GOLF

Jack is Back

"These are interesting times," Jack Nicklaus mused. In the 1980s the Golden Bear was, by many accounts, growing old and losing his competitive edge. At forty his drives were not as prodigious as they once were, his legendary concentration often seemed to wane at critical junctures, and even his fans feared that their hero invested too much of his time and passion into the business and architectural ventures that cluttered his schedule. Furthermore, critics of the game described a professional tour overrun by country-club clones with mechanical swings and little imagination. Even golf's veterans shook their heads: "Pro golf is dull," grumbled Tommy Bolt, "It's a chorus line of blond towheads you can't even tell apart." Ironically, the blond Nicklaus himself had once been condemned as a talented player with few charms, especially when he dared to challenge golf's reigning demigod, Arnold Palmer, in the early 1960s, Now, the tour looked to Nicklaus for an infusion of character, and during the summer of 1980 he gave the game what it yearned for. After a two-year winless streak and endless tinkering with his swing mechanics and short game, Nicklaus unexpectedly seized control of the U.S. Open at Baltusrol Country Club with an Open-record 63 in the first round. He went on to lead the tournament from start to finish, wrapping up his fourth Open championship with birdies on the seventy-first and seventy-second holes to maintain his two-shot lead over Japan's Isao Aoki. In the process Nicklaus won over fans and competitors alike; cries of "Jack is back!" filled the gallery between shots, and in the locker room old rival Lee Trevino shouted at the television screen as he watched Nicklaus stalk up the eighteenth fairway, "Get away and let the big dog eat!" The title was Nicklaus's eighteenth major championship, five more than anyone else in history. But he was not through. In August the rejuvenated Nicklaus routed the field in the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) Championship, winning by seven shots on the treacherous Oak Hill course in Rochester, New York. By claiming two major titles in 1980, Nicklaus accomplished an incredible feat. He had won majors in four different decades dating back to his 1959 U.S. Amateur Championship, solidifying through longevity what he had already confirmed in countless moments of competitive excellence: that he was the greatest golfer the game had ever known. And he still was not finished.

Watson

Despite Nicklaus's stunning reemergence, the early years of the decade belonged to Tom Watson. In the mid 1970s Watson endured a reputation as a choker after letting two U.S. Open titles slip from his grasp, but in 1977 he bested Nicklaus in two thrilling matches at the Masters and the British Open and thus gave notice of his ascendancy. By the 1980s it was apparent that Watson's occasional failures were largely a product of being in contention nearly every week. Each year he seemed to set a new season-earnings record, gathering PGA Player of the Year honors in 1977 through 1980, 1982, and 1984 (more than any other golfer in history), and winning a total of eight major championships between 1975 and 1983. But in many ways Watson's legacy is indelibly linked to a single shot played at the 1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. Capturing the Open title had become Watson's obsession ("Just winning money is not enough.…I must win the U.S. Open to be considered one of the great players"), and so when he came to the second-to-last hole tied once again with Nicklaus, Watson resisted the conservative approach into the center of the green and instead fired a two-iron toward the seventeenth's perilous pin placement. The gamble failed, and his ball settled in the deep Open rough between the green and the rocky shores of the Pacific Ocean. Watson faced a shot that demanded the nerves of a surgeon: a delicate wedge shot out of the viney grass to a slick green sloping away from him. When Watson's caddie whispered nervously, "Get it close," Watson responded confidently: "I'm not trying to get it close. I'm gonna make it." And he did, sending him into an ecstatic victory dance around the green's perimeter, at the conclusion of which he swung and pointed at his caddie and exclaimed, "Told ya!" Making a birdie when a bogey seemed inevitable, Watson had the Grail in his clutches, and when he birdied the final hole for good measure, he had staggered the Golden Bear once again. Watson's playing partner that day, Bill Rogers, rated the shot afterward, "He couldn't have hit a better shot if he'd dropped down a hundred balls." To which Nicklaus chimed in, "Try about a thousand." For many Watson had stared down the ghosts of blown opportunities past, or, as Thomas Boswell wrote afterward: "Golf allows its champions to develop genuine dignity. They play completely alone, more free of owners, managers and teammates than even professional boxers.…Because of their solitude—each reaches moments like Watson's at the seventeenth when he is framed by nothing but sky and history—great golfers seldom find it possible to hide their bedrock character, even if they would prefer it."

Senior Tour

Nicklaus's "comeback" at the age of forty would prove to be a portent of things to come. One might argue that the 1980s represented golf's "gray years," a period during which established figures such as Raymond Floyd, Lee Trevino, and Hale Irwin, all in their forties, wrested one last major championship from the young and hungry. Even the venerable Arnold Palmer, fifty-three, opened the 1983 Masters with a bit of magic, a four-under-par 68, and briefly tantalized those members of "Arnie's Army" longing for one last charge from their hero. Significantly, the decade gave the game's legendary names new life in the form of a tour of their own. The PGA Senior Tour grew out of the popular success of the "Legends of Golf" tournament, a team event begun in 1978 that not only brought the likes of Sam Snead and Billy Casper out of retirement, but showed that they could still play scintillating golf. In 1980 the United States Golf Association established the U.S. Senior Open for players fifty-five years of age and older (the minimum age was dropped to fifty in 1981 to coincide with PGA Seniors Tour entry age), and the inaugural event was won by Roberto de Vicenzo at Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, New York. By 1987 the PGA had scheduled a circuit of thirty-seven Senior tournaments. Two years later there was a "Senior Slam" in place, consisting of the U.S. Senior Open, the Senior Players Championship, The Tradition, and the PGA Seniors' Championship. Financially, the Senior Tour was a colossal success. Capitalizing on the popularity of their members, including by 1990 such players as Trevino, Nicklaus, Palmer, Gary Player, and Chi Chi Rodriguez, the tour was driven financially by large-scale corporate sponsorship and by the revenues generated from two-day Pro-Ams before each tournament, in which amateur golfers paid thousands to play and socialize with their idols. As a result many of the Senior Tour's stars, such as Bob Charles and Jim Dent, earned nearly as much in one year on the fifty-and-older circuit as they had during their entire PGA careers. Still able to break par but unwilling to undergo the rigors of the regular tour, older golfers reveled in the opportunity to reclaim their competitive fire. The once gruff Billy Casper showed up for each round in brightly colored knickers and argyle plus fours, while the rejuvenated Trevino gushed, "This is the most fun I've had with my clothes on." Even Nicklaus, who initially dismissed the tour by asserting that "the problem for me is that the guys who are competing are the same guys I have beaten for thirty years," warmed to the challenges offered and in 1991 won three quarters of the Senior Slam.

European Invasion

During the decade golf increasingly distinguished itself as an "international" game. While there had long been a coterie of skilled foreign-born golfers laboring on the PGA and Ladies PGA (LPGA) tours, the 1980s saw a notable shift away from the customary dominance of American players. On the women's circuit Britain's Laura Davies and Sweden's Liselotte Neumann won U.S. Opens in 1987 and 1988, and Ayako Okamoto of Japan was selected as the 1987 LPGA Player of the Year after leading all female golfers in earnings. South Africa's Sally Little continued to win frequently on the women's circuit and captured three different major championships during the decade. On the men's tour the presence of international players was even more pronounced. European players won nearly half of the Masters and British Opens contested during the 1980s, and Australians David Graham and Greg Norman each captured one major during that span. It was perhaps Seve Ballesteros from Spain who best exemplified the challenge to the supremacy of U.S. players on the American tour. Ballesteros was a handsome and compelling figure, attacking each course with youthful exuberance, daring, and an endless arsenal of imaginative shots. At times it seemed like Ballesteros won every tournament with a cunning shot from a strand of trees, the wrong fairway, or an out-of-the-way parking lot. By the age of twenty-one he had used his precocious talents to capture victories on four different continents (including the 1979 British Open), and a year later he became the youngest champion ever at the Masters. By contrast, Nick Faldo of Great Britain was a model of consistency, negotiating a golf course with almost geometric precision. Fittingly, Faldo won the 1987 British Open by parring every hole in the final round, while his competitors struggled in the gorse and brambles that penalize the wayward. Perhaps the most telling sign of the European preeminence came in the Ryder Cup series, a biannual team competition pitting an American squad against a contingent of golfers from Europe. When the Europeans captured the cup in 1985, it was their first victory since 1957. They proved the feat was no fluke by winning again in 1987, and, after a tie in 1989, retained the cup into the 1990s.

