by Byron Nelson
It was early March of ’56, and Harvie and Kenny had just played in the San Francisco city championship at Harding Park, where Kenny beat Harvie 6 and 4. There were at least 15,000 in the gallery at that tournament. Shortly after that, Eddie and I were in Pebble Beach for the Crosby Pro-Am, and so were Kenny and Harvie, playing as amateurs, of course. Louise and I and the Lowerys were invited to dinner one evening at George Coleman’s home before the tournament started. During dinner, George said to Eddie, “Your two kids really played well in San Francisco.” Eddie was feeling pretty good and he said to George, “Yes, they can beat anybody, those two kids.” Then they got into a discussion. George said, “Anybody?” Eddie replied, “Anybody—yes, they can beat anybody!” George kind of baited Eddie a little bit and said, “Including pros?” And Eddie fired right back, “Yes, including pros.” So George said, “Well, I’ve got a couple of pros I’d like to have play them.” And Eddie said, “That’s fine, they can beat anybody.” George said, “What do you want to bet on that?” And Eddie said, “Five thousand.”
Now all this time, Eddie hadn’t yet asked Coleman who his players were. When he finally said, “Okay, George, who are your players?” George looked straight at him and said, “Nelson and Hogan.” Well, that sure took me by surprise. But Coleman knew I had worked with both Kenny and Harvie and that I’d love to play with them anytime, so it was fine with me.
Eddie kind of swallowed and looked at me, and finally said, “They’ll beat them, too!” Well, Ben wasn’t at the dinner, so George first had to call Ben, and he said yes, he’d play. The match was on for the first thing in the morning. By the time we got to the course—which happened to be Cypress Point—the bet had gone down from $5000 to just a friendly wager, fortunately. But word had gotten out that we four were playing, and we had quite a gallery, about a thousand people. We didn’t waste any time getting started—the birdies started at the first hole. They made them, we made them, and sometimes we all made them together. We finally went one up at the 10th, when Ben holed a full wedge on a par 5 that you couldn’t reach in two. Then I made a 3 with a drive and 2-iron and one-putt at the 11th, but they birdied too, so we halved that. Starting at 14, the hole up the hill through the trees, we both made 3, and we both made 3 at 15. At 16 I made 2, so we were two up at 17, and they birdied but we didn’t. Now we were one up. They birdied 18, but so did Ben, so we won 1 up. The four of us were a total of 26 under par, and many of the people who were there said later that it was the greatest four-ball match in history. It would be interesting to see a couple of the good pros and amateurs play a match like that today.
As for the Masters that year, Kenny played wonderfully well and was leading the tournament four shots going to the last round. I had been paired with the last-round leader since 1946, but Cliff Roberts and Bob Jones decided I shouldn’t play with Ken because I was his teacher and it might cause controversy. They had him play with Snead instead. Whether it was just because he couldn’t play with me, or simply the pressure of being the one and only amateur to ever have a chance to win the Masters, he stumbled badly that last round; he shot 80 and lost. Four years later, in ’60, Ken was in the clubhouse and they already had him in the winner’s circle when Arnold Palmer birdied 17 and 18 to beat him by one stroke. So he just missed winning the Masters two times.
Somewhere about this time, I was in Wichita Falls for a large junior tournament. One night at a party, I got to talking with Rufus King, a fine amateur golfer, and his brother Charley, who was in the film business. Rufus was saying, “You know, Byron, you ought to do some instructional films—short ones, for television.” Charley agreed and added, “If you could do about thirteen of them, that would be a good package to work with, and maybe I could find someone to help finance it.” We all knew that Bob Jones had done some many years before that were sometimes shown in theaters in the early thirties. We talked about it two or three other times and I suggested that Rufus have Charley get in touch with Eddie Lowery. Rufus and Eddie knew each other from amateur golf, so Charley called Eddie and he did help finance it. We called the series “Let’s Go Golfing,” and did all the filming up at Wichita Falls, Texas. We had a very small crew—just a cameraman who also did the directing, and a couple of assistants. I enjoyed making the films. I’d talk and hit a few shots and talk some more—it wasn’t much different from giving a clinic or a lesson except for the part where I’d be indoors, introducing the show or signing off. I never did know whether they really weren’t any good or were just ahead of their time, but unfortunately, they didn’t sell very well at all.
