How I Played the Game

by Byron Nelson

  Well, Betty and Mrs. Pfeil came out for the lesson, and I watched Betty swing for a good forty-five minutes, talked to her a little about this or that part of her game, but never mentioned anything about overswinging. When I was done, her mother asked me why, and I said, “Mrs. Pfeil, Betty doesn’t overswing. She’s extremely supple, and she doesn’t lose the club at the top or move her head, so she’s not overswinging.” That seemed to give Betty more confidence in her game, and she went on to be quite a good player. Won the Pennsylvania State Amateur several times, I believe.

  Another fine woman player I became acquainted with while I was at Reading was Glenna Collett. She lived in Philadelphia, and though she was several years older than I, she liked to watch me play, so she’d come see me in quite a few local tournaments. I got to see her play quite often, too, and she was the finest woman golfer I’d ever seen at that time. Now, she couldn’t have beaten Babe Zaharias or Mickey Wright or the good modern women pros, but she was a fine player, with a beautiful swing—and no one can argue with her record. In Glenna’s day, it was still “ladies’ golf,” not women’s golf as it became later and is today, and the ladies then didn’t have the strength or the distance they developed later on.

  In the fall of ’37, I was invited along with Denny Shute and Henry Picard, who had played with me on the Ryder Cup team, to go to Argentina to do a series of exhibitions and play in the Argentine Open. Louise and I went back to Texarkana before the trip, and I worked steadily on my game. There was no one around to bother me and I wasn’t working there, so I had the practice area all to myself most of the time. I shagged balls for myself, and just kept refining my swing and working on my short game. Don Murphy, the pro who had come in after me, would come out sometimes and we’d talk about the golf swing. He taught pretty much what I was doing. He continued there till he retired a few years ago, and now is pro emeritus. A good man.

  We were in Texarkana for about a month before we flew to Argentina. Folks today would find this hard to believe, but it took, by actual count, seven days to fly there. We flew a combination of DC-3’s and PBY’s—planes that would land and take off on water. We’d start early each day and stop about the middle of the afternoon, because none of the airports or water landing areas had any lights or radar.

  With those PBY’s, when we’d take off, they’d have a speedboat go out ahead of us and create a wake for us to take off on. And you’d land between these floating logs they’d anchored on the water. It wasn’t the most enjoyable thing, believe me. In fact, looking back on that trip, I’d say aviation has improved since then even more than golf!

  The worst part of the trip down was going through the mountains. That was something, flying through the Andes in a cabin that wasn’t pressurized, at 23,000 feet or more. The plane was dipping and shifting in the wind currents like a blue darter looking for a bug, and we had to take oxygen through these tubes you held in your mouth. Denny Shute got terribly sick, but it didn’t seem to bother me much at the time. Years later, when I began to fly for ABC and found I would just about get the shakes every time, I realized that experience in ’37 really had affected me. I finally had to go see a hypnotist—Dr. Charles Wysong, brother to Dr. Dudley Wysong, whose son now plays some on the Senior Tour. His office was in McKinney, Texas, and he cured me in about a half-dozen sessions. I’ve never had any more trouble with it.

  Anyway, the airline had made advance hotel reservations for us, which helped. The mosquitoes were so bad that the beds had mosquito netting all around them, or we never would have gotten much sleep. A Mr. Armstrong of Armour Meat Packing Company had arranged the whole trip; he also made sure our meals were set up ahead of time. I believe he was the head man for Armour in Buenos Aires. We had very good food in Argentina, and as you might expect, wonderful steaks much of the time.

  It took us a week to get there. We were there a month, and spent another week getting back. We were paid our expenses plus $1500—and nothing for the two weeks of travel time. We played in a couple of small tournaments, the Argentine Open and another match play event. I didn’t negotiate the greens very well—they were stiff and wiry—so I didn’t score well at all.

  One interesting thing happened during one of those exhibitions—a plague of locusts. The air was so thick with them that every time you swung a club, you’d kill six or seven of them and have to wipe off the club before you could hit again. Kind of upset your stomach, really. You could hardly see for all the locusts in the air, plus you’d crunch dozens of them under your feet when you walked. We played three holes before they finally called a halt, and we had to wait about three days till the wind switched directions and the bugs flew off somewhere else and let us play. We have a photo of it, and it’s amazing—people can’t believe we even tried to play under those conditions.

