by James Dodson
Despite America’s entry into the war, in 1942 the tour mounted twenty-one tournaments, with a collective purse of $116,000, before concluding in late summer at Byron’s Inverness Four-Ball in Toledo. President Roosevelt, a lifelong fan of the game and a solid mid-handicapper player when younger, urged Fred Corcoran to keep professional golf going as a morale booster.
Ben played in twenty-one events, Byron in twenty, Sam in fourteen.
The Hawk’s private war for major acceptance began at the season-opening L.A. Open, where he carved a magnificent four-iron shot to the final hole and sank a clutch birdie putt to tie long-hitting Jimmy Thomson, and then beat him in the playoff, the first of his career and an excellent omen. Sam placed third, Byron sixth. The battlefield shifted to Oakland, where Byron cruised to a five-stroke victory. Next came San Francisco, where Ben and Byron dined with Francis Ouimet’s pie-faced Brookline caddie, Eddie Lowery, who’d migrated to California and had done exceedingly well in the car business. Here Ben nailed down his second win despite the brief maddening return of a hook that had him aiming well right of most fairways, according to Byron; Sam finished second.
On they went to the Texas Open, where a weak putt on the final hole kept Sam out of the playoff between Ben and the eventual winner, Chick Harbert. The next week, at the rain-shortened New Orleans Open, Sam lost a playoff to Lloyd Mangrum, then went home to Hot Springs for a brief rest before driving to Florida and winning the St. Petersburg Open and St. Augustine Pro-Amateur back to back. In between he nearly won the fifth Seminole Amateur-Professional, an unofficial event that had golf’s richest Calcutta; in 1939 the club gained unwanted national headlines for a wagering pool that topped $48,000. In Ben’s second Seminole appearance, he became better acquainted with another invited guest, George Coleman, a future Oklahoma state champion he’d first met back at the lavish Agua Caliente in 1932 when both men had mostly lint in their pockets. Born to wealth the same year as Ben, Coleman had already made his first fortune in oil—an elegant, beautifully spoken man who would develop close friendships with both Byron and, especially, Ben, who fell under the spell of everything he saw at Seminole and grew to regard George Coleman as a brother. Founded with little fanfare by millionaire E. F. Hutton and his cronies in the snake-infested mangrove jungles of Juno Beach shortly before the stock market crashed in 1929, the club was ultra-discreet and dedicated to personal privacy, the ultimate sporting retreat for prosperous men and their guests, offering a golf course widely hailed to be designer Donald Ross’s finest work.
Its patrons numbered Pulitzers and Vanderbilts, wintering Hollywood movie stars, barons of Wall Street and occasional British royalty, and its elegant pink-stucco clubhouse, designed by society architect Marion Wyeth, featured a swimming pool where some members originally preferred to swim in the nude and—more important—a simple but magnificent wood-paneled locker room that would eventually become the envy of private clubs everywhere. Everything about the course pleased Ben’s increasingly critical eye, especially the daunting uphill sixth, a par-four that turned slightly left to right and whose sliver of a heavily bunkered green required a flawless approach shot. In time, Ben told his good friend Henry Picard—destined to become Seminole’s sixth head professional in 1956—that it was his favorite hole in all of golf. Byron himself went on the record to call the place “Just about the finest club I have ever seen, full of very warm and friendly people.” In the 1942 tournament, Ben finished third, three strokes behind Sam and four ahead of Byron.
Beginning the important Carolina swing and tuning up for the Masters, with dogwoods struggling to bloom along the fairways of Pinehurst No. 2, Ben and Byron opened the North and South Open Championship with sterling 69s, with Sam just a stroke behind. By the time four thousand spectators ringed the seventy-second green in a chilly spring twilight, to no one’s particular surprise it was Hogan who had mounted a blistering ten-under assault during the final thirty-six to beat his top rivals, Snead and Nelson. One, two, three … again. A Charlotte sportswriter wondered if professional golf was a three-horse race, noting it was only a question of when—not if—the tour would cease operations.
Days later in Greensboro, former New York Yankee slugger Sam Byrd slipped past all three to win, though Ben claimed second place. At the next stop, the Land of the Sky tournament in Asheville, Ben made up for what he considered a poor finish at Greensboro by lapping the field at the posh Biltmore Forest Golf Club, another of his cherished Donald Ross courses, and winning for the third time in a row.