My golf by now was all right for the most part, though I continued to play just for the fun of it, and at the Masters in 1957, I had almost more fun than I could stand. On the 16th hole in the fourth round, I put my 4-iron tee shot in the water. So I went up to the front of the tee box, about thirty yards closer, and hit my 7-iron good and solid. The ball was sailing towards the hole just perfect, but it hit the flagstick on the metal section about a foot above the cup—back then Augusta had wood-and-metal flagsticks—and it bounced straight back into the water. It was the only time in my whole career that I hit the pin and ended up in the water. Next I went to the drop area, where the gallery sits now, got on, and two-putted for a 7. When I finally did get my ball in the hole, I got the biggest round of applause you ever heard anybody get for a quadruple bogey.
The next year, 1958, I began a minor career as a consultant on golf course design. It started at Brookhaven in North Dallas with Bob Dedman, who now owns Club Corporation of America and is successfully running more than 200 golf clubs. For Brookhaven, I was hired to help the architect, Press Maxwell, shape the fifty-four greens on the course. I greatly enjoyed it, and was able to rely on my experience in playing so many courses across the country. We used what natural landscape there was, didn’t move a lot of dirt, and ended up with three good golf courses. I received $10,000 for the whole job.
That was the good news about 1958. The bad news was I had to have back surgery. You know, the peculiar thing about golf is that most golfers who have back problems find it begins bothering them when they’re putting more than any other time. In April of ’58, I was on the practice green at Augusta, and when I straightened up it hurt quite a bit, though it didn’t bother me in the tournament other than when I was putting. After the Masters, my back kept on hurting and getting worse. The pain was going down my right leg; it was so painful to walk on that I could hardly stand it. I finally went to Dr. Brandon Carrell, a golfer and a wonderful orthopedic surgeon. He took X-rays and told me I had a disc problem in my lumbar vertebrae, numbers three, four, and five. Next, he made an appointment for me to see Dr. Albert Durrico, a fine neurosurgeon. Dr. Durrico tested my right leg and found I had lost about 50% of the feeling in it; I couldn’t raise my toes on my right foot at all. So in August, they both operated on me at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas. It was then they discovered I’d hurt my back falling off that roof when I was a kid. But I got along just great, and the sixth day after surgery, I walked down the hall to the elevator and out to the car and Louise drove me home. It was good to be free of that pain, though I knew I had to be very careful and couldn’t play any golf for a while.
After I’d recovered quite a bit, I called Dr. Carrell and asked him when I could play golf again. He told me I could start with a few little short shots, and work my way up gradually to the longer clubs. A few weeks later, he asked me to meet him at Brookhollow and watched me hit for a little while. Then he said, “I think you’re ready to play—and I’ll play with you.” I’d always given him three strokes but he said, “It’s been so long since you played, I’ll play you even.” Well, I shot 73 and beat him and he said, “Byron, if I ever get you on the operating table again, you’ll never beat me any more!”
There was some more bad news that year, but it turned out all right in the end. In ’55, when we’d won the Crosby, Eddie Lowery had bought us in the Calcutta pool. He won quite a nice amount of money, which he didn’t keep
for himself but gave away to his family and friends. Eddie was always a very generous man, and quite often when I went to a tournament he’d pay my expenses and those of others he’d invited, too. He was also quite generous to his brother and sister. The only problem with the money he’d won in that Crosby Calcutta was that he didn’t report it to the government.
