by Byron Nelson
It was an unusual tournament for me in a way. Everyone at Augusta National was glad to see me, and I surprised myself by playing as well as I did. I was 14 under par on the par fives, and I had three eagles: one on 15 in the third round, and two on 13, in the first and second rounds. It was a record at the time, and held up till 1974. I don’t recall who I was paired with or very much about the tournament, but I finished tied with Frank Stranahan for second, so I was very pleased. There was a point during the tournament when I realized I was playing well enough that I had a chance to win, but it really didn’t matter to me one way or another, which may be why I didn’t try harder. Though I played well on the par fives, I played the par threes poorly and putted badly, so there wasn’t one particular hole where I could say, “That was where I lost it.” The fact was, I really didn’t care anymore. I enjoyed seeing our friends there, and Augusta will always be a special place for me, but playing there in ’47 showed me once again that I was definitely through with the tour. I had no desire to go back out there. It was behind me.
But I did start to do more in other areas of golf soon after the Masters. In June, I went to St. Louis for the Open, but instead of playing, I wrote for one of the press services. That was interesting and fun, kind of being on the inside and the outside at the same time. Less than two weeks later, I played an exhibition at my old post, Ridgewood Country Club in New Jersey, where I proceeded to set the course record of 63. The next month, I began a series of exhibitions in cities like Flint, Michigan; West Bend, Wisconsin; Elgin, Illinois; and even Chisel Switch, Kansas. I did thirty-five exhibitions in two months, shot between 63 and 68, averaged 67, and made enough to keep the ranch going a while longer. Besides being a nice relaxed way to make some decent money, exhibitions made me realize I really enjoyed putting on a show for the fans, especially doing the clinics. Without the pressure of an upcoming tournament to worry about, I could laugh and joke with the crowd, and I found out I actually had a sense of humor.
All that exhibition work also prepared me well for the Ryder Cup matches that year in Portland. It was a great honor to be selected for the team again. I had been selected a couple of other times since 1937, when I’d first played in the Ryder Cup. But with the war on, we never really played until ’47, so it was gratifying to get to do it again, since I had a feeling it would be the last time I would get picked for the team. It was an interesting situation. The British, who were just barely starting to recover from the war and all the bombing, were not allowed to take any money out of England. A man named Robert A. Hudson, a successful businessman in the Pacific Northwest and a golf nut, paid the expenses for the British team himself. In fact, the great British player Henry Cotton was able to come and play in the Masters that year only because Eddie Lowery loaned him the money—which Henry paid back immediately.
I remember one funny thing about that Ryder Cup. Herman Barron and I were playing in our alternate-shot match. I was the captain of our twosome, and we were one up going to the 17th, a par 3. I put my tee shot eight feet from the pin, and the British were fifteen feet away. Herman was a wonderful putter and I had complete confidence in him, so when we walked on the green, I got this idea in my head that I would give the other guys their putt, which I did. Barron looked at me like I was completely crazy, and said as much to me. But I just said, “Herman, I have no doubt at all that you’ll make this putt.” Which of course he did, and we ended up winning the match nicely.
After ’47, my appearances in tournaments such as the Masters, the Colonial, and occasionally the U.S. Open were purely ceremonial. With only a few exceptions, I never did play particularly well in any of them, though I certainly enjoyed seeing the people and knowing that they liked seeing me again. For quite a while, I enjoyed playing in a tournament without having the pressure. I could relax, just amble along and enjoy the good shots, but sit back and realize it didn’t matter to me if I finished fifth or twenty-fifth. And of course, I didn’t play in any of these beyond where I could put on at least a good show. I was the first to play 100 rounds at the Masters, though, which I’m pleased about.
So from that point on, my career in golf is of little interest to most folks except for an occasional story. One funny thing happened in 1948, at the National Celebrity tournament at Columbia Country Club in D.C. I was paired with Snead, who happened to hate cameras. Snead would always look around the gallery before he hit to see if anyone was taking pictures. Well, that day some guy was following us. He was standing about thirty yards down the fairway, and had this camera hanging around his neck—there weren’t any rules then about cameras on the course during a tournament. Sam saw him and watched him every hole, though he never once took a picture or even acted like he was going to, so Snead could never say anything to him. But Sam played poorly and I shot 67 and was low pro. I always wondered whether that fellow knew how much Snead hated cameras and had bet against him that day.