The Masters of 1942 would be last played before it, too, was shut down in a time of worldwide crisis—and surely among the most memorable. Ben, Sam, and Byron, the tour’s leading money winners, were naturally the favorites. Many have even posited that this was the moment when the Masters, featuring the first live radio broadcast by NBC, achieved its major championship status. The bucolic setting in the lush grounds of a former horticultural nursery, and the sweet familiarity of a tournament guided and shaped by the enduring presence of Bobby Jones, attracted more and more national attention with the advent of every spring, especially from weary sportwriters slogging home from spring training baseball. “For many of us it was a genuine reprieve from our regular duties covering baseball,” John Derr says, “and a chance to rub elbows with the royalty of golf. Cliff Roberts made sure the reporters were treated like patrons, a strategy few other tournament directors picked up on until well after the war. I don’t know if ’42 was the year it became a major event in most minds, but it was surely well along that road in a hurry. That’s why nobody wanted to see golf stop.”
And this year, like a gift from the gods meant to carry for the war’s duration, the Masters provided a championship for the ages, a nip-and-tuck scrimmage between Byron and Ben that saw the latter take on twenty-eight putts in the second round, amid a wild and swirling wind that shredded virtually every other score in the field. “Best managing I ever did out there,” he calmly explained in the locker room. “I mean manipulating the ball, allowing for wind and roll. You had to do that in that wind.” Despite Ben’s impressive 68, Byron led him by three strokes as they headed into the weekend play. Sam opened with a sloppy 78, complained of a bad back and never recovered enough to figure better than seventh. As the Augusta Chronicle reported, in the strange final round Byron seemed to have only bad luck and Ben nothing but good luck. Yet Byron arrived at the final two holes of regulation needing just two pars to beat Ben, who twenty minutes before had coolly dropped a six-footer to narrow the lead to a stroke and posted
280.
A weak approach shot at seventeen, however, left Byron buried in the bunker with a fried-egg lie that cost him a bogey on the swift and grainy Bermuda green. He now needed a birdie on eighteen to win. Unfortunately, attempting to steer his drive close to the inside of the dogleg to give himself a better angle at the steep uphill final green, he pushed his ball into the trees on the right and found it sitting atop a heavy clump of grass and pine needles. Gripping down on a five-iron, he miraculously hooked a shot through a narrow gap and somehow coaxed it onto the putting surface, ending fifteen feet from the cup. Minutes later, his birdie attempt lipped out, producing a sharp gasp of disappointment from the crush of spectators wedged around the green. Byron tapped in for par, removed his cap and smiled, clearly showing the stress of the day. The Monday playoff would begin at two-thirty, patrons learned.
That night at the Bon Air Vanderbilt, Byron slept fitfully, and the following morning Ben knocked on his door and, discovering his old friend and rival in a pale and unsteady state, offered to postpone their match. Byron thanked him but declined. Later that summer, he confided to close friends at Inverness that just like Bobby Jones, his stomach sometimes caused him distress before a critical match. His hero’s cure was a steaming bath and several fingers of good corn whiskey, preferably well-aged bourbon, whereas Byron opted for a bland chicken sandwich and a cup of warm tea, hoping to keep that down until his nerves settled. More than nerves were on edge,
however. During the train ride from Asheville to Augusta with Louise and his good friend Jug McSpaden, the two men calculated that by banking $100,000 in winnings each could live comfortably off the interest and never have to tour again. Still harboring secret hopes that Byron might change his mind about adopting a child, Louise made no attempt to mask her growing disaffection for life on the road, reserving travel now primarily for major events like the Masters and the U.S. Open. Though Byron owned the farm where his parents lived in Texas, the couple constantly talked about finding a place all their own and putting down more permanent roots. Louise favored a certain neighborhood in Dallas; Byron, who was thirty years old that spring, and approaching the end of his prime by the standards of any other sport, pictured a spread out in the country near his folks in Denton. Ever since childhood, he’d dreamed of owning a ranch.
The fatigue many had perceived in Byron’s gait and facial expressions was largely psychological. In the heat of competition, he rarely smiled, prompting some to conclude that, as it had with Jones, tournament golf was becoming a great burden to bear. And in fact, his happiest days were spent teaching at Inverness, performing exhibitions, interacting with members, and playing challenge matches with friends and promising young players. The tension of a major championship only exacerbated his nervous stomach and made him privately yearn for a simpler life, the sooner the better.
