by Byron Nelson
But my situation was more like the rest of the fellows out there. I was very busy at Inverness and extremely happy there. I did enough traveling during the winter in California and the southeast that by the time the Masters was over, Louise and I were happy to get back to Toledo and spend the relatively cool summer there. Plus, I was making more money at the club—from salary, lessons, and shop profits—than I could count on making on the tour anyway.
Still, it was hard to keep my game in shape, and essentially, my golf suffered the first three years I was at Inverness. For instance, I started out 1941 pretty rough. Played badly the first two events, with a 302 at the L.A. Open and a 290 at Oakland, and just plain failed to qualify for the San Francisco Match Play tournament. Then I tied for fifth at the Crosby Pro-Am and for second in the Western Open at Phoenix Country Club. On the last hole, I hit a high 6-iron to the pin, which was cut fairly close to the front, over a bunker. I made that eight-footer to tie for second.
We pros always enjoyed playing in Phoenix, because Barry and Bob Goldwater would invite quite a few of us pros out to Barry’s house for a steak cookout during the tournament. This was long before Barry ever became Senator Goldwater. In fact, the two brothers owned Goldwater’s department store, a wonderful store which they ran quite well. The Goldwaters were very nice people—Barry was a natural leader, a good thinker, and good at speaking. Louise and I always looked forward to that party, and since I had won the tournament in ’39, I was on the list of invitees the rest of the time I was on the tour. This must sound at times as though all we pros thought of was our stomachs. The truth is, traveling the way we did, sometimes the food we’d get was all right, sometimes it wasn’t very good at all, and once in a while, it would be excellent. We’d all had enough lean times that we really appreciated good food when we could get it, and that wasn’t any too often.
The Texas Open was next, and that year it was played at Willow Springs in San Antonio, a tough little course. We had terrible weather, both snow and hail, but we went ahead and played in it. Lawson Little shot a 64 the final round—none of us could believe that—and I tied for fourth, mainly due to my putting. I had streaks of poor putting then; I remember after I’d played in the British Open, someone said that if I had putted well, I could have set a new scoring record. Well, that may be or may be not, but as I’ve said before, we didn’t work on our putting much because of the inconsistency of the greens. We concentrated on getting our approaches close to the pin, which was a lot more effective.
I didn’t do too well in New Orleans, either, tied for eighth. Then we went on to Miami for the Four-ball. My partner was McSpaden again, and again we lost to Runyan and Smith in the second round. Maybe that’s why Jug and I were called the Gold Dust Twins—because we didn’t get the gold, just the dust.
Next was the Seminole Invitational Pro-Am—not an official PGA event, but we loved the course and the food and loved to get to go. My partner that year was a fine amateur named Findlay Douglas. He was sixty-six years old and the 1898 National Amateur Champion. He still carried a 6 handicap, and he was a pleasure to play with. On the last hole, we needed a 3 to win, and a 4 to tie. Well, I made the 3, so that made Findlay pretty happy. Interestingly enough, though my winnings weren’t considered official, I did get $232.50 for my two rounds of 64-71, and $571.79 for my share of the Calcutta pool for a total of $803.29. Not bad pay for two rounds of golf, back then.
Then Louise and I headed back to Toledo so I could get things ready in the shop. The golf course wouldn’t really open until the middle of April, and there wouldn’t be much activity until after Decoration Day—what’s now called Memorial Day. But I needed to get things ordered and see that things would be running right when I did return after the Masters.
The next tournament was the North and South at Pinehurst. I played all right, tying for fourth, but had a bad last round of 76. I don’t remember what caused it now—sometimes it’s a blessing not to have a perfect memory. But the Greensboro tournament started the very next day, and I did better. I had a hot second round of 64 and won, so I was real pleased. A round of 64 can almost make you forget a 76. Another reason I was pleased to win there was that the weather was real bad, and the courses weren’t in good condition at all. Playing well in conditions like that gives you confidence. Of course, we pros didn’t complain about course conditions then—we were just glad to get to play.
