Half-Decades of Dominance: Walter Hagen

One in a Series

Walter Hagen made it respectable to be a professional golfer – which is ironic when you consider he was known as a hard-drinking, hard-partying, womanizing showman who had a habit of showing up on the first tee still dressed in the previous night's rumpled tuxedo, drink in hand.

     That's what people often remember today. What they sometimes forget  is what an amazing player he was, how much he dominated the professional game, and what he did for the sport.

     From 1924-1928, Walter Hagen won 6 of the 13 major championships he entered, including four PGA Championships in a row (he won five overall). During this stretch of majors, he finished in the top five 11 times, and never finished out of the top 10 (his worst finish was 7th, in the 1926 U.S. Open).

     An incredible run, to be sure. But now let's add a little perspective ...

Hagen launched his pro career at a time when American professional golfers typically scratched out a living working for an eastern country club during the summer, then headed south for the winter in hopes of supplementing their incomes with tournament winnings. It was not a glamorous way to make a living, a far cry from the pampered life top professionals (and even many middling ones) lead today. (Photo: NY Times/AP)
     Here's how author Curt Sampson describes the era in his best-selling book, Hogan:

As it had been since golf took hold in the United States in 1888, a professional had to have a job at a club to make any financial headway. The lone exception to the rule was the charismatic Walter Hagen, the first full-time, unattached touring professional. After winning the 1919 U.S. Open, he resigned his post at Oakland Hills Country Club for a life of tournaments, exhibitions, and drinking champagne from women's spike-heeled shoes.

To make matters worse, it was also a golden age of amateur athletics. Athletes of any sort who cashed in on their gifts for money were viewed as little more than mercenaries. Golf, in  particular, was viewed as a "gentleman's" game, played in its purest form by men who did so purely for the love of it (assuming they could afford to do so). As a result, many of the top golfers of the day retained their amateur status throughout their career. Thus, Hagen shared the golfing spotlight with amateurs such as Francis Ouimet, Chick Evans, and, in particular, Bobby Jones.
     Though clearly the two top golfers of the era, Hagen and Jones are difficult to compare. It's not quite apples and oranges; more like red apples and green apples. They played the same game, but they had different goals, different ways of earning a living (Jones was an attorney), and different tournaments available to them.

     Jones was eligible to compete in four tournaments considered majors at the time: the U.S. and British Opens and the U.S. and British Amateurs. Hagen had only three: both Opens and the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) Championship – four if you count the Western Open (more about that later). Further, most professional golfers at the time did not make the trans-Atlantic voyage to play in the Open Championship (the proper name for what Americans generally call the British Open) due to the expense and the relatively small size of the purse. Hagen, however, was not most professionals. By the time he played his first Open Championship in 1920, Hagen was accomplished and popular enough on both sides of the Atlantic that he knew he could make the trip worthwhile by lining up lucrative exhibition matches and personal appearances. In addition, that first trip was subsidized by a wealthy benefactor – no doubt one who intended to make his money back by wagering on the action.

     During the 1920s, Hagen played in the oldest championship eight times, and won it four. This includes two straight wins in 1928-29, and five straight top-3 finishes. Meanwhile, Jones entered the Open Championship just three times between 1926 and 1930, in 1926, '27, and '30 – but won all three times. Between the two of them, Hagen and Jones won seven of eight British Open titles from 1924-1930. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

     In head-to-head U.S. Open competition from 1924-28, Jones owns one title to Hagen's none and finished ahead of the Haig four times out of five. But in their high-profile 72-hole exhibition match in 1926 – billed as the "World Championship of Golf" and promoted as something akin to a heavyweight title fight – Hagen took it to Jones, but good. Competing in match-play format, Hagen built a huge early lead and never relented, closing out the storied amateur on the 61st green, 12-and-11.
     Hagen's greatest legacy comes in the PGA Championship. Not only was he a charter member of the Professional Golfers Association, he won its championship five times in seven years, including four in a row from1924-27. In 1928 he made it as far as the quarterfinals, giving him an astonishing 22 match wins in a row against the best professional golfers in the world. It's a shame Hagen didn't get more of a chance to compete against Jones in match play. The big match-play tournaments at the time were the U.S. and British Amateurs, in which Hagen could not compete; and the PGA, for which Jones was ineligible.

Half-Decades of Dominance

     In 2009, as Tiger looked poised to draw ever nearer to Jack's all-time record of 18 professional majors, the "Who's the Greatest?" question rightly also drew to the fore. Tiger has certainly earned a spot in that discussion already, and in the opinion of many already wears the crown.
     What I find interesting, however, is how the question is generally framed: Usually, it's from a "full career" standpoint; occasionally it gets asked as, "Who was better at their respective peaks?" With the full career option, Jack and Tiger generally stand head and shoulders above the crowd – particularly if you look primarily, or exclusively, at number of majors won, as many commentators do. The problem, as I see it, is that longevity becomes too large of a factor.
     For instance ... let's say Tiger Woods decides to retire from professional golf tomorrow to enter a monastery. He will still be four major wins short of Jack's career record. But everyone would say, "Yeah, but if that scandal thing hadn't have happened ...."
     Should that matter? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on how you approach things.