Testifying to the significance of this playoff for the coveted Masters medallion of 1942—the signature green jacket wouldn’t be introduced until 1949 (the year Sam captured his first Masters)—at least twenty-five touring pros hung around to see Hogan and Nelson decide the matter, among fifteen hundred spectators who skipped work to follow the action. “Here for all intents and purposes were the two best players in the game,” Henry Picard explained years later, “and I don’t know anyone who wanted to miss it except perhaps Sam Snead. I don’t recall seeing Sam there. I suspect he cleared out fast. He didn’t need to be reminded what the three of them were chasing.”
From the outset, Byron played like a man who’d been throwing up all night. He opened with a towering slice into the pines that required him to poke the ball back into the fairway with a putter held in his left hand, resulting in a double-bogey against Ben’s par-four. Several times he paused and blew his nose. But on the par-five second hole, he struck a rousing low-iron shot onto the green and just missed making eagle. Both men birdied. After five holes, however, he found himself three down.
Among his many graces, Byron Nelson always possessed an almost magical talent for escaping disaster. On the par-three sixth, he laid his tee shot ten feet from the cup and smoothly rolled home the birdie as Ben missed left and made bogey, losing two strokes of his lead. Then, on the long par-five eighth, Byron unleashed a 280-yard drive and carved a spectacular three-iron shot to six feet, canning his second eagle opportunity to take the lead by one. On the downhill tenth, Ben missed the green and made bogey to go two down. At the par-three twelve, in the verdant heart of “Amen Corner,” Byron nearly holed a seven-iron and tapped in for a birdie that placed him three up with six to play.
But Ben, who’d never beaten him in a playoff, refused to give up. Banishing all thoughts of Glen Garden and the Texas Open from his mind, he kept coming like a trained killer, silent, methodical, his bright gray raptor’s eyes seeing only the beautiful green battlefield ahead of him. He drained a clutch fifteen-footer at the fourteenth to cut Byron’s lead by a third. On fifteen he made another birdie while Byron three-putted for par. The lead had shrunk to one.
Ben had the honor at sixteen but pushed his tee shot into the right-side bunker, staring at it disbelievingly for several seconds. Byron then struck one of the finest clutch shots of all time, dropping his ball thirty inches from the cup. He missed the short sloping putt but Ben made bogey from the sand. The lead was now back to two.
That’s how they arrived at the final green, greeted by a rising tsunami of appreciative applause from a gallery that included their contemporaries and a large contingent of young men already in uniform. Both had left their approach shots in the deep bunker fronting the green, and both played fine explosion shots to eight feet. Byron putted first, his ball stopping just shy of the cup, and he tapped in for bogey. Ben took only a moment before rolling his par putt home, cutting the final margin, once again, to a single shot: Ben 70, Byron 69.
They removed their identical flat linen caps, made by the same Times Square hatter, smiled cordially and shook hands. All over again, Ben was the soul of gracious in defeat. Up the slope in the applauding gallery, their wives exchanged long, tearful hugs, Louise knowing all too well how painful this was for Valerie. It was Glen Garden and the Texas Open writ larger than ever.
A few minutes later, Alfred Bourne, the head of the Singer Sewing Machine Company and a prominent Augusta member, playfully signed the winner’s check for $1,500 on the champion’s back. Someone in the press reminded Byron that, prior to the match, he’d promised to reveal his secret to playing Augusta National—assuming he won.
“Always shoot for greens,” he said, visibly relieved to have it over with. “Try and avoid the bunkers. And never go for a dangerous flag position.” This was his own version of “course strategy.”
“How do you think you did today against Ben?” he was also asked. Byron took a moment to answer.
“Except for the first hole,” he said gently, perhaps attempting to soften the blow for his long-suffering friend and rival, “I think that was the finest round I ever shot.”
For Sam and Ben, redemption of a kind came within weeks.
A week before the start of the PGA Championship at the Seaview Country Club outside Atlantic City, New Jersey, Sam drove to Norfolk to enlist in the navy. “My thinking there was that they might station me right there, close to home, where I knew a good number of folks and some of the better golf courses,” he laughingly explained years later. “But I guess that was pretty naive thinking.”
