Bernie Samons, NJSGA Course Rater, Board Member And Award Winner, Passes Away

Bernie Samons, former Chairman of the NJSGA Course Rating Committee and member of the NJSGA Board of Trustees, has passed away.

In 2015, Samons was honored with the NJSGA’s Honey Gantner Award, given each year to a top volunteer who typifies what it means to give time year after year, day after day, for the love of golf.

When it came to Samons, there was nothing better an NJSGA course rater could do than imitate their leader.

“Bernie raised the expectations of the course raters, which he did by example. The other raters saw the effort he was putting forth. Bernie Samons gave the course raters a strong sense of direction. Bernie was a great worker,” said Mike McAneny, the NJSGA current Tournament Director who worked with the course-rating program for 10 years beginning in 2001.

Samons took over as chairman of the NJSGA Course Rating Committee in 1999 and directed it for nearly a decade.

Samons was NJSGA Course Rating chairman from 1999 through 2008, and took course rating to a new level. He trained close to 100 course raters in that nine-year period and many of his innovative ideas are still used today by NJSGA raters.

“Bernie was a class act - one of the greats in our NJSGA Course Rating sphere. He loved his golf and was extremely thorough and passionate about the Course Rating craft,” said Rich Kennedy, NJSGA Director of Handicapping and Member Benefit Services. “As the committee chair for many years he represented the Course Raters and the NJSGA well. I enjoyed the time I spent working with him.”

Jack Luts, a member of the NJSGA Advisory Committee of Past Board Members and a course rater, agreed.

“Bernie was the first to expedite course rating, send groups ahead to rate the forward bunkers and greens while others took care of the tees and fairways,” Luts said. “He streamlined the process and made it more enjoyable. Bernie loved golf, playing all over the world, including Scotland and Hawaii and was a member at one time of Cedar Hill, Brooklake, East Orange and Hendricks Field.

“Bernie was known for his great sense of humor and story-telling abilities. Yet he was a stickler for uniform code, not allowing raters to wear shorts until temperatures reached the 90s. He loved golf, and in particular, his course raters,” Luts commented.

“Bernie and I started at about the same time, in the 1980s and we only had a few guys doing it at the time. Bernie took it seriously,” said Zoltan Pope. “We used to go to the USGA calibration conferences, which standardized the course rating system across the country. One year we went to Kansas City.

“What we were doing became more exacting. We started using more instruments and it became more scientific. Bernie was a lot of fun. After having played the golf course, sometimes we’d have to reevaluate our initial ratings. Sometimes the course would play harder than we rated it; the bunkers would come more into play than we thought, the fairways narrower than we thought. We could always adjust the ratings,” Pope said.

Linda Rosner, one of Samons’ three children, remembers family vacations built around golf. “Any vacation we took, there had to be a golf course nearby. As a family, we’d go down to St. Croix over Christmas and he used to love to play those courses. One year, he and a bunch of buddies took a trip to Ireland to play. He spoke about that trip for many years after,” Rosner said.

Samons and his wife Nan and family resided in the town of West Orange. His company was called Samons Pensions.

“It was mainly pension plans, but he sold insurance,” Linda stated. “One time, he was a general agent working in New York City. Later, he had his own office on Springfield Avenue in Springfield.”

Samons graduated East Orange High School and later the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, according to his daughter.

“The family came first, then it was golf. In the winter, if there wasn’t snow on the ground, he was out there. If it was raining he went out. If a course was open, he was playing golf,” she said.

“He loved the course rating. He adored that. He enjoyed the friendships he made with the other guys and loved playing those courses. When I would see him after he rated a course, he would tell me every single aspect of that day.

“I don’t play golf, but I know about slope and other different terms. He took it very seriously. If that job was given to him, he was going to rate it to the best of his ability,” Linda said.

Another course rater, Clark Schrock, said Bernie was very particular when it came to calling the narrow tree-lined corridor forward of a teeing ground “a chute.”

“Bernie was very anti-shoot. In all the years I rated with him, there was maybe one or two places where we had a ‘chute.’ ”

Schrock also remembers Bernie’s big heartedness.

“He was the authority, but he always gave you a chance to say what you thought. He was a wealth of knowledge. He knew a lot of the local courses and a lot of the people. He did the course rating with us more in a sharing way. He is not an arrogant guy.

“Bernie was a great guy. But he was the guy who’d make the final call on the bunker percentage or the slope on the green,” Schrock said.

“He always tried to find the most efficient way to do the ratings and the most efficient way to use his raters. Bernie brought quality individuals to the course rating committee. He was good at finding them and teaching them and bringing them along.

“Everybody had great things to say about him. He was a genuine good guy. He was devoted and committed to serving golf,” McAneny added.