American Triumvirate

by James Dodson

  Three years earlier, he’d come through for Ben Hogan with a loan of fifty dollars that sent him west for the very first time, sharing a ride out to Pasadena with Jack Grout and a pro named Ralph Hutchinson. “I left here with seventy-five dollars in my pocket,” Ben told Ken Venturi in a famous—and rare—TV interview in 1983. “Would you try that today?” After only three weeks he was out of money, supplementing his meager diet with oranges he picked off trees just off Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, and forced to wire home for more money. Leonard sent him another hundred dollars. A dip down to Mexico to play in the Agua Caliente Open, however, netted Ben $200 and a slight ray of hope. But the next two weeks, he came up empty again, and was almost broke. He limped back to the Texas Open, shot 75-80 and withdrew for a third time. Somehow he made it to New Orleans for the next event, where he also divided nothing by nothing.

  “After New Orleans I wasn’t in the money and I was broke,” he explained to Venturi, his voice still quivering discernibly fifty years after the fact. “I had to come home.”

  The professional golf tour Ben was so eager to grab on to was nothing like it is today—or, for that matter, the Golden Age of just a few years before. The “tour” then, for one thing, operated only in the first five months of the year, limiting both public exposure and the players’ prospective income. The winter events took players from the West Coast to Texas and Florida, and in the spring they moved toward the Carolinas. Then, for most of them, it was time to return to their club jobs.

  Moreover, a perfect storm of circumstances combined to stall the game’s growth in 1932 and even set it back, starting with how Wall Street’s collapse rippled destructively through every segment of American life. During the first five years of the Great Depression, when a fourth of the workforce lost their jobs and national income dropped by nearly 65 percent, more than half the nation’s golf courses either suspended play or shut down completely, while others reconstituted themselves from private to public. At one famous club on Long Island, a number of its wealthy members never bothered to return after the events of Black Tuesday, leaving their lockers full, their personal items uncollected.

  Though he wasn’t a professional, Bobby Jones was such a huge star that his retirement seemed historic, an unfillable void in the public imagination. But even as gate receipts declined and tournament directors scrambled to find any sort of sponsor, a dusty caravan of wily old pros and hungry-eyed newcomers continued to chase the game across the withered landscape like there was no tomorrow. The luckier ones augmented their winter quests with club pro positions and understanding members who didn’t mind if they took a few weeks off before and after the holidays to make some money out west before opening up the club in the spring. Scattered among them were talented young amateurs who could no longer afford to play the game for the sheer competitive thrill, plus a number of far less savory sporting types—con men, trick shot artists, hustlers like the legendary “Titanic” Thompson, whose only principle was money, betting on virtually anything and raking in far more of it than any club or touring pro could dream of.

  Fortunately, Walter Hagen still showed up from time to time to delight the noticeably smaller galleries with his brilliant shotmaking and sparkling repartee, though anyone who cared to look close enough could see his incomparable game had slipped a notch or two since he won the Open campaign at Deal in 1929; the hunger to win simply wasn’t there anymore, nor perhaps the vaunted scrambling skills. Likewise, after displaying the promise of a human supernova, Gene Sarazen went off to hobnob with Hollywood types, purchased a dairy farm in Germantown, New York, and settled into the cozy life of a country squire as the Roaring Twenties slipped away like an echo from an empty dance hall.

  Seemingly unaffected by the spreading financial panic, the 1930 Agua Caliente Open on the Mexican border in Tijuana offered a defiantly eye-popping purse of $25,000, the largest amount any tournament had ever offered, and enough to lure “Squire” Sarazen out of his comfortable rural life. He won the big payday and then launched a comeback in 1932 that culminated in victories at both the U.S. Open at Fresh Meadow and the British at Prince’s, where he transported a secret weapon of his own invention—the sand wedge—beneath a topcoat in order to prevent the “gents from the R&A” from banning its use. But in the bleakest days of the Depression—roughly from 1931 to 1935, coinciding with Hogan’s own darkest years—tournaments were fighting for survival, many simply folding while others halved their purses in order to develop creative ways of entertaining and boosting the morale of patrons who were constantly assured by their politicians that national recovery was “just around the corner.” These included free medical check-ups or lunch with paid daily admission, raffles of used cars and idle farm equipment and livestock to raise money for local relief programs, even pie-eating contests and dance marathons. The Los Angeles Open lowered its $10,000 purse to $7,500 and then $5,000, which was typical of most events. Not surprisingly, the Agua Caliente Open was an early victim of hardening times, not long after Hogan won his first decent money as a pro there in 1932, and would probably have gone under had it not been for the hustle and creativity of Bob Harlow, an Exeter-educated son of a Massachusetts clergyman, who became the tour’s first manager in 1931.

  A veteran newsman, Harlow made his name as Walter Hagen’s agent and personal manager, orchestrating exhibitions and public appearances that made the Haig one of the best-loved athletes of his time and reportedly a millionaire several times over despite his famously cheeky assertion “I never wished to be a millionaire. I only wanted to live like one.” In desperation, an increasingly worried PGA Tournament Bureau hired Harlow to bolster shrinking galleries and stem defections from the winter circuit. By using his organizational skills and imposing regulations that reformed the lax manner in which some tournaments operated, he quickly gave the tour professional respectability and established the groundwork for a more autonomous organization.