At the time, he told several recruiting officers, including, he claimed, an admiral who turned up to have their photos made with him, “The PGA Championship is next week up in New Jersey. They’re planning to cancel play until this thing is over and I’d like one more shot at a title. Will that be a problem?”
“Oh, we’ll give you a pass for that, don’t you worry,” one of them assured him. “You just go ahead and sign.”
Something, however, told Sam to wait. “I thought about my wife, Audrey, and about the three thousand dollar purse and the two thousand dollar bonus from Wilson [if he won], and I decided the rest of the boys could handle Tojo all right for just one more week.” He asked if his induction could be delayed a week, and the brass reluctantly agreed. It turned out to be perhaps the wisest—and most challenging—decision of his playing career.
Though other top stars were signing up to serve as well, the most competitive field of the year began grueling match play in the final week of May on the relatively short but demandingly tight composite course that drew from Seaview’s Bay and Pines eighteens, layouts to which Donald Ross, Howard Toomey, and William Flynn had all contributed design work.
En route to the thirty-six finale, Sam beat Vic Ghezzi, red-hot Sam Byrd, an aging Willie Goggin, PGA president Ed Dudley, and ever-dangerous Jimmy Demaret, who playfully advised Sam not to wear his sailor’s cap in his match against Corporal Jim Turnesa, who was on leave from the army’s nearby Fort Dix and had brought along a throng of seven thousand GIs to cheer him along. “This crowd isn’t exactly pulling for you,” Dudley had remarked to Sam earlier in the tournament. The hostility, Sam later learned, stemmed from a rumor circulating that he’d attempted to dodge his enlistment—and that it was the navy only doubled the offense, hence Demaret’s joke.
Turnesa is quite a story himself, one of the seven sons born to Vitale and Anna Turnesa, who’d immigrated from Naples, Italy, to Elmford, New York, in 1904. All the boys became prolific golfers, creating perhaps the game’s most storied family dynasty. Phil, Frank, and Dou
g became outstanding teaching professionals. Joe, Mike, and Jim migrated from the amateur ranks to the tour in the 1940s and early ’50s, between them winning dozens of events, reaching the final of every major championship, having played on both the Walker Cup and Ryder Cup teams. With help from his older brothers, the youngest Turnesa, Willie, attended the College of the Holy Cross and went on to have an amateur career that rivaled Bobby Jones’s. Upon hearing that he’d won the U.S. Amateur at Oakmont in 1938, the story goes, the patriarch Vitale supposedly declared, “Why shouldn’t he win? All he does is play golf!”
Jim, short and trim and unusually quiet by nature, the second youngest, born the same year as Sam, reached the final by eliminating Dutch Harrison and Jug McSpaden, and then the country’s two hottest players, Ben and Byron—all of which produced an avalanche of sports headlines from just up the Hudson that immediately transformed Jim Turnesa into a star and poster boy for the American GI.
On the eighth hole of their Saturday double-round match, Turnesa dropped a fifteen-foot birdie putt and Sam missed his. On the thirteenth, he drained a thirty-five-footer that electrified the troops, then followed up by holing a sensational bunker blast on the sixteenth that set them off even more explosively. Sam appeared shaken, in part because on several holes friendly soldiers kicked Turnesa’s wayward drives back into the fairway, but also because the openly partisan gallery raised such a ruckus and razzed Sam so fiercely that at one point Dudley had to step in and request them to calm down or risk being “invited” to leave the grounds. Turnesa himself attempted to quiet the crowd, and afterward Sam quickly pointed out that Turnesa was a true gentleman throughout.
After twenty-three holes, however, Sam was three down and struggling to maintain his composure. A twelve-foot par save on the next hole, which Turnesa bogeyed, narrowed the lead to two. By the twenty-eighth hole, Sam had drawn dead even and noticed Jim taking several extra waggles, a subtle sign he was beginning to feel the pressure of the moment. After missing the green at the thirtieth hole, Turnesa missed an easy par putt to give Sam the lead, producing a chorus of boos and grumbles. A short time later, on the short thirty-fifth hole of play, suddenly “feeling as confident and loose as I ever felt in a finish,” Sam struck a beautiful seven-iron shot that flew 160 yards and dropped into the cup to close out the championship like a bolt of lightning.