STEPHEN C. "STEVE" SAMPSON (Athlete, Class of 2005)
After being named to Little League Baseball all star teams three straight years, Steve Sampson eventually turned to golf.
He has won ten club championships, capturing the Bristol Country Club title in 1978, 1980, and 1981 and finishing as the best golfer at Crestwood Country Club seven times in the 1990s.
Partnering with current Senior PGA star Dana Quigley for fourteen years, Steve won over thirty New England Pro-Am events, including local victories at Alpine, Fall River, Ledgemont, Rhode Island, Sakonnet, and Wannamotonomy. In 1988 the two of them, along with Steve’s cousin John Sampson and Bill Wilkinson, competed in the Bermuda Good Will Tournament versus one hundred and thirty other teams from around the world. They finished in the runner-up position. Returning the following year, they did themselves one better and won the championship.
He has won Rhode Island State Amateur Invitational titles at Agawam Hunt, Alpine, Crestwood, Ledgemont, Pawtucket, Point Judith, Potowomut, Rhode Island, Sakonnet, and Wannamoisett. Qualifying for the State Amateur Championship twelve times and leading the field after the first day of qualifying in 2000, Steve has reached match play four times and lost to the eventual champion on three separate occasions.
At the Rhode Island State Mixed Championship, he and Donna Warner won medalist honors three times and finished as tourney runner-ups twice in the early 1990s. In 2005 he and his wife Donna snared the first division title. And Steve has placed in the top ten six times at the Rhode Island Par 3 Championship.
Eventually recognizing that he was getting old, Steve entered the Senior Club Championship at Crestwood in 2003 and won that tourney.
Off the course he has been a member of the Crestwood board since 1994 and served as that club’s president from 2000 to 2003. Steve has also been a vice president of the Rhode Island Golf Association since 1994.
Steve has won the Senior Club Championships at Crestwood Country Club 4 times; 2003,2005,2008, 2009 and 2010.
(Steve was named the President of the Rhode Island Golf Association in 2009.)
From Ocean State Golf website.
RIGA’s New President Looking to Maintain RIGA excellence
By T.F. GEARY
Rhode Island Golf Association elects Steve Sampson as the new president.
He is an expert at organization. He had to be, to successfully build and then run his auto parts business for so many years.
Recently, at age 57, Sampson retired and now can devote most of his time and energy to helping the RIGA continue to grow.
Sampson has a tough act to follow, succeeding George Fowler, who also had a tough act to follow (Don Lamb).
Each year the Rhode Island Golf Association installs its new president at the annual awards banquet held in December. Each year the incoming president says pretty much the same thing. “I tell everybody the people we have running the organization (Executive Director Bob Ward, his assistant Jim McKenna and secretary Kate McCurry) are absolutely great at what they do,” said Sampson. “They have things well under control and I’m not one to rock the boat.”
One of the things that make the Rhode Island Golf Association such a well-oiled machine is that the new president progresses through the ranks and knows the ropes when they reach the big chair. They are smart enough to understand how to stand to one side and not try to impose their will on the rest of the membership.
“There’s not a big difference between being a vice president and the president,” said Sampson. “I guess I get the final say on some things but we have an operating committee and to be honest, we really do all work as a team.” Everybody knows everybody, has played golf with everybody and they all share the same abiding love for the game.
Last year Fowler said that he wanted to start expansion of Rhode Island golf tournaments for seniors and Sampson has the same goal in mind. “I do probably want to enhance the senior section of the tournaments, maybe put in a couple of senior divisions,” he said.
Currently the RIGA only has the state senior amateur and four-ball. Sampson would love to place a senior division in a couple of other major Rhode Island golf tournaments (a tournament within a tournament), with senior divisions in both the Burke Memorial and the state stroke play.
“We all like to play in the Burke and the stroke play but obviously we don’t have a realistic chance of winning,” said Sampson, who has discussed the possibility with Fowler and other prominent senior players such as Peter McBride and Fred Schick. They are hopeful that this is the year that those divisions are added.
“There aren’t many seniors, outside of (Dr.) George Pirie, who can compete with the younger guys,” said Sampson. “George can still compete at any level but we’re not all George Piries. He’s one hell of a player.”
Sampson isn’t too bad himself. A member at Crestwood Rhode Island Golf Country Club since 1985, he carried a two handicap for years. It’s now around five or six, still nothing to be sneezed at and now that he’s retired and can devote more time to his game, perhaps he can lower it.
