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Expert Commentator, golf, ABC Sports
"Like father, like son" is a saying which fits ABC's expert golf commentator, Peter Alliss, like a glove.
Percy Alliss, Peter's father, was a well-known British golf professional who proceeded to spread the golf gospel on the European continent.
Alliss, who was born in Berlin in 1931, took up the golf gauntlet of the family and turned professional in 1947, when he was 16. During his pro career, which lasted until 1974, he won three British PGA Championships, played on eight Ryder Cup teams, played on ten teams representing England in the World Cup and won 23 major tournaments, including two Spanish Opens, one Italian, one Portuguese and one Brazilian. He spent only six weeks on the American tour in 1954, and therefore was little known in this country as a player.
Alliss, who has been a part of ABC's golf commentary team since 1975, made his broadcasting debut with the BBC covering the 1961 British Open, won by Arnold Palmer.
Alliss claims, in his usual understated, droll manner, that he's a golf commentator because he's "just there as an old player, a lover of the game and a good weaver of stories." Nevertheless he has held some of the greatest honors that can be bestowed upon a British golfer. In 1962 he was named Captain of the British Professional Golfers Association and, in 1967, captained the British team against its European competition in what is now known as the Hennessey Cup.
He again was captain of the British Professional Golfers Association in 1987, when the Ryder Cup was played at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio, and Europe won for the first time in the United States.
As the first president of the Women's PGA (1980-1984), an organization founded in the United Kingdom in 1980, Alliss has been instrumental in attempting to lift the women's golf circuit off the ground in Great Britain and Europe.
He is past president of the Greenkeepers' Association, an organization of men and women who tend the golf courses in Great Britain.
Alliss is actively involved in golf course design. He has written more than 20 books, the latest being "Peter Alliss' Golf Heroes" (Oct. 2002), and also writes regularly for Golf World Magazine, the largest golf publication in Europe.
Alliss and his wife, Jackie, reside in Hindhead in Surrey, England. They have three children. He also has two other children from his first marriage.