by Dan Jenkins
“Save Yourself”
Gary Player was accidentally pushed into a lake in a rush of autograph seekers at Congressional in 1976. “Why didn’t you jump in and save me?” Gary asked his caddie, Rabbit Dyer. Rabbit replied, “I can’t swim.”
Best Late Bloomer
Paul Azinger, after winning at Inverness in 1993: “Twelve years ago I’d never broken 70, and I couldn’t break 80 two days in a row.”
Best or Worst Prediction
John Daly after winning in ’91 at Crooked Stick: “I’m not gonna become a jerk. If I become a jerk, I’ll quit golf.”
The Always Quotable Mr. Daly
John Daly on the subject of sports psychologists during the 2007 PGA at Southern Hills: “You gotta be insane to listen to all our s—t.”
Best Rant
Tommy Bolt gets the award for his performance in the 1961 PGA at Olympia Fields near Chicago after he was suspended indefinitely—it lasted two weeks—for using “vulgar and abusive language.” Part of the rant: “Man, everybody cusses. I cuss, sure, but I cuss myself, don’t you see? If they suspend everybody out here who cusses, they ain’t gonna have nobody left on the tour but the folks who do the suspendin’.”
Don’t Touch These Greens
By tournament time in ’87 at the PGA National in West Palm Beach, Florida, the greens were 80 percent dirt, 10 percent wire, and 10 percent herpes.
Sudden Drama
The 1977 PGA at Pebble Beach served up the first sudden-death playoff in majors history. It was sad to see forty-seven-year-old Gene Littler stumble to a closing 76 and allow Lanny Wadkins to tie him. But in the locker room before the playoff, Lanny took the cocktail out of my hand, saying, “Gimme some of that,” took a swig, said, “That ought to do it,” and went out to win on the third hole.
The record book doesn’t show it, but I claimed an assist.
Big Finish
The last day of the 2014 PGA at Valhalla was filled with so much drama, I’ve ordered a drone to drop Oscars on Rory McIlroy, Phil Mickelson, and Rickie Fowler, plus the grounds crew, which somehow managed to turn rivers and fishing holes left by a violent midday rainstorm into a golf course. Then Rory, the three-day leader and master of all golf shots, lost the lead and had to reclaim it on the last nine with an eagle and two birdies, and win it over the heroic Mickelson and the gritty Fowler with two putts practically in the dark. Best PGA ever, and one of the best majors ever. In the end, golf introduced a new sheriff in town, a twenty-five-year-old power-hitting, sweet-swinging Northern Irishman whose name wasn’t Tiger.
THINNING THE HERD
THINK ABOUT A golfer whipping it around 27 holes in light-running scores of 54, 58, 55, and doing it in one day with a set of clubs that look like upside-down walking canes and a golf ball made out of congealed haggis.
Right. I’m not all that impressed with the majors that Old Tom Morris won at Prestwick on the west coast of Scotland back in the 1860s. This is not to put down majors. Majors are the gold standard by which all golfers are to be measured in this one life to live. To paraphrase an old football coach, winning majors isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
So that’s why I’m here today. To put historical evidence in the blender and identify golf’s true heroes, those who reigned supreme when golf clubs looked like golf clubs and the golf ball stayed in the air longer than a shot put.
I’m permitted to do this because I know more about golf and golf history than I do about the swords and spears of the Romans and Carthaginians.
First you have to go with me and acknowledge there were majors before there were majors. Today’s majors, as ordained by Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and the press, are the U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA, all national championships, plus the Masters, which isn’t the championship of anything but became a major in the thirties due to having Bobby Jones, Grantland Rice, and a beautiful golf course going for it.
In the past there were three kinds of majors. There were the national championships. There were the old “bonus tournaments”—Western Open, North and South Open, Metropolitan Open—that awarded the winner with matching prize money from the equipment and apparel companies. There were also the events during World War Two at Chicago’s Tam O’Shanter Country Club that took the place of the majors that were “suspended for the duration.” Tam’s events were so popular they continued through 1957. Tam’s World Championship and All American Open offered obscene prize money, from first place worth $10,000 in 1951 in the World to $50,000 by 1954, along with exhibition guarantees that made winning it worth a hundred grand.
Money meant a good deal more to the touring pro back then than it does now. You couldn’t tell a guy who won Tam’s All American Open or World Championship that it wasn’t more fun to be rich than having his name in a record book nobody reads.
