by Byron Nelson
When I first started, Arnold Palmer was on his way up; by the early sixties, he was in his heyday. I felt just like the gallery did. He was one of the most exciting golfers I ever saw. He really was a charger—he hit quite a few bad shots, but he had a knack of recovering with some wonderful shot to make up for his mistakes. Chris and I would always go watch him whenever we could. It was always fun to watch Arnold play.
I was still getting my feet wet in television work, just doing the Masters with Chris, when another film opportunity came along called “Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf.” Fred Raphael, who helped start the first seniors tournament in Austin—now called the Legends—was the producer for the Shell series, and he called me in the summer of 1961. He explained what the series was all about, that the matches were to be played with various players on courses around the world, and that he’d like me to play the first one with Gene Littler, the U.S. Open champion that year. The match would be at Pine Valley in New Jersey, and the winner would get $3000, the loser $1500. It sounded like fun, so I agreed to play.
Since this was the first match, the film crew was still learning what was involved, so it was very slow. They had a station wagon with a camera on top of it and some other small vehicles with cameras on them so they could get around where the wagon couldn’t go. Gene Sarazen was the commentator for our match; he alternated on the series with Jimmy Demaret.
I played rather well, but Gene had a lot of trouble at the fifth hole, which is one of the most difficult par threes I know. You play uphill across a ravine, and a gravel road runs across the fairway quite a little ways short of the green. It was a driver for me from the back tee, about 227 yards, but I put it nicely on the green. Gene missed his tee shot badly and his ball went into these short, thick, stubby oak trees at the bottom of a hill to the right of the green. After he’d hit three times, I still couldn’t see him. Finally I hollered, “Are you still down there, Gene?” He said, “Yes, but I’m not making much progress.” Finally, he put his next shot on the bank at the side of the green and made 7. I had a pretty nice putt for a birdie but missed it and made 3, so I gained four strokes on Gene there. He shot 42 on the front and I shot 37.
They talk a lot about slow play today and it is a problem, but this match was ridiculous. We started as soon as it was light enough, but it took all day—ten solid hours—to film ten holes, and most of the next day to do the other eight. Slowest round of golf I ever heard of in my life. It bothered me some even though I played all right.
When we were finished for the day, Gene and I went in to shower and change clothes. I’d known Gene a while and after we’d already started to undress he said, “Man, I played badly today, Byron. What in the world was I doing?” He had respect for my knowledge of the golf swing, and I told him that when he played well, he set the club perfectly at the top of his swing. But that day, because of the slowness of the filming, he rushed his swing and wasn’t getting set at the top. He asked me, “Do you mind if we go hit some balls?” I said, “Sure.” So we got dressed again and went out to the practice tee, and the next day when we played the final eight holes, he put the charge on me and ended up with 34 on the back nine. I played the back nine well, but he made quite a few putts and came within two strokes. On the last hole, a tough par four, they had to stop filming for one thing or another three different times. Then the whole thing had taken so long that they ran out of film. When they finally got the film changed, it was time to hit my second shot, but I hit it real thin, put the ball in a deep bunker in front of the green and made five, while Gene made four. For the full eighteen I had 74 and Gene 76, which wasn’t too bad considering it was the longest round of golf either one of us had ever played.
The way the series worked, whenever you won a match you’d play another one. So the next year, I had the pleasure of going to Holland and playing Jerry DeWitt, Holland’s champion and a fine player. Unfortunately I had the flu and felt terrible, which isn’t an excuse for the way I played, but Jerry did beat me that day. Before the match Sarazen, Demaret, Raphael and I had a wonderful luncheon with the president of Dutch Shell in his private suite. Gordon Biggers, the man from Shell who was responsible for arranging and producing all the shows, was also at that luncheon, and I got very well acquainted with him. After Shell stopped doing the series, I asked Gordon why and he said, “It was very well-liked, but Shell didn’t sell any more gasoline because of the show, so we had to drop it.” I’ve had many people tell me about seeing that match because so many golfers like Pine Valley, and they really did enjoy all the shows. Besides being about golf, they were kind of travelogues, showing the sights to see in the area around the golf courses where the matches were played—and of course, they always promoted Shell’s products.