You know, looking over my record for ’41, I’m surprised to see how many bad last rounds I had. It’s understandable that I didn’t win much until I got those last rounds turned around some. The next week at Asheville, North Carolina, I tied for tenth on a very hard course and never scored better than 72, though at the Masters I played very steady and finished three shots back of Craig Wood, who won.
Because my contract limited me to six weeks away from the club, I skipped the Goodall Round Robin in favor of playing in the U.S. Open, which was at Colonial in Fort Worth. They had put new sod on two greens and the course was in terrible shape. There had also been a lot of rain, which didn’t help anything. People didn’t know what to do then for golf courses like they do now, so we all just played and tried our best. I had another terrible final round of 77, tied for seventeenth, and won $50. You could say I was disgusted with myself. So the next few weeks I worked hard and finished second three times in a row, at Mahoning Valley, the Inverness Four-Ball with McSpaden, and the PGA at Cherry Hills.
A couple of interesting things happened at that PGA championship. I remember in my second match, with Bill Heinlein, I was coasting along through the front nine. Then all of a sudden he got hot and pretty soon I was 2 down going to the 13th. I managed to pull myself together and won 2 up. Next, I dispensed with Guldahl 2 and 1, and faced Hogan in the quarterfinal. I was 1-up going to the final hole. He had a fifteen-foot putt and I had a twelve. He missed his, I made mine, and that was the match. Remember, all of these were 36-hole matches, and the qualifier was thirty-six holes as well.
Next was the semifinal against Gene Sarazen, always a tough competitor. Fortunately I won, 2 and 1. Later he came over to me in the locker room and said, “Nelson, you double-crossed me.” Surprised, I looked at him and said, “How did I do that, Gene?” He said, “I’ve been playing my irons so well, I decided I’d let you outdrive me, then put my ball close to the pin and it would bother you. But you just put yours inside me all day!”
Next came the final against Vic Ghezzi, and one of the most unusual things happened that I ever saw or heard of in golf. I played wonderfully well the first twenty-seven holes and was leading 3 up going to the back nine. But I’d had such tough matches before this one, all of a sudden I just felt like all the adrenalin went out of me. I tried to fight it, but it didn’t do any good. After thirty-six holes Vic and I were dead even.
The playoff was sudden death. On the 2nd hole, we drove, then hit our approach shots close to the green. We both chipped past the hole about forty-six inches, and our balls were fairly close together, though mine was about a half-inch further away and his was about eight inches to the left. The referee, Ed Dudley, asked if Vic’s ball was in my way, and I said no. But when I took my stance, I accidentally moved his ball one inch with my foot. Well, of course, that was a penalty. In match play, it meant loss of the hole and in this case the match. Naturally, I conceded.
But Vic said he didn’t want to win that way, and there was quite a discussion. They decided that I should go ahead and putt, but I knew the rules. In my mind I’d already lost the match and knew it wasn’t right to let me putt. I didn’t want anyone ever to say I’d won by some sort of fluke. So of course I wasn’t concentrating real well and missed the putt, and Ghezzi won, which was only right.
The next tournament I played in was the St. Paul Open at the end of July. It was a six- or eight-hour drive from Toledo, so it was reachable. I tied for seventh and won $278. You see, I really did make more money at Inverness than I could count on on the tour. With my salary, all the income from my lessons, and shop pro
fits, I did pretty well, with the exception of winning the occasional big tournament. This was why, with my commitment to Inverness, I had to pretty much concentrate on the majors and big money tournaments, because anything less would cost me time at Inverness, plus lesson fees and shop income. And if I didn’t play well, I could end up losing even more.
So I worked until the first week in September, when I drove to Chicago for the Tam O’Shanter. This was a new tournament put on by George S. May, a “business engineer.” That meant he advised other companies how to run their businesses. He was the first to put up a lot of money for a tournament. The first year, 1941, the first prize was $2000, the next year $2500, and it kept going up.