For Old Time's Sake

If Nicklaus's victories in 1980 surprised those who thought his best golf was behind him, then his winning the Masters at the age of forty-six must have seemed unthinkable. When the tournament began he was 160th on the money list, had missed three of seven cuts (and withdrawn from a fourth), and was once again said to be anxious about his business interests. He began the final round five shots behind the leader, Greg Norman, and had eight players ahead of him on the leader board. Nevertheless, on 13 April 1986 the Golden Bear roared again. Having missed a series of makable putts on the front nine, Nicklaus suddenly caught fire, shooting a phenomenal 30 on the back nine for a round of 65 to win his sixth green jacket. With the crowd exploding with each stroke and their shouts resounding through the azaleas, the rest of the field came unglued. The title was safe only after Ballesteros hooked his iron shot into Rae's Creek on the fifteenth and Greg Norman pushed his approach shot into the bleachers on the eighteenth. The unfolding scenario reconfirmed the power of Nicklaus's sheer presence during a stretch run at Augusta. But for the Golden Bear himself his extraordinary play and the gallery's adoration led to an unexpected consequence: he began to struggle with powerful emotions during his round. Four or five times he fought back tears and had to lecture himself, "We have to play golf. This isn't over.…What I really don't understand is how I could keep making putts in the state I was in." Moreover, he admitted that he often failed to see the ball land because of his weakening eyesight. "I'm missing the pleasure of seeing my ball finish," he said. The golfing world, on the other hand, celebrated the flight of each drive and the curl of each putt. As Rick Reilly wrote afterward, "It is a trick no other golf god has pulled, not Palmer or Hogan or Snead or Sarazen. Nicklaus had beaten young men at a young man's game on young men's greens and beaten them when they were at their youthful best."

ALMOST IMMORTAL

The appeal for most occasional bowlers (and the thorn in most professional bowlers' sides) is that bowling is a sport anyone can play welll Bowling began the 1980s as one the most popular participant sports in the country. Three out of every eight Americans were sanctioned league bowlers in 1980. Its popularity flagged over the next ten years, however, due in part to the fact that the public increasingly perceived it as a recreational rather than an athletic practice. Many believed that lanes were so oiled and grooved that any hack off the street could stroll into an alley, drink a few beers, chew the fat, and still post a high score. The gap between "Joe Bowler" and bowling legend Earl Anthony was perceived as decreasing, and the American Bowling Congress (ABC) grew anxious about the standards within which bowling scores were considered legitimate. The effort to maintain the integrity and stature of bowling as a sport was perhaps never more clear than in the curious case of Glenn Allison. Allison stood with one foot in each bowling world. He was a retired professional bowler—winner of four ABC championships and five Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) titles—who, as a liquor store manager and league member, rolled three consecutive 300 games on his girlfriend Jessie's birthday. The 900 series on 1 July 1982 was the highest score in bowling history, surpassing the 886 total Allie Brandt bowled in 1939. Allison's "gift" (he had told Jessie he would bowl a 300 game for her moments before his first strike sent the pins crashing) was witnessed by an awestruck alley full of spectators, bowlers, employees, and family members who celebrated the accomplishment with enthusiastic abandon. The general manager at La Habra 300 Bowl later mounted Allison's portrait over Lanes 13 and 14 and put his name on the pinsweeps which guard the now-hallowed ground. The ABC was not nearly as enthusiastic. After inspecting the lanes the organization's representative refused to sanction the 900 series, citing lane-dressing conditions that were not "in compliance with Article 7, Section 3" of the bowlers rule book. Despite assurances from local inspectors, appeals from Allison, and complaints from critics of the ABC (including many members of the professional tour) who had long contended that lane-dressing standards were vague and arbitrarily policed, the Congress did not waiver. Although never officially recognized, Glenn Allison's feat remains for many a significant achievement. "I think it's a remarkable feat," said Earl Anthony. "It's like a golfer hitting three or four straight holes in one." For his part Allison felt that he needed the sanction in order to secure a spot at the top of the bowling world. "The 900 series, if it were sanctioned, that's something that could never be broken," said Allison. "I would always be at the top of the record books, and as far as I'm concerned that would make me immortal." The claim to immortality was later made by Thomas Jordan who rolled an ABC-recognized 899 (and a four-game total of 1,198) in New Jersey in 1989. But for many bowling fans, Jordan's near-perfect score is only a reminder that perfection's name is Glenn Allison.

Sources:

Frank Deford, "Frank Deford Goes Bowling," Sports Illustrated, 68 (25 January 1988): 50-59;

John Garrity, "Thrice Perfect, Once Scorned," Sports Illustrated, 57 (15 November 1982): 76-90.

Saturday Slam

One of the men caught in the wake of Nicklaus's Augusta run was Greg Norman, who was only just beginning a summer of amazing golf and astounding misfortune. By the mid 1980s Norman was being touted as another in the long line of "Bear-apparents." In the 1984 U.S. Open he nearly broke through with a major win, losing an 18-hole playoff to Fuzzy Zoeller after the two had tied after 72 holes. But in 1986 it appeared that Norman, called the Great White Shark for his blond locks and his tales of deep-sea fishing off the Australian coasts, had positioned himself for greatness. Norman led each of the four major tournaments going into the final rounds, but could secure only one victory. The press dubbed the impressive feat the "Saturday Slam," but for Norman it amounted to a trail of disappointment. He seemed to lose each tournament in some new, excruciating manner. Nicklaus's tremendous back nine momentarily stunned the normally resolute Norman, and after he double-bogeyed the par-four tenth hole, it seemed as if his chances were slipping away. "When we got to the fourteenth hole, there were only about fifty people left in our gallery," said Norman afterward. "They were all up with Nicklaus.…I told Nick [Price, Norman's playing partner], "Let's wake these people up and show them we're still here.'" And he did, reeling off four straight birdies to tie Nicklaus, who had finished his round. On the last hole, needing only a par to force a playoff, Norman's four-iron approach shot careened into the bleachers to the right of the green, and he had to settle for a bogey and second place. In the final round of the 1986 U.S. Open at Shinnecock, Norman's putting stroke abandoned him and he shot a 75, as Raymond Floyd emerged from the pack to win. To his credit Norman dominated the field at the British Open that summer and earned his first major title. The jinx seemed to be over. But in August Norman saw the PGA Championship ripped from his grasp when Bob Tway holed a shot from a bunker beside the eighteenth green to beat the Shark by a stroke. As if 1986 were not torturous enough, golf's furies victimized Norman once again at the 1987 Masters, where Larry Mize sank an improbable 140-foot pitch on the second hole of sudden death to take victory from Norman. In the history of the game, no golfer had ever made a shot from off the final green to win a major title.

Pat Bradley

While Norman saw his chance at the Grand Slam crumble, Pat Bradley nearly accomplished the rare feat on the ladies' tour that same summer. By the mid 1980s the LPGA tour was flourishing, bolstered by the charismatic rise of Nancy Lopez and Jan Stephenson in the late 1970s, and the continued fine play of JoAnne Carner, the tour's reigning matriarch. In a period of seeming parity Bradley won three legs of the women's slam in 1986—the LPGA Championship, the Nabisco Dinah Shore Tournament, and the du Maurier Classic—and finished an impressive fifth in the U.S. Women's Open. Excluding Bobby Jones, who inspired the notion of golfs Grand Slam when he won the U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, British Open, and British Amateur in 1930, only three other professional golfers had captured three-quarters of the prize: Ben Hogan (1953) on the PGA Tour, and Babe Zaharias (1950) and Mickey Wright (1961) on the LPGA. Having already triumphed in the U.S. Open in 1981, Bradley also became the first woman to win all four majors in her career. Before the summer of 1986 Bradley's reputation bore a certain similarity to Norman's, for though she possessed remarkable concentration—her peers referred frequently to "the Stare" to describe her otherworldly intensity during competition—she had garnered notoriety as a frequent bridesmaid. Critics pointed to her remarkable record of 21 wins and 42 second-place finishes to attest to both her preeminence on the tour and her purported lack of a "killer instinct." But that summer Bradley won tournaments as dramatically as Norman lost them. At the LPGA Championship, for instance, Bradley birdied the last hole with a twelve-foot putt that left runner-up Patty Sheehan pounding her fists on the ground in frustration. At the du Maurier, Bradley found herself nine shots back after thirty-six holes, only to shoot a 67 followed by a 67 to gain a sudden-death playoff with Ayako Okamoto, whom she ousted with yet another birdie on the first playoff hole. In the only major that eluded her, Bradley struggled to a 76 in the first round, only to play herself back into contention with rounds of 71, 74, and 69. By the end of the year Bradley had put together one of the greatest seasons any golfer had ever known: five victories (three of them majors) and six second-place finishes. She was the LPGA's leading money winner, its Player of the Year, and the recipient of the Vare Trophy for low stroke average.

Repeat

No one had won the U.S. Open in consecutive years since Ben Hogan returned from a near-fatal car accident to grab the crown in 1950 and 1951. Tom Watson nearly accomplished the repeat in 1983, finishing second to Larry Nelson, but for many a defending champion the rigors of the Open (slick greens, narrow fair-ways, unyielding rough, intense pressure) seemed to dissolve quickly any visions of grandeur repeated. Few would have pegged Curtis Strange as the man to accomplish such a feat before the 1988 Open. The tour's leading money winner in 1985, 1987, and 1988, Strange was widely regarded as one of the best golfers in the world, but he won mostly in the small tourneys. Many fans cringed at the memory of Strange's collapse at the 1985 Masters, when he lost a commanding lead in the final round, twice hitting approach shots into the water on the back nine. But in 1988 Strange played himself into contention in the second and third rounds of the Open, and despite losing two shots to par on the final day, gained an eighteen-hole playoff with Nick Faldo when he artfully escaped a greenside bunker on the final hole. In the Monday playoff Strange putted extraordinarily well and defeated the usually steady Faldo. Having finally "broken through," Strange was considered one of the favorites entering the 1989 Open at Oak Hill Country Club, and he did not disappoint. However, even after a spectacular 64 on Friday, Strange and the rest of the field found themselves on Sunday chasing Tom Kite, who had broken par in each of the first three rounds. Kite, heir to the "best golfer to never win a major" tag previously attributed to Strange, struggled mightily during his final round, never quite recovering from a triple-bogey on the fifth hole. Meanwhile, Strange performed with Hoganesque calm and precision. Beginning his round with fifteen straight pars, Strange watched the rest of the field wilt in the heat of competition. When he birdied the sixteenth with a fifteen-foot putt, Strange pushed his lead to two shots and coasted to his second consecutive Open victory. Entering the press tent after his victory, Strange broke the stoic demeanor that had carried him through the day's travails and shouted, "Move over, Ben." Curtis Strange had earned the right to share the pedestal with the great Hogan.

