The club grew over the years, yet continually struggled to generate a sufficient cash flow, and Hudson generously contributed his own money as necessary. “He thought Rogers really should have a nice country club and he made it work,” said his son, Mike Hudson, who is currently president of Pinnacle Country Club. “I don’t think there’s any way the club could have stayed and been a viable entity without Red Hudson. He had a real passion for it.” Red Hudson eventually bought the country club outright for an undisclosed sum in 2002.
“It is hard not to think of Pinnacle without thinking of Red Hudson,” said Callahan, who is also president of the Arkansas State Golf Association board of directors. But as time passes and Northwest Arkansas continues to grow, there are many Pinnacle members who don’t think of Hudson when they think of Pinnacle — because they’ve never heard of the man. Hudson, who was born in Pine Bluff and inducted into the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame in 2005, learned the value of hard work growing up on a tobacco farm in Tennessee, then used that trait to grow a small poultry company doing $20 million in sales in the 1970s into the fifth-largest poultry and meat processing company in the country in 1997, with annual sales of some $2 billion. Along with visionaries Don Tyson, Sam Walton and J.B. Hunt, Hudson — whose company was sold in 1997 to Tyson Foods Inc. of Springdale in a $643 million deal — built his company on a foundation of hard work and jumpstarted the economic boom that continues today. And that is partly the reason several Pinnacle members have developed a four-day golf tournament that honors Hudson’s legacy. It is called, simply, The Tribute.
Honoring a Legacy
There are about a dozen men from Pinnacle who make a trip to central Arkansas each summer to play in what has become one of their most anticipated golf tournaments, the Country Club of Little Rock Four-Ball. Founded in 1902, CCLR is one of the state’s oldest golf courses and epitomizes history and prestige. Its four-ball tournament is circled on the calendar by many of the state’s top golfers and businessmen. “They have always liked the fact that we bring good golfers down, and that makes for good competition,” said Pinnacle member Brent Henry, a senior vice president with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Rogers. “It has really turned into a week we look forward to.” One of the tournament’s unique aspects, Henry said, is a qualifying round, followed by three rounds of match play, making the golf competitive for scratch golfers, high-handicappers and anyone in between. The more tournaments Henry competed in at CCLR, the more he kept having the same thought. He recognized how much he and other Pinnacle members enjoyed the event, and he became interested in getting one started in Rogers with the same format. In discussing it with the two Hudsons, Henry struck upon the idea of taking the concept at Pinnacle one step further — improving the Pinnacle golf schedule with a premium-type event, while at the same time honoring the legacy of the club’s most important patron. “There are a lot of people at that club who have no idea who [Red Hudson] is,” Henry said. “What we really tried to do is take what we felt was the need for that type of tournament at Pinnacle, and to make sure going forward, everyone knew something about Mr. Hudson.”
First Class
The core group of Pinnacle members who competed in the CCLR Four-Ball comprised the original Tribute tournament committee. From the beginning, Henry said Mike Hudson’s instructions to them were clear — don’t cut corners and make the event nothing short of first class. “And that’s very reflective of Red,” said Henry, chairman of The Tribute committee. “We had some pretty lofty expectations to begin with and I think we’ve met them” Registration for the tournament is a tax-deductible donation of $1,000 per two-man team to the Pinnacle Country Club 501(c)3, which is a turnkey price for the entire tournament.The inaugural tournament was played in 2010 with 54 teams. The field included 80 teams each of the last two years, and at this year’s tournament, played July 19-22, overwhelming demand led to a waiting list for interested players. Unlike the event at CCLR, which accepts 112 teams, Henry is satisfied with a cap of 80 teams for The Tribute. Henry said the players like the tournament’s unique format, with teams being seeded based on a qualifying round, as opposed to pre-tournament seeding based on a player’s handicap. “If you went off that, it’d be the same guys and same teams with the same seeds every year,” he said. “By qualifying, you have to go out and shoot a number. Some guys play better than others. Let’s face it; we’re businessmen and we’re working and there are times when the golf game is not quite where it should be. It really changes things up.” The tournament has quickly gathered steam. Players this year came from Florida, California, Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Rogers attorney Asa Hutchinson, a former federal prosecutor and U.S. congressman, also participated. Steven Dixon, sales director for BioBased Technologies of Springdale, won the tournament in 2010 and again this year — with different partners. Other golfers who have been on the winning team in the event’s short history include Sam’s Club executive Michael Chaney of Bentonville and attorney Conner McNair of Fayetteville with the firm Friday, Eldredge & Clark.Charlie Jurgensmeyer, a Pinnacle member, competed in the inaugural event, but scheduling conflicts kept him out of the last two. Jurgensmeyer spent 25 years — “my entire working life” — working for Red Hudson as the chief financial officer for Hudson Foods. He said Hudson would’ve been delighted with such a positive outpouring of golfers playing in a tournament to honor him. “Red was not a person who sought after a lot of publicity, so he would’ve been a little shy about it,” Jurgensmeyer said. “But he would’ve been pleased with it.”
Building a Foundation
Just four years before his death, Red Hudson, who started playing the game while in his 30s, still maintained an impressive handicap of 14.9.“He had his handicap down in single digits when he was younger, but it crept up as he got older, just like all of our handicaps do,” Jurgensmeyer said. “But his short game was always phenomenal.” Mike Hudson remembered his father’s skill set as good, but not great. The ups and down never affected his passion for the game.“I played with Daddy a lot and he could play all day long,” he said. “To me, you play 18 holes and that’s about enough. I’ve played 54 holes in a day with him. He loved to keep playing. He and Frank Broyles would go over to Augusta and Frank was the same way. They’d play 54 holes a day at Augusta.”Red Hudson also hosted business associates from across the country for an annual golf outing in Rogers dubbed The Hillbilly Shootout, initially at Prairie Creek Country Club on the east side of Rogers, and later at Pinnacle. The Tribute pays homage to that event with its own Hillbilly Shootout, a family-friendly event held Saturday night of tournament week at the 18th green. It’s played under the lights and with plenty of music, public-address announcing, food and drink.
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by Paul Gatling (pgatling@nwabj.com)
September 17, 2012
