How I Played the Game
Page 31
Though Louise never spoke again except to say, “Home,” she did sing once or twice when we went to church shortly after I brought her home, but then she apparently had another small stroke and never sang again. She learned to feed herself, but could never write or walk, and pretty much needed to be cared for totally. Yet her personality didn’t really change that much. She was still there, although it was like she was in a prison, and her main way of communicating was through me. Even though she couldn’t talk, we had been married so long and were so close to each other that I could nearly always figure out what she wanted or needed. One time, about the middle of the summer, she was trying very hard to communicate something to me when I finally realized she wanted to go to our favorite fruit farm in Weatherford, about forty-five miles away, for fresh peaches. Another time, she wanted to visit her niece, Sandy, in Fort Worth. It made me feel good to know I could help her in those ways, because there was so little else I really could do, though I took care of her myself at times on weekends or when one of the nurses was sick.
In many ways, Louise’s mind was still quite normal, yet in other ways she became very fearful, probably because of having to be so dependent on everyone else and having no way to communicate. She became very fearful of fire, for instance. That first fall, as soon as it got cold, I started to build a fire in the den, because we had always enjoyed having a cozy little fire of an evening. But Louise became so agitated I had to put it out, and never even tried to have a fire the whole rest of the time she was alive. She also would get quite worried in the car. The Salesmanship Club had very kindly given me a special van with a hydraulic lift for Louise’s wheelchair, but although she was strapped in very securely, she would still watch the speedometer closely and let me know right away if she thought I was going too fast.
To their everlasting credit, our best friends stayed in close touch. For instance, Jim and Betty Chambers came over from Dallas nearly every Sunday afternoon and visited with us. Also, Chris Schenkel and Tom Watson came to see Louise quite often during her illness, and I can never thank them enough for taking so much trouble. Louise always recognized everyone and was happy to see them. Sometimes it was frustrating for her not to be able to talk, though Chris and Tom would talk to her as though she could, which wasn’t easy for them to do. Chris was excellent at it, and she really enjoyed that.
But after spending five months in the hospital and rehab, Louise never really made any more progress. She lived for twenty-five months more. Then, on September 14, 1985, she had another very bad stroke while sitting in our garden room just after breakfast one morning. I rushed her to the hospital, but after waiting several days, the doctors said she was now brain-dead and there was no chance for recovery at all. Now came the hardest decision of my life—telling the doctors to disconnect the life support systems they had Louise on. She and I had talked about this situation years before and had both agreed we didn’t want to be kept alive that way, but it still is a difficult thing to do. Even so, it was amazing how strong her body was physically, because she lived another two weeks and finally died October 4, 1985. I still went to visit her every day and sat holding her hand when she died. We had been married fifty years and four months.
You know, I don’t think it’s possible for a man to be as successful as I was and not have a wife like Louise to help support me through the bad times as well as the good ones. It must have been very difficult for her during my streak, for example, because I was going through so much. She never said “I wish it would end,” even though I knew all the pressure I was having was affecting her, too. In my earlier career, too, she always seemed to know when I needed encouragement and when I needed a little push—when to be politely forward enough to get me to do what I should to become a better player and a better person. She never minded being “Mrs. Byron Nelson” and taking a back seat regarding all the publicity I was getting, but I was so eternally grateful when the ladies of the Byron Nelson Classic gave her a party one year. It showed Louise that they understood how important she was to me, but more important, that they loved and appreciated her for herself, not just because she happened to be my wife. Another thing that happened along this line was that Abilene Christian University established a golf scholarship endowment fund in both our names, and gave an enormous party for us to get it started. It made both of us feel very good—there were over twelve hundred people, and it was a wonderful evening.
Of course, Louise’s illness wasn’t easy for me, either. It was hard to feel so helpless. I did everything I could for her and was glad to have the opportunity to make up for all the years when she had sacrificed so much for me, but there was only so much I could do. The strain of it all made me start to lose weight, and when I got down to 160 Dr. Murphy told me I had to do something about it or I’d end up in the hospital too. I had prayed and all the church and our friends were praying for me, but nothing seemed to help much until one day I decided to go for a walk. I took off and went a mile or so down our country road, and by the time I got back I felt better. I began to walk nearly every day, and besides being good exercise, it seemed to give me more of a sense of having some control over my life again. I started to eat better and put on a little weight, and all of that helped me take better care of Louise.
But after she died, I felt so lost. Now I had no one to take care of and it didn’t seem like I had much reason to go on living. I started to go downhill again, losing weight and pretty much just feeling sorry for myself. Once again, Dr. Murphy told me, “Byron, we’re going to have to get you turned around some way, or we’re going to lose you.” But I didn’t care a whole lot one way or the other, till one day the next March, when I got a call from my good friend Cy Laughter.