Sources:

Thomas Boswell, Strokes of Genius (New York: Douhleday, 1987);

Rhonda Glenn, The Illustrated History of Women's Golf (Dallas: Taylor Publishing,1991);

Steven Goodwin, The Greatest Masters: The 1986 Masters and Golfs Elite (New York: Harper & Row, 1988);

Dan Jenkins, Fairways and Greens: The Best Golf Writings of Dan Jenkins (New York: Doubleday, 1994);

George Peper, Grand Slam Golf (New York: Abrams, 1991).

GOLF

Everyman's Game

In the 1970s the game of golf at all levels—from the professional to the amateur ranks—had never been healthier. Americans in 1971 watched on television as astronaut Alan B. Shepard sent a six-iron shot sailing in the moon's thin atmosphere; millions shared an enthusiasm for the sport with Shepard. In the previous decade Arnold Palmer in swashbuckling, go-for-broke style had popularized the game and had opened country-club gates to legions of middle-class fans. Although he played a sport perceived by many Americans to be snobbish, Palmer was seen as an everyman on the golf course, his untrained-looking swing wildly hooking the ball into the woods then slashing it back into play. "The King," as he was called by his fans, sweated and chain-smoked his way through a round with a determined walk and stare. As millions of Americans headed out to the public links to emulate their new hero Palmer, a pudgy-faced, long-hitting Ohioan named Jack Nicklaus began challenging Palmer's rule. By the 1970s "the Golden Bear" was seemingly winning everything in sight and had claimed all four major titles. Nicklaus was Palmer's successor—just as Palmer had succeeded Ben Hogan. But as the decade progressed many became convinced that Nicklaus had surpassed all of his predecessors and had become golf's greatest player ever.

A Mass Sport

More and more public courses were being built in the 1970s, and important equipment changes were keeping pace with the golfing boom. In 1968 Spalding had begun selling a Surlyn-covered two-piece ball, the Top-Flite. The new ball flew farther and was more durable. Although many in the pro ranks shunned the new ball because it was difficult to impart spin on the hard cover, thus making it harder to control, the two-piece, hard-covered ball meant more distance and lower cost for the average golfer. Golf clubs also became less expensive during the decade. Mass-produced, investment-cast clubs came into the market, and many new companies sought to cash in on inexpensive club making. As a result middle-class Americans could afford equipment once reserved for the upper class. Expanded television coverage of men's and women's PGA Tour events also helped in bringing greater attention to golf during the decade. Some of the difficulties and expenses of golf coverage were solved with the addition of handheld cameras and on-course commentators following groups of players.

The PGA Tour

Television and a broader fan base meant big money for the American PGA Tour during the 1970s. By the end of the decade, total tour purse money exceeded $10 million, and the beginnings of a Senior PGA Tour—extraordinarily popular and lucrative in the 1980s—could be found in the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf tournament played at Onion Creek in Austin, Texas, an event which debuted in 1978. An expanded tour schedule, more television coverage, and larger purses—due largely to the PGA having aggressively courted corporate sponsors—fit the vision of Deane Beman, the once-great amateur golfer who became the tour's commissioner in 1974. Beman's critics snidely suggested that his goal was to assure the tour journeyman that, like Nicklaus and Palmer, he too could become a millionaire playing golf. Indeed, the efforts Beman made to fatten tour purses meant that pro golf could provide a fine living for men other than the game's elite. The days spent on the road grinding from one event to the next were, for the average tour pro, coming to an end and would be replaced by first-class air travel and decent hotels.

The Women's Tour

In 1973 Kathy Whitworth, the leading money winner of the LPGA Tour during much of the late 1960s and early 1970s, led pro women in year's earnings with $87,000. In that year Jack Nicklaus led the men's tour with $320,000. Fewer events, less television coverage and fan support, and fewer corporate sponsors meant that the LPGA Tour players lagged well behind their male counterparts in wealth and recognition. The LPGA, however, had no shortage of talent. Great and charismatic players such as JoAnne Carner, Donna Caponi Young, Sandra Haynie, and Judy Rankin dueled week after week for prize money that was a fraction of the purses for which the men played. In 1976 Rankin became the first woman golfer to win more than $100,000 in one year, and by the end of the decade purses for women's events were averaging over $100,000. The LPGA was beginning to profit from increased corporate sponsorship and television coverage—and the patronage of Dinah Shore. In 1972 the popular entertainer became involved with one of the tour's major tournaments, which became known as the Colgate-Dinah Shore Winners Circle. Shore soon became addicted to the game of golf, and her association with the tournament—and her play in the tournament's celebrity proam event—meant expanded coverage by NBC, greater corporate interest, and, most important, greater fan interest in women's golf. Shore succeeded in doing for the LPGA what Bing Crosby and his association with the Pebble Beach tour stop had done for PGA popularity.

The LPGA's Superstar

In 1978 junior golfing sensation Nancy Lopez burst onto the LPGA Tour and became what women's golf most needed—the game's greatest star since Mildred ("Babe") Zaharias. Her unusual swing, endearing smile and personality, and winning ways attracted millions to women's golf, as she dominated the tour in her rookie year with nine victories—including the LPGA championship, which she won by six strokes—and a record single-season total of $189,813 in prize money. In one remarkable stretch during that 1978 campaign, Lopez won five consecutive times, stunning the sports world. She took Player of the Year honors for 1978, as well as Rookie of the Year—a feat unheard-of until then. She repeated as Player of the Year in 1979, having won eight more tournaments. In that year she also won her second Vare Trophy, awarded to the player with the lowest scoring average. Lopez's dominating presence on the golf course further revolutionized golf during the next decade, as purses became richer and fans and the media began to pay greater attention to the LPGA Tour.

Merry Mex

Although Palmer and his municipal-course swing were being overshadowed by Nicklaus, with his cool demeanor and mechanical efficiency during the 1970s, golf fans had other everymen to follow, most notably Lee Trevino. Known to fans as the "Merry Mex," Trevino was born in Dallas, Texas, where he eked out a living as a $30-a-week assistant pro at a driving range hustling bets on the side. A great storyteller, Trevino claims to have beaten opponents in money games using a Coke bottle. Trevino exploded onto the big-time golfing scene in the late 1960s, winning the 1968 U. S. Open and becoming a permanent fixture at or near the top of the tour money list through much of the 1970s. He replaced Palmer in golf's Big Three, joining Nicklaus and South Africa's Gary Player, when in 1971 Trevino pulled off a phenomenal triple, winning the U.S., Canadian, and British Opens in a space of four weeks. Although the Merry Mex and his constant chatter were big hits with the gallery and television audiences, Trevino was beginning to give the Golden Bear fits by often squeaking ahead of Nicklaus in the final round. Such was the case in the 1974 PGA Championship, and in that year Trevino also captured the Vardon Trophy, awarded to the PGA Tour player with the lowest scoring average.

Blacks

Despite the presence of such tradition-defying players as Palmer and Trevino and the game's increased affordability and popularity among the middle class, professional golf largely remained lily-white in its racial attitudes, as many of the tour's venues remained discriminatory in their policies. Nevertheless, the 1970s saw the continuing success of Charles Sifford, whose emergence on the PGA Tour in the late 1950s helped overturn the tour's "all-white" rule in 1960. In 1975 Sifford won the PGA Seniors title, capping off a career in which he won over $340,000. The tour's first nationally prominent black star, however, was Robert Lee Elder. A product of the black United Golf Association tour, Elder qualified for PGA Tour play for the 1968 season, and in that year faced off against Nicklaus in a thrilling televised sudden-death play-off at the American Golf Classic. Elder lost on the fifth hole, but the play-off had placed him in the national limelight. He captured his first PGA title in 1974 at the Monsanto Open. He won twice in 1978, and in 1979 at the age of forty-five he became the first black to play for America's Ryder Cup team. Both Sifford and Elder became fixtures on the Senior Tour during the 1980s.

Young Talent

Throughout the decade young, talented players challenged Nicklaus's primacy on the golf course, and in the act of doing so some even became superstars, such as Tom Weiskopf, Texans Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite, and Californian Johnny Miller, who shot an incredible 63 on the lightning-fast greens of Pittsburgh's Oakmont Country Club to win the 1973 U.S. Open. In 1974 Miller had one of professional golf's greatest years, winning eight tournaments. By 1976, however, Miller's star was fading, and Nicklaus remained on top of the heap. The Golden Bear had won a record fifth Masters in 1975, and in 1978 he won another British Open, giving him at least three victories in all four majors. In 1980 he won his fourth U.S. Open at famed Baltusrol, shooting a record 272 for seventy-two holes.

