Oakmont in '94 was the last hurrah for the club pro shop

Bob Ford is a man of many distinctions. The longtime head pro of Oakmont and Seminole has played in three U.S. Opens—making the cut in 1983 when he finished ahead of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Greg Norman—and 10 PGA Championships. He retired from Oakmont in 2016, and he’s the U.S. Open’s first-tee starter for life.

But here’s one distinction that’s less well-known: Ford was the last club pro to control all sales–from shirts to hats to rocks glasses—at a United States Open. In 1994, he and the membership of Oakmont bought the merchandise, sold it and kept the profit. They also introduced the first mail-order catalogue against the wishes of the United States Golf Association.

In 1994, they brought in $7 million (over $15 million in 2025 dollars) with the profits split between the club and Ford.

The next year, the USGA took over sales at Shinnecock Hills, and that operation has been run every year since by the same person, Mary Lopuszynski, managing director of merchandising and licensing for the USGA. At Oakmont, Ford had happily invited her into his literal tent to show her the ropes.

“He couldn’t have been a better guy,” she says. “I basically followed Bob around. He would turn around and trip over me. I was a sponge!”

Today, merchandise sales contribute materially to the overall $160 million haul the USGA reaps each year from the U.S. Open, though Lopuszynski is tight-lipped about the actual amount. (Sales are not broken out on the USGA Form 990, which details nonprofit finances.)

It wasn’t always so. The U.S. Open pro shop was once a family affair, run like a bigger version of the club’s pro shop with added staff coming from the pro’s brothers, sisters, children and friends. How to run an Open shop was passed from one club pro to the next like a swing tip traveling down the range.

Owning the shop came with big risk for the reward. Ford had the good fortune of learning on the job. In 1973, when Lew Worsham was Oakmont’s head pro, Ford was an intern on his staff. He spent much of that time assembling the periscopes that fans used to see the action.

“Lew kept the money between his mattresses at the house and we deposited it on Monday,” Ford says. “If he did a quarter of a million that year, he did a lot.”

By the 1983 Open, Ford had been the head pro at Oakmont for three years. He had traveled to other U.S. Opens to learn how those pros ran their Open shops. He credits Bob Ross at Baltusrol, which hosted the 1980 U.S. Open in which Ford played, with teaching him the basics over several practice rounds.

“I had the [pro shop sales] in 1983, and the club had nothing to do with it,” Ford says. “In The club made money on the tickets. In 1983 I also played all four rounds, plus I played the practice rounds. My family really stepped up.”

To compartmentalize the two, Ford went to a hypnotist. “She had me visualize stepping on the first tee and being in a different world. It seemed to work for me. When I played nothing bothered me. When I finished playing, I went to work in the shop.”

And he finished tied for 26th place—the last club pro to make the cut at a U.S. Open— and sold $800,000 worth of merchandise, equivalent to about $2.6 million today.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, golf grew and interest in the U.S. Open boomed. Merchandise sales followed suit.

Don Callahan, the long-time head pro at The Country Club, had been tracking this wave through fellow pros. Ahead of the 1988 U.S. Open, he decided to seek help from Tim Collins, a business student at Northeastern University and former club caddie, to make sure they got it right.

“He headed up the merchandise part and did a very professional job,” Callahan says of Collins. “We broke all sales records, and we sold 91 percent of all the merchandise we brought at full retail. We had rainy days and sold umbrellas and rain gear. We had sunny days and sold more shirts.”

Collins, who recently retired from working in the oil and gas business, says it was an amazing assignment for a young business student. “It was a great job and it kind of launched my career in many ways … Not many people would have given that job to a 19-year-old kid. [Callahan] really had to have guts to ask me to take it on.”

The next year, Collins took what he learned at the Open about ordering, managing inventory and sales cycles to Oak Hill and helped Craig Harmon set up the operation. “All the pros who needed help in subsequent years, we shared our approach to marketing, to merchandizing, to how we procured products,” Collins says.

In 1990, the U.S. Open was at Medinah Country Club in Chicago, another great sports city. Mike Harrigan, who had been named head pro only the year before, says Harmon was happy to share what worked at Oak Hill but there was just one problem: It had rained for most of the 1989 Open, skewing what people bought. “They sold a lot of umbrellas,” Harrigan says.

By that point, though, vendors were set up to replenish overnight what was selling well. “We had a guy who was a member at Medinah who made t-shirts at a factory in Addison, Il, which was five minutes away. He’d send us thousands of t-shirts a day”

Harrigan also enlisted almost all his family to help: “I’m one of 13 children. All my brothers and sisters and my mother and all their friends came out to work the merchandise tent.”

That year, Harrigan says he sold $3.3 million worth of stuff. “Fronting all that inventory was a little stressful,” he says. “It’s the unknown. But we probably sold 95 percent of what we ordered, and then I had the rest of the year to sell more in the shop.”

The 1994 U.S. Open was Ford’s third national championship at Oakmont, and the scope of the operation looked nothing like it did in 1973. It was also now a chance for Oakmont to earn serious money, since the United States Golf Association wasn’t yet paying clubs a site fee.

“It was a revenue source,” Ford says, “but it was getting way too big for the host golf pro to run.”

Enter Lopuszynski to shadow Ford as the person who would take over sales the next year for the USGA. Lopuszynski already had some experience—her first job in golf was at Winged Foot Golf Club during high school, and she worked the 1984 Open there under head pro Tom Nieporte.

“It was very mom and pop-ish thing,” she says. “It was a great opportunity for the club pro—who in almost all cases owned the shop—to have a great career year. I never thought of what it would become or what it would lead to.” Lopuszynski now has a team of 16 people, and they work to sell merchandise for all different tastes. Hats are always their best seller.

Not every selection goes well. Lopuszynski remembers one U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2, when the USGA ordered a thousand bobblehead dolls in the image of the club’s famous putter-boy logo. It was a bad year for bobbleheads. They barely sold 100 and donated the rest to the First Tee.

Ford remembers his big mistake in 1994 with a rueful laugh. Greg Norman was in his prime, so the club went big on straw hats similar to the ones Norman was wearing at the time in the club’s signature green color. There weren’t many takers.

“That was a bust,” Ford laughs. “They’re probably still up in the attic in my old house on 18.”

His fellow compatriot at Brookline says it wasn’t all Ford’s fault for going long on the Norman hats. “If Bobby Ford had some 92-degree, sunny days,” Callahan says, “he would have sold those straw hats, for sure.”

While millions of dollars of Oakmont merch will be sold this year, whether it’s shirts, sweaters or umbrellas will depend, like it always has, on the weather.