by James Dodson
In 1935, following a forty-first-place finish at Oakmont, still just twenty-three years old but suddenly missing his putting touch, Guldahl fared poorly in other tournaments that year, and returned home to Dallas and informed his mother he was through with competitive golf. He tried selling cars, among other odd jobs, but eventually drifted back to a local nine-hole course and began working on his game again. After his young son, Buddy, developed a sinus problem, Guldahl moved his family to the dry California desert, where he played in a few events but won nothing of significance. While there, however, he met the movie executive Robert Woolsey and the actor Rex Bell and accepted their offer to stake him enough money to play in the inaugural True Temper Open in the spring of 1936, where he won $240 and followed up with an eighth-place finish at the U.S. Open. Just weeks later, his putting touch returned and he won the prestigious Western Open—considered a major title in those days—and finished the year with the best stroke average on tour, 71.65. After Guldahl’s wild flurry of closing birdies cost him the Masters in 1937, he went on to beat heavily favored tour rookie Sam Snead by two strokes at the U.S. Open at Oakland Hills. After returning to form, he would win two more Western Opens in succession and defend his Open title by an impressive six-stroke margin at Cherry Hills in 1938.
“Though Sam and soon Byron were getting all the attention, Guldahl was the best player in the game,” says Open historian Robert Sommers, “all because of a hundred-dollar stake by two men who had faith in him.” Not surprisingly, his success attracted more Hollywood types, including the reclusive millionaire Howard Hughes, a fine golfer, who once phoned Guldahl before playing in a club event just to chat about bunker shots, downhill putts, and how to play in the wind. After Hughes won the tournament, a check for $10,000 turned up in the pro’s mailbox.
Despite the noticeable improvements in Ben’s 1937 performance, Guldahl was enjoying the kind of breakthrough success he could only dream about. When the Hogans rolled back into Fort Worth to visit his mother and spend the holidays with her parents down in Cleburne, their travel-worn Buick had an additional 3,600 miles on its odometer and bald tires.
Yet there was plenty to be happy about that Christmas. Back in September, once again fate and Henry Picard seemed to conspire to give Ben a much needed boost up. When the U.S. and British Open champion Tommy Armour broke a bone in his hand and announced he had to scratch from the Hershey Round Robin Four-Ball, a star-studded affair that included the tour’s top sixteen money winners, Picard penciled in a pleasant but largely unknown named Vic Ghezzi into Armour’s slot to partner with Ben Hogan. He also advised his boss Milton Hershey to pay close attention to the way Hogan conducted himself, both on and off the golf course.
“He’s overdue to start winning tournaments,” Picard told him, “and he’s a self-made guy who lives clean and works harder than anybody out here.” Hershey, both a Quaker and a self-made man himself who’d failed three times before he found the magic formula for making a fortune in chocolate, liked the sound of that and made a note to see how Hogan fared against the best players of the day. The bookies weren’t impressed with the Hogan-Ghezzi pairing, however, ranking them dead last at the outset, the odds 200–1. But the pair startled everyone by firing a blistering 61 best-ball total in the opening round and continued the assault until they were fifty-three strokes under par for 126 holes of play. Only the team of short-game wizard Paul Runyan and the game’s popular new star Sam Snead came close to matching them.
Despite Sam’s success, Ben’s shared triumph at the Hershey Four-Ball was quite possibly the most important win any player achieved that year, for it proved his relentless work ethic was beginning to pay off.
As Ben and his long-striding partner approached the final green of Mr. Hershey’s tournament that September afternoon, their winners’ checks all but in the bank, trailed by a gallery of some four thousand people, Ghezzi raked his fingers through his sun-streaked hair and waved to spectators. Ben, on the other hand, kept his head down, his handsome angular face devoid of emotion, his eyes sweeping over the surface of the final green as they approached—almost as if, on the threshold of what he’d dreamed about for so long, he half expected to discover it was only an illusion.
