by Byron Nelson
When I stepped up to hit my drive on 18, I noticed the tee box was kind of soft and slick. As I started my downswing, my foot slipped a little and I made a bad swing, pushing my tee shot deep into the woods on the right. By now I knew Ben had shot 70, and I had to have a par just to tie. When I got to my ball, I was relieved to find I had a clear swing. The ball was just sitting on the ground nicely, and there was an opening in front of me, about twenty feet wide, between two trees. I took my 5-iron and hooked that ball up and onto the green fifteen feet from the pin and almost birdied it—but I did make my par. So you can see why I felt very fortunate to tie.
Then came the playoff. This was one of the rare occasions when I was so keyed up my stomach was upset, even during the night. I lost my breakfast the next morning, which I thought might be a good sign, because I had always played well when I became that sick beforehand, and it always wore off after the first few holes. When I saw Hogan in the clubhouse, he said, “I heard you were sick last night,” and I said, “Yes, Ben, I was.” He offered to postpone the playoff, but I said, “No, we’ll play.” I did have half of a plain chicken sandwich and some hot tea, which helped a little, but you can see in the picture that was made of Ben and me when we were on the first tee that I was very nervous and tense.
This was probably one of the most unusual playoffs in golf, in that at least twenty-five of the pros who had played in the tournament stayed to watch us in the playoff. I don’t recall that ever happening any other time. Ben and I were both very flattered by that.
Flattered or not, though, I started poorly. On the first hole, I hit a bad drive into the trees and my ball ended up right next to a pine cone, which I couldn’t move because the ball would move with it. On my second shot, the ball hit more trees in front of me, so I ended up with a 6 while Ben made his par. We parred the second and the third. Then, on the fourth, a long par 3, I thought the pin was cut just over the bunker, but my long iron was short and went in the bunker, so I made 4 while Ben made 3. We’d played four holes and I was 3 down.
The 5th hole had a very tough pin placement at the back of the green, but we both parred it. The par-3 6th, I began to come alive a little and put my tee shot ten feet away, while Hogan missed his to the left and made 4. I put my ten-footer in for birdie, so I caught up two shots right there.
We both parred the 7th. Next, I eagled 8 and Ben birdied, so now we were even. I picked up three more shots on the next five holes, including a shot on 12 that rimmed the hole and stopped six inches away. But Ben didn’t get rattled much. Though his tee shot stopped short on the bank, his chip almost went in for a 2.
Byron Nelson, about eight months old.
At age 5 ½.
Byron with his mother, Madge Nelson, and her parents, M.F. and Ellen Allen.
Byron in 1934.
Louise Shofner Nelson.
Louise and Byron on their wedding day in 1934, leaning against Byron’s 1933 Ford roadster.
Byron leading in the first round of the Texas Open at San Antonio’s Brackenridge Park. He finished second behind Wiffy Cox.
Byron playing Lawson Little at San Francisco’s Presidio in January 1935.
Taking a lunch break on the final day of the 1936 Metropolitan Open, which he eventually won.
A locust swarm during an exhibition at the Jockey Club in Argentina in 1937. After 3 holes the match was called off.
Byron with winner Tom Watson sometime in the late seventies at the Byron Nelson Classic . . .
. . . and in May 1992 at the same event.
A publicity shot taken in 1981 at Augusta.
Byron and wife Peggy at a local charity tournament in 1992.
Vice president Dan Quayle, Sam Snead, Gene Sarazen, Peggy Nelson, and President George Bush watch as Byron putts on the White House lawn in May 1992.
The 1992 Masters Champions Club Dinner. First row: Byron, Tom Watson, Gene Sarazen, Jack Stephens, Ian Woosnam, Henry Picard, Herman Keiser, Sam Snead. Second row: George Archer, Nick Faldo, Doug Ford, Gay Brewer, Billy Casper, Bob Goalby, Art Wall, Ray Floyd, Bernhard Langer, Arnold Palmer, Seve Ballesteros. Third row: Ben Crenshaw, Craig Stadler, Larry Mize, Tommy Aaron, Sandy Lyle, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Fuzzy Zoeller, Charles Coody.
Byron after shooting a course-record 66 at the 1937 Masters.