But let me get on to culling golf’s elite from the proletariat.
Golf’s true heroes—monarchs, emperors, rulers—begin with the Great Triumvirate, and I don’t mean cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke. The Great Triumvirate consisted of Harry Vardon, J. H. Taylor, and James Braid, two Englishmen and a Scot.
Vardon, Taylor, and Braid may have played golf in coats and ties, and their fans may have caught an occasional whiff of Fox and Hound pipe tobacco, but these three gentlemen dominated their competition from 1894 through 1914.
After championship golf was extended to 72 holes in 1892, which is the intelligent place to begin counting, Vardon won six British Opens and a U.S. Open while Taylor and Braid each won five British Opens. There was also a tournament called the News of the World Match Play Championship, which for a decade in their day was considered a major. Braid won it four times, Taylor twice, Vardon once. This gives Braid one more major than Vardon, nine to eight, an obscure stat I just kicked out of the heather.
But Vardon commands the most respect for venturing to America to win the U.S. Open of 1900 at Chicago Golf, and later tying for second in two others, the 1913 “Ouimet Open” at The Country Club in Brookline and the 1920 Open at Inverness in Toledo.
Also for inventing The Grip.
The twenties became known as “The Golden Age of Sports” primarily due to Grantland Rice and other poets flipping adjectives like pancakes while covering Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Jack Dempsey, Red Grange, Charley Paddock, Bill Tilden, Man o’ War, and of course Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen.
Unless you’ve been texting and listening to rap since birth, you know that Bobby Jones won thirteen majors—all national championships—but you may not know that Walter Hagen could boast of winning seventeen over the same period.
Hagen’s total would include not only his five PGAs, one of his two U.S. Opens, and four British Opens, but three of his five Western Opens, two of his three North and South Opens, and two of his three Metropolitan Opens.
Jones was movie-star handsome and did that Grand Slam thing in 1930 and grabbed the larger headlines, but it was the two of them together who lifted tournament golf into a big-time sport in the United States.
The first half of the thirties goes to Gene Sarazen. The rest of it belongs to Ralph Guldahl.
Sarazen exploded on the scene as a twenty-year-old in 1922 when he won both the U.S. Open and PGA, a historic double. He repeated in the ’23 PGA, then spent the rest of the decade chasing Jones and Hagen. It was after Jones retired and Hagen was in his declining years that Sarazen inherited the earth. Sarazen won the U.S. Open and British Open in 1932, another double. He followed this up by winning the PGA in ’33 and the Masters in ’35. It was his double eagle on the 15th hole at the Augusta National that got him a tie with Craig Wood in the final round, after which he won the playoff. That shot did much to major the Masters, a competition originally known as the Augusta National Invitational.
Guldahl was a slow-playing Texan from Dallas, the same age as Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, who was considered the best player in the world from 1936 through 1939. In that stretch he won three Western Opens in a row from ’36 through ’38, two U.S. Op
ens in a row in ’37 and ’38, and the ’39 Masters.
All that was a hallucination to Ben Hogan. At the time Ben was still struggling to make a living on the Tour. He once confided to me late in his career, “I didn’t think Ralph could play a lick. He had this fast, floppy swing. I’d have been ashamed to take that swing out of town. But what he accomplished certainly made me work harder to succeed.”
It was a good thing Guldahl didn’t look back during his streak. He’d have noticed Byron Nelson chipping at his FootJoys.
Byron reached stardom much faster than Hogan, like five years faster. Nelson was stronger and taller than Ben, a natural athlete, unlike Ben, and almost chose professional baseball over golf. Byron won the Metropolitan Open in ’36, the Masters in ’37. In ’39 he won the U.S. Open, the Western Open, and the North and South Open, and would have accomplished a sort of American Slam had he not lost to Henry Picard in the PGA final on the 37th hole.
Nelson owned most of the forties. He won the ’40 PGA, the ’42 Masters, the ’45 PGA, and the All American Opens at Tam in ’44 and ’45. It was in ’45, of course, that he did the streak thing. Along the way he was runner-up in the ’41 Masters, PGA, and Western Open, the ’44 PGA, and the ’46 U.S. Open.