  To the chagrin of a few wildcatting pros who were out there for the easy money or to keep a step ahead of the law, he established rules governing personal behavior. In 1932, he began keeping records in an official tour book that exists to this day, detailing specific problems and solutions tailored to every event, including sponsors’ opinions and covering everything from course conditions to crowd reactions.

  Moreover, he arranged for short promotional films of upcoming tournaments to be shown at movie houses, and for banners to be lofted across main streets announcing the big-name golf stars who were about to arrive in town. “Bob saw pro golf primarily as a form of great public entertainment, and like all the great entertainers,” said Paul Runyan, who joined the tour in 1931, becoming a Harlow client in the process, “he believed golfers had an obligation to put on a good show. I must have heard him say that a million times—‘You boys are here to put on a good show for people.’ But he wanted it done the right way, respecting the rules of the game, with class and sophistication.”

  Understanding the power of publicity and the challenge of looming deadlines, Harlow granted special pre-tournament interviews and radio visits with leading players, and adroitly recruited aging stars like Hagen and Sarazen to lure prospective sponsors to fund-raising affairs, flattery that prompted them to open their checkbooks. Among other things, he convinced the Golf Ball and Golf Club Manufacturers Association—later evolving into the National Golf Foundation—to help underwrite financially shaky tournaments in the Southwest and even reached into his own pocket to help guarantee their survival. Among his many innovations, he introduced a voluntary marshal system, which encouraged stronger local participation in tournaments, enlisting scout troops to sell baked goods and admission tickets, or car dealerships to provide transportation for the players. In time, civic fathers lauded his tireless efforts to give their communities a much needed boost of pride, a good show, and a chance to showcase their town’s can-do spirit in a time of great difficulty.

  As a result of these and other deft orchestrations, though the number of ev
ents declined during his first two years at the helm, the tour’s cumulative purses actually increased from $77,000 to $130,000, underscoring Harlow’s belief that the eventual addition of a summer tour would make professional golf even more viable, a year-round proposition for stars like Hagen, Sarazen, and a handful of others who weren’t locked into seasonal club jobs that required their presence from May to September. In 1932, the Tournament Bureau (composed of several disgruntled veteran players) declined to renew Harlow’s contract, citing conflicts of interest that his list of famous clients presented. Harlow then became a principal architect of a new breakaway organization simply called the Professional Players Group, creating a template for the PGA Tour more than three decades before its official formation in 1968. This ambitious vision suggested that given proper promotion and player development, every tournament in the future could be comfortably sustained by a core of local sponsors of ten to twelve of the top players committed to play the entire circuit, creating both momentum and an ever-growing calvacade of stars who would, at least in theory, grow from season to season.

  Not surprisingly, when it became clear that Harlow’s idea appealed to most of the biggest names, he was rehired by the PGA Tournament Bureau and the incipient rebellion was quelled—or, more accurately, put off for another day. In the meantime, he’d won his point about the feasibility of a year-round tour, and by the end of 1935 had developed a roster of fourteen events that spanned the summer months and added nearly $60,000 in additional prize money, encouraging a new generation like Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, and Sammy Snead to chase the game, even though they had to finish in the top five or six slots to make more than their basic expenses any given week.

  For all Harlow’s success in keeping the dream alive and improving pro golf’s public profile, the vast majority of players still led a hand-to-mouth existence on the road. “It was one swayback town to the next,” as Paul Runyan summed it up, “with everyone looking to catch a little lightning in a bottle.”

  He was, in fact, luckier than most. Members at his home club, the Metropolis Country Club in White Plains, New York, each put up $50 to stake Runyan and his wife to the winter circuit of 1931–32. In return, he would split any winnings evenly with his backers. With a wizardry that earned him the nickname “Little Poison” among his colleagues and eventually made him the most admired short-game teacher of his generation, he sent home $4,400 that first year on the circuit, and his admiring and appreciative members forswore their share of his earnings.

  “It really was a vagabond’s life in those days,” he reflected one afternoon in the early 1990s. “I mean, most of the tournament sites were either in small towns or in the suburbs of major cities—so taking a train was pretty much out of the question, not to mention expensive. Everyone traveled by cars, which frequently broke down and were subject to weather and poor road conditions—and getting lost. Guys doubled up and shared hotels and some split their winnings until they banned the practice. It was all about surviving for another week. If a guy finished in the spinach one week, he might stay someplace pretty nice. If he didn’t, it was whatever flea-infested rooming house he could find. There were fellas who actually rolled into town and went straight to the best hotel bar in town hoping to meet a divorcee who could provide a nice accommodation for the week.

  “I remember Sarazen actually caused a dustup by railing against wives out on tour—claimed the life out on tour was no place for a married gal and too damn expensive. Gene claimed having your wife along only put unnecessary pressure on a fellow to win. That was easy for him to say—he was rich compared to the rest of us. Having my wife along never bothered me one bit. In fact, I welcomed having her with me. It was a lonely road and there weren’t many Walter Hagens out there—but that didn’t stop us all from trying to be the next Walter or Gene.”