I played well in that first Tam O’Shanter and won the $2000. No, I didn’t make that much each week in the shop, but that was just one tournament of four or five that had big purses, and I sure couldn’t count on winning all of them. I always did well at the Tam, though. I wish the course were still there—it was turned into a development some years after George May died. The course was fairly hard, and the fairways were narrow. I played well there for two main reasons: one, it was a big money tournament so I tried harder, and two, I played those clover fairways well. Not that they planted the fairways in clover, but there was a lot of it on the course, and there were no chemicals to control it back then. Having learned to play on Texas hardpan, I always clipped the ball off the fairway and didn’t take much turf like some of the other boys. That clover had a lot of sticky juice if you hit very much of it, which would cause you to hit fliers. Fliers have little or no spin and you never can be sure what they’ll do, except it’s usually something you don’t want.
After the Tam, I played in a couple of little events near Inverness, the Hearst Invitational and the Ohio Open just outside Toledo, where I had a final-round 62, one of my lower scores in competition. Then Louise and I took our annual trip back to Texarkana. In December, we drove to Florida again, where I won the Miami Open for the second year in a row. That brought me $2000 prize money, plus an extra $537.50 in pro-am and low-round awards. It was a tough little course and the greens were stiff bermuda with a lot of grain. But in the practice round, I noted which way the grain ran on each hole, and most of the time, I didn’t pay as much attention to where the pin was as to which way the grain ran on that green and where I wanted to be when I putted. I was hitting my irons well, so I was able to place most of my approach shots where I would be putting downgrain, because that was the easiest putt you could have on that type of grass.
Right after Christmas, I played in the Beaumont Open and tied for seventh, then won the Harlingen Open with 70-65-70-66. The Beaumont course had the narrowest fairways of any course I ever saw. They were lined with trees, and Chick Harbert, who had trouble keeping his drives straight anyway, would tee his ball up as high as he could and hit toward wherever the green was. He’d say, “If I’m going to be in the trees, I’d rather be closer to the green.” Even as straight as I was, I had trouble staying in the fairways. They were the talk of the week.
I finished up 1941 playing in 27 tournaments, and my black book says I won $11,819.12, though Bill Inglish’s records say it was a little more, $12,025. The difference wasn’t enough to worry about, that’s for sure.
Of course, the whole year of ’41, there had been a lot of talk and worry over the situation in Europe, and we knew it was just a matter of time before the United States would get involved. Sure enough, that December we jumped in with both feet, and everyone’s lives changed almost overnight. Most people thought we’d lick both Germany and Japan in six months, come home victorious, and get on with business as usual—but of course, it didn’t turn out that way.
All of the men who were able to signed up for the draft, and then we tried to go about our business whatever way we could until our number came up. You know, it’s a good thing we really can’t see into the future, because if we’d been able to back then, I don’t think many folks could have stood it.
Starting out in ’42, I tied for sixth in Los Angeles, which kept the L.A. Open on my list of important tournaments I still wanted to win. Then in Oakland I did win, by five shots. This is how I did it: The greens there were quite soft, and all eighteen had a definite slope from back to front. I noticed that we were all hitting at the flag, and our balls were spinning back, sometimes off the green. I changed tactics after the last practice round, and aimed for the top of the flag. Then, when my ball spun back, it ended up closer to the hole. That’s the main reason I won. I remember the pro there was Dewey Long-worth, brother to my good friend Ted Longworth from Texarkana. He was a good player and a nice man, just like Ted.
Our next stop, the San Francisco Open, was played at the California Golf Club where my friend Eddie Lowery was a member. I played well but putted very poorly and finished eighth. I’ve already said that most of us pros didn’t spend much time on putting, because of the difference in the greens and so on, but I had another reason. I had originally learned to putt on stiff bermuda greens, where you had to hit the putt rather than roll it. I never really got over that, and I didn’t work on it enough because we tend not to work on things we’re not good at, and that certainly was true for me. I didn’t three-putt much, but my bad distance was eight to fifteen feet. Those were the ones I didn’t make as often as I should have.