In 1963, the year after my match with Littler was shown on television—which incidentally was on my fiftieth birthday—I signed my first contract with ABC. As anyone who’s ever heard me talk knows, I have a fairly strong Texas accent, and when I first started doing television, I not only had the accent but a lot of Texas expressions and pronunciations to go with it. Roone Arledge, our producer, right away started telling me I needed to change the way I spoke and quite a few of my expressions. But Chris told me, “Don’t pay any attention, Pro. People who know you know the way you speak, and you speak very plainly. It wouldn’t be you if you tried to speak like an Easterner.” So I pretty much ignored Roone and only changed the way I pronounced one word, bermuda, which Texans used to pronounce “bermooda.” No one seemed to mind that I didn’t change much, and even Roone kind of got used to me after a while.
That first year with ABC, 1963, the PGA Championship was played at Dallas Athletic Club. I was working with Jim McKay and doing the color commentary. Jack Nicklaus won; it was his first PGA championship, and I remember the 18th hole well. Jack drove in the rough to the left and had to make a 4 to win. There was water in front of the green and he had a bad lie, so he played a smart shot and laid up in front of the water, knocked his third stiff and made 4. Besides it being Jack’s first PGA, the other unusual thing about the tournament is that it was and still is the hottest week on record in Texas. The temperature hit 113 degrees and even the air conditioning in the clubhouse went out. There were people fainting everywhere; some almost had heatstroke, and it was very serious. I know the heat hurt attendance to some degree.
The next year, 1964, a couple of great things happened. The first was that Chris Schenkel came to ABC and I got to work with him again. Chris and I had a lot of wonderful times working together, and one of the funniest happened when we were doing the World Series of Golf at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio. I was still pretty new to television, and one of the problems I had in those early days was keeping my voice low enough so the players on the green in front of us wouldn’t be bothered as they tried to putt. Both of our voices carry quite well, but Chris had more experience at lowering his voice almost to a whisper, while I never really did learn to do it like he could. Quite often, the players or their caddies would be looking up at us on the tower and waving for us to hush.
But sometimes they listened real well. This particular year, Billy Casper was getting ready to putt for a birdie on eighteen, with his ball twelve feet back of the pin. I was describing the putt and spoke into the mike as quietly as I could, “No one has played quite enough break on this putt. Everyone has missed it on the low side.” Billy was standing over his putt, but suddenly backed away, looked at it again, then walked up and knocked it in. I saw him later in the clubhouse and he said, “Thanks, Byron.” I said, “What for, Billy?” He said, “I heard you talking about my putt on eighteen and I’m glad I did, because I didn’t see that much break. I would have missed it otherwise.” Shortly after that I suggested they put a plexiglass screen in front of Chris and me, so we could talk in a more normal tone of voice without the players being able to hear us.
Besides getting to work with Chris again, the second great thing that happened to me in ’64 was Ken Venturi winning
the U.S. Open after a terrible struggle. In the early part of the year, I’d had a few conversations with Ken about his golf game. He was playing very well then and I’d encouraged him and told him he was doing great. I didn’t work with him at all, just talked with him on the phone. That June, the Open was at Congressional Country Club in Washington, D.C. Kenny did well the first two rounds despite the heat and humidity, which were very bad. But the real test came when they had to play the last thirty-six holes on Saturday. Kenny wasn’t used to that kind of weather, living in San Francisco and having already had some recent health problems that had seriously affected his golf game for a while. Chris and I thought even during the third round that Ken wasn’t going to make it. It looked like he was out on his feet just walking down the fairways. After he played the morning round, a doctor took care of him all during his break for lunch and followed him quite closely the rest of the day.
