Legendary golfer and businessman and Pensacola resident Jerry Pate joined the Foundation Board in 2018. Early in his golfing career, Pate garnered eight PGA Tour victories and seven foreign wins, including the 1976 United States Open and the Tournament Player’s Championship in 1982. He also won the 1974 U.S. Amateur and has competed on the Walker Cup and Ryder Cup teams. In later years he won on the Champions Tour winning twice, including in Tampa at the Outback Championship. Pate also worked for many years as a golf commentator for ABC, CBS and the BBC.
Since 1977, his company, Jerry Pate Design, has developed award-winning golf courses, including Kiva Dunes, Old Waverly Golf Club and the Preserve in Mississippi, and Trump National Colts Neck in New Jersey. In 2010, Jerry Pate Design also began providing certified landscape architecture services in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia and has created many transformative and award-winning community parks, urban streetscapes, corporate and educational campuses and athletic facilities, including Pensacola’s Vince Whibbs Community Maritime Park, Blue Wahoos Stadium and Admiral Mason Park. The Urban Land Institute’s Open Space Award for Excellence earned by the Community Maritime Park in Pensacola is the first and only such award earned by a project in northwest Florida. Pate also owns and operates Jerry Pate Turf & Irrigation, Inc., a multifaceted irrigation equipment, design and consulting firm.
Mr. Pate is an alumnus of the University of Alabama and member of its President’s Cabinet. He is one of the longest-serving current members and current vice-chair of the board of the Northwest Florida Water Management District. He is also a board member of the Gulf Coast Council of the Boy Scouts of America and the Andrews Institute Research & Education Foundation, which is dedicated to advancing the science of orthopedic care. He’s also a member of the Florida Council of 100 and past chair of the Environmental Institute of the Golf Course Superintendents’ Association of America. He previously served on the PGA Tour Champions board.