Watson

One player emerged in the late 1970s whom many felt would succeed Nicklaus as golf's greatest. Tom Watson, a midwesterner with a Huck Finn face, served notice to the golfing world in 1975, when he won the British Open at Carnoustie and finished in the top ten in the other three majors that year. In one of the finest head-to-head golfing contests ever witnessed, Watson outplayed Nicklaus in the fourth round to win the 1977 British Open. The contest played over the links layout in Turnberry, Scotland, was soon being called "The Duel in the Sun" and served as a preview of other spectacular Watson-Nicklaus duels in which the play of the two men would rise well above that of the rest of the field. From 1977 to 1979 Watson owned the Vardon Trophy and Player of the Year honors, and his best year, 1980, was yet to come.

GOLF

TafVs Game

Golf was played in the United States before 1888, but the U.S. Golf Association (USGA), with five charter clubs, was not established until 1894 as the governing body of U.S. play. By 1900 there were more than 1,000 courses in the United States, with Massachusetts and New York each having more than 150. The game spread rapidly from 1900 to 1920. A 25 June 1909 New York Times story reported a boom in golf when President William Howard Taft began playing the game to keep up his health. The number of players at some public links was reported to have doubled following media coverage of Taft's interest.

The 1910 Open

On 18 June 1910 Alex Smith (one of five brothers, all of whom were professional golfers) won the USGA Open Golf Tournament after an eighteen-hole playoff round against John J. McDermott and Macdonald Smith, the first three-way play-off in the Open's history. In the same year, he also won the Metropolitan Open. Alex Smith was considered one of the fastest putters in the game. He urged golfers to "go up to the ball and knock it into the hole" and he coined the phrase "miss 'em quick."

An American-Born Champion

British players seemed to have a lock on the U.S. Open title until June 1911, when McDermott, who learned the game in the caddy ranks, became the first American-born champion by defeating Michael Brady and George Simpson in a play-off round. He repeated his victory in August 1912. McDermott's legendary iron play was matched by his ego; he believed that he could beat anyone and could generally carry out his boast. His wins ended British supremacy of the game, but he did not fulfill his potential as a golfer as mental illness led to his permanent confinement in an institution.

Amateurs

In the amateur ranks, youth moved forward. Jerome D. Travers, an amateur from Long Island, New York, won his first U.S. Amateur championship in 1907, then captured the U.S. Open in 1915, the second amateur to earn this distinction. He was the game's most prominent figure from 1906 to 1915. Before Travers ended his career, he won four U.S. Amateur championships, five Metropolitan Amateur championships, and one U.S. Open title.

Ouimet Victory

On 20 September 1913 Francis Ouimet, a twenty-year-old amateur, won the U.S. Open Golf Tournament at the Brookline Country Club in Massachusetts. His upset victory after a three-way playoff remains the most significant win in the development of golf in the United States. His opponents were the two leading British professionals, Harry Vardon and Edward "Ted" Ray, the 1912 British Open champion. Ouimet played the last six holes two under par to tie Vardon and Ray. In the eighteen-hole play-off round Ouimet bested them by five and six strokes, respectively. It was one of the most dramatic play-offs in the history of the U.S. Open and was considered one of golf's most thrilling moments. A record number of entrants necessitated the first qualifying round in the history of the event. At least three thousand people witnessed this great upset and victory for native American talent.

Increasing Popularity of Game

The achievements of American golfers led to golf's increasing popularity. In 1913 there were 350,000 American golfers; in ten years the figure would grow to more than two million. As 1914 ended the Executive Committee of the U.S. Golf Association reported a membership of 88 active member clubs and 303 allied clubs, an increase of 33 over the previous year. After World War I the number of good American professionals grew along with the number of top-flight players capable of winning big tournaments. Unlike the British, the Americans were quick to build up the financial side of tournament play, particularly in the 1920s.

Walter Hagen

The U.S. Open held at the Midlothian Country Club in suburban Chicago in August 1914 was a watershed event. The last open before World War I took its toll on British golf, the tournament was distinguished as the final stand of the famous British "triumvirate" of Vardon, James Braid, and John H. Taylor. It also marked the first U.S. Open victory of American Walter Hagen, who defeated his fellow American, the amateur Charles "Chick" Evans Jr. Hagen's contribution to golf at Midlothian, however, surpassed his notable achievements as a player, as his actions helped to make professional golf a respectable occupation. Considered socially inferior to the club members, the first golf pros were mostly Englishmen and Scots who designed the early courses, kept the grounds, made and repaired the hickory-shafted golf clubs, trained and managed caddies, and instructed novices. Before Hagen pros received little money from tournament earnings, product endorsements, or paid exhibitions. During open tournaments, they were barred from the clubhouses. Hagen, with his pleasing personality, sartorial elegance, and supreme confidence, challenged this social discrimination directly, precipitating the "Midlothian Incident." Feigning ignorance of rules barring pros, Hagen made himself at home in the clubhouse and in the locker room. The country club soon gave up its attempt to enforce its rules, thus quietly acceding to "a social revolution in American golf."

Endorsements

Throughout his career Hagen broke down social barriers in both the United States and Europe. Rather than rely upon tournament winnings, Hagen made his money on tours and product endorsements, hiring a business manager, Robert "Bob" Harlow, hailed as the "founder of professional golf," to guide his career. Harlow capitalized on Hagen's popularity by lining up endorsements for golf equipment and arranging profitable golf tours that netted Hagen between $30,000 to $50,000 annually.

American Triumvirate

On 18 June 1915 Travers, then America's leading amateur, became the second amateur to win the U.S. Open and to stand off the pros. Ouimet, Evans, and Travers were often called the great amateur triumvirate of America. In the 1916 U.S. Open Evans established a record low of 286, which was not matched until 1932, when Gene Sarazen tied it. The prize money was increased to $1,200 in 1916, with the winner getting $500 (if professional) and a gold medal. Evans also won the 1916 National Amateur, the first time both events were captured in the same year by one golfer.

Professional Golfers' Association

On 17 January 1916, the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) began at a luncheon in New York City given by Rodman Wanamaker, of the Wanamaker department store family, and attended by many top golfers. The organization developed from a desire of the early professionals to foster interest in the game, to raise the standard of living for the sport's pros, and to maintain a high standard of professional ethics. On 7 February an organizing committee established the new association, drew up tentative bylaws, and chose a permanent committee. Its first president was Robert White. Three months later the first national PGA tournament was held at the Siwanoy Golf Course in Bronxville, New York, on 10 April. It was won by Jim Barnes, of Great Britain, with a one-stroke victory over Jock Hutchison. Wanamaker donated a total prize of $2,580 with $500 going to the winner. World War I stopped play in 1917 and in 1918 but Barnes successfully defended his PGA crown in 1919 by defeating Fred McLeod in the final round.

Women

Women's interest in golf in the 1910s continued to develop, though the only major championship for women was the U.S. Women's Amateur, first held in 1895 in Hempstead, New York. Because of discrimination, progress for women in the game was slower than it might have been. On 30 July 1916 The New York Times reported that women golf players had only restricted access to most courses in New York and in New Jersey. The Garden City Golf Club in New York allowed women to play only on Monday and Friday mornings, and they had to tee off by 11 AM. The twenty or so women members of the Upper Montclair Country Club in New Jersey were not allowed to play on holidays; they were restricted to Saturday mornings and to Sundays after 3 PM.

World War I and After

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, all golf tournaments were canceled. However, the PGA sponsored an "open patriotic tournament" in 1917 at the Whitemarsh Country Club in Philadelphia to benefit the American Red Cross and charged admission to spectators, a practice copied by the U.S. Open in 1921. The Whitemarsh tournament was probably the first tournament played as a fund-raiser, but it was not the last as many exhibitions were staged throughout the war. In 1919 all major U.S. tournaments were resumed and on 11 June 1919, Walter Hagen won the first postwar U.S. Open Golf Tournament at Brae Burn Country Club in West Newton, Massachusetts, with a 301 total and a play-off victory over Michael Brady. The USGA increased the prize money in the U.S. Open to $1,745, which provided purses for the first twelve players though first prize remained $500. By the end of the 1910s, golf was well established in appeal and popularity in a nation that increasingly valued exercise and open air sports. Emphasizing etiquette and polite manners, the game appealed to businessmen and the upper classes who found it challenging and diverting.

HORSE RACES AND PURSES,
1909-1913

Sources:

Gerald Astor, The PGA World Golf Hall of Fame Book (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1991);

Al Barkow, The History of the PGA Tour (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1989);

Nevin H. Gibson, The Encyclopedia of Golf (New York: Barnes, 1958);

Douglas A. Noverr and Lawrence E. Ziewacz, The Games They Played: Sports in American History, 1865-1980 (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1983);

Robert Sommers, The U.S. Open; Golf's Ultimate Challenge (New York: Atheneum, 1987);

David Stirk, Golf; the History of an Obsession (Oxford: Phaidon, 1987).