  “Life on the early tour was nothing short of a paid education in survival of the fittest,” the witty and urbane Harlow told a reporter about the time he founded Golf World magazine in 1947. “If you found a way to make it one week, well, you graduated to another week. And so it went. For a lot of those fellows, many of whom eventually became the tour’s biggest stars, pro golf was like university education, a higher institution of hard knocks.”

  In the autumn of 1932, not long after he won the Rivercrest Invitational, Byron lost a part-time job he’d held at a Fort Worth bankers magazine and was trying to decide what his next move should be when a letter came from Ted Longworth informing him that the members of the Texarkana Country Club had put together an open tournament and were inviting players from four surrounding states, with a purse of $500. The assumption was that Byron would play as an amateur.

  A week or so later, he boarded the Greyhound with his clubs, a small suitcase, and a couple of ham sandwiches his mother had made for him. “It was during that bus ride that I got to thinking about the prize money and realized there was no point in not playing for it,” he explained. “By that time I’d played against many of the best players in the Southwest and I decided my chances of making some of that money were probably pretty good.”

  At the tournament’s official registration table Byron asked what was required to play for money. “Just declare that you’re a pro and put down five dollars,” he was told, as Ben Hogan had been a year and half earlier in San Antonio. So he slapped down his money, finished third and collected seventy-five dollars. “That was more money in my hand than I’d ever seen before.” Encouraged by his performance, he got back on the bus and went home and informed his parents that he planned to take a shot at the winter tour in California, specifically at four events played in suburban Los Angeles.

  With the backing of friends who put up $500 to get him out west, and the reluctant blessing and prayers of his parents, Byron played decently but failed to make any money and was forced to wire his friends back in Fort Worth asking for more cash. They cabled back that they had none to send, so Byron was forced to scramble for a way home. Fortunately he learned about a Fort Worth businessman named Charlie Jones who was driving home from L.A. “I don’t remember a whole lot about that ride except that I felt bad about running through that money and coming up empty-handed,” he reminisced years later. “We talked about how different the golf courses were out in California. I also remember that Charlie Jones talked to me about the importance of making a business plan to make my goals clear. That stuck with me.”

  Better yet, a short time later, Ted Longworth sent another letter saying he was leaving Texarkana for a job at the Waverly Country Club in Portland, Oregon, and to urge him to apply for his old job. “You won’t make much money—no salary, only what you make from the shop and giving lessons—but you will eat regular and it will give you more time to practice,” his mentor wrote. In the first week of April, Byron acquired the position, which would pay roughly sixty dollars a month. “My parents were happy about it in one respect, because they knew by now I had golf in my soul,” he wrote decades later. “They were sad to see me leave town, though, and told me to be a good pro, to take care of myself, to be good and to go to church.”

  As usual, he took his mama’s advice to heart. After securing a room at a local couple’s house for seven dollars a week, Byron found the Walnut Street Church of Christ, whose congregation included a large and active youth group. There he met a member who managed the local Ford dealership who gave him a good price on a new royal blue roadster. One Sunday at Bible Study class, he also met pretty Louise Shofner, whose father owned a grocery store. She’d been living in Houston with her aunt, learning to become a hairdresser. At a church picnic, Byron ate a piece of her angel food cake and got to know her. The next day, he invited her out to the movies; because she had a boyfriend, she politely demurred. He repeated the invitation the next day, receiving the same response. The next Sunday, he purposely planted himself beside her at Bible Study and made his pitch a third time; this time she agreed to let him take her to the movies, after he drove her home. They saw a Hollywood musical and went to
the drugstore for an ice cream sundae. She had to be home no later than ten-thirty.

  “I was twenty then, and she was seventeen,” Byron recounts. “That was the first real date I ever had in my life, and once I met Louise, I never even thought about dating anyone else.”

  The best thing about the Texarkana Country Club was its golf course, a tightly wrought gem with heavily contoured greens and deep bunkers that rewarded a good shot and punished a poor one. Accuracy, in other words, was paramount. There was also a superb practice range where Byron spent every free moment he wasn’t working or courting Louise. After about a year, a caddie named Miller Barber began shagging his balls and helping him find a groove with the steel-shafted Kroydon clubs he was playing by then. The caddie grew up to win eleven times on the PGA tour, including the 1968 Byron Nelson Classic.

  Byron’s search for the perfect swing was soon assisted by his growing friendship with Harvey Penick, gentle, cerebral assistant pro at the Austin Country Club, who’d thought a lot about how the newly introduced steel shafts might change the game. Unlike their hickory predecessors, steel shafts produced far less torque or twist, which meant the players didn’t have to compensate for a bending shaft and thus it was easier to square up at impact. The two men—both future Hall of Famers, one as a champion, the other as a teacher—had numerous conversations during these years and it was probably Penick who convinced Byron that the new technology required a new swing altogether.