  One other note: I got the first case of hives in my life down there. Thought it was the stress of traveling or something, but a doctor determined that it was the avocados with hot sauce I was eating every day. He told me to quit eating them, and the hives cleared up. But I’ve never had any trouble with avocados since then, so maybe it was the hot sauce—who knows?

  We played about four exhibitions a week, plus those other tournaments, then flew to Rio de Janeiro, heading home. We stopped to give an exhibition in Rio, but I was tired and homesick, so I came on home. It was a great homecoming. Louise was always glad to see me come back when I went off to play in tournaments, but this time, with me being so far away for six weeks and her worrying about me flying and all, she was happier to see me than I ever expected.

  The whole effect of the trip was so negative, really, that a few years later I turned down an offer to go to South Africa and play with Bobby Locke. Sam Snead went instead and got beat fourteen out of sixteen matches, but he was paid $10,000 and they gave him a real nice diamond. Louise didn’t want me to go, of course, but she said later that she wouldn’t have minded having that diamond.

  You could say that 1937 was a whirlwind year for me, with my first Masters win, my first Ryder Cup, first British Open, my win in the International Match Play Championships, and the trip to Argentina that fall. So it’s no wonder that I only played in a couple more tournaments by the end of the summer, not doing particularly well in either one. The first was in Miami, and from there, McSpaden and I went on to play in Nassau. It’s interesting to note that our trip there and back was paid for. That was long before the PGA developed the idea of not accepting expenses or appearance money, which I think is a good idea and has been good for the integrity of the game all the way around.

  Before we left for Texarkana that fall, Mr. Giles drew up my contract for renewal. He didn’t say anything about a raise, so I told him very politely that I felt I had earned one, that I’d done a good job in the shop and had played well for the club. He agreed, and without another word, he raised my guarantee from $3750 to $5000. That wasn’t salary, you understand. It was simply that if I didn’t clear $5000 from my shop, club care costs, lessons, clothing, clubs, balls, etc., then the club would make up the difference. Fortunately, I had no trouble meeting and even surpassing that guarantee each year, due to increased play and more lessons. I was fortunate in that there was very little cash involved, as nearly everything was charged to each member’s account. Also, the club paid Ralph Trout, my assistant, so I didn’t need to worry about that. In 1939, I didn’t get another increase; it stayed $5000, but once again, I wasn’t worried about making it. Naturally, if you didn’t make your guarantee, the club wouldn’t be very happy with your performance if they had to pay out a lot of money. It was more of a protection in case you had a lot of bad weather or some such thing. Still, that raise surely was some good news to take home to Louise that night.

  My winnings in ’37 were $6,509.50, and my caddy and entrance fees were a little over ten percent of that, $712. I did get a $500 bonus from Spalding for winning the Masters, but not anything else that I remember. I ranked seventh on the money list, which was by far the best I’d done
yet.

  In 1938, I played in twenty-five tournaments and won two of them. Finished well in several more, but I wasn’t burning up the course anywhere. I did play in the second Crosby Pro-Am, at Rancho Santa Fe in California. My partner was Johnny Weissmuller, the movie “Tarzan” and Olympic swimmer. Originally, you know, the amateurs played without any handicaps at all. We didn’t do very well, as I recall, but Weissmuller sure was fun to play with.

  Another amateur who played in that tournament was Eddie Lowery, who had McSpaden as his partner. Eddie had been Francis Ouimet’s caddie in the U.S. Open in 1913. He told me once that he’d had to play hooky from school to do it. He would hide out until just before the round started, because they had truant officers in those days, and they were tough. But they didn’t bother him after he got on the course. I’d met Eddie before, but spent quite a bit of time with him that week, and it became the start of a wonderful, lifelong friendship. Eddie was also the one who started me working with Kenny Venturi and Harvie Ward.

  One of the most interesting stories that year was the weather during the San Francisco Match Play Tournament. The wind was blowing so bad that there were hurricane flags up out on the bay, but we played anyway. I led after the first qualifying round with a 77, if you can imagine that. I don’t believe they’d play in weather like that now, and I’m glad. It really was scary, and dangerous.

  In ’38, I won a little money in most of the tournaments I played, had a good mini-streak of two out of three wins in Florida that spring, and then finished fifth at Augusta. Maybe I didn’t win the Masters because they weren’t demonstrating the Hammond organ this time. It wasn’t a bad year at all, but it would have been hard to equal ’37 anyway, and I didn’t expect to.