Then came one of the most moving experiences of my life. It was the summer of ’48, and my brother Charles had been married to Betty Brown of Gainesville, Texas, for several years. Charles had just gotten out of the service, and Betty was seven months pregnant. Then Charles came down with a fever. For a few days we thought it was the flu, but they finally diagnosed it as polio. We took him to the Veterans’ Hospital in Dallas, but we didn’t feel he was receiving the best treatment. I wanted to take him out of there myself and get him to a civilian hospital. But Charles refused; he knew they wouldn’t release him, then he’d be AWOL and that would cancel his Army benefits, so he stayed. My parents drove over there from Denton every single day. They didn’t think he’d ever live because he had bulbar polio, the most serious kind.
Well, he did live. After their baby was born, which they named Byron III, Louise invited Betty to come live with us. When Charles finally got out of the hospital, he lived at the ranch with Betty and the baby until he could find work. Now, Charles had a wonderful singing voice, a beautiful, deep, bass-baritone. He had been song leader at the Pearl Street Church of Christ in Denton and when he got well enough, they told him he could come back. When it was announced that he was going to start leading the singing again, the church was packed full, and our whole family was there. He was sitting on a bench with his crutches, behind the podium, but when he got up, he fell. Absolutely flat on his face. But he told everyone not to help him. Then he crawled to the podium and pulled himself up, while the whole church was silent. When he finally stood up, Charles hit the first note of the first song full bore, and off he went. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, and I don’t know if any of us were singing very well right then. Even though he’s my little brother, Charles has always been an inspiration to me, and I can never remember that moment without getting pretty emotional.
I bought my first herd of Herefords for the ranch in the fall of ’48. I bought the cows from a Dr. Wiss in Keller, and the bull from Dr. Alden Coffey in Fort Worth. The bull was from the bloodline of Prince Domino Returns, one of the greatest Hereford bulls ever. As far as I was concerned, the day those Herefords arrived was a lot more important than any tournament I played in that year. My father and I did a lot of the work on the ranch ourselves. We had one hired hand most of the time, and the three of us hauled manure, cut and baled hay, dug post holes, and built fences—whatever there was to do, we did. It was also during these years that I started raising turkeys. Two things started me on them. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make much money on our cattle because the ranch was really too small for that. But I knew you could make money on either turkeys or chickens. We had eaten store-bought turkeys the year before and remembered they hadn’t had much flavor because they were too lean. A fellow I knew, Claude Castleberry, was in charge of all the food for the Texas State College for Women in Denton. He played golf, and also had a cafeteria in the school where townspeople could come and eat. When I asked him where he got his turkeys, he said mainly just big producers like Armour and Swift. I was going to raise a few just for our friends and us, bu
t when I told him I was thinking of raising turkeys he said, “If you do, I’ll buy them.” Between the college and the cafeteria, he would use 400–500 a year. So I got going and built a turkey building right next to my cattle barns, and some roosting racks outside for when they outgrew the building. Then I fixed some brooders in the cattle barn, and raised about a thousand turkeys at a time. They were called “Texas Bronze” because of the bronze coloring at the end of their feathers. I passed the word around to our friends, and I finished the turkeys on corn the last couple of months to fatten them up. The toms weighed an average of over twenty-four pounds, and the hens fourteen. Back then, you could take them to regular eviscerating plants to get them cleaned and dressed, which I did. Then I would deliver them myself, door to door, to our friends and family in Fort Worth and Dallas.
You’d have to use a big pan to roast them because they were so juicy, and everyone said those were the best turkeys they ever ate. I did make a little money on those birds, but I worked hard for my dollar. Things went along all right for a few years, but then in ’53, Claude Castleberry left TSCW and someone else took over the buying. Their policy had changed and now they had to take bids, but naturally I had to get more money than the big poultry producers who didn’t finish their birds on corn. So I couldn’t compete, and I got out of the turkey business. But I have to say you can buy a better turkey now than you could then. Today’s turkeys are excellent.
