For a man who never played a minute of sports beyond the high school level, John Q. Hammons is a giant on the Ozarks sports scene.

"Where would we be without him? I'd hate to know," longtime Missouri State director of athletics and Hammons friend Bill Rowe said in a recent interview.

Hammons, 89, has made a lasting imprint on local sports. He has funded all or major parts of the construction of Hammons Student Center, Hammons Field, Highland Springs Country Club and the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.

His last sports project --the 11,000-seat JQH Arena on the Missouri State campus -- might be the most impressive yet. The $67 million building, with Hammons providing $32 million, is home to MSU's basketball teams.

"It certainly is hard to imagine what Springfield and southwest Missouri and the horizon of sports would look like without John Q. Hammons," said Jerald Andrews, executive director of the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.

"When you think about all he's done financially, it's truly amazing."

Matt Gifford, general manager of the Springfield Cardinals, recently called Hammons "a visionary." The Cardinals have been a smash hit at Hammons Field since 2005.

"That vision brought professional baseball back to Springfield and to the great fans of the Ozarks," Gifford said.

"We have been the beneficiaries of his vision with all that summertime fun at the ballpark."

Rowe, who has known Hammons for 50 years, said Hammons was a sports enthusiast prior to becoming a business mogul.

Hammons played basketball and baseball in high school in the tiny southwest Missouri town of Fairview, in Newton County. He graduated from Southwest Missouri Teachers College in 1939 and then spent two years coaching junior high basketball in Cassville.

His teams lost a total of two games in those seasons.

Even after he gave up the coaching whistle, Hammons remained an avid fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and, later in life, the MSU men's and women's basketball teams.

He has attended Reds spring training for 52 consecutive years and the NCAA men's Final Four for the past 51 years.

"He always went and watched the (Final Four) semifinals, then came home," Rowe said. "Staying for the championship game would mean missing work for two more days."

Rowe often has accompanied Hammons to the Final Four and was with him in Detroit in 2006, when Hammons threw out the first pitch before Game 2 of the Cardinals-Tigers World Series.

When Hammons started to get serious about building a baseball stadium, he and Rowe toured several top college and minor-league parks around the country to get design ideas.

"I think this one is the crown jewel of them all," Rowe said of the $32 million Hammons Field, which Hammons financed fully. It opened in 2004 as home to MSU's baseball team, with the Double-A Cardinals coming a year later.

Through all the projects they worked on together involving facilities for MSU teams, Rowe said Hammons never tried to influence hirings or firings of MSU coaches.

"Never one time did he say, 'You guys ought to consider so and so for a job,' or 'You ought to fire so and so,' " Rowe said. "That's never been his mode of operation."

JQH Arena is the largest on-campus basketball facility in the Missouri Valley Conference.

Valley commissioner Doug Elgin called JQH "a crown jewel" and praised Hammons as a major player in the business and sports worlds.

"I (recently) toured it and it's one of the top on-campus facilities that I've seen, anywhere in the country," Elgin said recently.

"I think you have to look at the opening night in JQH Arena as a celebration, both of athletics at Missouri State and a celebration of Mr. Hammons' life."

When brainstorming a name for the new arena, Rowe said Hammons liked the idea of using his initials.

"The stadium in Washington, D.C., RFK Stadium, was named after Robert Kennedy and he said he always liked that," Rowe said.

"It was different," Rowe added of the JQH designation, "but appropriate."

Perhaps Hammons' most important contribution to the citizens of the Ozarks has been a result of the Nationwide Tour golf tournament, held each summer at Highland Springs Country Club since 1990.

The PGA Tour-sanctioned tournament would never have come to Springfield without a facility like Highland Springs, a Hammons development that opened in 1989.

The Price Cutter Charity Championship raised $6,375,591 in charity dollars for area youth organizations through its first 18 events. When this year's total is announced later this year, it's expected to push the overall mark to around $7 million.

"It's important to keep in mind that those dollars have impacted a lot of lives," said Andrews, director of the golf tournament since 1997 and the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame since 1995.

Andrews said he can close his eyes and see a Hammons who is much different than the man in the business suit.

"We all have images of people in our minds," Andrews said. "I see him as a young man, coaching kids in basketball, with a whistle around his neck and the word 'coach' across the front of his sweat shirt."