  Ben Hogan had turned pro two years before I did, but he was a late bloomer. He had trouble with hooking the ball too much, and it took him quite a long time to get that under control. So it took him a long while to make it on the tour to stay. He’d come out for a while, run out of money and go back to Fort Worth, come out again, go back to Texas, and so on. He grew quite discouraged at times, but I could see that he had not only talent, but a kind of dedication and stubborn persistence that no one else did. I encouraged him to keep at it and keep working on his game, and he did all right, finally. Ben practically invented practice, because back then, most clubs didn’t even have a practice area, but Ben would spend hours working on his game wherever he could find a place to practice, and it’s a great part of the reason he was so successful.

  But it did take a while before he was on the tour to stay. In the early days of the Masters, they had a Calcutta pool, and in 1938, I was there at the party because I was the defending champion and Mr. Roberts asked that I make an appearance. So Ben Hogan’s name came up, and no one bid on him at all. They were about to put his name in a pot with a couple of other players when I decided to buy him, and I gave $100. The next day, Ben saw me and said, “I hear you bought me in the Calcutta pool last night for $100.” I said, “Yes, Ben, I did.” He said, “Could I buy half-interest?” So I agreed and he scrounged around and came up with fifty dollars. But he didn’t play very well at all and finished out of the money, so at least I only lost $50.

  In the ’38 Masters, I was the defending champion, of course, and in the first round, by tradition, I was paired with Bob Jones. It was the second big thrill I had in golf, as far as playing with the legends was concerned. At that time, Jones always played the first round of the Masters with the defending champion, and the last with the tournament leader. He was very nice to play with, talked just the right amount, and encouraged me. He shot a 76 that day, and I had a 73, but it was quite a while after he’d quit playing publicly, and he was really serving as the host of the tournament more than as a player.

  When he became too ill to play a few years later, he gave me a great honor by asking me to play the final round in his place, which I did from 1946 until 1956, when Kenny Venturi was the leader. Then the committee decided that since I had worked closely with Kenny, it would be unfair to the other players to have me paired With him, and they put Snead with him instead. After that, they changed to putting the leader with whoever was closest to him, like they do now.

  On that spring tour I recall something else pretty unusual happening in a tournament at St. Petersburg, Florida—I whiffed one. That’s right, flat missed the ball. It was in the last round, on a par five, and I drove over to the left side of the fairway, right in front of a nice, five-foot-tall palm tree. When I took a practice swing, my club just barely touched the leaves, so I figured I was okay. But when I took my 4-iron back and started down, the club hit a leaf just hard enough to kind of grab on to it, and I swung right over the top of the ball—never even moved it. No choice but to knock it out in three, and I hit my approach close enough to make my putt for a fairly unusual five.

  One interesting thing about the North and South Open, which was always held at Pinehurst. For the money we were making, it was a very expensive place to play, since about the only hotel was the Carolina Inn, where you had to dress for dinner every night—black tie, the works. We never actually stayed there until ’39, and they put all the golfers on the ground floor. Naturally, as we came in after our rounds, we’d be talking about how we’d played, and first one and then another fellow would come out of his room, and pretty soon we’d all be standing out in the hall, talking about golf. It was really fun. Louise and I felt we were living high on the hog in those early days at Pinehurst.

  But in ’38, I really was even busier at the club than I had been the year before, so I couldn’t play in as many tournaments as I had at Ridgewood, particularly if they were very far away. One I did play in was the Cleveland Open, when a fellow named Babe Ruth played. After watching him, I thought it was good he played baseball and not golf, because I don’t think he’d ever have made a good golfer. But the gallery loved seeing him.

  The U.S. Open in ’38 was at Cherry Hills. I finished fifth and won $412.50, but my clearest memory of that tournament was the rough. It was very inconsistent, and one time, I know it took me two shots to get out of it. Tough course. For the last thirty-six holes I was paired with Dick Metz, who was leading the tournament at the time. But he started leaving every approach shot short of the green, and leaving every putt short, too. I liked Dick very much, and felt sorry for him, but there wasn’t anything I could do to help him. He had a terrible score and finished way out of contention.

