Charitable donations set Presidents Cup apart

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Editor's note: This article is reprinted courtesy of Boston Hannah, which produces The Presidents Cup program.

To get a sense of what truly separates The Presidents Cup from other major sporting events, you only need to pause and consider the role that its charitable mission has played since day one.

From the first matches in 1994, no player, Captain or Captain's Assistant on either team has ever been compensated. There is no purse to be divided. No winners' shares to be banked.

Instead, the net revenues are divided into equal shares that participants equally designate for charities or golf-related projects of their choice. Contributions are made through PGA TOUR Charities, Inc., in their names. The first seven Presidents Cup tournaments generated more than $17.75 million for charities worldwide, beginning with a $750,000 contribution in 1994 and culminating with a record $4.2 million from the 2007 matches at Royal Montreal Golf Club.

"The Presidents Cup's most important mission is benefiting worldwide charities," says PGA TOUR Commissioner Tim Finchem. "It is especially rewarding because these are the charities that are most important to our players and captains and are personally designated by them."

The list of organizations that will benefit from this year's Presidents Cup won't be available until after the competition. However, records from the past few matches indicate the recipients contributed to personal foundations; groups committed to medical research; colleges and other educational institutions; sports groups, particularly golf organizations such as The First Tee; and broad-based organizations such as the Ronald McDonald House and the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

A look at 2009 team members who also competed in 2007 gives a good indication of where they might direct their contributions this year. For example, in 2007, Tiger Woods directed his entire $150,000 donation to his Tiger Woods Foundation. A sizeable percentage of players also elected to donate all or a portion of their monies to their foundations; Retief Goosen directed some of his funds to his Retief Goosen Golf Academy while Geoff Ogilvy contributed directly to the Australian Sports Foundation; Steve Stricker contributed a portion to the Wisconsin Chapter of the American Parkinson Disease Association; Zach Johnson contributed to the National Christian Foundation; Jim Furyk donated his $150,000 to the University of Arizona Foundation and Mike Weir gave to the Brigham Young Athletic Department as well as to his personal foundation.

But in a great many cases, participants in The Presidents Cup elected to focus their contributions at a local level, focusing on hospitals, schools and other educational facilities, athletic programs and, most touchingly perhaps, programs that focus on helping battered women and abused or neglected children.

One case in point is current British Open champion Stewart Cink, who is playing on his fourth U.S. Presidents Cup team this year.

In 2005, Cink split his money four ways. One of the beneficiaries was The Healing Place in Tuscumbia, Ala., where children ages three through 19 and their families get free help coping with the grief of losing a parent or sibling. It is a major focus of his charitable efforts (see www.stewartcink.com). But another facility that deeply touched Cink and his wife, Lisa, was Big Oak Ranch, a children's home in Alabama run by former University of Alabama football player John Coyle. The facility opened in 1974 and 14 years later a girls' ranch was added in memory of a 12-year-old girl who had been beaten and sexually assaulted by her father. Coyle pleaded with a judge to get custody of the girl, but the judge returned her to her parents who beat her to death three months later.

"It's a place where kids go to grow up, basically," Cink told writer Melanie Hauser in an interview for The Presidents Cup 2007 program. "People who don't want their children or have trouble, they just drop them off. They've raised something like 1,500 kids. In fact, the first kid who went through there just turned 50.

"Every charity touches your heart if you just let it," said Cink, who could have been speaking for all the players, Captains and Captain's Assistants who have been moved by -- and who responded to -- the needs of others over the past 15 years.

It might prove to be The Presidents Cup's greatest legacy.