American Triumvirate

by James Dodson

  Sam was laid to rest in the meadow beside Audrey.

  Today, a curious traveler searching for clues to the indelible legacy of Sam Snead sees traces of the man in lots of places. The portion of U.S. Route 220 within Bath County is now called the Sam Snead Memorial Highway, and Greensboro has a Sam Snead Boulevard. Seventeen Sam Snead’s Taverns lavishly display his memorabilia, as does the Greenbrier, including his original Masters jackets and one of his signature straw hats.

  On August 2, 2009, Sam Snead and Bill Campbell were the first two inducted into the new West Virginia Golf Hall of Fame, the greatest amateur and finest professional the region ever produced. “Golf would have been a very different landscape without Sam Snead,” says Al Barkow. “Without Sam, it’s hard to imagine the golf tour being what it is today.”

  Byron Nelson never meant to become an icon.

  In 1981, he began the longest stint anyone has ever served as an honorary starter at the Masters, not to reinforce his reputation as the player who created the modern golf swing and had the grandest winning streak anyone will ever achieve in the game, but to celebrate the sport itself and the many friends it had given him.

  Perhaps no one had a bigger influence than Byron on succeeding generations of pro golfers. After shaping the game and values of Ken Venturi in the 1950s and ’60s, he offered to work with Tom Watson after the young Kansan lost a heartbreaking Open to Hale Irwin at Winged Foot in 1974, which was one of his last telecasts as a commentator. In the locker room afterward, he pointed out to Watson that his leg action was out of sync in the final round, and invited him to come down to Fairway Ranch if he ever wanted any help.

  Watson won Byron’s own tournament in 1975, deepening their friendship, and took his advice on how to play Carnoustie in difficult conditions to claim his first Claret Jug later that summer. A year later, however, during a dry spell of wins, he finally took Byron up on his offer, and showed up at Fairway Ranch. “The minute you walked through the door,” recalls Watson, “you could feel the love and humility of that house. Byron and Louise welcomed me like I was one of their own. She cooked great meals and Byron and I talked about the golf swing for hours. His understanding of it was incredible, probably as far-reaching as anyone who’s played the game. No one ever hit the ball straighter than Byron, and his honesty in analyzing my swing was very rewarding. As much as anything else, though, it was the way this man conducted his life that served to inspire me. He helped set me on a path that helped boost my game to the next level.”

  In 1977, Watson won his first green jacket and outdueled Nicklaus at Turnberry to win his second British Open, finishing as the tour’s leading money winner and the PGA Player of the Year, and went on to establish himself as one of the greatest players of modern times. As his career blossomed, Watson frequently referred to Byron’s influence on his life and golf.

  Many other young players found their way to Byron’s doorstep and sphere of influence over the years, including Ben Crenshaw, Tom Kite, Corey Pavin, Scott Verplank, Justin Leonard and Payne Stewart. After getting to know Byron and working with both him and Harvie Ward—another of Byron’s protégés—Stewart claimed two U.S. Opens and revived a dormant spiritual life that carried him to the summit of the game at Pinehurst in 1999, just before he died in a freakish plane crash.

  “Byron’s greatest legacy,” Ben Crenshaw says with great emotion, “was the sense of integrity and friendship he passed along to everyone he met, tour player and average golfer alike—a love of the game that transcends all else. People couldn’t take their eyes off Ben Hogan at play, and Sam made golf such a warm and appealing game to watch. But Byron made it a game of enduring friendships, and that’s something everyone who loves the game understands.”

  In late April, when Louise Nelson suffered a stroke and was unable to speak or care for herself, Byron devoted every waking moment to her. “During the time he attended to Louise,” says Charlie Summerall, a good friend from Preston Trail, “we almost never saw Byron. And when we did, it was shocking how much weight he’d lost. The toll on him was obvious. A lot of us worried about his health.”

  That same year, the Byron Nelson Classic moved from Preston Trail to Las Colinas in Irving, which would soon become part of the Four Seasons Resort, and by now this was the first tournament to have raised over a million dollars for charities. Jon Bradley, Byron’s longtime accountant and business manager, recalls that he finally dipped into the investment account Cliff Roberts had set up for him decades before. Untouched until then, this provided Louise with the best possible care until her death in October 1985. Other funds were derived from the sale of a prime lot at Las Colinas that the owners had deeded to him. Up till then he had never accepted a penny of compensation for his involvement with the tournament.