The 1937 Ryder cup team. Standing: PGA President George Jacobus, Ed Dudley, Byron, Johnny Revolta, Horton Smith, Henry Picard. Sitting: Gene Sarazen, Sam Snead, Ralph Guldahl, Denny Shute, Tony Manero.
Harold McSpaden (with seat cane) accompanies Byron on his way to victory in the 1939 U.S. Open in Philadelphia . . .
. . . and Byron accepting the trophy from USGA President Archibald M. Reid.
Teeing off at the 1939 PGA Championship in Flushing, New York. Byron lost to Henry Picard on the 37th hole of the finals.
A sand shot on the 7th hole on the way to winning the 1939 U.S. Open.
Sam Snead waits his turn at left as Byron drives from the third tee in the final round of the 1940 PGA Championship in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Byron won on the last hole.
Byron, Jimmy Demaret, Jimmy Hines, and Tony Penna look over the $10,000 prize money at the 1940 Miami Open, won by Byron.
Playing in a 1941 exhibition match for British relief, Byron nearly holed out after Olin Dutra picked up his ball and placed it on a pop bottle lying nearby.
The Gold-Dust Twins: Byron with his longtime golfing partner, Harold McSpaden, in the early 1940s.
Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Byron, Johnny Weissmuller, and Jimmy Demaret have a little fun in Houston during a wartime Red Cross/USO tour.
(Left to right) Ben Hogan, Byron, Bob Jones, and Jimmy Demaret at Augusta National Golf Club in 1942.
Playing out of the rough on the way to victory at the 1945 PGA Championship.
Celebrating a world record 259 at the 1945 Seattle Open.
At the 1944 Tam O’Shanter in Chicago, Byron holes one in a playoff win over Clayton Heafner.
Teeing off at the San Francisco Open in 1946. Byron won by nine.
Byron with his mother and father on his Denton farm in the early forties.
Feeding the hogs in Denton.
This Ford tractor from the 1940s is still running.
The Masters Champions for the first dozen years, excluding the war years: Horton Smith, Byron, Henry Picard, Jimmy Demaret, Craig Wood, Gene Sarazen, Herman Keiser. (Ralph Guldahl is missing.)
The 1947 Ryder Cup team. Standing: Dutch Harrison, Lloyd Mangrum, Herman Keiser, Byron, Sam Snead. Sitting: Herman Barron, Jimmy Demaret, Ben Hogan, Ed Oliver, Lew Worsham.
Byron putting in good friend Eddie Lowery’s office in San Francisco.
Byron with Babe Didrikson Zaharias in 1946.
Ben Hogan, Byron, and Herman Keiser at Augusta in 1946, just before the final round.
Byron and Louise with two half-Tennessee walkers presented to them by the mayor of Denton on the courthouse steps in 1946.
Byron receiving some tips from Ed Sullivan in the early fifties.
With Bob Hope at Pebble Beach in the late sixties.
Byron with President Eisenhower, Ben Hogan, and Cliff Roberts at Augusta in the late fifties.
Arnold Palmer, Byron, Doug Sanders, and Gene Littler at the 50th anniversary of the LA Open in the mid-seventies.
Presenting Ken Venturi with the Sportsman of the Year award after he won the U.S. Open in 1964.
Byron with longtime ABC “Wide World of Golf” partner Chris Schenkel doing a Masters tournament broadcast in the early sixties.
At President Ford’s tournament in Vail, Colorado. The president’s birdie putt has just lipped out.
Ken Venturi and Byron doing a clinic at Jasper Park Lodge in Canada in 1980.
When we arrived at the 18th tee. I was leading by 2, and Ben’s approach shot ended up way at the back of the green, with the pin way at the front. I played short of the green on purpose, not wanting to take a chance on the bunker, because in those days, a ball landing in the bunker would bury, and then
you really had your hands full. But I figured I might chip up and make par, or no worse than 5, while I was pretty sure Ben couldn’t make his putt from up on the top ledge. I was right—he two-putted, I made 5 and won by one shot.