After announcing that he was retiring at the start of the ’46 season, he went on to win six more tournaments, two of which were in Houston and New Orleans, where Ben Hogan and Sam Snead finished second and third.
Byron acted as if it was “a strange thing” rather than something to be proud of that he held an edge over Hogan and Snead in head-to-head duels.
He topped Hogan in close contests in a playoff for the ’40 Texas Open, in a quarterfinal match of the ’41 PGA, and in their exciting playoff for the ’42 Masters. He dusted Snead in the PGA final of ’40, in a 36-hole playoff for the Charlotte Open in ’45, and in that two-day 72-hole exhibition match in ’45 that was billed as a “World Championship of Golf.”
“It was a funny thing,” Byron liked to say. “Ben and Sam were two of the greatest players in the world, but they never could beat me head-to-head. I don’t know why that was. It was just the funniest thing.”
Ben Hogan and Sam Snead dominated golf from the latter half of ’46 through 1956. The press saw them as bitter rivals. They were rivals on the golf course, to be sure, but it was known to a few of us that they were close friends. Ben was in awe of Sam’s picture swing and entertained by Sam’s locker room humor. Sam was in awe of Ben’s fierce work ethic and competitive spirit.
They intruded on Byron Nelson’s dynasty, and for a time the three of them were considered another Great Triumvirate. What brought this about was Hogan winning the North-South in ’40 and ’42, winning the ’42 U.S. “wartime” Open at Ridgemoor in Chicago—it would become known as Ben’s fifth U.S. Open, although “unofficial”—being runner-up to Nelson in that ’42 Masters, and in ’46 winning the PGA, Western Open, and a third North-South. Meanwhile, Sam was winning the ’42 PGA and the ’46 British Open, and finishing runner-up in eight other majors.
I enjoy pointing out that Hogan specialized in Triple Crowns. You know about ’53, when he won the Masters, U.S. Open, and British Open. But you may not know about the others: In ’46 he won the PGA, Western Open, and North-South Open. In ’48 he won the U.S. Open, PGA, and Western Open. In ’51 he captured the U.S. Open, Masters, and World Championship at Tam O’Shanter.
Snead took advantage of Hogan’s absence in ’49 when Ben’s Cadillac lost a bout to the Greyhound bus. Sam practically ran the table. He won the Masters, PGA, Western Open, and North-South Open, and narrowly lost the U.S. Open by three-putting the 71st green at Medinah. That would have been a Big Five, or a Cinco de Sneado. Maybe something more poetic.
I give Hogan sixteen majors and eight runner-ups. I give Snead twelve majors and a whopping thirteen runner-ups. And the two of them did it against an array of combatants that included Lloyd Mangrum, Cary Middlecoff, Jimmy Demaret, Jackie Burke, Tommy Bolt, Julius Boros, Bobby Locke, and more Dutch Harrisons, Johnny Bullas, and Chick Harberts than you can count.
There’s been one more Great Triumvirate in golf, and if you don’t know it consisted of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Gary Player, I will confiscate your press badge and sentence you to cover NASCAR.
What can be said about Nicklaus, Palmer, and Player that you don’t already know? That Jack’s middle name is William? That Arnold’s middle name is Daniel? That Gary doesn’t have a middle name?
It’s accepted that these three won a total of thirty-four majors between them from 1958 through 1986. Breaking them down, Nicklaus has eighteen, Player nine, Palmer seven. You could win money betting that Player has more majors than Palmer. The average guy doesn’t buy it. The average guy will say, “How can this be? Arnold Palmer invented golf on TV. Arnold Palmer took golf to the people. Arnold Palmer is more loved than Lassie.”
One explanation is that Arnold lost a lot of majors he could have won or should have won if it hadn’t been for a fellow named Destiny, who is known to be as untrustworthy as an airline pilot with a thirst.
As for the number thirty-four for the Big Three, I’m upping it to forty. First, I’m removing the quote marks from “the fifth major.” The Players in Ponte Vedra Beach offers the biggest paycheck on the Tour for the winner, and annually attracts the strongest field. Guys would trade a lot of Greensboros for one Players trophy.
Nicklaus won the Players three out of the first five years of its existence, so I give him three more majors. Then I’m invoking the Bobby Jones Rule. This rule says if a guy wins a pro major, he gets to count his U.S. Amateur title if he has one. Jack has two and Arnold has one. New count: Nicklaus has twenty-three majors; Palmer has eight.