Golf

The Golden Bear

Any discussion of professional golf in the second half of the twentieth century has to pay attention to at least five things: the four major "Grand Slam" tournaments and Jack Nicklaus. Even in his sixth decade, Nicklaus dominated the news from the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) and the talk on golf courses everywhere. Though he did not win a "major" golf tournament during the 1990s, he kept things interesting and exciting in a variety of ways. He was on every all-sports all-century list (ninth athlete overall on the ESPN list, the top golfer listed) that came out. In 1998 he made the Augusta National exciting with a Sunday charge that had him only two strokes off the lead on the front nine on the final day of the tournament. He ended up in sixth place, only four strokes more than the winner. He added an occasional visit to the Senior Tour to his regular participation in the major championships. He won two U.S. Senior Opens (1991 and 1993) and finally, after 146 consecutive appearances in the major championships, declined to participate in the U.S. Open, a streak unlikely to be broken.

A New Star

Yet, as Nicklaus's star began to dim, another player, Tiger Woods, seemed to challenge his status as the greatest golfer of the century. Indeed, no player other than Nicklaus had ever dominated the sport as Woods did toward the end of the 1990s, Woods's reign began as a teenager, when he won the U.S. Amateur for three consecutive years (1994-1996), as well as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship in 1996. When he turned pro in September 1996, his first year was better than the lifetime careers of most players. He won the fifth event he entered, the Las Vegas Invitational, and six of twenty-five events, breaking the single-season money record. He won the 1997 Masters by shooting eighteen-under-par, twelve strokes better than his nearest competitor. He suffered a "sophomore slump" in 1998, yet still compiled a record that many golfers would envy, winning three events. Then, in 1999, he dominated professional golf, setting another record in earnings, more than double any other golfer in history ($6,616,585).

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF USA TODAY SPORTS (10 NOVEMBER 1999)

If anyone needed proof that real sporting events were merely the foundation for an industry-that took on a life of its own, the media's pursuit of sports-related news—regardless of its relevance to actual athletic endeavors—provided all one needed in examining the sports section of the morning newspapers. Pick a day, any day. Toward the end of the millennium, a typical fall day, in the heart of college and pro football seasons, at the beginning of college and pro basketball seasons, the front page of the sports section of the popular national newspaper, USA Today, had five articles. Only one of these stones was about an athletic event: "Jazz Hand Blazers First Loss 92-87." The other articles, including the two leads, were mostly about politics and money. The self-proclaimed "Cover Story" was titled, "Entering the Political Arena: Ex-athletes, Sports People Get in the Game for Bradley," an article about the senator and former New York Knick who had entered the presidential campaign. The other lead story was, "Yankees' Payroll Surpasses $90M; Baseball's Average Pay Up to S1.57M." Other front-page stories were "NHL's Senators Suspend Yashin for Season" (about a contract dispute between a professional hockey franchise and a star player, or, more appropriately, a non-player), and "Smith Out; Aikman Uncertain" (about injuries sustained by two professional football players).

The front page of the USA Today sports section also had a "topbar" and a half-dozen "sidebar" stories, short blurbs about various sporting matters, or, in some instances, non-sporting items. One snippet reported that Young America (a yacht), though it had broken in two, still had a chance to quality for the Louis Vuitton Cup if it could get its backup ready to sail. The top item in the sidebar directed readers to a "focus" article on page 3C about high school athletes choosing colleges at an earlier age: "Some say teenagers are being bullied into early decisions." The announcement of the American League "Top Rookie," Kansas City outfielder Carlos Beltran, was the next sidebar item, followed by an observation about an actual sporting story in process, jockey Laffit Pincay Jr.'s bid to overtake Bill Shoemaker's record of 8,833 victories. The next story was about the withdrawal of figure skater Nicole Bobek from an exhibition after she was taken to a hospital. Then came the announcement that prize money for the upcoming winter Goodwill Games would be $647,600. Finally, one sidebar announced that Fred Couples would substitute tor Payne Stewart in the Skins Game. Stewart was killed in a 25 October 1999 plane crash.

USA Today also had the scores of pro basketball and pro hockey on the front page, and readers were directed to "coverage" further inside the paper. There was also a graph of the "NFL's All-time Career Points Scored Leaders." Front-page advertisements, as well, encouraged the reader to give a gift subscription to USA Today, purchase Baseball Weekly at a local newsstand, or fly KLM and/or Northwest Airlines. A framed block featuring a sports quiz asked: "Who is the youngest person ever to win a Wimbledon Match?" The reader had to turn the paper sideways to read the answer, "Jennifer Capriati, at 14 years, 89 days."

The front page featured four pictures, the largest of Bill Bradley with former NBA stars John Havlicek and Billy Cunningham. There are smaller pictures of an unnamed Young America crewmember preparing to abandon ship, of Rookie of the Year, Carlos Beltran, and of Michelle Munoz, a high school basketball player who had committed to play basketball at the University of Tennessee.

The entire sports section consisted of fourteen pages, and included stories on NASCAR, Tiger Woods, Ken Griffey, baseball payrolls, Emmitt Smith, domestic violence and the death of the wife of NFL defensive back Steve Muhammad, NFL standings, a full-page advertisement of Woods promoting American Express, NHL news including some game reviews and trade information, analysis and commentary on college basketball, field hockey, volleyball and cross country, female student man-agers, NBA "Team by Team Notes," an article on Michael Jordan dropping by "to see his former team," women's boxing, the new floor for the Boston Celtics, women's tennis (accompanied by a picture of Anna Kournikova-who was barely relevant to the story), betting lines, and a host of other lists, advertisements, and trivial bits of information. USA Today, like most other media at the turn of the century, was no longer merely a reporter of the news, but was part of the entertainment industry.

Many Players Shine

Though Woods dominated the headlines, many professional golfers played well during the decade. Hale Irwin won the U.S. Open (1990), three PGA Senior Championships (1996-1998), the U.S. Senior Open (1998), and the Senior Players Championship (1999). Lee Janzen and Payne Stewart each won the U.S. Open twice. Stewart's death in a plane crash in 1999, however, cut short his brilliant career. Mark O'Meara had a good 1998, winning both the Masters and the British Open. John Daly won two majors, the PGA (1991) and British Open (1995), but toward the end of the decade seemed to be losing a battle with personal demons. Other players who won regularly and made big money included Davis Love III, Fred Couples, Tom Kite, and David Duval—each earning, by the end of the decade, more that $10 million apiece in their careers.

Ladies Professional Golf Association

Women's golf also had its bright lights. Betsy King began the 1990s as she concluded the 1980s, winning two U.S. Women's Opens (1989-1990) and three Dinah Shore Classics (1987, 1990, 1997) en route to becoming the all-time leading money winner on the women's tour with $6.3 million. Other multiple American winners in the major women's tournaments included Beth Daniel, Patty Sheehan, Meg Mallon, and Juli Inkster.

The Ryder Cup

One of the surprising golfing stories of the decade was the Ryder Cup. Traditionally, this event had been a match between the United States and Great Britain, annually dominated by the Americans. In 1977 other European golfers joined the British, and the result was some of the most exciting golf in the world. The United State won in 1991 at the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, South Carolina, and in 1993 at the Belfry Golf Club in Sutton Coldfield, England. The Europeans evened the score with victories at Oak Hill Country Club at Rochester, New York, in 1995, and the Valderrama Golf Club in Sotogrande, Spain, in 1997. The 1999 contest, the tiebreaker for the decade, at The Country Club of Brookline, Massachusetts, began with the Europeans appearing to run away with the title. To overtake a talented squad led by nineteen-year-old Sergio Garcia, Paul Lawrie, Colin Montgomerie, and Jesper Parnevik, the Americans (led by Hal Sutton, Tom Lehman, Steve Pate, Jeff Maggert, and Phil Mickelson) required the greatest final day comeback in the history of the event. Beginning with an 8-4 deficit, the Americans tallied an 8½ to 3½ point margin on the final day for the victory. The excitement of Justin Leonard sinking a long putt on the seventeenth hole generated a premature celebration by the American team that was roundly condemned in the European press. The criticism was justified since the victory was not actually secured until after Jose Maria Olazabal missed his putt. Despite the flak, it was a great way for American golfers to end the decade.

Sources:

CNNSI.com, Internet website.

LPGA Tour, Internet website.

NandoSportserver.com, Internet website.

PGATOUR.com, Internet website.

The Sports Illustrated 1999 Sports Almanac (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998).

GOLF

Golfing Popularity

Like virtually every other sport in America during the 1920s, golf experienced an extraordinary increase in popularity. The number of weekend golfers doubled between 1916 and 1920 to a high of one-half million. The sheer volume of players meant that new golf courses, private and public, had to be constructed. In the past golf often had been viewed as an exclusive game for the upper classes, but during the 1920s the game increasingly appealed, as a participant and a spectator sport, to the middle class, who enjoyed more leisure time and relative prosperity than ever before. These were the same people who thrilled to the exploits of a trio of American golfing heroes.