Louise and Valerie had stayed together up at the clubhouse during the playoff, and they were both very happy for me. Valerie was a very gracious lady, and Ben was always fine whether he won or lost. It was a great victory for me, and more so because I’d been able to beat Ben, who by then was getting to be a very fine player. The fact that he had come from well behind everyone else here showed that he had a lot of determination and persistence.
Then it was time for us to head back to Toledo and Inverness, where we stayed for six weeks before I played again. The PGA that year was at Seaview Country Club in New Jersey, and I was up against Jim Turnesa, one of the wonderful Turnesa brothers, in the semifinal. Jim was in the service, and naturally, the gallery was pulling for him, which I could well understand. I was 1 up when we came to the 18th hole, and I was short of the green, but chipped up two feet from the hole. Jim putted his stone dead and I gave it to him. The gallery gave him a tremendous round of applause because he’d played so well, and I thought it was one of the nicest things I’d ever seen a gallery do, to applaud like that when they thought he’d lost. I felt I had taken enough time over my putt, but maybe I hadn’t waited long enough for the noise to die down and lost my concentration. Anyway, I missed my putt, so we were tied. On the first playoff hole I hit a terrible drive and pulled it into the sticks. I made bogey, so Turnesa won, but ended up losing in the final to Snead. I was very disgusted with myself, feeling I’d just thrown the match away.
Back home, the Inverness Four-Ball was two weeks later, and my partner was Jimmy Thomson. We made a pretty good team, because I was playing well generally, able to make pars most of the time, and he was a good partner because he was so long. I’d hit a good drive and he’d be twenty to forty yards ahead of me. We managed to finish fourth and won $454.
The next week was the Hale America Open at Ridgemoor in Chicago, where I finished fourth and won $475. I skipped the Mahoning Valley tournament the next week in favor of the Tam O’Shanter again, and managed to win it—but just by the skin of my teeth. I was leading by five shots going into the fourth round and playing very well in beautiful weather. It seemed I had the tournament won, though I certainly didn’t feel that way. Anyway, on the first hole, I left my approach shot short and the green had a ridge on it with the pin on top. I three-putted for a 5. On the second hole, I hit an excellent drive that landed in a divot. But it was sitting all right and I was sure I could reach the green in two, though there was a creek just in front. Well, I hit it thin, it went in the creek, and I three-putted for a 7. The 3rd was a par 3 with a lake in front of the green; I hit a 6-iron that landed on the edge of the green but rolled back into the water. I’d made one bogey and two doubles, and was five over after three holes. I was out in 42—just terrible. But I pulled myself together and played the back in 35, which put me in a tie with Clayton Heafner after starting the day five shots ahead of the field. You think I don’t feel for the boys today when the same thing happens to them? I surely do.
We had the playoff the next day—all playoffs were eighteen holes in medal tournaments, and there were just about as many playoffs then as there are now. But the beautiful weather had gone—it was windy, rainy, and miserable. However, I was steamed up enough to play well, shot a 67 to Heafner’s 71, and won the Tam again. That was a good comeback for me, particularly because of the way I’d lost in the PGA just a few weeks before.
I won two other small tournaments that year, the Ohio Open and the Charles River Invitational, but neither of them were official events, so they don’t count on my record, though they were good experience for me, and it never hurts to win, even if you’re just playing a casual round with friends.
What did happen that year—in fact, the next month—was my professional baseball debut. Growing up, I liked to play baseball and was a good outfielder. At one point, I thought quite a bit about which one I wanted to concentrate on, and chose golf. But I still loved baseball and went to watch a game whenever I had the chance. In Toledo, that meant the Mudhens, a farm team for the St. Louis Browns. Fred Haney was their manager, and he and I had played golf some at Inverness. The Mudhens had an exhibition game coming up against the Browns, and Fred got the idea of having me play in it to get more people out to the game, which was going to benefit the Red Cross. He advertised it as “Golf Night,” and gave me ten days to practice with the team. I remember that catching the ball in the type of glove we had then was making my hand really sore. He told me I could fix it by sitting and tapping my palm with a pencil over and over to toughen the skin, and it worked.
In the practice sessions, I did all right on everything but batting. You just can’t believe how fast that ball went past the plate. You really had to be ready to hit before it left the pitcher’s hand, and I never quite caught on. Then they got me suited up, and Fred told me it was fortunate I was the size I was, because I wasn’t too hard to fit.