As it happened, about that time Eddie had a salesman who also played golf. This fellow got to where all he wanted to do was play golf and not work. Eddie called him on the carpet a few times, but finally had to let him go. Then the man got mad and told the IRS that Eddie had made all this money at the Crosby and hadn’t reported it. The government picked up on it and in 1958 Eddie was called in on a special IRS investigation and charged with fraud. Naturally, since my name had been connected with his for many years and I had played with him in the Crosby, they subpoenaed me for the trial. But the day before the trial began, Eddie’s attorneys took me to dinner. They never mentioned what they wanted me to say or anything like that, but said, “We see no reason why we can’t use you for a witness, too.” I said, “Fine.” They said, “You need to start thinking about all you want to say, because you’ll be asked a lot of questions.” When the trial began the next day, the defense was the first to call witnesses, and they called me as a witness first thing, which made the prosecution come right up off their chairs. Then they all had a confab with the judge, who decided I could be used as a general witness, rather than just for either the prosecution or the defense. They questioned me most of that day and the next. It was difficult, but luckily I could recall a lot of what Eddie had done for me and all the particulars, and my testimony helped to clear him. He had to pay the tax on that money plus a penalty, but he was cleared of fraud.
You’d think that would have been the end of it, but the next year I got called in on a special investigation because of my testimony, and the IRS went back five years into all my financial affairs. Fortunately, I was able to identify every deposit in my checking account and every check, and the agent said he’d never seen that done before. But even though they never found anything of any importance, every year they did a special audit on me, until finally my wonderful CPA, Jon Bradley, told them they were harassing me and threatened to take them to court. Things have been fine ever since.
I owe a lot of my financial success in life to golf. Not just because of the money I won—in fact, that was the least part of it—but because of all the wonderful people I met who have helped me in so many ways. Really, it’s one of the best things about the game, that you can meet so many excellent people. As I said earlier, I’ve been a blessed man all my life, and one of the greatest blessings I have is my friends. And it just has always kept getting better and better.
NINE
Television
and My Own
Tournament
AS YOU CAN SEE, THOUGH I’D RETIRED FROM TOURNAment golf, I was just about as busy as I ever wanted to be, what with one thing and another. I was still doing exhibitions and a little radio, raising cattle, farming hay, working those eggs, writing for the Dallas Times Herald with my friend Jim Chambers, and occasionally helping to build a golf course somewhere. Then too, I was still working for MacGregor; that continued until 1962, when I switched to Northwestern and stayed with them for sixteen years. So I wasn’t exactly finding time hanging on my hands.
I’d even done a little film work. Besides the instructional films I did in Wichita Falls that never got off the ground, I’d had a very small cameo part in a Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis movie back in the fifties. When I say “small,” I mean a long-distance shot of me off hitting a ball somewhere, and I never heard anything about it after I did it, though they did put my name in the credits. Ben Hogan was in it, too, but he had a larger part than me, because his name was more prominent at the time.
By then, television was already showing sports such as football, baseball, and basketball. They had even begun doing the golf majors then—the U.S. Open, the PGA, and the Masters. I’d never thought about being part of all that. But in 1957, all of a sudden I was.
As I found out later, Cliff Roberts was having a discussion early that year with Frank Chirkinian, who produces CBS golf and has always produced the Masters telecast. They got to talking about the color commentator Cliff and Bob Jones wanted to use for the Masters. Frank had used various ones, both on radio and then on the first telecast in ’56, but Cliff wasn’t satisfied with any of them. Cliff and Bob wanted to keep the Masters from sounding as commercial as some of the other tournaments, so there were some restrictions an announcer needed to abide by. For instance, they didn’t ever want you to mention the size of the gallery, the prize money, or how much money any of the players had won. You had to keep all that sort of thing toned down. So Frank asked Cliff, “Well, who do you want to use?” And Cliff finally said, “I know Nelson pretty well. He won’t go off half-cocked and he’ll do what you tell him to do. Why don’t you ask him?” Frank called right away and asked me and I said yes, though I was quite nervous about it. Live broadcast announcing wasn’t anything like the film work I’d done, nor was it really very much like radio. I knew they had used Vic Ghezzi, Gene Sarazen, and some others before, but I was out on the course playing and had never heard or watched them, so I didn’t have an opinion of how they did or the opportunity to learn from them what I would be expected to do. It wasn’t going to be easy, and I didn’t want to let Cliff or CBS down. But one thing did make me feel better, and that was when they told me I would be working with Chris Schenkel. Chris was already quite well-known for his wonderful ability on television and as a speaker and master of ceremonies at dinners and so forth. Really, he was much more of a celebrity than I ever thought of being, and he still is today. I felt Chris would be good to work with and would help me a lot.