The chicken business was next. Again from playing golf, I’d met Joe Fechtel, president of Western Hatcheries in Dallas. I knew he was in the chicken business and he knew about my turkeys, so one day he asked me if I’d ever thought about producing fertile eggs to sell to a hatchery. He told me his company would furnish the chickens and roosters and show us what to do, then they’d buy the eggs from us. They would pay 65 cents a dozen, cleaned and cased. Then they’d put the eggs in an incubator under my name, and for every percentage point above 65% fertility, I’d get an extra penny, but if I was under 65%, I’d get docked a penny. I’d always liked chickens, and my mother knew a lot about them, so I liked the idea. I invested over $20,000 in the buildings, the refrigerated egg house, and all the automatic feeders and waterers we needed. We had over 17,000 laying hens at one time, and in all the ten or so years we had those chickens, we never had less than 65% fertility. More than any other one thing I did with the ranch, the chickens always made me a little money, enough to fool with, anyway. But in the early sixties, things began to change again. The chicken business started moving to Arkansas, where the summers weren’t so hot. Joe told me when he was going to move, and my operation was the last one he closed out with before he moved.
All this chicken talk reminds me of a golf story. One day in June of 1949, I got a call from my good friend Eddie Lowery in California. Eddie had been a fine amateur player as a youngster. In fact, he got started as a caddie, just like I did, only about a dozen years earlier. And Eddie always was serious about golf. He was small, about 5'9" or so and 150 pounds, but he had very large hands. He won several championships in New England, from the time he was sixteen on, and by the time I met him, he knew everyone in golf. He served on the USGA board for many years, and was an amazingly energetic man. He didn’t always use the best language, but you couldn’t help liking him, he loved golf so much.
Anyway, after we’d chatted a bit he said, “How are you playing, Byron?” I’d been playing well, so I told him, “I’m playing pretty good, Eddie.” He talked a little more then said again, “Are you really playing good?” I replied, “Yes, I’m playing good, Eddie—why?”
He said, “I’ve been playing out here at Santa Rosa Country Club with the Buzzini brothers, and they’re picking me like a chicken. I want you to come out here and play them with me. I’ll set up a few exhibitions for you, but first we’ll play these guys.” George Buzzini and his brother worked as the pro and assistant at Santa Rosa. George especially was a pretty good player and did well in all the local tournaments, though neither he nor his brother ever played on the tour as far as I know. But I told Eddie I’d come out there.
Louise and I got there, and after dinner we went to Eddie’s house. He took me up to his bedroom where he had this practice putting gadget and a whole bunch of putters lined up against the wall. Now, Eddie never did think I was a very good putter. He was right to some degree, as I’ve explained before. He just never thought I was as good as I ought to be. So he picked out this putter, a MacGregor Spur, and had me start hitting some putts with it. I had a little trouble at first, but then started hitting it pretty good. Eddie said, “That’s the putter I want you to use tomorrow against the Buzzinis.” I said, “Eddie, I’ve got my own putter and I’d rather use it.” But Eddie said, “It’s my money we’re playing for, so you use that putter, not yours.” I finally agreed, so we were set.
The next morning, I started off a little slowly and scrambled around and made a par, then another par, then pretty soon I started making birdies. The Buzzinis began pressing, but I kept on making birdies with that putter. To make a long story short, they finally quit pressing, because I made 12 birdies and six pars and shot 60. Eddie got all his money back—with interest.
He had me take that putter home and said, “If you ever use anything but that putter, you’re nuts.” I used it for two more months and never made another putt outside of four feet, and finally sent it back to him. When he got it back, he phoned me and called me every name in the book, but I told him, “Eddie, I think I used up all the putts in that club when we played the Buzzinis!”
