Lt. Col. Dan Rooney was sitting on his couch and watching the PGA Tour one afternoon about three years ago when a thought struck him: it seemed as if the Tour was the only major sports league that didn’t observe the national anthem. It also made him think of one of his favorite phrases: virtue is belief in action.
“Lots of people believe stuff,” Rooney said on this week’s episode of GOLF’s Subpar podcast, “but are you taking action?”
Rooney, the founder of Folds of Honor, which provides educational scholarships to spouses and children of fallen or disabled military service members and first responders, reached out to then-PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and asked about bringing the national anthem into golf. (He also reached out to another pal, Jack Nicklaus, to help the effort.)
It worked. Folds of Honor Friday is now incorporated at dozens of PGA Tour, PGA Tour Champions and Korn Ferry Tour events.
“As of this year, we have over 50 events that now observe the national anthem,” Rooney said. “The partnership that we have with them is called Folds of Honor Friday, where we award a minimum of 13 scholarships (there are 13 folds of the flag) in each one of these PGA Tour markets. It’s been a put-it-on-my-tombstone moment: brought the national anthem to the PGA Tour. And it’s one of those things of omission. Nobody ever really thought about it, and now we have people showing up in red, white and blue on Fridays and they are playing the national anthem … it’s just really cool.”
You can listen to the complete interview with Rooney here, or watch on YouTube below.