What I didn’t realize was that Chris would help me get started on a whole new career. Even better, this became the start of my long friendship with Chris. It was another fortunate thing in my life that came about simply because I’d played good golf some years before and had gained a reputation for knowing something about the game. But when I first talked to Chris about it, I told him, “I’m afraid I won’t know what to say.” He encouraged me. “All you have to do is tell what’s going on in the picture on the television screen in front of you, and you know golf well enough to be able to explain what the player is doing or has to do. You just do the golf, and I’ll do the announcing.” He helped me tremendously, and instead of being so nervous, I found I really did like doing the Masters because of being at Augusta and working with Chris.
That first year, 1957, we were in the tower back of the 16th green. I don’t really recall any outstandingly good or bad shots on that hole, but I remember Doug Ford won when he holed out of the bunker on the 18th. The hardest thing to learn was not to talk about the play on 16 right in front of me, but rather to discuss the play being shown on television. Another difficult thing was to be talking on the air with the earpiece in my ear and Frank talking to me at the same time. Frank would say, “In two minutes we’ll go to the twelfth and it’ll be so-and-so on the screen.” It was hard to remember at first and very disconcerting, but I got used to it reasonably easily.
Since I was just starting in television, I was very fortunate to have Frank Chirkinian as executive producer. When I first met Frank, he struck me as a man who was never at a loss for words, but also had good intuition about when to “move”—from one camera shot to another—to pick up a certain player. He could move from one player to another more quickly and smoothly than anyone I ever worked with. Most people have never seen him, but Frank is short, with dark skin, brown eyes, and very curly hair. He speaks very fast and is very pleasant to work with if you do your job, though if you don’t, you’re liable to catch a few choice words. But because he moved and spoke so fast, you really had to keep alert. If you weren’t tuned in every minute to what was going on in your ear and on the screen, you could easily get caught flat-footed. It took a lot of energ
y.
We always prepared for the actual show on the weekend by doing a rehearsal during the practice rounds, which in a way was more complicated than the actual telecast. The public didn’t hear or see this because it wasn’t on the air, but Frank took it just as seriously as if it was. He’d say, “All right, you guys, we’re going to do this short and sweet, but we’re going to do it like we’re on the air, only very fast. So be on your toes, because I don’t want to have to tell you twice.” He’d get uptight sometimes—you could hear his voice get a little more high-pitched, but you couldn’t tell it unless you knew him real well.
The thing that helped me so much, even more than Frank’s expertise, was that when the show would be thrown to us, Chris would lead me in at the right time and make it very simple. Also, if I were talking and he needed to say something, he’d just tap my leg to signal me that he needed to take over. I really feel that if I had not been assigned with Chris and later worked with him so long at ABC, I never would have been on television the length of time I was. He really did train me and helped me tremendously.
Apparently Cliff Roberts and Bob Jones weren’t unhappy with my performance, because they asked me to come back the next year. This time, though, Chris and I were at the 18th hole, the command center for the tournament, which was considerably different from being at the 16th. After that we did the Masters together for several more years. In between, I also did a little freelance work for NBC and ABC, and in 1963, I signed my first full-year contract with ABC. Chris stayed with CBS till 1964 when he came to ABC. I was very happy about that, because I’d enjoyed working with him so much. Chris told me recently that I was the first professional golfer to do television commentary on a regular basis, so I guess I pioneered in that area, too.