  In 1984, the Byron and Louise Nelson Scholarship Fund was founded at Abilene Christian University, where his younger brother, Charles, served as a trustee.

  In the spring of 1986, a divorced mother of two named Peggy Simmons, a freelance copywriter who was preparing to enter the Methodist ministry, received a letter from Byron at her home in Dayton, Ohio, inviting her to come out and watch him play an exhibition match. She had briefly met him at an event in Dayton in 1981, and later wrote an appreciative fan letter. He had the bluest eyes she had ever seen, she later told him.

  Five years later, they met again and romance sparked. She was forty-one. He was seventy-four. Byron’s friends feared she might be a golddigger looking to take a famous lonely man for a ride. In October of 1986 he baptized her at his church in Roanoke, however, and less than a month later they were married in the same sanctuary and honeymooned at Byron’s home on a course he’d designed—one of eight he had a hand in shaping—down in the Hill Country of Kerrville, Texas.

  “Many had their doubts,” says Jon Bradley, “but Peggy turned out to be the best thing that could possibly have happened to Byron. She brought love and vitality back into his life and extended his life for another twenty years. Anyone who knew them will tell you the same thing. They were like newlyweds.” One of the deals they made early in their marriage was that Peggy would cook for him every day, and Byron would do the dishes. “He said the only dishwasher in the house was him,” Peggy allows with a laugh. “He did the dishes every day, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and he never failed to thank me. When I started thanking him for doing the dishes, he got tears in his eyes and told me I didn’t need to do that. If you can believe it, he told me he was afraid he could never do enough for me.”

  In 1990, Cleveland Golf rolled out a premium new set of Byron Nelson irons called the 68.3 Tour Model, in honor of Byron’s record scoring average in 1945.

  On his eightieth birthday in February of 1992, 150 guests were invited to a gala party at the Four Seasons Las Colinas, where a nine-foot bronze statue of Lord Byron leaning on a golf club was unveiled, an apt symbol of his towering presence in the game. Chris Schenkel served as emcee that evening, and most of Byron’s star pupils and members from his Sunday school class attended. The USGA presented him with a replica of his 1939 U.S. Open trophy. That same year, Peggy collaborated with him on his delightful memoir How I Played the Game.

  The Byron Nelson Foundation began quietly a short time later, aiming to benefit charities close to Byron’s heart, including youth programs and after-school care in the metro area’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods.

  During the PGA Merchandise Show of 1995, more than 4,500 people turned out to honor the fiftieth anniversary of his miraculous year in 1945 at a large dinner thrown by Cleveland Golf. Broadcaster Jack Whitaker served as emcee, and Sam Snead entertained guests with stories about his early rivalry with Byron on tour. “While Byron was out there he simply was the best,” Sam graciously said at one point. “He didn’t drink or smoke or dance, so I don’t think Byron had any fun at all,” he added, drawing a huge laugh from the crowd.

  When Byron was called on to speak, he looked over at Sam and reflected, “You know, Sam is a funny man. But he was wron
g when he said I didn’t have any fun on tour. Sam, you don’t think winning eleven straight tournaments was fun?” The hall exploded with laughter and wild applause.

  Tributes began pouring in from every direction that year, the fiftieth anniversary of his incredible streak and eighteen wins. Among other things, a new clothing line called Eleven Straight provided him with the largest royalties of his long career, and protégé Corey Pavin captured the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills that June using a commemorative set of Byron Nelson wedges.

  In 1997, the Nelson tournament climbed over the $4 million mark in charitable donations, in part due to the sellout triggered by Tiger Woods’s first professional appearance in the area. Within five years, this figure would eclipse $110 million in donations to local charities.

  Byron made his final appearance as an honorary starter at the Masters in 2001, stiffly poking a short drive down the right side of the fairway and calling it quits, a year before Sam did the same.

