How I Played the Game

by Byron Nelson

  About this time I was advised I needed to have an official domicile for tax purposes, and I figured Texas would be the best place, because it was one of the few states that had community property laws to protect Louise in case anything happened to me. It was also my home state, and Louise and I had felt for some time that if I ever left the tour, we wanted to settle near Fort Worth, because my family was all there and her sister Delle had married and moved there by this time.

  Just as important to me was the fact that I’d wanted to do something for my folks for some time. They were living in Handley, Texas, and my father was running a feed store there. My brother Charles, about fourteen, was helping out, lifting those hundred-pound sacks of feed and doing the deliveries, but it was still awfully hard work for my father. He had bought the feed store some time before from Mr. Magee, the banker, with whom he’d become good friends. Magee was a widower, and talked my mother and father into moving into his home where my mother could keep house and cook for him, and they had lived with him for a few years. But I wanted them to have their own place.

  We eventually found a fifty-four-acre farm for sale southeast of Denton. We bought it, and they moved there in October of 1940 and lived there six years. It was a good place for them. The farm gave both my parents plenty to do without overworking them, and made it easier for Charles and my sister Ellen to go to college as well. Louise and I never actually lived there, though it was my official domicile for tax purposes until I left the tour in ’46 and moved back to Texas permanently.

  But back to Inverness and golf. Naturally, I was so busy those first few months that between the Masters and the Open, I only played in one 72-hole tournament, the Goodall Round Robin. It was at Fresh Meadow Country Club in Flushing, New York; I tied for sixth at plus 2 and won $300. Hogan played beautifully and won with plus 23. Besides being busy, my contract only allowed me to be gone six weeks out of the six months I would be at the club, so unless a tournament was close by that summer, I couldn’t play in it. The pros’ club contracts differed quite a bit back then. Some pros could go play in tournaments every week, and simply “played out of” a certain club rather than working there every day, while others worked a full week, like me. But I was enjoying my new job and the club a lot more than traveling on the tour, and making more and steadier money most of the time besides. I did play in one local tournament, the Ohio Open at Sylvania Country Club just northwest of Toledo. I shot 284 and won $250, but it wasn’t an official PGA event, so it doesn’t count on my record. But it served as a nice warm-up for the National Championship two weeks later.

  The Open was at Canterbury Country Club in Cleveland that year, about a two-hour drive from Toledo. Not quite close enough to commute. I tied for fifth with 290, but felt very good about how I’d performed, all things considered. Lawson Little and Gene Sarazen tied at 287, and Little won in a playoff. The week after, I played in the Inverness Invitational Four-Ball. I was paired with Walter Hagen, long after the peak of his career. The sponsors then did everything possible to get more people to come watch the tournament, and in those days they didn’t invite just the players on the tour, necessarily. Hagen was in his fifties and playing no tournament golf at all, but they invited him to help draw more gallery. Because I was the host pro, they had me play with Hagen because it would have been unfair for the other players to be paired with him as his game wasn’t very sharp. We had to walk, naturally, and Inverness was a tough course, so it was a bit much for Hagen. The ninth hole there comes right by the side of the clubhouse, the tenth tee is at the men’s entrance to the locker room, and the 13th hole comes back to the clubhouse again. So after we played the front nine, Hagen would say to me, “Play hard, Byron, and I’ll see you at the fourteenth tee.” This was the only tournament I finished last in after becoming an established player (we tied for last, actually, at minus 14), but it was all for a good cause and it was fun to see Hagen play even then, so I didn’t really mind.

  The PGA was at Hershey in 1940, but busy as I was at the club, I hadn’t played in a tournament for two and a half months. I was playing well, however, playing quite a bit with the members and giving lots of lessons. I had arranged in my contract with Mr. Carpenter that I could play in fivesomes with the members. What that meant was on Saturdays I’d go play a few holes with one foursome and a few holes with the next and so on. It was a good way for me to get to know each of the members, plus I could see what condition their clubs were in and how they were playing, and help them decide what kind of clubs, putters, new bags, or whatever they needed. It helped my sales in the shop, and it helped the members, too. They seemed to like it that I played with them.

  About a month or more before the PGA, I started to get in shape for the competition by taking on three members at a time and playing against their best ball. They gave me a one-putt maximum on the first green, so I always started with par or birdie, but after that, I had to really play hard. We’d play once a week. These fellows all shot in the 70’s, and their best ball would be 65 or 66. It was tough competition, but I held my own and won most of the time. Some of the fellows I played with were Ray Miller, Eddie Tasker, Bob Sawhill, Alan Loop, and Tony Ruddy. A great group of golfers and good friends.

  So I felt I was in good shape when I arrived at Hershey. I did all right in the qualifying and early matches, and made it to the semis without too much trouble. I remember how difficult it was for me to play in the semifinal against Ralph Guldahl, who was a wonderful player and a tough competitor, but who was also very slow and deliberate, while I played very quickly. I had to work at staying calm and not becoming impatient, and I managed to do it, fortunately. Then, in the final against Sam Snead, on the third hole in our afternoon round, Sam laid me a dead stymie* and thought he had the hole won. But I chipped over his ball with my pitching wedge and holed it and we halved the hole instead with birdies. By the time we reached the 16th tee, I was one down with three to play. On the 16th, I hit a good drive and a fine iron and holed a six-footer for birdie to catch up with Sam. On the 17th, a short par 4, you drove out on to a hill and pitched to a small green. I pitched three feet from the hole and made another birdie to go one up.

