Jim Schlosser Reports on "A GGO Thing"

"The tournament-sponsoring Greensboro Jaycees and the local ABC board from 1972-81 unveiled the official GGO decanter for that year. It was filled with Ezra Brooks or Old Mr. Boston bourbon and each year had a different design.

The one in 1977, for example, had a left-handed golf club (the '77 tournament chairman Wade People was a lefty) against a golf ball.

Lines extended around the blocks at ABC stores the day decanters went on sale and the collector's items often were gone in hours. A GGO decanter hasn't been made in 27 years, but people still talk about them -- and collect them.

"The bottles captured the imagination of the Greensboro community, and there was no way to escape its affection for them,'' writes 2002 Jaycee President Randy Harris, who has just published "A GGO Thing" about the decanters.

Available for $18 on Amazon.com, www.randyharris@triad.rr.com or his blog, www.ggoblogger.blogspot , the book provides a history of the decanters.

It also weaves in a history of the tournament and the Jaycees, who started the event in 1938. The last chapter is devoted to other tournament collectibles, such as dishes, goblets and apparel.
Harris' favorite decanters are the first, from 1972, and the one from '79. The '72 model is a round model of a golfer, flag and tree with the words Greater Greensboro wrapped around it. That decanter was based on a design from where the decanter idea originated, the old Bing Crosby PGA Tour event in California. The '79 model shows an umbrella-holding caddy with his other hand extended and checking for rain. It rained often back when the tournament was played in early spring.

Oddly, Harris says, no early decanter mentioned the tournament site, Sedgefield, until the last event played there before this year, in 1976. The next year's bottle, Harris says, "was a proclamation of the move to Forest Oaks," as the new venue's clubhouse and name appeared.
The liquor-decanter era ended in 1981 when leaking decanters prompted the ABC Board, which received all profits after the Jaycees approved the design, to put a halt to them. A group of Jaycees tried to market one the next year, without liquor and with limited availability. The idea flopped.

Some bottle collectors don't count the '82 model. Harris does, declaring, "I think you have to give that bottle some credit. It tried to keep the tradition alive."

Now that the tournament has returned after 31 years to where the decanters began, Harris doesn't expect a resurrection. He says a fancy bottle of booze as a tournament symbol "might not be the most PC (politically correct) thing to do these days."

This excerpt was taken from the from the following link. To read the entire article go to:
http://www.news-record.com/content/2008/08/17/article/abc_stores_saw_first_sign_of_tourney

ABC stores saw first sign of tourney
By Jim Schlosser