UMES pulls plug on Art Shell golf tournament

UMES has pulled the plug on the Art Shell celebrity golf tournament weeks before the annual event named for the NFL standout was set to tee off at the Great Hope Golf Course.

UMES President Juliette Bell said canceling the early June tournament would allow the university time "to explore ways to enhance the event as a vehicle to raise the profile of the University's distinctive PGA Golf Management Program."

The tournament, in recent years called the Art Shell UMES Golf Invitational, launched in 1991 at the historically-black university in Princess Anne from where Shell graduated and was a gridiron superstar in the late 1960s. He joined the Oakland Raiders and later became the first black head coach in the modern history of professional football.

Over the years, the tournament attracted local supporters alongside notables in football and other sports including former Washington Redskins defensive lineman Carl Kammerer and history-making professional golfer James Black, who became the first black man to card a first-round 67 in the PGA Tour in 1964.

Also over the years, supporters eased rhetoric that the tournament was a catalyst to promote the reinstatement of collegiate football at UMES, which was a powerhouse program for years. The Hawks produced multiple professional players such as Shell before the football team dissolved in 1979.

More recently, the tournament benefited from and drew attention to the UMES PGA-accredited Golf Management Program, the only one recognized by the Professional Golfers Association at a historically black college or university, Bell said.

In a letter released late Thursday, May 26, the president credited the golf tournament with helping UMES gain support of its PGA golf management program.

"With the tournament as a catalyst, the University's PGA golf management program has gained support from the family of the late Charlie Sifford, one of professional golf's black pioneers, and his admirer, Tiger Woods," Bell said in the letter to friends and supporters of the golf invitational.

"These gestures, which the university greatly appreciates, would have been impossible without the loyal group of UMES alumni and friends who came together each June to play in Art's tournament," the president also said.

Shell, the president said, is one of UMES' "most loyal alumni" who kept the university "in the front of people's minds by giving his time and energy to support a fun event everyone enjoyed."

Neither Bell nor organizers were available on Friday to comment about the future of the Shell tournament.

David Dodge works at the Great Hope pro shop and learned two weeks ago that the June 8 tournament that attracted over 100 participants was canceled.

"I worked two of the tournaments the past two years, and the Art Shell tournament is a very positive and successful tournament, with the talent, the athletes, the history and dedication," Dodge said. "It brought us notoriety to hold it here — in excess of 25 famous people were here."

He likes to think the event returns next year bigger and better. "I firmly believe that they are backing up, regrouping, and next year will be bigger and better than ever," he said. "I'm hopeful."

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