America's Golfing Dominance

Bobby Jones, who was the dominant golfer from 1923 to 1930, is widely regarded as the sport's greatest practitioner. Jones's two major rivals during the 1920s were Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen, and this trio of Americans became known as the Three Musketeers. Together they overshadowed everyone else in U.S. and international golf. Two of the Musketeers were largely responsible for an astonishing accomplishment between 1921 and 1930. In 1921 Jock Hutchison, a Scotsman who had moved to the United States, won the British Open at St. Andrews as an American. From that point on, American golfers claimed the tournament nine times out of ten. Hagen took the title in 1922, 1924, 1928, and 1929; Jones won it in 1926, 1927, and 1930; and English-born American resident Jim Barnes carried it home in 1925. Only one British golfer, Arthur Havers in 1923, broke the string of American wins.

Walter Hagen

Hagen was the most colorful member of the Jones-Hagen-Sarazen trio, and his 1922 victory in the British Open made him the first American-born player to attain the championship. Golf historian Mark H. McCormack notes that "Hagen was indisputably a genius. He must have been to have hit so many bad shots while winning so much and so often.… He made golf look difficult, and because most golfers find the game difficult they were able to identify with Hagen." He was noted for his natty attire on the links but more notably for his boldness in the game and in life. He was a persistent voice for admitting professionals to all the major tournaments; he loathed the time-honored notion that gentlemen should play for the pure joy of sport rather than pay. Hagen won the British Open four times, the U.S. Open twice, and the PGA title five times, which included four consecutive titles between 1924 and 1927.

Gene Sarazen

Sarazen was the most durable of the Three Musketeers. He was still competing at age fifty-six when he finished four rounds in the 1958 British Open Championship at Saint Anne's. Sarazen was the best "little man" playing golf. An excaddy from a humble background, he had changed his name from Eugene Saraceni because he thought it made him sound like a violinist. Sarazen claimed the golfing world's attention when, at the age of twenty-two, he won the 1922 U.S. Open; turning professional, he took the PGA title that same year and then brashly challenged and defeated Hagen in a one-on-one match for the unofficial championship of the world. In one year Sarazen had come from obscurity to international fame. He would become the first golfer to win all four major professional titles: the U.S. Open (1922), the British Open (1932), the American PGA (1922, 1923, and 1933), and the Masters (1935).

Other Golfing Stars of the 1920s

There were, of course, other notable golfers, both American and European, during the 1920s. Great Britain's Joyce Wethered took the British Women's Amateur title four times, in 1922, 1924, 1925, and 1929, and France's Simone de la Chaune in 1927 became the first European to win the British women's championship. (She married tennis star René Lacoste, and their daughter, Catherine Lacoste, would win both the U.S. and the British Open titles in the mid 1960s.) Glenna Collett (later Glenna Collett Vare), one of America's best-known female golfers, won the U.S. women's crown in 1922, 1925, 1928, and 1929 (and again in 1930 and 1935). Jim Barnes claimed the U.S. title in 1921, and Cyril Walker, a 118-pound club professional from Englewood, New Jersey, won it in 1924. Edmund R. Held of Saint Louis took the first USGA-sponsored Amateur Public Links championship in 1922. Leo Diegel won back-to-back PGA championships in 1928 and 1929. The 1920s were clearly a decade blessed by golfing talent.

SIR WALTER, THE PRO

Walter Hagen, known as "the Haig," attracted crowds with his flamboyance. He began caddying at the age of seven and one-half in his native Rochester, New York. At twelve, he was in school one afternoon when he felt the call of the links. He waited until the teacher's back was turned, then jumped out the window and hurried to the golf course. That, in effect, ended his formal education. He caddied for several years, then obtained a succession of jobs in pro shops, eventually becoming a professional golfer, which carried very low status in the 1920s. Pros were, in effect, servants. They gave lessons to golf-club members, made clubs, and did various other chores, but they did not mix with the gentry. Hagen changed all that.

Three British Opens made the difference. In one, Hagen was told he had to eat his meals in the pro shop with the other hired hands. The next day he rented a chauffeured limousine to drive him to the front of the pro shop. He sat in regal splendor in the back of the car while a liveried footman served him an elaborate luncheon with the appropriate wine for each course. On another occasion, when he was made to dress in the pro shop instead of the club locker room, he again hired a chauffeured limousine, which drove him to the front of the pro shop; he changed into his beautifully tailored golfing clothes in the back of the car. These antics attracted attention, but they would not have changed anything had it not been for the fact that the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, invited him to have lunch in the clubhouse at an English course. When the club attendants whispered to the prince that Hagen, as a golf pro, was not allowed in the clubhouse, the prince replied loudly that if Hagen left he, too, would go. From that point forward, the social distinction between pros and amateurs ceased to exist.

Source:

Ron Fimrite, "Sir Walter/ Sports Illustrated, 70 (19 June 1989): 75-82.

Sources:

O. B. Keeler, "Golf," in Sport's Golden Age, edited by Allison Danzig and Peter Brandwein (New York: Harper, 1948), pp. 183-207;

Mark H. McCormack, The Wonderful World of Professional Golf (New York: Atheneum, 1973);

Michael Williams, History of Golf (Secaucus, N.J.: Chartwell, 1985);

Herbert Warren Wind, The Story of American Golf (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956).

GOLF

The Game in America

Americans began playing golf after the American Revolution, with two of the earliest clubs established in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1786, and Savannah, Georgia, in 1795. Between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, Americans showed little interest in golf, and not until the 1880s did significant numbers of Americans start playing the game again. In 1887 Joseph M. Fox, a member of the Merion Cricket Club in Philadelphia, and John Reid, a Scottish immigrant and executive of an ironwork in Yonkers, New York, organized the nation's first modern golf club, named St. Andrews after the historic club in Scotland. In 1891 William K. Vanderbilt hired Willie Dunn, a noted Scottish golfer, to build Shinnecock Hills, the first professionally designed course, near Southampton, Long Island, where New York's wealthy elite had summer homes. The Shinnecock Hills Golf Club became the model for clubs throughout the country. By the mid 1890s rich golfers easily could follow the seasons, playing clubs in the Northeast during the spring and summer and the South during the fall and winter. In 1894 both St. Andrews and the Newport Club, in Rhode Island, held national championship tournaments.

Rise of the United States Golf Association

In 1894 the Amateur Golf Association (AGA) was formed to administer and standardize the game. Later that year the AGA changed its name to the United States Golf Association (USGA). The five charter-member clubs were St. Andrews, Newport, Shinnecock Hills, the Chicago Golf Club, and the Brookline Country Club in Massachusetts. On 22 December 1894 Henry O. Tallmadge, the secretary of the St. Andrews Club, held a conference of USGA officials to establish a site for a single national championship. They decided to hold both an amateur and an open championship tournament at the Newport Club in October 1895. Charles Blair McDonald won the 1895 USGA amateur title over Laurence Curtis, who, according to the New York Herald, "was not in any way in the game against McDonald, for he had a low short drive compared to a long well directed drive of his opponent." The first U.S. Open was won by Horace Rawlins, the Newport assistant pro, against nine other professionals and an amateur. A $50 gold medal and $150 cash accounted for his winnings. By 1895 there were seventy-five golfing clubs in the United States. By the late 1890s golf had acquired such an elite following that Outing reported it as "a sport restricted to the richer classes of the country."

The Influence of Harry Vardon

Despite golfs some-what limited popular appeal, the number of clubs in the nation grew to exceed a thousand by the turn of the century. In 1900 the three-time British Open champion and top-ranked player in the world, Harry Vardon of Great Britain, toured the United States, playing in a series of exhibition matches sponsored by the A.G. Spalding and Brothers sporting goods firm to promote its new golf ball, the Vardon Flyer. Despite his fame and his victory in the 1900 U.S. Open at Chicago, Vardon's promotional campaign for the golf ball that bore his name was not considered a success by the Spalding company. The Vardon Flyer was an outmoded gutta-percha ball, inferior to the recently introduced rubber-centered ball. Vardon's tour, however, did succeed in further promoting golf in the United States.

Early U.S. Open Champions

In the 1900s foreign-born golfers dominated the United States Open. Willie Anderson, a Scottish immigrant, won four Open titles (1901 and 1903-1905). His feat of winning three consecutive titles has yet to be surpassed or equaled in this century. Alex Smith, the 1906 Open champion, was one of five Scottish-born brothers who gained prominence in American golfing circles during the 1900s and 1910s. He defeated his brother Willie with a combined score of 295 in 1906, the first sub-300 U.S. Open performance. Smith, who became one of golf's greatest instructors, developed Jerome D. Travers, one of the leading amateurs and professionals of the late 1900s and 1910s, as well as Glenna Collett, the leading female golfer of the 1920s and 1930s. George Sargent surpassed Smith's record total of 295 with a 290 performance in 1909.