Cy ran a tournament in Dayton, Ohio, called the Bogie Busters, sort of a fun tournament with some celebrities like Johnny Bench and Glen Campbell, President Gerald Ford, and quite a few well-known people in business and politics from around the country. I had gone to it several times before, and when Cy invited me to be his special guest, I agreed to go.
As soon as I hung up the phone, I remembered a young woman I’d met the last time I was at Cy’s tournament, in 1981. Her name was Peggy Simmons, and she was an advertising writer. She had impressed me, though at that time she was just starting to play golf and didn’t really know a lot about it. We’d talked quite a bit at the course the two days of Cy’s tournament, and she had sent me a nice note afterwards, telling me she’d appreciated getting to meet me. That was in 1981, and I’d never seen or even thought about her again until I got that call from Cy in March of ’86, five years later.
Well, I had an idea I’d like to have her come out to see me play again, so I dug up her address and wrote to her. She wrote back, then I called her, and pretty soon we were writing and calling every day, nearly. Six months later she moved to Texas, and we were married on November 15. Living with Peggy has been a great joy for me. Despite the difference in our ages—nearly thirty-three years—and our different backgrounds, we get along amazingly well and have a lot of fun together. I’ve helped her improve her golf game so much that now she’s about a 15 handicap, so I refuse to give her any strokes, and I have to work hard to stay ahead of her.
I truly feel that if it hadn’t been for Peggy, I wouldn’t be alive today, and many of our friends tell me the same thing. She had led a pretty quiet life before, so being married to me was quite a change, but she’s adjusted very well to being the wife of this old broken-down pro. I just hope we’ll have a lot of years together, because I’m enjoying every moment of it.
At least, I’m enjoying every moment when I’m not being operated on. I’ve had two hip surgeries in the past two years, cataract surgery, a hernia repair, and my eyelids fixed because they were drooping so much I was having trouble seeing. In addition to all that, I also managed to cut a finger off out in my shop, doing some woodworking. The doctor sewed it back on, fortunately. It made me a lot more cautious in my shop, but it wasn’t enough to make me quit.
Since the late fifties I’ve also had occasion to help design several golf courses—kind of a third profession and one I’ve enjoyed quite a bit. Not that I could actually design one all by myself—I have no engineering background, and there’s a lot of that involved—but after playing golf for sixty-five years I’ve observed some things about what makes a really good golf course, and I’ll work with the architect on all phases of the layout, the direction of the holes, the size of the greens, and things like that. Well, eventually someone thought because I’d played pretty good golf about a hundred years ago, I might have something to contribute in that area. I’ve worked on quite a few throughout the country, many with my good friend Joe Finger, but my favorite golf course involves the work I’m proudest of.
It all began in 1978, when I was at Augusta for the Masters. I was on the General Improvements Committee, and during our meeting the subject of the par-five eighth hole came up. You see, Cliff Roberts had died in 1977, but quite a few years before his death he had decided to change the eighth green. He didn’t like the mounds around the green because he felt they made it too hard for spectators to see the play. These weren’t viewing mounds like on today’s stadium courses; they were small but strategic mounds the player had to work around for his approach shot. Cliff had those mounds almost completely flattened, and the result was that it ruined the hole. He realized it himself eventually, and before he died he said that he wished they would put it back the way it used to be.
The only problem was no one could remember what the original green looked like, nor could anybody find any pictures of it. They’d asked several of the players, and one thought there had been a bunker or two, one thought something else, but no one was sure at all. Then they asked me. I described it to them and I was quite sure I remembered it exactly, so they offered me the job of developing a scale model of the hole and bringing it back the next spring to show them.
When I got home, I called Joe Finger and told him what I’d gotten myself into, and fortunately he was willing to help. We were working on another course at the time, so when he came up for that project, we sat down and he started drawing a picture of the green as I described it. Then we got Baxter Spann, one of Joe’s partners and an expert at building models, to go to work on it, and the next spring, back we went to Augusta. When we showed our model to the committee, they said, “Go ahead.” As soon as the course closed at the beginning of the summer we went to work, and in six weeks, we had it all ready—the mounds all around the left and back of the green exactly like I remembered it.
One day the men were just putting on the finishing touches and spreading the grass seed when we looked up and here came Frank Christian, the photographer for the club, in his car. Frank’s father had been the club photographer before him, and when he reached us, Frank said, “I found a picture of the old green up in my attic!” Joe and I just stared at each other. Then Joe took the picture from Frank, looked at it, looked at the green, looked back at the picture, and said, “I don’t believe it—it’s exactly the same!” Fortunately, that was one time my memory worked pretty well. It would have been a lot easier on us if Frank had found that picture sooner, but if he had, we might not have gotten the job and I wouldn’t have this story to tell.