  Then we came to the 18th, a long par 3, and it was my honor. I’ll never forget it. I took my 3-iron, almost hit the flag, and went about ten feet past the hole; I’d be putting downhill. Sam put his tee shot about twenty-five feet to the left of the hole and putted up close, so he had three. So all I had to do was make three to win the match one up. I coasted that putt down the hill very gently and made my three to beat Snead and win the PGA Championship.

  As a nice sidelight to that victory, a couple of years ago I received a very kind letter from a man named Charles Fasnacht in Pennsylvania. He wrote that the boy who had caddied for me at Hershey had been a good friend of his, and when I sank that last putt to win, his buddy tossed Charles the ball and he had kept it all this time. He felt bad about it and wanted to send me the ball, but I wrote and told him that if it had meant that much to him to keep it all these years, then I couldn’t think of anyone who deserved to have it more.

  That PGA was where the story got started about my so-called nervous stomach. Mr. and Mrs. Cloyd Haas came over when I had to play Guldahl in the semifinals. Mr. Haas had gone to the locker room with me before this 36-hole match, and while he was there, I lost my breakfast. He went right out and told Louise and Mrs. Haas. Louise said, “Good!” which Mr. Haas at first thought was very cruel, but he later found out that it was a good sign, because it meant I would play well. I didn’t do it all that often, but somehow the story got started in later years that this was why I left the tour. Actually, it was a little more complicated than that, which I’ll tell you about later.

  A few other members from Inverness had come with the Haases—Hazen Arnold, Mr. Carpenter, the Bargman brothers, and several others, and after I won, I learned they’d made reservations for me and Louise to return to Inverness on the train that night. After dinner, they gave us a wonderful celebrat
ion party in the dining car on the way home.

  I’d now won every major American tournament plus the Ryder Cup, but had not won the Los Angeles Open, which was considered a big tournament then. But I just didn’t feel yet that I’d completed my record. I wanted to win the PGA again, and had hopes of winning the national championship again as well. So I still had some golf to play.

  The week after the PGA, I played in the Anthracite Open at Scranton and was second, with Snead winning. Then it was back to Inverness and no more tournaments until after I left the club in the early fall and went back to Texarkana. I finished the year well, though, winning the Miami Open and $2,537.50 at Miami Springs. I shot 69-65-67-70—271 and beat Clayton Heafner by one shot.

  One thing I should mention about that year was how I got Cloyd Haas started in the golf umbrella business. Golf umbrellas then were about as bad as golf shoes had been before Foot-Joy started making them for me and McSpaden. Our umbrellas were flimsy, the cloth they used wasn’t waterproof and would leak, and if it was windy, the things would turn inside out and the ribs would break all to pieces.

  Mr. and Mrs. Haas had taken Louise and me in like their own children, and we went over to their home for dinner quite often. Summers in Toledo were famous for mosquitoes, but they had a nice big screened-in back porch where Mr. Haas and I would go after dinner to sit and talk. We’d talk about first one thing and another, and one evening, I said, “Mr. Haas, you make such wonderful street umbrellas. Why couldn’t you make a good golf umbrella, too?” He said, “What kind of a golf umbrella do you need?” I told him, and he got to thinking about it. A few weeks later, I was at the Goodall Round Robin tournament in Fresh Meadow, New York. Mr. Haas was up there in New Jersey at the same time, visiting the factory he ordered his umbrella frames from, so he asked me to come out and meet him there. We talked with the manager about what we needed, and we settled on a double rib design and birdcloth for the fabric. They used my size to decide how big to make it, and it was quite adequate. Those first ones turned out to be a little heavy, but they were so much better than what we’d had before. I had mine made up in British tan and brown, and had one made for McSpaden in green and tan. When we brought them out to the course, all the boys wanted to know where they could get one, too. So Haas-Jordan got into golf umbrellas from then on, and theirs are still the finest, in my opinion.

  I worked with Haas-Jordan for several years after that. Mr. Haas made me vice president of marketing, and each tournament I’d go to, I’d visit the large department stores—Neiman-Marcus, Macy’s, Bullock’s—and give them my card, and just introduce myself. I didn’t really do any selling, it was more of a public relations thing. But I got $25 for each call I made, which was nice, plus a generous bonus check each year, which was even nicer. Mr. Haas also had special ties made up for his staff to wear, with all kinds of different designs of umbrellas. I soon became known as “The Umbrella Man,” and it stuck for quite a while.

  My connection with the Haas family continues to this day. I gave some lessons to Mr. Haas’s daughter, Janet, when she was just a college student, and she and her husband, H. Franklin “Bud” Waltz, became two of our dearest friends. Bud has been on the PGA advisory committee for many years.

  I started to teach right away at Inverness, and found that I was teaching more of the better players now. I gave lessons almost constantly while I was at the club, and I enjoyed it. It was much easier to make the better players understand what I was saying, because they had a better grasp of the basics of the game.

