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.