  The final three years of his life were spent going to church two or three times a week and working in his woodshop to make birdhouses and cutting boards and coffee tables for friends, including a dowry chest for Tom Watson’s daughter, Meg. “Golf was easy for me,” he liked to tell visitors to Fairway Ranch. “Woodworking is hard. But I love doing it.” He soon graduated to porch swings and coffee tables and clocks.

  On the morning he died, Byron felt perfectly fine. It was September 26, 2006. “Before I went out to my ladies Bible study class,” Peggy recounts, “I made him his favorite breakfast—sausage biscuit, scrambled eggs and coffee with cream.” Byron was doing the dishes, and she asked if he wanted her to turn on radio minister Alistair Begg’s morning broadcast so he could listen before he went out to the woodshop. He did, and the couple kissed. “Sweetheart, I’m so proud of you,” he told her, then she went out the door.

  Around lunchtime, she returned and found Byron stretched out on his back on their porch, like a man enjoying a peaceful nap. “I knew the moment I saw him that he was gone,” Peggy says quietly. “I took his pulse and placed my hand on his cheek. I told him, ‘I’m so glad you’re in heaven now.’ ” He was ninety-four years old.

  Several golf clubs in the area offered to provide food for the 2,200 people who attended Byron Nelson’s memorial service at the spacious North Richland Hills Church of Christ, and tributes and flowers poured in from all over the world. A VIP room was set up to accommodate a large contingent of PGA stars former and current that included Tom Watson, Phil Mickelson, Ben Crenshaw, Corey Pavin, Ken Venturi and Tom Lehman. Byron’s favorite hymn, “Blessed Be Thy Name,” was sung and eulogies were given by Alistair Begg and Jon Bradley. “The funeral was everything you would expect for Byron Nelson,” says Tom Watson. “Few men have earned the respect and love that he did in an incredible life. In the end, that was Byron’s greatest legacy to the game.”

  Eight days after Byron was laid to rest beside Louise in the family plot in Denton, Peggy finally broke down and cried like a baby. “I’d been strong for days but I suddenly missed him so much,” she says. “I asked God to please let me dream about him.” A short while later, she did just that, and finally felt at peace.

  On October 16, 2006, Byron Nelson was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal of Honor by the Senate and House of Representatives, an act that passed unanimously and detailed twenty-five of his astonishing achievements.

  Today, a replica of that medal and other artifacts that had belonged to one of golf’s greatest ambassadors and gentlemen reside in a display case in the stunning atrium of the new Byron Nelson High School in Trophy Club, Texas, home of the Byron Nelson Bobcats, a name inspired by his famous quote that “Winners are a different breed of cat.” Paintings of Byron in his early days also grace the beautiful school’s public spaces.

  Back at Fairway Ranch, Peggy Nelson keeps the house pretty much the way Byron loved it, on special occasions wearing his 1937 Masters medal on a chain around her neck, a gift he gave her many years ago.

  For anyone searching for a final bit of poetry and mythic symmetry in arguably the three greatest golfers of the twentieth century—this unique and incomparable American Triumvirate—it’s intriguing to realize that they left this world in the reverse order in which they’d arrived, the youngest to the oldest, all sons of the same wondrous year—first Ben, then Sam, and finally Byron.

  The youngest caddie: Sam, age seven, at the Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia (illustration credit i1.1)

  Sam, with former U.S. Open winners Johnny Farrell and Billy Burke, at the Cascades Open in 1935, which he thought he should’ve won (illustration credit i1.2)

  With Audrey, whom he married in 1939 (illustration credit i1.3)

  Perhaps the most iconic photograph of the most charismatic star of the prewar years on the PGA Tour (illustration credit i1.4)

  The good sport: Sam after losing the 1940 PGA Championship to Byron (illustration credit i1.5)

  His first U.S. Open disaster, at Spring Hill in 1939 (illustration credit i1.6)

  Sam brings home the claret jug, 1946 (illustration credit i1.7)

  With the Hawk in the late 1940s, probably taken at Augusta, both men in their prime (illustration credit i1.8)

  Following his record eighty-two PGA Tour wins, the professional emeritus at the Greenbrier, with his beloved dog, Meister, in 1992 (illustration credit i1.9)

  Traveling buddies: Sam and his son, Jack, in 1995 (illustration credit i1.10)