When he went back out in the afternoon, Kenny just played absolutely automatic, thinking more about just finishing than what he was doing as far as playing was concerned. Fortunately, he was playing with Ray Floyd, an excellent man to be paired with and a super nice person. I can still see how Ken looked on that television monitor. I couldn’t believe he was still on his feet. When he made his putt on the last hole, I don’t think he could have gone another step. Ray Floyd was so moved by Kenny’s performance that there were tears in his eyes when he picked Kenny’s ball out of the hole. I’d have to say that those 36 holes were the two most unusual rounds of golf I ever saw. What’s more, they proved what a great player Kenny really was.
It wasn’t very long after the Open, though, that Ken began to have trouble with his hands. A golfer’s hands are pretty important, and Kenny’s hands got so bad that he finally had to have them both operated on in June of 1965. I was concerned about what this might mean to Kenny’s career in golf, and my concern became considerably stronger when Kenny was selected to be on our Ryder Cup team. The rest of the team included Julius Boros, Billy Casper, Tommy Jacobs, Don January, Tony Lema, Gene Littler, Dave Marr, Arnold Palmer, and Johnny Pott.
It was a good team, I felt, and I had just begun to wonder who the captain would be when I got a call from Warren Cantrell, president of the PGA, who happened to be from Amarillo, Texas. Warren said, “Byron, I talked to the players on the team and asked if they would like you as captain, and they said ‘Absolutely!’ ” There wasn’t one dissenting vote, which made me feel very happy and very honored. Warren’s call took me right back to the days of the 1935 Ryder Cup at Ridgewood when I was assistant pro. While I knew then that I wanted to be on the team one day, I never dreamed about being captain. This wasn’t even on my list of goals when I was on the tour.
It was certainly one of the greatest honors in my career, but I wanted it to be more than an honor—I wanted it to be a victory. The Americans had held sway for quite a while, but I knew the British players were getting stronger and were looking forward to the chance to trim our sails. In those days, the captain had nothing to say about the selection of the team—it was all done on the basis of points earned by winning or playing well in various events over the two-year period between the matches. When my captaincy was announced, it was only three months before the matches, so I didn’t really have much time to work with the team.
Because of the lack of time, right away I began thinking about what I could do to help the team before we went over to England. Our opponents were still using the smaller British ball and we would have to use it too, so I got some for the team to practice with when we all met in New York before flying to England. I made arrangements with the good folks at Winged Foot, and as soon as the team arrived, we went out there to practice. They were amazed at how differently that British ball behaved. Because it was smaller, you didn’t get as much ball on the face of the club, so it didn’t have as much backspin and it wouldn’t fly as high as the American ball. Also, the heavier, wetter air they would encounter in England would affect the ball even more. I’d always felt that was why the British played more pitch-and-run shots than we did, because the small ball lent itself to that type of shot more.
I already had Venturi’s hands on my mind, and then during the practice round that afternoon, Johnny Pott got a stitch in his right side that was hurting quite a little bit. But we had a doctor examine him who decided it was only a pulled muscle and shouldn’t be a problem. That relieved me considerably, because Venturi had only recently gotten back to playing and was just now at the point where he could play without gloves, so he was somewhat of an unknown quantity.
There were several parties for us before we left, and the biggest one was on the last night, when the PGA gave a wonderful one at the Waldorf-Astoria. There we were, dressed in our dark blue suits, white shirts, and striped ties, all matching, and each of us had a complete Ryder Cup wardrobe right down to our golf bags, shoes, and wind-breakers, just like when I’d been on the team in ’37 and ’47. Bob Hope was there, I think Bing Crosby was too, plus the Governor of New York, the Mayor, and many golf dignitaries from all across the country. Everyone wanted to give us a big sendoff and encourage us to play well, which we all appreciated.
