different kind for the PGA tour: By the end of that
year, the organization had donated more than 100
million dollars to charitable organizations.
Impact The growth of golf in the 1980’s was fueled
by the aging of the baby-boom generation, increased
leisure time available to Americans, an increased
number of golf course facilities, and technological
improvements to golf equipment. These develop-
ments drove golf’s popularity not only as an ama-
teur pastime but also as a professional sport, as golf
afficionados also became spectators on the PGA tour.
Further Reading
Astor, Gerald.The PGA World Golf Hall of Fame Book.
New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1991. Focuses pri-
marily on the famous players and accounts of
their most famous victories in the major tourna-
ments.
Campbell, Malcolm.The Encyclopedia of Golf.3d ed.
New York: DK, 2001. Good for research and spe-
cific information about the history of golf, the ac-
complishments of specific champion golfers, and
the champions by year of the world’s major tour-
naments. Extensive facts and information about
the 1980’s.
McCormick, David, and Charles McGrath, eds.The
Ultimate Golf Book: A Histor y and a Celebration of the
World’s Greatest Game.New York: Hilltown Press/
Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Historical information
about the great players and the major tourna-
ments. Contains extensive historical photographs
from golf’s earliest years to the end of the twenti-
eth century.
Alan Prescott Peterson
See also Sports; Watson, Tom.
Goodwill Games of 1986
The Event International sports competition
founded by Ted Turner
Date July 4-20, 1986
Place Moscow, Russia
Goodwill Games of
Games, were the brainchild of Atlanta mogul Ted Turner,
who sought a venue for increasing goodwill between the
world’s superpowers. The competitions were to be aired on
TBS, Turner’s Atlanta-based television superstation.
The Goodwill Games were organized as a response
to the United States’ boycott of the 1980 Olympic
Games in Moscow and to the Soviet Union’s refusal
to participate in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Despite the fact that Ted Turner bypassed the U.S.
Olympic Committee (USOC) in his plans, he and
the USOC later reached an agreement that future
Goodwill Games should not become alternatives to
the Olympic Games but should focus on U.S.-Soviet
competition. Turner believed that the world’s top-
notch athletes should be able to come together in an
environment free of the political pressures that had
marred the 1980 and 1984 Olympic Games. Eleven
feverish months went into planning the event, in
which athletes from the United States and the Soviet
Union competed together on the same playing field
in a major international multi-sport summer event.
In response to Turner’s initial proposal, the Sovi-
ets had suggested the event be limited only to Ameri-
can and Soviet athletes. Turner insisted, however,
that other countries be allowed to participate. Fol-
lowing the Soviets’ agreement to this condition,
Turner helped recruit the Western team, giving
$6 million to the Athletics Congress, which, in turn,
paid top American athletes $3,000 each to compete.
Turner envisioned star athletes participating in track-
and-field events, swimming, boxing, volleyball, and
figure skating. The Soviets accommodated the games
by building a huge studio for TBS visitors, doubling
their police force, and posting banners that pro-
moted sports, friendship, and peace. Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev insisted that the message of the
games was to be friendship, and Moscow received a
huge influx of American visitors flocking to witness
the event.The Games Following spectacular opening cere-
monies, the Goodwill Games began. During these
games, six world, eight continental, and ninety-one
national records were broken. On the opening day,
Soviet swimmer Vladimir Salnikov set a new record
of 7 minutes 50.64 seconds in the 800-meter free
style. Soviet pole vaulter Sergei Bubka broke his own
world record with a vault of 19 feet 8¾ inches. In the
women’s basketball finals, the United States, led by
Cheryl Miller, defeated the Soviet team, ending a
152-game, twenty-eight-year Soviet winning streak.
Brazil won the bronze medal.
In other notable events, American Jackie Joyner-
Kersee compiled 7,148 points in the heptathlon to428 Goodwill Games of 1986 The Eighties in America