  Masters legends: Byron, Sam, Augusta chairman Jack Stephens, and the ageless Gene Sarazen (illustration credit i1.11)

  The Slammer at Snead Links, where he and Audrey are buried side by side (illustration credit i1.12)

  Byron in his early twenties, probably not long after he played in his first professional event (illustration credit i2.1)

  Well-mannered and waiting: early days on the struggling PGA Tour (illustration credit i2.2)

  With Louise, not long after their marriage in 1934 (illustration credit i2.3)

  Mr. Golf’s quest to perfect the swing coincided with the arrival of steel shafts (illustration credit i2.4)

  Byron’s famous “dip” (illustration credit i2.5)

  His second major title, the 1940 PGA Championship (illustration credit i2.6)

  Traveling partners early on, Byron and Ben even shared tastes in clothing. (illustration credit i2.7)

  Friends and rivals: after Ben’s breakthrough in 1940, their relationship noticeably cooled. (illustration credit i2.8)

  Following the 1946 season, Byron became a full-time farmer, part-time golfer. (illustration credit i2.9)

  A new life: Byron and Peggy were married in 1986. (illustration credit i2.10)

  With his protégé Ken Venturi, the 1964 U.S. Open champion (illustration credit i2.11)

  The woodshop is where Byron felt most at home in later years. (illustration credit i2.12)

  Chester Hogan and his son Ben in happier times, 1913 (illustration credit i3.1)

  Ben turned professional in 1932, failing on his first attempts to make it on tour. (illustration credit i3.2)

  He married Valerie Fox in the spring of 1935. (illustration credit i3.3)

  Jimmy Demaret was probably Ben’s best friend on tour—and the player he felt was most underrated. (illustration credit i3.4)

  Ben and Byron remained close up to the start of Wold War II. (illustration credit i3.5)

  After Ben won the Los Angeles Open and the U.S. Open at Riviera in 1948, the press dubbed the course “Hogan’s Alley.” (illustration credit i3.6)

  The nearly fatal car crash in early 1949 made him a truly mythic figure. (illustration credit i3.7)

  The most famous photograph in golf: Ben’s immortal pose at Merion, en route to winning the 1950 U.S. Open (illustration credit i3.8)

  Sam won his second green jacket in 1952, as Ben did in 1953—setting up a playoff for the ages in 1954. (illustration credit i3.9)

  After winning the British Open in 1953, Ben was given a ticker ta
pe parade in New York City. Bobby Jones was the only other golfer so honored, in 1926 and 1930. (illustration credit i3.10)

  Ben fans Jack Fleck’s red-hot putter following his surprising U.S. Open victory at Olympic in 1955. (illustration credit i3.11)

  With his wife, Valerie, at Shady Oaks, where Ben spent his happiest hours after withdrawing from public view around 1970 (illustration credit i3.12)

  Acknowledgments

  Though the late Herbert Warren Wind provided the inspiration and title for this book, the seeds were probably sown one rainy autumn afternoon in 1987 over a lunch with Henry Picard at the Country Club of Charleston, South Carolina. Picard spoke so modestly and engagingly about the early days of the professional golf four—and specifically his unshakable belief that Byron Nelson, Sam Snead, and Ben Hogan played the pivotal role in its survival and growth—I was inspired to spend the next decade seeking out and interviewing players who shaped that era and laid the foundation for the early PGA Tour, a terrific grounding for the eventual writing of an authorized biography of Ben Hogan, An American Life. Sam Snead and Byron Nelson were tremendously generous with their time and unique insights, each agreeing to comprehensive interviews on at least two occasions. Over a period of years I was fortunate to gain many of the insights and stories contained herein from a host of great players that included Gene Sarazen, Paul Runyan, Tommy Bolt, Johnny Bulla, Jack Fleck, Jack Burke Jr., Shelley Mayfield, Skee Riegel, Johnny Pott, Johnny Palmer, Eddie Merrins, Ernie Vossler, Don January, Dow Finsterwald, Dave Marr, Billy Casper, Mike Souchak, Bob Goalby, Bob Rosburg, Cary Middlecoff, Jim Ferree, Doug Sanders, Jerry Pittman, Tom Weiskopf, Johnny Miller, Ben Crenshaw, and Tom Watson.