Mr. Golf," he was one of the first non-players to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1975. He acted as tournament manager of the PGA in the 1930s, promotion manager in the 1940s; the founder of the LPGA, the Golf Writers Association of America, the Metropolitan Golf Writers Association; tournament director of the Thunderbird and Westchester Classic; and the director of the International Golf Association. In addition to golf, his diverse career also included the world of baseball, boxing, hockey, football as he at one time managed the business affairs of Sam Snead, Ted Williams, Babe Zaharias, Stan Musial, Tony Lema, Ken Venturi, Seve Ballesteros, Tom Weiskopf and Pete Gogolak.

Corcoran is honored annually with the Corcoran Cup, a golf tournament featuring the nation's top blind golfers, to raise funds for Guiding Eyes for the Blind, an organization that trains dogs for the visually impaired. He was inducted into the Massachusetts Golf Hall of Fame in 2002.

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Corcoran started in golf as a nine-year-old caddy at Belmont Country Club, carrying bags for Francis Ouimet and Alexa Stirling. At the age of 12, he became the youngest caddie master in America, collecting five cents from every boy who carried a bag. As a young man he worked for the Massachusetts Golf Association, with Donald Ross at Pinehurst, and as the official scorer for the United States Golf Association. Among his innovations was the first tournament leaderboard that reflected birdies, pars and bogies, marked in different colored crayons, a method that caught on immediately and is used around the world today.

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