Earlier in the year, while still out west, he’d expressed his frustration to Valerie about his inability to close the deal coming down the stretch—admitting he still allowed his nerves or something in the gallery to distract him. She had stared at him with her sweet brown eyes and said in an almost childlike manner, “Well, Ben, maybe you just need to find a way to ignore the gallery completely and focus only on your next shot. Maybe you should concentrate harder and forget all of that.” A simple piece of advice. Yet years later Ben credited his wife with giving him the key that unlocked his greatness. “Before she said it so plainly, I seemed to think about everything else out there except what I had to do at that very moment.”
At Hershey, he had finally succeeded in doing what Valerie had suggested—blocking out the world at large, including many bitter disappointments both on and off the course, and concentrating on shot by shot. “If we’d lost,” a relieved Vic Ghezzi afterward confided to Jimmy Demaret, “I’m quite certain he would have jumped out a window.”
As it was, he pocketed $1,100 after making thirty-one birdies—six more than anyone else in the field. Milton Hershey was the first to congratulate the now broadly smiling Ben. “I heard from Henry that you were the man to watch this week,” he said. “And Henry was sure right about that.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hershey,” he replied. “I’m glad I didn’t let Henry down—or you, either.”
Hershey patted him on the back. “Maybe we should stay in touch,” he said.
“Yes sir. I’d like that.”
In 1938, the year many social historians believe America finally began to emerge from the economic gloom that had defined the decade, Ben Hogan finished thirteenth on the tour’s official money list with $4,794. His friendly Glen Garden rival and sometime traveling partner Byron Nelson, with two victories, made only slightly more. With eight victories that included the Canadian Open title, Sam Snead dominated the headlines and made Fred Corcoran smile, owing to the largest spectator turnouts in years.
But as Ben Hogan later described it, this was the turning point of his life.
7
BREAKTHROUGH AND HEARTBREAK
JUST AS THE TOUR FINALLY BEGAN to regain its footing in 1938, another kind of trouble loomed on the horizon—the danger of war in Europe.
This unspeakable possibility first made its presence known in the golf world during the sixth edition of Samuel Ryder’s biennial gathering at Southport & Ainsdale Golf Club in Southport, England, in June of 1937, where both Sam Snead and Byron Nelson made their debuts as Ryder Cuppers. Two years before this, while serving as George Jacobus’s assistant professional at the Ridgewood Country Club in New Jersey, Byron enjoyed the privilege of serving as one of the event’s organizers and hosts, helping to select the wardrobes for both teams. This made an indelible impression on him. “It got me to thinking about getting to be a good enough player to make the team,” he recalled decades later. “I wanted it as much for the clothing as anything else, but it gave me that much more motivation for working on my game.” A strong American squad bolstered by Picard, Runyan, Wood, Sarazen, and aging captain Walter Hagen had little difficulty dispatching a respectable Great Britain and Ireland team, 9–3. When a deeply inspired Byron Nelson confided to several Ridgewood caddies that he planned to make his first Ryder Cup team in two years, however, they merely laughed at him.
From the beginning, an air of valediction hung over the Ryder Cup proceedings of 1937. For one thing, eligible to participate under the same rules of residency that had kept him from participating in three previous Ryder Cups, thirty-year-old Henry Cotton—widely acknowledged as the finest British player of his generation—returned from semiretirement in Belgium to lead a strong squad that had never lost the cup on home soil and included the winners
of the last four Open Championships. With poor weather and gale-force winds predicted for the Lancashire coast in the late June event, the London oddsmakers gave the home pros a slight advantage.