Happy Birthday, Jack!*

What to say about the Golden Bear, on the occasion of his 70th birthday? So, so much that could be said ... so few words to adequately express it.

     Regular readers have probably figured out by now that the Whiffler is a particular fan of golfers, past and present, who exemplify the ideals of class, grace, dignity, and sportsmanship. Add "magnitude of accomplishment" to this mix and clearly no one stands taller than Jack Nicklaus. (Photo: Jack Nicklaus in 1959, John G. Zimmerman (no relation) for Sports Illustrated)

     It's easy to forget that when he first burst onto the national scene, Nicklaus was not well-liked by the golfing public. This was partly because he immediately threatened to knock the King, Arnold Palmer, off his throne. But it was also because the young Jack often came off as something less than humble. Understandably so! He was quick to speak his mind (as he is to this day), which, when coupled with his supreme self-confidence, often made an unfavorable impression on the public. As he writes in his autobiography, My Story:

When I think of myself back in those peak amateur days ... I still cringe at how cockily I must have come across to a lot of people. For instance, before leaving Columbus for that U.S. Open I remember telling my college coach, Bob Kepler, "Kep, I'm playing so well I might just win this thing." You might think such things – you should think such things – but you should never say them to anyone, or at least not to anyone who isn't extremely close to you like a parent or spouse. I did it all the time, and it embarrasses me now just to remember it.

Update: Gary Player

Fellow blogger Phil Capelle (Capelle on Golf) weighed in with an insightful comment on my previous post about Gary Player, whom he calls "one of the most underrated golfers of all time." He wrote in part:

He won nine [majors], as you said, but Player swears that he won 10 because he felt he was robbed of the 1969 PGA, which he lost by one shot due to hecklers in the crowd.

Player was the target of local protesters (remember, it was 1969!) who came to the Dayton, Ohio, tournament to object to, among other things, the hated apartheid government of Player's native South Africa. As legendary scribe Dan Jenkins recounted in his Sports Illustrated write-up:

What happened was, Gary Player got a rolled-up program thrown at him, a cup of ice tossed at him and a golf ball hurled out onto the green by a girl while he lined up a putt. Jack Nicklaus, meanwhile, had a big guy come out of the crowd and onto a green and start toward his ball, which in turn made Jack draw back the putter as if he were offering a new tip—always hold the club high when swinging at a demonstrator. And everybody went crazy for a moment or two with shouts of "Club 'em, kill the pigs," meaning the hecklers. It was not what anyone particularly wanted to have happen in a championship, of course, since Player and Nicklaus were at the time trying very hard to catch Raymond Floyd [the eventual champion].

Did this cost Player the championship? It's impossible to say for sure, of course. I'm of the mind that it's always very difficult to say that one thing would or would not have changed the outcome of a sporting event, because you just don't know what else might change as a result. Though I have no doubt Player feels it did. And it's clear from Jenkins's story that both players were rattled by the events:

The Legend that is Gary Player

In my first official post on Whiffling Straits, in the context of making some 2010 predictions, I pointed readers to Gary Player's website; specifically, the page dedicated to his 1970 musical release, "Gary Player Sings." This was a bit of a cop-out. The item I originally wrote for him went something like this:

Gary Player, the Jack LaLanne of professional golf, will celebrate his 75th birthday on November 1 by pulling a dump truck full of self-esteem across the Nelson Mandela Bridge – with his teeth.

The link on "self-esteem" goes to the biography page on his official website, which begins: "Gary Player is a legend in his own time." The rest of the site is sprinkled liberally with similar bombast about his status as a near-mythical figure. But I changed the entry because I didn't want to misrepresent how I feel about the man who claims to have hit more golf balls than anyone in history.
     I find Player absolutely fascinating. He has an inspiring backstory, having grown up dirt poor in South Africa, where his father was a miner. His mother died when he was 8. He's gotten where he is today by working harder than anybody in the history of the game (even Hogan, by my estimation), both on and off the course. The winner of nine (yes, nine!) major championships, he was an amazing player, even as he labored in the shadow of Palmer and Nicklaus. Because of the "golden era" in which he played, I think he sometimes doesn't get enough credit today for what he accomplished on the course. Who knows how many majors he would have won had he peaked in, say, the 1980s?

Player also seems to be a fine man, well-respected in the game, and extremely respectful of the game in return. In 2006 he received the PGA Tour's Payne Stewart Award. After he played his final Masters in 2009, it was very moving to see other South African golfers waiting to pay their respects as he came off the 18th green for the last time. He greeted each one warmly and sincerely, as though each small, private encounter meant the world to him -- as no doubt it did. (Photo: Michael O'Brien, Golf Magazine/Golf.com)
     He's relentlessly optimistic, a whirlwind of positive energy that never seems to wane. I love a story Dr. Bob Rotella tells about him in his book, "Golf is Not a Game of Perfect," to illustrate the value of positive thinking. As recounted by a fellow competitor he was rooming with at the time, the story goes that Player would return to the room one week just raving about how much he loves putting on fast greens. Then, the very next week, he would come home raving about how much he loves putting on that week's relatively slow greens. The point was, Player didn't really love both fast and slow greens, but convincing himself that he did helped his confidence tremendously. It's an attitude worth emulating, in many aspects of life.