Handwriting on the Wall

CALLIGRAPHY SCOREBOARDS ARE A DYING – BUT NOT DEAD – ART THAT SPEAKS TO GOLF’S AGE-OLD RESPECT FOR TRADITION.
Gather ’round, golfers and fans, and hear tell a tale of yore, a distant past before tournament scores were rendered scrollable on your phone, and before digital scoreboards the size of drive-in movie screens blared results visible from a long-iron shot away. We’re talking about the antiquated art of pen on paper. But not just any pen or any paper. We’re talking calligraphy. Leaderboards rendered as lovingly as love letters, by artists directly descended from Belgian monks who spent lifetimes illuminating sacred manuscripts, and whose latter-day cousins hand-post runs, hits, and errors on Fenway Park’s Green Monster.
GATHERING PLACE
Actually, the heyday of calligraphy leaderboards wasn’t all that long ago — maybe the 1950s, when it occurred to tournament officials that chiseling scores in granite was too time-consuming and chalkboards too illegible, not to mention dusty. Instead, officials nabbed the nearest literate-looking intern to handwrite on big sheets of lined butcher paper the results of each player’s round as they turned in their scorecards.
“If you think about our game prior to the internet,” says Mark Passey, one of the deans of golf calligraphy, “how were you going to let people know? The biggest tournaments might tell you who the leaders were on a metal board, and maybe a chalkboard in the press room. But what about everyone else in the field? You might have 156 or 312 players. You couldn’t display them all that way. People wanted to know where things stood; how they compared.”
That was in an era when people printed things. With a pen. On paper. “If you could handwrite scores and make (them) legible, and then if someone could print in a way that was attractive, well, that was the evolution of golf calligraphy,” says Passey.
Passey, the retired director of regional affairs for the USGA Central Region, developed his deft hand by hand-printing signs for his father’s grocery store. “I learned how to print large formats; learned how to use a pen correctly. I started doing golf scoreboards around 1980. First, I did a few at my club. Then somebody would see one and ask me to do one for their club, then for the tours and golf associations. Then I was asked by the USGA board. I was the only person on staff who had the skill set.”
Passey went on to do renderings at golf tournaments for more than three decades.
One of the most gratifying aspects of golf calligraphy is the water-cooler effect. Leaderboards became a natural mustering spot at a golf tournament.
SCGA Executive Director Jeff Ninnemann did calligraphy scoreboards for California events for many years in his previous role as director of SCGA championships and golf operations. “You’d get all kinds of people at a tournament, especially a big one,” Ninnemann recalls. “The leaderboard was the gathering place as the tournament went on, as scores were coming in. But it was also mesmerizing for people to watch. Folks were almost equally interested in the skill of the calligraphy — just seeing the art — as in the results of the tournament.”
“It definitely becomes like a water cooler, especially if the calligraphy is really good,” says Jimmy Becker, longtime assistant director of SCGA championships and golf operations. “You get a lot of people coming up and making comments, like, ‘Oh, that looks great. Is that even real? Or is it preprinted?’ And you tell them, ‘No, that’s all hand done.’”
Ninnemann has sun-setted his own calligraphy career, but Becker still renders boards for select SCGA events — namely, the SCGA Amateur and Women’s Amateur, the California Amateur and California Women’s Amateur. Nationally, leaderboards are rare; they show up at a scattered few club and pro events. “We still think that it’s a cool touch to have,” says Becker, “and it’s something a little different. It’s something of a lost art, which is sad, but it’s also a ton of work.”
TON OF WORK
No question about that.
Passey cites U.S. Amateurs as his most challenging event. “Three hundred twelve players! Two courses! Every 10 minutes I’d get 12 scorecards, from 9 a.m. till dark. A bathroom break was a luxury. It was hard work, physically and mentally. But it was way fun.”
A calligrapher’s tournament begins days before the event. “It takes a lot of prep work,” explains Becker. “For 156 players, it usually takes me six to eight hours to ink in the names and hometowns.
“I’ll do the big letters first, the initial letter of the last names. Then I spell out their last name — which gets hard to fi t with really long names — adding in their first name, their hometown, their state. Then once I get all the letters in, I go through and do all the shadowing, to give it contrast. All the while, I have to make sure I don’t screw anything up, because if you screw up a name, or you put them in the wrong order, you’ve got to start over.”
Mistakes happen, of course. Sometimes a handwritten typo, sometimes a score change. Calligraphers are a prideful lot. Mistakes hurt. As Ninnemann puts it, “Oh, man, I had a perfect game going and then
bam — there goes the board. Even if no one would notice other than the person doing the board, that would drive you nuts.”
For a simple boo-boo, good old-fashioned Wite-Out does the trick. Bigger errors might call for a patch job. Every calligrapher carries extra sheets, scissors, glue and a stapler in their tool kit.
A calligrapher is only as accurate as their information. Passey has experienced more than once being fed scores for the wrong nine on days when players might be starting their round on the back nine. “It’s part of the deal. Cover it up and fi x it.” The whole nine? “Sometimes a whole 18,” Passey groans.
Other do-over hazards include sprinklers, fog, wind and, well, birds.
Since you’re wondering, “Hey, just how many letters are these guys inking in the course of a tournament?” Passey has your answer: “About 40,000 letters and numbers. You’ve got 10 numerals and 26 letters (duh), so you’re doing about a thousand of each on average. Of course, you’ll do way more than a thousand 4s, and not too many 1s (natch) or 9s (we hope).”
Keep in mind that those characters may be 2 to 4 inches high each, spread across sheets as high as 6 feet and as long as 30 feet. That’s a lot of ink. Which is why the veteran Passey uses hard-to-find refillable pens that he’s held onto for 40 years. “I get new tips, springs and O-rings to update my kit and keep it in good shape,” he says.
Ninnemann and Becker both use golf-specific Coopercraft pens (“Pens that help you score”) in sizes that range from 2mm to 60mm.

“Golf calligraphy may be a dying art, but it’s assuredly an art.”
ART AND A-R-T
Golf calligraphy may be a dying art, but it’s assuredly an art. Every calligrapher has their own style. Some, like Becker, use all uppercase. Ninnemann is an upper- and lowercase guy. “I’ve been through phases, too, like a gothic, squiggly style.”
“It’s like painting,” Passey notes. “You’re standing, working on a vertical surface, making big strokes. An initial cap in red, the rest in black. I can look at a scoreboard and know who did it by their style. Sometimes I’d see people doing things I was doing.” Then what, Mark? “I’d change my style.”
Other nice touches: Becker will render golfers’ school mascot or club logo beside their names. Passey, working from photos he’d taken in advance, would render a small painting of every hole to post on the summary sheet each day.
Most importantly, though, Passey cites the A-R-T of calligraphy. “It’s got to be accurate,” he says. “The scores, the spelling, everything. It’s got to be readable — simple, readable text. If it’s beautiful but you can’t read it, it’s not a good scoreboard. And it’s got to be timely. I know every player is going to come over and look at the scoreboard when they finish their round. I want the updated info next to their name by the time they get there.”
Accurate. Readable. Timely. That’s the A-R-T of golf calligraphy. Long may it live.