LEHI — One by one, the pillars of Utah golf, who are still alive, made their way to the stage as the charter class of the Utah Section PGA’s inaugural Hall of Fame. The inductees comprise the Mount Rushmore of the state’s golf engine, machinery that’s been chugging along for half a century.
Their nine faces, if etched on a mountain, would eat a mile of granite.
To celebrate its 40th anniversary, the Utah Section inducted its Hall of Fame charter class on Wednesday night at The Barn at Thanksgiving Point before a crowd of more than 325 guests and honorees under the direction of executive director Devin Dehlin, president Craig Norman, and emceed by Wes Ruff of ABC4 Utah.
“I’m just excited that we’re getting this going, to be able to honor some of our great professionals,” Dehlin said.
“I look at all the (professionals) who laid the groundwork for all of this,” said Norman. “The work they did to get it off the ground was amazing.”
Dehlin said another class induction is planned next year, and subsequent honors will follow every four years. “We felt we needed to induct nine this first time to get things started.”
The nine men honored have impacted thousands of golfers through decades of service.
This charter class included Tee Branca, Jeff Beaudry, John Evans, Robert McArthur, Ken Pettingill, Ernie Scheiter Jr., Jimmy Thompson, Doug Vilven and Scott Whittaker. Vilven, Branca and Thompson were feted posthumously. Here is a detailed biographical sketch of each inductee assembled by former Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune sports writer Kurt Kragthorpe, now with Fairways Media.
This group included the three-legged stool of the Section’s founding consigliere, Beaudry, Pettingill and Whittaker.
These three started organizing the section in Beaudry’s kitchen with Beaudry’s upbeat and chipper organization skills, Whittaker’s innovation and creativity, and Pettingill’s business acumen. They had no money, just a clean slate to create. Before 1986, Utah’s PGA professionals had to register with the Rocky Mountain Section that stretched from Canada to southern Utah.
A fourth person instrumental in the creation was the late longtime rules official Vilven, former head professional at Oquirrh Hills, Park City Golf Course, and co-creator of Golf in the Round in Salt Lake City.
Beaudry (Copper Golf Club), Pettingill (Valley View) and Whittaker (Bountiful Ridge) all worked as club professionals, making them more than qualified to lead the section in the early days and beyond.
The other inductees have worked as legendary club pros and competitive players, including two-time Provo Open champion Evans, who once beat Hall of Famer Johnny Miller (Cascade Golf Course and Cedar City Golf Course), McArthur (Tri City, now Fox Hollow, and Riverside Country Club), Branca (The Country Club), Schneiter (Ben Lomond, Schneiter’s Bluff) and Thompson (Timpanogos and Tri City, now Fox Hollow).
From the recipients, three things became common threads in their lives. They loved golf so much they rarely went home, they had very understanding wives and kids, and they were people persons, bona fide extroverts. They also loved teaching the game and mentoring many current professionals who followed in their footsteps.
At age 76, Thompson was named the section’s Teacher of the Year while working at Golf in the Round. Branca spent 51 years at the Country Club, starting as a caddie. He helped bring along legendary head professionals Sonny Braun and his brother Jerry when they were teens in Provo.
Another feature of this group is that there is a golf web that connects almost all of them through employment ties, lifelong friendships and serving on various boards and committees of the game. Many are members of the Utah Golf Hall of Fame and have been honored with plaques named after them.
Tommy Sharp, runner-up in the 2025 section championship, said he began hanging around Thompson when he was just 14. “He had no time limit when he gave a lesson,” said Sharp.
Evans, who is the father of high school and college golf in Cedar City, never charged a dime to teach kids how to golf.
Beaudry, the section’s first executive director, said he certainly was a turtle on a fence post — the turtle didn’t get there by itself. “I had plenty of talented help.”
All of these inductees trained today’s section professionals and leaders.
McArthur, whose brother Reed is head professional at Sunbrook in St. George, began his career in the first days of that area’s first course, Dixie Red Hills, in the mid-’60s and was tutored by Thompson at Tri City. After 33 years at Riverside, his assistants Norman (Hobble Creek), Chris Moody (Riverside) and Kent McComb (Bountiful Ridge) had award-winning careers in golf.
Evans’ disciples include Jared Barnes (Cedar City), Colby Cowan (Black Desert) and Chris Stover (Wasatch State Park, Bountiful Ridge). When Evans got into coaching high school and SUU, he said his love for golf shifted into even higher gear.
Whittaker, the last to take the stage, recalled his involvement in helping save the Utah Open, turning it into a national envy with its unprecedented eight pro ams the week of competition. He also helped trigger an association with Special Olympic athletes during that week, a life-changing experience for competitors and athletes. He also helped usher in the Ben Hogan, Nike and Korn Ferry tour stops in Utah.
“It was never work, just fun,” said Pettingill, the force behind creation of Valley View Golf Course. His son Chad is now the general manager of The Ledges in St. George.
Schneiter was asked what has stood out in his career, the associations, the people he met along the way or the tournaments.
“It’s the victories. I like to win,” he said.
Deseret News columnist Lee Bensen once wrote of the 95-year-old Schneiter, “You’d be hard-pressed to find a greater lifetime ambassador for the game in the state, and even harder pressed to find anyone who would argue the point.”
In the early days of the section, Whittaker and Pettingill had an early version of the Apple computer to line things up. It had a small screen and looked like a big box. Whittaker wrote the section’s official charter on that machine. “It was before there was such a thing as spell-check,” he said.
As a group, this charter class could give lectures, speeches and win awards in storytelling of the game of golf. Getting them in the same room for this honor was a home run for Dehlin and Norman on this night.
Nobody wanted to turn off the lights.