  One of the first good young golfers I met at Inverness was Frank Stranahan, R.A.’s son. He was quite an admirer of my accomplishments, and as he got better at his own game, he began to think he was as good as I was, which led to some interesting stories.

  At one point, Mr. Stranahan had signed Frankie up for some lessons with me. Well, I soon found out that this young man wouldn’t listen to anything I had to say. He just wanted me to watch him hit balls, and wouldn’t change anything or take any of my suggestions seriously. After a few weeks of this, I told him, “Frankie, I’m not going to give you any more lessons. You won’t listen to me, and you’re wasting my time and your father’s money.”

  Naturally, it didn’t end there. A few days later, Mr. Stranahan came into the shop with Frankie in tow, and said to me, “Frankie says you won’t teach him any more.” I was really on the spot. I certainly didn’t want to get Mr. Stranahan mad, because he was very influential at the club. But I had to tell the truth, too.

  “Mr. Stranahan,” I said, “that’s not exactly what I said. Frankie won’t listen to me or change anything about the way he plays, and he’s wasting your money and my time. That’s why I told him I wouldn’t teach him any more.” Mr. Stranahan looked at Frankie and asked, “Is that true?” Frankie nodded and said, “Yes.” So Mr. Stranahan said to me, “If you’ll continue to teach him, I’ll make sure Frankie does what you say.” I agreed to give him another try, and he fortunately changed his attitude as well as his golf swing, and became a very fine player.

  I had three assistants during my time at Inverness—Tommy Sullivan, Herman Lang, and Ray Jamison, who I hired from Ridgewood. Ray was an excellent golfer and teacher, and after I left Inverness, he moved on to be head pro at Hackensack Country Club in New Jersey, where he worked for many years. Herman Lang was a wonderful pro too, and was later hired to be head pro at Inverness until he retired and was succeeded by their present pro, Don Perne, also a fine man.

  I had quite a few bad last rounds in ’40 that cost me some tournaments. I became conscious of this, and it wasn’t because I was nervous or choking or freezing up, but I gave some thought to it, and changed my philosophy. Regardless of whether I was behind or ahead going to the last round, I tried to really charge and go all out—not foolishly taking chances, but building myself up for the last round mentally. That’s why I began to play the fourth round the best later in my career.

  1940 was a little like 1938. I had won four tournaments and added another major, the PGA, to my record, but I couldn’t expect it to be as big a year as ’39 had been. I was enjoying life in Toledo and my job at Inverness. I finished second on the money list, and I felt very fortunate. It was really a wonderful year, considering how little golf I played.

  Louise and I left Toledo for Texarkana at the first cool spell, about the middle of September. I left my assistant in charge of the shop until it actually closed around the first of October. In December, we drove to Miami for the Miami Open again, which I managed to win for the second year in a row. That put another $2,537.50 in the bank, so my total winnings for the year, according to my little black book, were $9696. No, we weren’t having to borrow from Dad Shofner any more.

  I went deer hunting that November in Uvalde, Texas, with Hogan, Demaret, and the new Winchester rifle I’d received from the folks at Reading the year before. I bagged a beautiful buck with a twelve-point rack of horns, but the game warden decided that since I had an Ohio driver’s license and Ohio plates on my car, my official domicile in Denton and my Texas hunting permit didn’t count, so he confiscated the deer and I had to pay an $80 fine. It really upset me, because I’d obeyed all the rules, but this fellow didn’t agree. And $80 was a lot of money in those days, especially for us.

  Very few people today realize what it was like to be on the tour then. You didn’t make enough money even if you were a fine player to make a living or ever accumulate anything just playing in tournaments, so it was necessary to have a club job. Certainly, the better you played and more tournaments you won, the better your chances of getting a job at a fine club. Especially if you were toward the end of your career and wanted to settle down and not travel any more, having a good tournament record was a really big help. Being a good player also helped you get more lessons, because people thought if you could play that well you certainly should know something about the game and be able to impart your knowledge to your pupils. That wasn’t always true, because some of the touring pros didn’t ever
spend much time teaching or become good teachers. The best teachers in my opinion were those who had taught themselves how to play, and who also had the ability to take it slow and easy with amateurs and be very patient. A top touring pro could also help increase membership and playing activity. Ridgewood was pretty full when I arrived, but Reading wasn’t, because there were a lot of golf clubs in Reading and it wasn’t that large a town, so my coming there after winning the Masters and then winning the Open two years later really did increase the membership. Inverness was always a famous club ever since 1920, when they held the U.S. Open there for the first time, so Inverness was also full when I arrived, but I did give quite a few more lessons than the pro before me had done. A couple of other examples of fine touring pros getting jobs at good clubs were Craig Wood at Winged Foot and Claude Harmon after him. No doubt their playing ability helped a great deal, in both their getting the jobs and helping to improve the clubs as well.

  There were a few pros, like Hogan and Snead, who were registered at a club such as Hershey for Ben and Greenbrier for Sam, but who never worked there full time, really, though the club got the benefit of their names and the prestige associated with their wins.