Once again, the most popular American in Britain, Walter Hagen, now forty-five years old and suffering the effects of what even he jokingly called his “whiskey fingers,” agreed for the sixth time to captain the U.S. side, though for the first time as a nonplaying participant. The first five of the ten-member squad had been determined early in the year and included the sentimental favorite Gene Sarazen; Denny Shute, former Open Championship winner and reigning PGA Champion; former PGA champion Johnny Revolta; two-time Masters champ Horton Smith; and Henry Picard, who’d won seven tournaments in 1935–36. The team featured three promising newcomers: Byron Nelson, the new Masters champ; the winner of that year’s U.S. Open, Ralph Guldahl; and Sam Snead, a five-time winner on the tour who’d finished runner-up to Guldahl at Oakland Hills. Former team member Paul Runyan and others Hagen had overlooked in favor of Sam grumbled that Snead had no place on the team because he’d turned in an inaccurate scorecard that spring at Pinehurst and skipped at least two events where he was scheduled to play in favor of better-paying exhibitions. “If he can’t find Pittsburgh or Thomasville, Georgia,” sniped journeyman Jimmy Hines, “how can he possibly find his way to England?” Despite Sam’s brilliant U.S. Open finish—the second lowest on record—the prevailing sentiment was that other veteran players were more deserving of the captain’s picks, another case of Sam versus the world.
Just days before the team set sail for England, on June 16, the Haig made his final selections: Augusta pro Ed Dudley and Tony Manero. “If there’s ever been a stronger team mounted from our side,” he boasted to a reporter from the New York Herald Tribune, fully aware of the galvanizing effect this remark might have on his team’s rookies, “I would challenge you to name it.” Britain’s redoubtable Golf Monthly seemed to concur, in the aftermath describing the Yankee Ryder Cuppers as “the greatest golfing force which has ever come to this country. A splendid spectacle of athletic youth.”
The Americans, particularly rookies Snead and Nelson, performed well. On Tuesday morning Hagen sent Ed Dudley and Byron out to meet the home team’s strongest pairing, Alf Padgham and Henry Cotton, in alternate-shot foursomes, and a headline in the local paper read “Hagen Leads Lambs to the Butcher.” An inspired Byron drove his ball magnificently against Cotton all day, and put his ball inside the British star’s on each of the par-three holes; he and Dudley stunned everyone except perhaps the wily Sir Walter by producing a relatively easy four-and-two victory, prompting a subsequent headline, “Lambs Bite Butcher.” Then, in the singles, Sam demolished steady Dick Burton five-and-four, silencing his critics and sealing the match for the Americans, winning for the first time ever on British soil. For the other side, one of the few triumphant moments came in a nail-biting singles match between Byron and Dai Rees, the diminutive Welsh tiger who was three down after the raw, drizzly morning round but clawed his way back in a driving afternoon rainstorm to win three-and-one. With the cup already lost, he was nevertheless lofted onto the shoulders of his fans and carried triumphantly back to the clubhouse in the cold Lancashire rain. Byron later confided to Snead that he found this display of national pride deeply inspiring. Sam agreed, though true to his nature—and unfortunately within earshot of a sportswriter from the Times of London—he also noted that the only thing the Ryder Cup stirred in him was the desire to get the hell home as soon as possible. His complaints about English food and weather and golf courses didn’t go unnoticed—or forgotten.
The victory was banner-headlined in America, prompting President Franklin Roosevelt to cable Hagen and his young team that they were the “greatest golfers in the world and nothing less than heroes to the American people.” During the concluding ceremony, the Haig, normally a flawless public speaker, grew so emotional—perhaps sensing this might be his final appearance at an event he’d come to cherish—that he mistakenly remarked, “I’m very proud and happy to be the captain of the first American team to win on home soil.” The crowd chortled at this gaffe and he sheepishly raised four fingers to signify his four British Open Championship titles. “You’ll forgive me, I’m sure,” he clarified with a wistful smile, “for feeling so at home here in Britain.”
No apology was necessary for the partisan crowd, who admired Sir Walter’s lifelong classy showmanship, remembering his stylish efforts to democratize their clubhouses. Behind the bonhomie, however, lurked growing concerns about Nazi Germany, prompting many in the British golf establishment to question whether the Ryder Cup would even be played in 1939.