Today my life is still busy. Sometimes it’s busier than I want it to be, so I’m having to say no to people quite a lot, but when you’re this old there’s only so much energy left, and I simply can’t do everything I used to be able to do. In the past few years, however, I’ve been given quite a few honors that I never expected or dreamed of, and though it meant a lot of travel, it was fun and made me feel very good. First, in 1990, my friend Buddy Langley wanted to celebrate the forty-fifth anniversary of my streak in ’45. Buddy was head of GTE Southwest at the time, and of course GTE has been our tournament’s title sponsor for the past several years. Buddy happened to be a member at Hope Valley Country Club in Durham, North Carolina, where I’d won the fourth tournament in the streak, so he got together with them and they invited folks from all of the clubs where I had won the other ten tournaments to come for the party. It was great—there were people from Montreal, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Toronto, Dayton, and the Carolinas. They even put up a wonderful plaque for me at the 18th tee, that great little par three where I made those birdies.
Also, I was asked that year to be Honorary Chairman for the U.S. Senior Open at Ridgewood, my old stompin’ ground, and it was a great feeling to go back there. They gave a wonderful party for me one night and a lot of the senior pros came and said so many nice things about me it was almost embarrassing. But I have to admit I enjoyed it.
Then in May of ’91, USGA’s Golf House museum did a special exhibit of my life, calling me golf’s “master craftsman.” They not only displayed all my trophies and golf memorabilia, but also some of my woodworking projects, which really surprised and pleased me. It was a lot of work for us and the Golf House staff to collect all the stuff for the display, but while we were doing it, we came across an old spelling test book I had from the fifth grade. I was a pretty good speller back then, and we noticed there were quite a few 100’s in that little old book, so we got to counting them. Turns out I had an even longer streak of wins than my eleven in a row in golf, because when I was in the fifth grade, I had thirty-seven straight 100’s in spelling. I’m not sure I could spell all those words right today, in fact.
Now I’m eighty, almost eighty-one. Except for a sore hip and some arthritis in various places, I have excellent health and still manage to get around all right. Peggy and I travel a little, go to the majors, play golf together, take a vacation now and then, and also spend time at our home in Kerrville whenever we can. I sign more autographs now than I did when I won all those tournaments in ’45, and when I look back on it all, I’m completely amazed at all that has happened to me.
I hope this book answers some of the questions I’m asked so often. No, I didn’t have hemophilia or bleeding ulcers, and I left the tour because I wanted to, not because of “poor health,” as is even stated in the Encyclopedia Britannica, I discovered recently. I’ve had a wonderful life with many blessings, and I guess the best one came on my birthday last year, when the Four Seasons Resort where my tournament is held gave me a tremendous party. My buddy Chris Schenkel was the emcee and we invited about 150 of our family and closest friends. We had a wonderful dinner, then a beautiful birthday cake with fireworks on it, and for the climax, they unveiled the nine-foot bronze statue of me by Robert Summers, which now stands near the first tee. It makes me feel so humble, because I feel I can never be as good as people think I am. But I try hard to be a Christian and do right, and all I can really do is to say “Thank you.”
APPENDIX
The Records of
Byron Nelson
BYRON NELSON’S AMATEUR RECORD
1928—Winner, Glen Garden CC Caddie
Championship over Ben Hogan in 9-hole playoff
1928—Winner, Katy Lake Amateur, Fort Worth, Texas
1929—Runner-up in Fort Worth City Amateur, Meadowbrook Municipal GC, Fort Worth, Texas
1930—Winner, Southwestern Amateur, Nichols Hills G&CC, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
1931—Failed to qualify by one shot in USGA National Amateur, Beverly CC, Chicago, Illinois
BYRON NELSON ON TOUR
Nelson retired at the end of 1946. Over the next twenty years he made infrequent starts on the PGA Tour. His wins during that time include the Texas PGA Open in 1948; the Crosby Invitational in 1951; and the Crosby Pro-Am (with Eddie Lowery) and the French Open in 1955.
BYRON NELSON’S CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
Tournament Victories—61, including 54 PGA-sanctioned events and the French Open in 1955
The Masters—1937, 1942
U.S. Open—1939
PGA Championship—1940, 1945
Member of the Ryder Cup Team in 1937 and 1947. Selected for team in 1939 and 1941. Also served as captain of victorious Ryder Cup team in 1965.
Records Nelson still holds:
Most tournament wins in a row—11, in 1945: Miami Four-Ball, Charlotte Open, Greensboro Open, Durham Open, Atlanta Iron Lung Tournament, PGA Canadian Open, Philadelphia Inquirer Invitational, Chicago Victory Open, PGA Championship, Tam O’Shanter Open, Canadian National Open
Most tournament wins in one year—18, in 1945
Lowest scoring average—68.33, in 1945
Most consecutive rounds under 70—19, in 1945