A couple of years ago I got a call from a young man who’d been hired to do a book on the history of the Santa Rosa Country Club. He’d come across a clipping about my 60 and couldn’t believe it, wanted to know all the details. It was pretty unbelievable—particularly since that putter quit working so soon after that match.
While I was working on getting the ranch going and keeping it going, Louise was very busy getting the house in shape. It was quite a mess when we moved in. The previous owners had dogs that they apparently kept inside the house, and the first night we were there, we had to sleep on a mattress on the living room floor. The first thing we knew, we were getting bitten by all these fleas that were in the carpet, so we had to get the whole house treated the next day. As soon as we could afford to, we hired an excellent architect and set about making the place over. We did it pretty much room by room, starting with the back porch, which we made into a good-sized kitchen, then taking what was the kitchen and dining room and making it just one big dining room. What’s now the den or trophy room used to be the bunkroom for four children. It had a little old metal shower in the corner and a fake fireplace and just a couple of little bitty windows. It was quite a project those first few years, but Louise loved it. She had a real talent for decorating and an eye for beautiful things, and because it was our first real home, it made me happy that I could finally afford for her to make our home exactly the way she wanted it to be.
We were so busy with ranching and redecorating that I wasn’t thinking about golf much at all. But my friend Eddie Lowery didn’t seem to ever think about anything but golf. One day in the late forties, Eddie called and had this idea that he’d like me to go on Ed Sullivan’s television show and give some brief golf instructions. Back then, the show was sponsored by Lincoln-Mercury, and Eddie, who was a very successful Lincoln-Mercury dealer, was on the panel that coordinated the advertising. I’d known Sullivan and had played golf with him since my early days at Ridgewood. In those days, Ed was a sportswriter and did a radio show called “The Talk of the Town.”
So off I went to New York to try this out, and what I did was go on stage with a golf club chosen for whatever the tip was going to be about. The first time we had only two minutes, and of course you can’t say much in two minutes. Remember, this was all live TV. Ed introduced me, then he stood very close to me, so close I could hardly swing the club. He apologized later and explained that many newcomers on the show would freeze up when they got out
in front of the audience and had all those bright lights nearly blinding them. I didn’t have that problem, fortunately.
That first golf tip was reasonably well received, and a few months later, Ed had me on for five straight weeks. They didn’t use real golf balls, but light plastic ones, sort of like the wiffle balls they have today, and on one show, Ed saw a friend of his sitting in a box seat not too far from stage, so Ed asked me to hit one of the balls to his friend. I hit it too hard and a little thin, and it hit a lady in about the third row right on her forehead. She wasn’t hurt or anything, but after the show she brought the ball up to us and you could still see the dimple on her forehead from where it had hit. Fortunately, in those days we didn’t have to worry about being sued, but still I decided to start practicing with those balls, and learned if you didn’t hit it hard it would go a lot farther. After that, Ed would often have me hit to someone or a certain place in the audience, and I did all right—at least, I didn’t hit anyone else in the head. I enjoyed it, but I enjoyed more getting to see the performers backstage and how they got made up and their nervousness and all they’d go through to get ready to go on stage. It was something to see.
During that five-show stint, one day Louise and I were walking down the street in Manhattan after a show I’d done the night before. We happened to pass by a group of about five men standing together who didn’t see us because they were arguing about the way I’d said to do something on Ed’s show. Louise said, “Why don’t you go over and interrupt them?” but I was a little shy yet about doing such things, so we just kept going.
Along about this time, when I wasn’t doing something with or because of Lowery or working on the ranch, I was often invited by Cliff Roberts to play at Augusta. One time in ’49 or ’50, I was there playing when a fellow named General Dwight David Eisenhower walked in. As it happened, Augusta’s pro, Ed Dudley, was Ike’s teacher, and Ike was there to take some lessons from him. Cliff set it up for us to play together, and it was fun. Ike was a good man to play golf with. He liked to chat, was very friendly-like, and when he’d hit a good shot, that expressive face he had would just beam all over. But when he hit a bad shot, he’d fuss at himself just like the rest of us. He hit a lot of good shots and was good around the green, but had trouble on his long shots, which faded off to the right a lot.