We had a good flight over on BOAC and landed in London, then boarded a smaller plane which took us to Southport, near the Royal Birkdale course. When we’d recovered from the trip and began practicing, it soon became apparent that Johnny Pott’s side wasn’t any better. As it turned out, he never so much as hit a ball. That cut me to nine players, and I knew Venturi’s hands wouldn’t allow him to play every match, so I had to figure very carefully how I would use him and the rest of my team. What’s more, Tony Lema had not come over with us because he’d been competing in the Canada Cup matches in Madrid, where he’d played poorly because of a sore elbow. That didn’t reassure me any, but during the practice rounds, Tony came to me and said, “Byron, I’m driving the ball badly—I need help.” He had a lot of confidence in me because he’d watched me play a lot at the California Golf Club when he was the assistant caddiemaster there in the fifties, and we’d played some together, too. I went out on the course to watch him, and I saw right away he wasn’t setting the club right at the top of his backswing. We had a little discussion about it, I told him what he was doing, and he began playing better immediately.
Despite our situation with Pott and Venturi, when there was a press conference that afternoon, I was not about to let the British know my concerns. The British captain, Harry Weetman, had his say first. By now, we had become the underdogs in the British press, so Harry announced that the British definitely had the stronger team and would win the match. Then it was my turn. I got up, looked at him and said, “Harry, we didn’t come three thousand miles to lose.”
It’s very awe-inspiring to represent your country in the Ryder Cup, and I’ll never forget the feeling of pride and excitement as I raised our country’s flag at the start of the matches. The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was there and welcomed us, Harry Weetman and Warren Cantrell made some remarks, and the match was on.
Most of the matches were very exciting and quite close, except for Davey Marr and Arnold Palmer’s showing in the morning foursomes on the first day. It was Dave’s first time to play in the Ryder Cup and he was very nervous. I watched him and he hardly got the ball off the ground the first seven holes. Obviously, even Arnold couldn’t overcome that and they lost to Dave Thomas and George Will, 6 and 5. However, I’d noticed that Dave finally settled down and was playing real well at the end, so I got an idea. Since this was the second match that morning, I figured Harry would move Thomas and Will to the first match that afternoon, so I did the same thing with Dave and Arnold. When I announced at lunch that Palmer and Marr would be playing Thomas and Will again, Arnold and Dave didn’t even finish their food, they jumped up from the table and charged off to the practice tee. My guess was right, because in the afternoon they shot 30 on the front nine—a remarkable score at Royal Birkdale, where par is 73—and they turned the tables completely, winning
6 and 5. We were all pretty happy about that, and I think it was the most exciting match of the whole tournament.
Though Tony was playing well and Arnold and Davey had come back, at the end of the first day we were tied at 4 points apiece. Kenny had not played well in his first two matches, so I had him rest during the morning of the second day. That was when we played the alternate shot format properly known as four-ball. In the morning we won two matches, lost one, and halved one, so we were needing to do better in the afternoon. For the last match of the afternoon I decided to pair Ken with Tony because they were good friends; they were both from San Francisco, and I knew they enjoyed playing together. They went up against Hunt and Coles and came to the last hole, a par five, deadlocked. It was Kenny’s turn and he hit a good drive, then Tony pulled the second shot and the ball ended up left and short of the green, back of a small shallow bunker. I was standing back of the green and knew we needed a point badly. The British players left their second shot short but on the right side, with only a simple chip to the green. Prime Minister Wilson was standing next to me and he said, “I say, sir, it appears as though we have the advantage.” I answered, “Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, it appears that way, but of all the people on my team, I’d rather have Venturi playing this shot than anyone else.” Then Kenny gripped down on the club, used a little short firm motion, and chipped close to the hole. The British chipped short and missed their putt and we won, 1 up. At the end of the second day we had taken the lead, 9 to 7, and went on to win decisively.
When the matches were over, I was talking to some of the British golf officials. They were wondering why it was that the Americans seemed to play better golf and a different type of golf. I told them it was in great part due to the different ball we used, and after I explained my ideas, quite a few of them agreed. A year or so later, they changed their ball to the same specifications as ours, which was a good thing for the game altogether.