Hogan won at San Francisco, though he was still hooking quite a bit then. On the 18th, which was a dogleg right, Hogan hooked a 4-wood high up over the trees and back into the fairway, because he just couldn’t fade the ball or even count on hitting it straight then. Though he hooked it, he used the same swing and did the same thing every time, so he got to be pretty consistent.
At the Crosby and the Western I didn’t do very well. I’d occasionally have several weeks when I wasn’t chipping or putting well, either one. But I practiced some, and by the Texas Open, I was doing better, finished eighth, then sixth at New Orleans, and second at St. Petersburg. Still couldn’t make much headway in the Miami Four-Ball, though—got knocked out in the second round again, this time with Henry Picard as my partner. But at least it was someone else beating us—Harper and Keiser instead of Runyan and Smith.
My game was getting better all along, but of course, so was everyone else’s. Our on-the-job training was working for quite a few of the players, from those who had loads of natural talent to those who had some talent and a lot of persistence. There still were no real teachers to go to like the boys have today. Most of the older club pros were still making the transition to steel shafts, or even teaching the old way of pronating and all, so they really couldn’t help anyone much. We had to figure things out on our own for the most part, and some fellows were better at it than others. But it was getting more and more important to have most of your rounds under 70, if you wanted to have a chance to win.
After Miami, I played in the Seminole Invitational again, enjoyed all their good food and being with the other players, and won $50. Well, at least the food was free, there was no entry fee, and my caddie only cost $8, so I had $42 more when I left than I did when I arrived.
I did better in the North and South, but had a bad last round of 73, tied for third, and won $500. At Greensboro, I had another poor last round of 74 and tied for fourth. Back then, they sometimes had prizes for low round of the day, and I tied in the third round with a 68, so I got another $25. Then I finished third at Asheville, and won $550. In my last five tournaments, I’d finished second once, third twice, and fourth once. I was definitely getting steadier, despite final rounds I wasn’t very happy with.
During that Asheville tournament, I realized there hadn’t been any pictures or publicity about me. It seemed the articles were all about the other players. I figured the press had gotten tired of writing about me, and I had gotten just enough used to all the attention that I kind of missed it. Anyway, about the third round, I was playing just so-so and was tied for the lead or leading. On the 16th hole, I put my ball in the left bunker, which was over six feet deep
. I got in there and was trying to figure out how to get out and close enough to one-putt, and stuck my head up and looked over the bank to see the pin. Right above the bunker, on the green to my left, was a photographer, getting ready to photograph me as I played my shot. I said to him, “Where have you been all this week? Just get out of my way!” I did get up and down, but I felt bad about what I’d said, so I looked the fellow up afterwards and apologized, and he said, “That’s no problem, I shouldn’t have been where I was.”
Along about this time, McSpaden and I were on a train together, talking about the money to be made on the tour. We figured then that with an interest rate of about 10%, if we could make $100,000 during our careers, we could retire and live quite comfortably on that annual interest of $10,000. That seemed quite reasonable at the time, but it’s a ridiculous idea now.
Next was the Masters, but before the tournament started, I played a match there with Bob Jones against Henry Picard and Gene Sarazen. We were all playing well that day, including Bob, and on the back nine, Henry and Gene made seven straight birdies—but never won a hole from us. Jones shot 31 on the back nine that day. Amazing.
Then the tournament began, and fortunately, I played very well, ending the first round with 68. Paul Runyan led nearly the whole first round, and ended up tied with Horton Smith at 67. Sam Byrd was tied with me at 68, and Jimmy Demaret was behind us with 70. The second round, Horton led by himself for one hole, then I tied him with a birdie at the second hole. It was kind of huckledy-buck between Paul, Horton, and me for the next five holes, but I pulled ahead of them both with a birdie at the par-5 eighth. I was leading then for the rest of the second round, when I shot 67, and all through the third, but lost a little steam in the fourth when I bogeyed six, seven, and eight. Hogan had caught up with me when he birdied the eighth himself. He was several groups ahead of me, of course, so I couldn’t see how he was doing. I birdied 9 to lead again, and led till the last hole despite bogeying 17.