Pictured: Howie Pierson (right) with son Patrick in 2021.
The MGA is saddened by the passing of Howard (“Howie”) Pierson, former MGA champion, accomplished athlete, and trailblazer. Pierson passed away at age 91 on July 31, 2026. He was a lifelong resident of Rockland County and the longtime teaching professional at New York Country Club.
With the MGA, Pierson won the 1980 Met Amateur Championship at The Stanwich Club, defeating George Zahringer III, but his accomplishments extended far beyond the golf course.
Pierson was a graduate of Tappan Zee High School in 1954 and one of the most accomplished athletes in Rockland County history, earning 13 letters in four sports. He attended Manhattan College, where he played basketball for two years before focusing on baseball, helping lead the team to the Metropolitan Conference title in 1957. Upon graduating in 1958, he signed with the Philadelphia Phillies and played one season before serving two years in the Army.
Pierson returned to Rockland County and began a career in education at Tappan Zee, where he taught science and coached baseball, football, and basketball before moving to Rockland Community College in 1965, where he taught physical education and coached basketball and golf. He served as athletic director at Rockland Community College from 1972 to 1997 and remained the coach of the golf team until recently. Between 1974 and 2010, the team won 21 Mid-Hudson Conference golf championships and made several appearances in the junior college national championships, finishing third in Division II in 1990.
In addition to his Met Amateur victory, in which he became the first African American to win an MGA major title, he qualified for the U.S. Amateur twice and, after turning professional in 1986, competed in eight PGA Champions Tour events. He was recognized by many for his dedication, commitment, and leadership, including induction into the Manhattan College Hall of Fame, Rockland County Hall of Fame, Rockland Community College Hall of Fame, and Tappan Zee High School Hall of Fame.
Visitation will be held on Thursday, August 6 from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM at the St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church (16 Jefferson St, Nyack, NY 10960). A funeral service will be held on Friday, August 7 at 11:00 AM at the same location.
From a profile on Pierson in the April/May 2021 issue of The Met Golfer:
At Broadacres, a 9-hole course in Orangeburg, N.Y., Howie Pierson often hit practice balls into the 1st fairway until dark. Patrick, his teenaged son, would stand in the fairway and catch his father’s iron shots with his baseball glove as long as they came in high and soft like a fly ball. When the balls came in lower and faster with the longer irons, he would stop them on the first bounce like his father had stopped baseballs in the late 1950s when he was a star shortstop for Manhattan College. The routine saved them precious daylight because they didn’t have to waste time shagging balls.
In the early 1960s, the elder Pierson, a Rockland County native and community college athletic director, turned to golf for a recreational outlet after a short stint in the military and two seasons in the Philadelphia Phillies minor league chain; he was one of the first African-Americans signed to the team, in 1958. At Broadacres he would play a $1 Nassau with some of the old-timers. “I’m losing but I’m watching and taking lessons from these guys,” Howie said. “Then all of sudden I started passing them and they started paying me.” Within a few years Howie was scratch, and in 1972 he qualified for the U.S. Amateur at the Charlotte Country Club.
Like his father, Patrick came to the game seriously in his mid-20s after playing college sports – basketball in his case. “For a person of color back then it wasn’t the thing to do when I was growing up,” said Patrick, who is 57. “But when Tiger came around all my friends wanted to play golf.” Also like his father, once Patrick decided to play in the early 1990s he quickly began to make a name for himself. “It didn’t take me long to get good because I had always been around the game, and my dad was my only teacher,” he said. “Dad knows my swing so well that I can tell him my issue over the phone and he can fix it without ever seeing me.”
In the Met Area, the father and son duo of Howard (almost universally known as Howie) and Patrick Pierson are the most accomplished African-American golfers ever. In 1980, Howie became the first African American to win a major MGA championship when he claimed the oldest and most traditional of them all, the Met Amateur. Howie also won the New Jersey Four-Ball twice, the Bergen Open, the Woodstock Open, and was the medalist in qualifying for the 1972 U.S. Amateur.
Howie grew up in Piermont, New York, and went to Tappan Zee High school, where he was first-team all-county his senior year in football, basketball and baseball. With Dorthea, his wife of 62 years, he raised three children — Kim, Howard IV, and Patrick — in Nyack. He coached baseball and basketball at Rockland Community College from 1965-69, continued as basketball coach even after becoming Athletic Director in 1972, and began guiding the golf team in 1974. His tenure as AD continued until 1997, and he is still a coach of the men’s golf team today. (He’ll be 86 in May and he concedes he doesn’t know how much longer he can do the job at his age – either at the college or at New York Country Club in Spring Valley, where he also still teaches the game.) Between 1974 and 2010 the team won 21 Mid-Hudson Conference golf championships and made several appearances in the junior college national championships, finishing second in 1990 in Division II.
He earned his Met Amateur title by upsetting George Zahringer III 3 and 1 in the finals at the Stanwich Club in Greenwich. Zahringer, eighteen years younger than the 45-year-old Pierson, was the reigning MGA Player of the Year, an honor he would win nine more times in the years to come. He already had posted victories in the Long Island and Westchester Ams, was looking to avenge his loss to Jerry Courville, Sr., in the Met Am final a year earlier, and was playing on a course where he had previously been a member. Stamina would likely be a factor in the final, as Pierson noted following his semifinal win over 19-year-old Cary Geensburg, telling reporters, “This 36-hole match I have coming up will be a long one for a fellow my age.”
Nonetheless, Pierson endured the long August day and beat Zahringer with the strengths of his game—accurate driving and strong iron play. Pierson was 3 up after the first 18, but Zahringer fought back to reduce the lead to one with three holes to play. Pierson held off Zahringer with a birdie at the 34th hole, and then closed him out on the par-three 35th when Zahringer hit over the green into a water hazard and conceded the hole. “It was a great win for me to beat the best player in the Met section,” said Howie, who was the only Black player in the field. “It was the perfect end to my amateur career.”
In 1986, Howie turned pro and would play in eight PGA Champions Tour events, but he never could match the success of his amateur career. “If I had putted well I would have won several more tournaments,” Howie said. “I could hit my driver down a railroad track and my irons were a little better than average.”
The Piersons take great pride in their accomplishments in the game and the path they’ve blazed. Howie will never forget his experience at the 1972 U.S. Amateur at the Charlotte C.C. “When they called out my name on the first tee there was nobody there,” he said. “And then all of sudden as I look to put my tee in the ground I see like 200 Black caddies show up dressed in their overalls. I felt so honored that they had come out to see me off. That was probably the only ball that I hit down the middle of the fairway all day.”
Read the full article, Like Father, Like Son from the April/May 2021 issue of The Met Golfer.