Don’t scream. I’ll be applying the same arithmetic to Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson before this exercise is over.
Despite the dominance of Jack, Arnold, and Gary over those twenty-nine years, there was an interlude of fourteen seasons—’68 through ’84—when they had to contend with two brash upstarts named Tom Watson and Lee Trevino.
Watson won eight majors—five British Opens, two Masters, and one U.S. Open. In doing so he turned Nicklaus into a runner-up four times, a feat that once prompted Jack to tell him, “You little s.o.b., you’re something else.”
Trevino won seven majors—two U.S. Opens, two British Opens, two PGAs, and one Players. He also turned Nicklaus into a runner-up in four majors. The most stunning was in the ’72 British Open at Muirfield, when Jack was going for the pro slam, having won the Masters and U.S. Open.
After his victory, Lee said, in typical fashion, “I didn’t come over here to try to help Jack Nicklaus win the Grand Slam.”
The period from 1986 through 1996 was dreary for America. True, Nicklaus won a sixth Masters, Ben Crenshaw won a second Masters, and Curtis Strange won back-to-back U.S. Opens, but foreigners kidnapped most of the majors. When the dust settled, England’s Nick Faldo and Australia’s Greg Norman had made the biggest impressions.
Faldo won three Masters and three British Opens, while Norman was a constant presence. Greg seemed forever to be threatening, and he did win two British Opens and a Players. His career featured eight runner-ups and a total of eighteen finishes in the top five. Some of his meltdowns were self-imposed, but he had the misfortune of losing twice to miracle hole-outs—the bunker shot by Bob Tway on the last hole in the ’86 PGA and the long pitch by Larry Mize in sudden death at the ’87 Masters.
Meanwhile, it was a decade in which One-Hit Wonders ruined golf stories. There were eleven of them. Among the batch: Jeff Sluman, Wayne Grady, Ian Baker-Finch, Steve Jones, Mark Brooks—dare I go on?
If Jack Nicklaus has twenty-three majors, Tiger Woods now has nineteen currently. Together with his four Masters, four PGAs, three U.S. Opens, and three British Opens, I’m adding Tiger’s three U.S. Amateurs—the Bobby Jones Rule—and his two wins in the Players.
In this reign of Tiger as a rock star, which seems like a hundred years, only two compet
itors have stepped up to own part of the turf—Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy. Phil’s accumulation of majors rises to seven when his U.S. Amateur of 1990 and his Players win in 2007 are added to his three Masters, one PGA, and the 2013 British Open, where he shot that mind-blowing, come-from-behind final-round 66. Meanwhile, Rory has captured one U.S. Open, one British Open, and two PGAs by the age of twenty-five.
There hasn’t been a golf swing as sound and yet picturesque as McIlroy’s since, well, I guess Sam Snead. The boy king has it all, plus he’s incredibly likable. He alone makes the future of pro golf exciting.
The most curious stat in Phil’s career is that he’s been a runner-up in a record six U.S. Opens. Six. You would think that sheer luck would have let him win one or two of those.
Luck, of course, plays by its own rules. Otherwise, how could Jack Fleck have ever beaten Ben Hogan in a U.S. Open playoff?
Scooping up the old recognized majors and throwing them in a pile with today’s recognized majors, here, as of this writing, is my new count of the all-time multiple winners of golf’s major championships:
Jack Nicklaus—23 (6 Masters, 5 PGAs, 4 U.S. Opens, 3 British Opens, 3 Players, 2 U.S. Amateurs)
Walter Hagen—22 (5 PGAs, 5 Western Opens, 4 British Opens, 2 U.S. Opens, 3 North-South Opens, 3 Metropolitan Opens)
Tiger Woods—19 (4 Masters, 4 PGAs, 3 U.S. Opens, 3 British Opens, 2 Players, 3 U.S. Amateurs)
Ben Hogan—16 (5 U.S. Opens, 2 Masters, 2 PGAs, 1 British Open, 2 Western Opens, 3 North-South Opens, 1 Tam O’Shanter World Championship)
Bobby Jones—13 (4 U.S. Opens, 3 British Opens, 5 U.S. Amateurs, 1 British Amateur)
Sam Snead—12 (3 Masters, 3 PGAs, 1 British Open, 3 North-South Opens, 2 Western Opens)