The Decade's Leading Amateurs

Among the decade's top amateur golfers, Walter J. Travis was perhaps the most remarkable. A native Australian, Travis immigrated to the United States in 1885 and did not start playing golf until the age of thirty-five. He played his first golf match in 1896 and won his first tournament in 1898. Travis lost the U.S. amateur title to Findlay Douglas in 1898 and 1899 but defeated him for the title in 1900 and 1901. After winning a third national amateur championship in 1903, he became the first foreigner to capture the British amateur title in 1904. Travis made up for his lack of power with aggressive and accurate play and exceptional putting. In 1901 he published the popular guide Practical Golf and, in 1905, started the magazine American Golfer. Amateur golf had greater appeal for most Americans than open play because many of the leaders, besides Travis, were American-born. Smith's protégé, Travers, one of Travis's chief competitors, won consecutive amateur titles in 1907 and 1908 as well as in 1912 and 1913. He also captured the New York Metropolitan Amateur Tournament five times between 1906 and 1913. Like Travis, Travers authored several articles and three books on golf.

Rise of Women's Golf

Golf, like tennis, offered women the opportunity for high-level competition. In 1894 the British Ladies' Golf Union held the first women's golf championship. The USGA held the first women's amateur championship at the Meadowbrook Club on Long Island in November 1895. Mrs. Charles S. Brown won that inaugural event. The first player to dominate women's golf in the United States was Beatrix Hoyt, who won three consecutive amateur titles from 1896 to 1898. She won her first title at the age of sixteen and retired from golf at the age of twenty-one. Genevieve Hecker won two consecutive amateur championships from 1900 to 1901. Dorothy Campbell of Scotland, who won the amateur title twice in 1909 and 1910, became the first woman to win the American and British amateur titles in the same year in 1909.

Sources:

Will Grimsley, Golf: Its History, People and Events (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966);

John M. Ross, ed., Golf Magazine's Encyclopedia of Golf (New York: Harper & Row, 1979);

Herbert Warren Wind, The Story of American Golf: Its Champions and its Championships (NewYork: Knopf, 1975).

golf game of hitting a small hard ball with specially made clubs over an outdoor course sometimes (particularly if it is near the coast) called a links. The object is to deposit the ball in a specified number of cups, or holes, using as few strokes as possible. Although golf's place of origin is uncertain, Scotland has the strongest claim. As early as 1457 it was banned there as a threat to archery practice, which was considered vital to national defense. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, Scotland (founded 1754), is the international shrine of golf, and the club's basic rules are the worldwide standards.

Rules and Equipment

The standard course, usually more than 6,000 yd (about 5,500 m) in length, consists of 18 consecutively numbered "holes" (the playing areas leading to the cups). The cup measures 4.5 in. (11.43 cm) in diameter and is set into a smooth surface of closely cropped grass, called a green. Golfers begin play by driving the ball toward the hole from the tee, a slightly elevated rectangular area. Between the tee and the green lies the fairway, often bounded by tall grass (the rough) and trees, and containing natural or constructed obstacles (hazards), such as small lakes or streams, sand pits (bunkers), and mounds. Fairways vary in length from 100 to 650 yd (90-600 m). Two basic principles underlie nearly all the rules: first, players must play the course as they find it and, second, they must play only their own ball, and not touch it (except to hit it with a club) until play is completed on the hole. These principles ensure challenging conditions, demanding skilled shotmaking, and imposing penalties for the loss of one's ball.

The rules have varied little, but changes in equipment have been dramatic over time. In golf's earliest days, the ball was made of feathers stuffed tightly into a leather bag and struck with wooden-shafted clubs. Today balls are of composite materials and can be hit in excess of 300 yds (274 m). A complete set of golf clubs once comprised 3 or 4 woods, used for long drives; 10 irons (numbered upward as the angle of the club face provided increased loft), used for intermediate and short shots; and a putter, used for rolling the ball across the green. Although golfers may carry no more than 14 clubs in their bags, they can now select from 15 different woods, some now made of nonwood materials, from a range of hybrid clubs that combine the characteristics of traditional woods and irons, making them easier to hit than the standard irons they are designed to replace, and from specialized wedges for sand play and for pitching the ball at varying degrees of loft, which complement the standard irons.

Golf in the United States

Although there is evidence that Americans played golf in the 17th cent., the first permanent clubs in the United States were not organized until the late 1880s. A dispute between the sponsors of two "national" championships led American golfers to found (1894) the United States Golf Association (USGA) as a governing body for the sport. The USGA also conducted annual tournaments, including the National Amateur and the National, or U.S., Open (which includes both amateur and professional players). The first of these championships took place in 1895. In 1916 the United States Professional Golf Association (PGA) was founded and the annual PGA championship inaugurated. During the first several decades in which these major tournaments were held, golf had little broad appeal.

Though the game boomed among business executives in the 1920s, amateurs were usually members of exclusive clubs, and professionals were usually teachers of the game. The only golfer to ever win a grand slam (the four major championships—then the British Amateur and Open and the U.S. Amateur and Open—in one year) was an amateur, Robert Tyre ( "Bobby" ) Jones , Jr., who retired shortly after his 1930 feat. During the Depression, many private courses opened to the public, and agencies of the New Deal built nearly 1,000 public courses.

Golf today is one of America's fastest growing participant sports, particularly among public course players. Many private clubs still exist in the 1990s, with some determining membership on racial or religious grounds. The growth of the game has been consistent since the advent of televised tournaments in the 1960s and the gradual strengthening of the professional circuit (which has lessened the distinction of playing as an amateur). Two of golf's greatest and most charismatic players, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus , entered their prime in time to take advantage of both conditions.

The world's best players now vie in 72-hole tournaments for prize money that can exceed $500,000 for a victory at one of the four major championships (now the U.S. Open, British Open, PGA Championship, and the Masters); some other events greatly exceed that amount. Every two years in the Ryder Cup competition, a team of American professionals plays against Europe's best players. A made-for-television event, the Skins Game, is a popular version of an old golf gambling game in which selected professionals compete for money that has exceeded $300,000. Women (under the aegis of the Ladies' Professional Golf Association, founded 1946) and seniors have their own professional tours. The women also contested their own U.S.-Europe team event, the Solheim Cup, for the first time in 1990.

Bibliography

See M. Bartlett, ed., The Golf Book (1980); R. Sommers, The U.S. Open (1987); G. Wiren, The PGA Manual of Golf (1991); T. Watson, The Rules of Golf (1992); J. Feinstein, The Majors (1999).

GOLF

GOLF originated in England and Scotland, and though American colonists played, the game quickly disappeared from the United States after the Revolutionary War. It came back in the 1880s, when the founders of the first country clubs discovered that golf suited their needs better than the traditional pastimes of horsing and hunting. Until the 1970s, private courses outnumbered municipal and daily-fee courses open to the public. The link between golf and the country club largely determined how the game developed, who played it, and how it has been perceived.

Elites developed country clubs in the late-nineteenth century to restore social order in the face of rapid immigration, industrialization, and urbanization. Country club members found golf especially appealing because it promised to revive the health of upper-class Victorians, some of whom believed they were suffering from a collective attack of nerves called neurasthenia. By the 1920s, country clubs had become appealing to the middle class. Modest clubs marked class, religious, and social distinctions as surely as wealthy white Protestant clubs did, but they also introduced golf to a wider audience. In 1916, there were fewer than 1,000 courses; by 1930, there were almost 6,000.

Golf also provided some of the earliest opportunities for women in sport. Though some clubs discriminate against women even today (by restricting weekend play to men, for example, or requiring wives or daughters to join in the names of husbands or fathers), many allowed women to play from the beginning. Men considered golf appropriate for the feminine constitution and temperament. It required more finesse than brute strength, and golfers competed against themselves and the course, not each other. Given the chance to play, however, women established themselves on their own terms. Olympic champion Babe Didrikson Zaharias pursued golf later in her career because she believed it would soften her unpopular androgynous image, but she immediately became famous for her powerful drives.

In 1894, representatives of the leading clubs created golf's first governing body, the United States Golf Association

(USGA), to promote the increasingly popular game, set rules, and sponsor tournaments. In 1916, a group of professionals, fed up with USGA policies that clearly favored amateurs, formed the Professional Golfers Association (PGA). The Ladies Professional Golfers Association was constituted in 1950.

American golfers lagged behind Europeans until 1913, when Francis Ouimet shocked the golf world by defeating England's best at the U.S. Open. Ouimet, who learned the game as a caddie, was the first of many working-class kids who taught themselves golf by carrying equipment at private clubs that would never accept them as members. The list also includes Walter Hagen, Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, and Byron Nelson. Hagen and Bobby Jones, an aristocratic amateur, dominated the game in the 1920s and became America's first golf superstars. Hagen won eleven "majors" in his career: two U.S. Opens, four British Opens, and five PGA Championships. Jones, who in the 1930s founded the fourth major, the Masters, took three British Opens and four U.S. Opens, plus five U.S. amateur titles. Together they established golf as a spectator sport.

During the Depression and World War II, golf's reputation suffered. Americans were feeling sober, and nothing seemed to symbolize the frivolous leisure class better than rich men in knickers chasing a ball around the manicured lawn of a private club. In the 1950s, the civil rights movement focused attention on the game's racism and on the segregation of most country clubs. As private organizations, the clubs were not required to integrate, and most did not. Many cities transferred public courses to private owners to keep them white. The golf establishment did not confront its race problem until 1990, when civil rights groups threatened to picket the PGA Championship, scheduled for the all-white Shoal Creek Country Club. Shoal Creek quickly admitted a black member, and the PGA promised to hold subsequent tournaments only at integrated courses. The same year, the U.S. Open champion Tom Watson resigned from his club because it refused a Jewish member. The desire for PGA events has encouraged most clubs to open their admission policies, but actual progress remains slow.

