A Look Back: Oct. 4 1959: Billy Casper wins the Portland Open. 1964: George Knudson wins the Fresno Open. 1987: Ken Brown breezes to winning the Southern Open Invitational by seven strokes over David Frost, Mike Hulbert and Larry Mize. 1992: Gary Hallberg wins the Buick Southern Open by a stroke over Jim Gallagher Jr. 1998: Steve Elkington defeats Fred Funk in a playoff to win the Buick Challenge.

People
Callaway Golf announces that 17-year-old pro Ty Tryon has agreed to terms of a deal that will make him part of Callaway Golf's team of staff professionals. Tryon will play Callaway clubs and balls, carry a Callaway Golf staff bag and wear the Company's logo on his hat.
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The Golf Course Superintendents Association of America names Chuck Borman to serve as its Chief Operating Officer. Borman has acted as executive director of the Carolinas Golf Course Superintendents Association since 1998.
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Technology
Tee time reservation network Book4golf.com signs an agreement with Golfclubexchange.com to provide the tee time booking link from the latter's Web site. The two companies will also start a co-branded auction site powered by Golfclubexchange.com.
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Events
Organizers of Premiere Golf 2001, the biggest golf trade show in Europe, announce the Nov. 13 show is attracting a record number of attendees. Sixty-five percent more exhibition space is available than last year and more than 85 percent of that area is already filled.
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Courses
Environmental Golf, a golf course maintenance company, signs up clients Scales Creek Country Club in Atlanta and Swanson Meadows Golf Club northwest of Boston. Bret Barton will serve as superintendent at Scales Creek and Ben Neuman will fill the same position at Swanson Meadows.
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Travel
The Phil Ritson-Mel Sole Golf School is now offering the "Golf Break" to businesses and corporations who hold meetings at Pawleys Plantation in Pawleys Island, S.C. The break includes a 15-minute instructional clinic, short game drills and refreshments.
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Business
Clothing maker Hartmax, which sells the Bobby Jones and Jack Nicklaus brands, among others, reports a drop in third-quarter revenues compared to the same period last year. The company shows a loss of 22 cents a share compared to 10 cents a share in 2000.
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Five Questions
Christopher McCabe,
VP of PGA Expo Show

The PGA Fall Expo was scheduled for Sept. 24-26 in Las Vegas. Nine days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on New York City and at the Pentagon, Reed Exhibitions announced it was canceling the show. Christopher McCabe is the Vice President of the PGA Expo Show and Show Manager for Reed Exhibitions and recently spoke about the decision-making process to cancel.

Q.: The PGA Fall Expo and its cancellation: Everyone has different feelings about what should happen, how exactly did it come about?

A.: The morning of Sept. 11 we were putting the final touches on the show when the tragic events occurred. Like a lot of the country, we were shocked and a bit numb and that day was pretty much lost. Starting the next day, we got on the phone and started calling all our exhibitors and polling a very good cross section of our buying group to determine how they felt. So that (week) we contacted all exhibitors and a good portion of our attendees and a vast majority said the show must go on. Out of, say, 540 exhibitors, I think we had less than 15 people cancel.
The weekend came, I'm assuming like I did that the rest of the country went home and really took stock. For those who were lucky enough not to be directly affected we were very pleased that we had our family and our health and we watched the news and saw all these varying reports come out.
So Monday morning came and we saw a few more companies opt out, another half-dozen or so to bring our total still under 20 and most people said it was a go. We knew at that point that our attendance from the Northeast would probably be lighter that expected, but we felt confident that the West Coast buyer would turn out in good attendance.
We were so sure we were going to do the show that I actually got on a plane Thursday morning and flew to Las Vegas. While I was in the air for those five hours a lot of things happened. More reports came out that the terrorist threat was bigger than some might have thought, that we were mobilizing troops for some form of retaliation and in addition to that the AP ran a story that was picked up nationwide that Las Vegas was a ghost town and that they had cancelled all the conventions -- which wasn't true at the time, but that was what was reported and something similar appeared on CNN.
That caused the phones to go off the hook with people canceling left and right, both exhibitors and buying groups saying they were not coming. So by Thursday afternoon, the 20th, it just imploded and a decision was made that even though it was a late date, it was in the best interest of our customers to cancel on the 20th than to move forward.
Some people experienced some financial loss because they had shipped freight, others had bought plane tickets, but we thought we had actually minimized their losses by canceling the show. We verbally knew that 100-plus companies had cancelled.
We made decisions all along the way based on the information we had and Thursday it came to a head and we made the decision to cancel the show.

Q.: The financial aspects of the cancellation is staggering for everyone, but Reed Exhibitions must have taken a big loss?

A.: At the moment it's excruciating and we are still trying to muddle through. I don't discount any exhibitor or buyer who lost even a thousand dollars. No one can afford to lose money in today's economy and we were working on people's behalf to try to minimize their losses. I just hope people realize that probably the biggest financial loss taken by anyone in this whole deal was us. We worked really hard to get this show back on its feet and we think we had turned the corner. There was a lot of excitement building up for the event and so I concur with many people who were disappointed that the show couldn't go on. We very much wanted it to go on.

Q.: Obviously you canceled the Las Vegas show, how many other Reed Exhibitions shows did you cancel as a result of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks?

A.: Three were canceled and one was postponed -- Vegas was one of three.

Q.: Can you talk about your thoughts on the Expo since you took control three years ago?

A.: There was a point prior to us buying the show, that the Vegas show had really grown by leaps and bounds and in some circles people equated it to the Orlando show. As a guy who has been brought up in the trade show industry, we realized there can only be one No. 1 show. So around the time we bought the show, the industry had pretty much come to that conclusion too and they voted that Orlando was the No. 1 show. So our Vegas event contracted a bit.
It probably lost 30 percent of its size, maybe 35 percent. While that contraction was taking place, we had also launched a show in Europe. We realized that Orlando was a fantastic show and it would be the big industry trade show. What we tried to do with the PGA Fall Expo was really create three unique aspects to it -- obviously the traditional trade show, then the expanded conference and education program, then the special events and club demonstration aspects that we did a year earlier in Spain so it was sort of a three-legged stool and we were very successful in getting people to buy into that.
Obviously the PGA put conference programs on, but we got Golfweek, Golf World and Golf Products News to each participate in the conference program as well as the AGM, a very important buying group out there. So all the conferences were going to be under one umbrella and each conference was going to earn PGA Pros credits toward their annual need to maintain their PGA pro status.
So that was the direction we were going to take this year and we are going to continue with that direction. We think we have something that will work unique from Orlando.

Q.: There have been rumors that the Fall Expo would be canceled in the future, your thoughts?

A.: People said that three years ago and said it two years ago, so it is incorrect, but they are correct in that it won't be a show similar to the Orlando show. It will be a more unique, more focused event that's not just a trade show, but more of an opportunity to network, learn about the industry, get education, try products and meet a select group of West Coast buyers.