The game began, and I started in right field in place of a fellow named Jim Bucher. Milt Byrnes was the center fielder, and he said, “Byron, if you get the ball, just toss it to me and I’ll come running and throw it in,” because he knew I’d have trouble throwing accurately the distance to second or third or home. Well, the first thing you know, someone hits a grounder right at me. I scooped it up and threw it to second, which kept the runner on first and got me a big round of applause from the fans.
Then it was my turn to bat, and I whiffed. The fans started hollering, “Better stick to golf, Nelson!” and “Put Bucher back in!” Fred kept me in till the fourth inning, though, and then he said, “Byron, you’ve had enough fun, and I really would like to win this game, so I’m taking you out.” That was fine with me. So Bucher goes back in, and strikes out his first time at the plate. Now the fans start yelling, “Put Nelson back in!” And then when we took the field, Bucher tried to catch a fly ball and dropped it, which really got the fans yelling even louder, “Put Nelson back in!” It was a lot of fun for me, but not so much for Bucher.
There’s a good follow-up to this story, though. The Ohio Open was a few days later in Cleveland. Marty Cromb, the pro at Toledo Country Club, rode on the train with me to Cleveland, and was criticizing me severely for being so foolish as to play baseball. “You could have hurt yourself—broken a finger, ruined your career,” he said. When we got to Cleveland, we were met by a friend of his, Bertie Way, a Scottish pro. Marty got to telling Bertie how crazy I was to play baseball, and how it was going to hurt me playing in the tournament.
Well, Bertie got all fired up and went to see some buddies of his, making bets against me, even though I was the favorite. We had no time to play a practice round, so I went out when the tournament started, scrambled around on the first hole and made par, scrambled again on the second, then settled down and started playing. To make a long story short, I birdied 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, shot 63, and won the tournament. Bertie was so mad at Marty I thought he was going to kill him. He really thought Marty had set him up.
By this time the war was getting worse, and many of the pros were already in the service. It was becoming more difficult to put on tournaments, and at the end of ’42 the tour just plain stopped.
There would be no Masters or U.S. Open for the duration of the war, and none of the regular events were played for all of ’43. We did have just a couple of tournaments that had pretty good fields, but most of the boys were either in the service in some capacity or doing exhibitions for the Red Cross or war bonds.
Back in the spring of ’42, when the draft was in full swing, I’d had a conversation with Colonel Woolley from the artillery training base at Camp Perry, near Toledo. He had played golf with me several times and thought I had a great eye for judging distance. He knew I had registered for the draft, and wanted me to let him know when my number was coming up, because
he wanted to get me to teach his men how to judge distance. I went down to enlist soon after he talked to me, but I failed the physical because of my blood condition. It was not hemophilia, but what was called “free bleeding”—my blood didn’t coagulate within the normal amount of time. Later that year my number did come up, and I failed the physical again for the same reason. They could have put me in a desk job of some sort, of course, but I still would have to go through basic training, and the Army didn’t want to take a chance on me getting hurt out in the field and not being able to get help soon enough. After I failed the physical the second time, they didn’t call me any more. So I was out of it. McSpaden was rejected too, because he had severe allergies and sinusitis. So there we were, looking as healthy as could be, but not in uniform like the rest of the boys. It was an uncomfortable feeling, believe me.
But it wasn’t too long after we were rejected that Ed Dudley, who was president of the PGA then, asked if we could do some exhibitions for the war effort, visiting rehab centers and so on. He and Fred Corcoran, who had been managing the tour, wanted golf to do its part. So Jug and I began in late ’42 and did exhibitions all through ’43 and part of ’44. David Fay, president of the USGA, told me recently that we did 110 of them, traveling back and forth across the country. We actually criss-crossed the United States four times doing Red Cross and USO shows, and going to the camps where they had rehabilitation centers for the soldiers. A lot of the camps had putt-putt courses and par-3 courses for the boys. Sometimes we’d go on military planes, sometimes on trains. We got no money, but MacGregor helped pay my expenses and Wilson paid some of McSpaden’s. The people at Inverness really supported me during that time too, making sure my shop was being run right while I was gone.