  The PGA was at Shawnee Country Club in Shawnee on the Delaware, Pennsylvania. Fred Waring, the wonderful bandleader, owned the course. He was also involved in the Waring Company, and as a result, all of the players were given a Waring blender. Quite a newfangled gadget at the time. Unfortunately, it was one of those times when I got hot too early. I beat Harry Bassler, a pro from California, 11 and 10 in my third match, but lost steam after that and got beat in the quarterfinals by Jimmy Hines, 2 and 1.

  Runyan and Snead made it to the finals that year, and Runyan used a 4-wood to Snead’s 6-iron and put his ball inside Sam’s every time, nearly. He was already being called “Little Poison” then, and beat Snead 8 and 7. We didn’t have match play tournaments very often—usually in the PGA Championship and a few other events. Even then, tournament organizers were realizing it was hard to predict whether the so-called big names would make it to the finals, and that really affected their ability to sell tickets and make money, or even break even. My own match play record was good, but it should have been better. I had quite a few early matches with what I would call less experienced players, but felt I had to play hard in those matches to keep myself fired up, and I’d peak too early. In the PGA at Pomonok in ’39, for instance, I beat Dutch Harrison 10 and 9 in the semifinals, but I must have used up all my good shots, because I lost to Picard in the final on the 37th hole. Still, I was tenth on the money list that year, and got some sort of a bonus from Spalding, plus balls and equipment. Not a great year, but certainly nothing to be ashamed of.

  1938 was also the ye
ar I got started in the golf shoe business. While McSpaden and I were at Pinehurst playing in the North and South, we got to talking with Miles Baker, a salesman for Field and Hint, who made wonderful men’s street shoes. Miles was from Kansas City and a good friend of Jug McSpaden, and he liked golf. Lots of times he would arrange his schedule so he could be where the tour was. We saw him at quite a few of the tournaments. Anyway, this evening we were complaining to Miles about the sorry state of golf shoes. The soles were so thin you could feel the spikes almost right through the leather. And of course, when it rained or we had to play on a wet course, the shoes wouldn’t hold up at all.

  So we were telling Miles all this, and we said, “You make such excellent street shoes—‘Dr. Locke’ and ‘Foot-Joy.’ Why couldn’t you make good golf shoes, too?” Miles asked us what we wanted, so we told him. We felt the sole needed to be thicker, and the shoes needed to be broader across the ball of the foot. A little while later, he had us come up to Boston to the factory there, and they made special lasts for us. Then they made up one pair for each of us to try—mine were British tan and brown with wingtips, and McSpaden’s were white buck.

  When we came out to the golf course in those new shoes, the players had a fit. “Where’d you get those shoes?” everybody was asking. So all of a sudden Field and Flint was in the golf shoe business, and McSpaden and I each received a 25-cent royalty per pair for quite a few years.

  I shot my highest score ever, 434, in a tournament that year of ’38, but I tied for third and won $950. For some reason I don’t recall, we played 108 holes at Westchester, for a purse of $10,000. Guess they wanted to make sure the fans got their money’s worth.

  Toward the end of September in 1938, McSpaden and I went to do an exhibition in Butte, Montana, on our way to the Pacific Northwest. Louise came too, and we were to fly into Butte, but in those days you didn’t fly very quickly. We took off right after playing in Tulsa and made a lot of stops; by the time we reached Butte it was about midnight. What was worse, though, was there was a snowstorm and we couldn’t land, so we flew on and landed at Missoula. Then we caught a milk train from Missoula back to Butte that stopped at just about every little station to load five-gallon milk cans into the baggage car. It was terribly cold, but fortunately, there was one car that had a little old pot-bellied coal stove, and that’s how we kept from freezing. The seats were just straight down and up with no padding, so they weren’t very comfortable. We got to Butte about two and a half hours later and went straight to bed. When we woke up there was snow on the ground, but the man in charge said we still were going to play. At the golf course, thank goodness, there were just patches of snow, so we put on a clinic and then went out to play. Believe it or not, quite a few people had come out for this, but not being used to the cold weather, we were about to freeze. I finally noticed one man in the gallery who had on a beautiful, warm-looking down jacket. I said, “That sure looks good—I’d like to have that on me about now!” He said, “Well, I can’t give you this one, but I’ll send you one—what size do you wear?” Sure enough, he did send me one just like his, and though I don’t get to wear it much here in Texas because we have such mild winters, it does come in handy once in a while.