Immediately afterward, the American contingent headed to Carnoustie for the Open Championship and were greeted by more cold, drizzly weather that deepened Sam’s gloom and uncharitable feelings but inspired Byron to a fifth-place finish that netted him $125. (Henry Cotton won.) The only downside was the cost. “Our boat tickets came to $1020,” he wrote in How I Played the Game, “plus I’d lost weeks out of the shop [in Reading, at his new post] with the Ryder Cup and British, so you can see why we didn’t play the British much back then,” he explained. “The PGA did cover some expenses, but I lost $700–$800 out of my own pocket.” Louise, however, found it “a delightful adventure, she made friends with the British wives and soaked up the local customs. But that was Louise, wherever she went she made it special. That made things easier for me.”
By his own account, the rest of 1937 was a “whirlwind.” Even as the reigning Masters champion settled into his new job in Reading’s handsome Tudor-style clubhouse in Pennsylvania, happy to give lessons to every level of player, Henry Picard invited Byron to join him and Denny Shute on a late-autumn trip to Argentina to play a series of exhibition matches and the national open. At the season’s close, the Nelsons shut the golf shop and house they rented from the local Studebaker dealer and headed south to Texarkana, where Louise would stay with her parents during the month he’d be in South America, and in the meantime he could practice to his heart’s content, paying particular attention to his short game.
Byron was scarcely two years into what he later called his “five-year transformation plan” to construct the ideal swing for the new True Temper steel shafts he was using, but his conversations with superb ball strikers like Picard and Shute, combined with hours of trial-and-error experimentation, had already yielded some impressive hints of things to come. For one thing, he began standing closer to the ball and a little more upright, leading to a takeaway motion that was considerably less flat than the traditional swing plane of hickory-shafted masters. By experimenting with hip motion, he then “stumbled into the discovery that placed me on the right path to a solid, repeatable golf swing.” Rather than begin his backswing by turning the hips and letting the swing take an inside-out path, as most veterans typically did simply to generate extra clubhead speed, Byron found that a slight lateral shift from left to right before the hips turned enabled him to take the club back on a one-piece motion that produced a straighter shot. This produced a modest “dip” that became in time Byron’s distinguishing movement. Moreover, in contrast to the conventional technique of “rolling the wrists” during the takeaway and delivery of the clubhead at impact—the traditional pronation and supination used by every great player from Harry Vardon to Bobby Jones, a movement perfectly suited to the greater flex of hickory shafts—Byron discovered that keeping the back of his left hand “aimed” at the target well before impact and into the follow-through significantly enhanced his accuracy. He picked up these ideas from Henry Picard and to some extent Shute, himself an exceptional long-iron player, but they originated in the swing theories of Henry’s mentor, Alex Morrison—key elements of the new steel-shafted era that would soon make Byron perhaps the most accurate ball striker of his day. A straighter left arm at the top of his backswing, he determined, also improved his accuracy.
In these early stages of Byron’s rapidly evolving golf swing,
his greatest weakness was chipping and putting, as he revealed with a disappointing tie for twentieth place at the 1937 U.S. Open at Oakland Hills outside Detroit, a beast of a course that required both pinpoint accuracy and length. The rookie sensation Sam Snead, by comparison, already excelled at both facets of the game and seemed to validate his popularity by tying the course record on the first day out with an impressive three-under 69. Forty-eight hours later Sam concluded his campaign on the difficult par-five seventy-second hole by reaching the green in two and sinking an eight-foot putt for eagle, a brilliant 283 finish, second lowest ever. When a revitalized Ralph Guldahl finished his day’s work two hours later, carding a stunning 69 that lowered the record once again, Sam suffered the first of what would be a series of heartbreaking Open losses. During the presentation ceremony, as Guldahl, smiling lazily, held his trophy and $1,000 first-place check, Sam drew a laugh from the crowd by leaning forward to slyly peek into the trophy cup. Everyone knew it was simply a matter of time before he had one of his own.
Byron and Louise found life in Reading a genuine pleasure, and far more social than they’d expected. “The people there were initially a little reserved,” Byron explained years later, “but after they got to know us, why, they invited us into their homes for parties and suppers and treated us more like members of the club. Louise made several of her finest friendships there, a regular bridge group, and I found it a wonderful place to teach and practice my own game.”