Nevertheless, golf has enjoyed years of fantastic growth. In the 1960s, Arnold Palmer, whose loyal fans are known as "Arnie's Army," and Jack Nicklaus, the "Golden Bear," helped make televised golf a success. At the beginning of the twenty-first century the game thrives inter-nationally, with celebrated players from all over the world and Ryder Cup competition between national teams. In 2002, Tiger Woods led the surge in the sport's popularity. As the game's most dominant player and first African American star, he introduced golf to a much wider demographic. With about 10,000 municipal or daily-fee courses and only half that many private courses, golf has become more accessible than ever.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cayleff, Susan E. Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

Chambers, Marcia. The Unplayable Lie: The Untold Story of Women and Discrimination in American Golf. New York: Pocket Books, 1995.

Lowe, Stephen R. Sir Walter and Mr. Jones: Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones, and the Rise of American Golf. Chelsea, Mich.: Sleeping Bear Press, 2000.

Moss, Richard J. Golf and the American Country Club. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001.

JeremyDerfner

See alsoRecreation ; Sports ; Victorianism .

Golf

Sources

Golf in America. Originating in Scotland around the fifteenth century, golf reached America during the colonial era, and Americans began playing the game after the American Revolution. The earliest clubs were established in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1786, and Savannah, Georgia, in 1795. Newspaper sources indicate that golf was regularly played at these clubs until the War of 1812. However Americans showed little interest in the game between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, one possible reason being that it was seen as an elitist sport and was therefore shunned.

Renewed Interest in Golf. The 1870s and 1880s witnessed a rekindled interest among Americans in golf. Charles Blair McDonald, a pioneer in the rejuvenation of the game, played golf in the Chicago area in 1875. Col. J. Hamilton Gillespie, a Scotsman who owned a lumber business in Sarasota, Florida, played golf there in 1883 or 1884. Andrew Bell of Burlington, Iowa, who attended the University of Edinburgh, set up a four-hole golf course in Burlington upon returning home and introduced the game to his friends. In 1884 Russell W. Montague, a New Englander, and four Scottish friends established a golf course near Montague’s summer home in Oakhurst, West Virginia. U.S. Army soldiers stationed near the Rio Grande played golf in 1886, and Alex Findlay, a Scottish immigrant turned cowboy, played golf on the Nebraska prairies. Beginning in 1888 golf was played for three years at Rockwell’s Woods, near Norwich, Connecticut. Members of the exclusive Tuxedo Club, in Tuxedo, New York, began playing golf in 1889, as did members of the Casino Club in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1890.

Establishment of St. Andrews. The first modern golfing club in the United States, St. Andrews, named after the historic Scottish club, was established in Yonkers, New York, in 1888. The idea for the club originated when John Reid, a Scottish immigrant and ironworks executive, invited some neighbors to a cow pasture across the street from his home to drive some golf balls. In 1887 Bob Lockhart, a friend of Reid, traveled to Scotland and brought back some clubs and the newly introduced gutta-percha golf ball. With the new equipment, Lockhart, Reid, and another friend, John B. Upham, gave an exhibition of the game on a three-hole course laid out on the cow pasture. Golf soon became so popular with Reid and his associates that by the end of 1888 they had formally organized the St. Andrews Golf Club, with Reid as president and Upham as secretary. Over the next three years St. Andrews moved twice: at Grey Oaks it held the first unofficial U.S. championship; and at its final location, Mount Hope at Hastings, the club constructed an eighteen-hole course, the first course of that length in the nation. (Although the Dorset Field Club in Dorset, Vermont, and the Foxburg Country Club in Foxburg, Pennsylvania, claim to be the oldest modern golf courses

in the United States, established in 1886 and 1887, respectively, they do not have the documentation to prove it, as does St. Andrews.)

Establishment of the United States Golf Association. Golf grew rapidly in the United States during the 1890s. In 1894 the Amateur Golf Association (AGA) was formed to administer and standardize the game. Later that year the AGA changed its name to the United States Golf Association (USGA). The five charter-member clubs were St. Andrews, Newport, Shinnecock Hills, the Chicago Golf Club, and the Brookline Country Club in Massachusetts. On 22 December 1894 Henry O. Tallmadge, the secretary of the St. Andrews Club, held a conference of USGA officials to establish a site for a single national championship. They decided to hold both an amateur and an open championship tournament at the Newport Club in October 1895. Charles Blair McDonald won the 1895 USGA amateur title over Laurence Curtis, who, according to the New York Herald, ”was not in any way in the game against McDonald, for he a had low short drive compared to a long well directed drive of his opponent.” The first U.S. Open was won by Horace Rawlins, the Newport assistant pro, against nine other professionals and an amateur. He won a $50 gold medal and $150 in cash. By 1895 there were seventy-five golf clubs in the United States. By the late 1890s golf had acquired such an elite following that Outing reported it as “a sport restricted to the richer classes of the country.”

Rise of Women’s Golf. Golf, like tennis, offered women the opportunity for high-level competition. In 1894 the British Ladies’ Golf Union held the first women’s golf championship. The USGA held the first women’s amateur championship at the Meadowbrook Club on Long Island in November 1895. Mrs. Charles S. Brown won that inaugural event. The first player to dominate women’s golf in the United States was Beatrix Hoyt, who won three consecutive amateur titles from 1896 to 1898. She won her first title at the age of sixteen and retired from competition at the age of twenty-one.

Sources

Will Grimsley, Golf: Its History, People and Events (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966);

John M. Ross, ed., Golf Magazine’s Encyclopedia of Golf (New York: Harper & Row, 1979);

Herbert Warren Wind, The Story of American Golf: Its Champions and Its Championships (New York: Knopf, 1975).

GOLF

Palmer and Nicklaus

The two most talented golfers of the 1960s made their marks as the decade opened. In 1960 Arnold Palmer won the Masters and the U.S. Open and earned $77,000 to lead all professional golfers. Second place in the U.S. Open went to a twenty-year-old amateur, an undergraduate at Ohio State named Jack Nicklaus. He shot a 269 over the seventy-two holes of the tournament. Nicklaus's last year as an amateur was 1961. He won the U.S. amateur title that year by eight and six strokes respectively in the final two rounds. He was prepared in 1962 to enter a head-to-head competition with Palmer to determine who was the greatest golfer of the decade and, arguably, of all time.

Palmer in 1962

Palmer won his third Masters title and the British Open for the second year in a row in 1962, but Nicklaus beat him in a playoff at the U.S. Open. Promoters seized the opportunity to exploit their rivalry by arranging the World Series of Golf at the Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio. Devised for a television audience, this event pitted the three best golfers of the year against one another in a thirty-six-hole competition. Nicklaus won with a 135; Palmer and South African Gary Player tied for second, with 139s.

$100,000 Winners

In 1963 Palmer and Nicklaus became the first professional golfers ever to win over $100,000 in a single year: Palmer won $128,230; Nicklaus trailed with $100,040. Palmer did not win a national title in 1963. Nicklaus won the Masters and the Professional Golf Association (PGA) championship, and he won the World Series of Golf against Palmer and U.S. Open champion Julius Boros.

Palmer and Nicklaus by Ten for the United States

In 1964 Palmer beat Nicklaus in a close match at the Masters, and the two tied for second behind Bobby Nichols in the PGA championship. They paired up to win the Canada Cup international competition by ten strokes. Nicklaus had eclipsed Palmer by the middle of the decade, and he demonstrated his prowess at the 1965 Masters tournament, where he beat Palmer, who came in second, by nine strokes. In 1965 Nicklaus won $140,752 in PGA prize money, breaking Palmer's record set in 1963. He won the Whitemarsh, Memphis, Thunderbird, and Portland tournaments.

Nicklaus on a Roll

In 1966 Nicklaus became the first golfer ever to win back-to-back Masters tournaments. With his victory in the British Open, Nicklaus had by his fifth year as a pro won the four major golf titles in the world: the Masters (three times; he would later win twice more, establishing an intimidating record), the U.S. Open (he won again in 1967, 1972, and 1980), the PGA championship (he also won in 1971, 1973, and 1980), and the British Open (which he also won in 1970 and 1978). Nicklaus lost the World Series of Golf in a playoff to Gene Littler. Palmer did not qualify.

A Record Year

Arnold Palmer may not have been Nicklaus's equal on the golf course by the late 1960s, but he was still among the leading money winners on the tour. In 1967 his PGA earnings of $184,065 were just behind Nicklaus's $188,998. Palmer won the Los Angeles Open, the Tucson American Classic, and Thunder-bird tournaments. Nicklaus, though, won money and set records. In the U.S. Open he shot a 275 for the seventy two holes, breaking a twenty-year-old record and finishing four strokes ahead of the second-place finisher, Palmer. Nicklaus also won the Bing Crosby, Western Open, Westchester Classic, and the World Series of Golf. He was at his peak.

Arnie's Army

Palmer's age had caught up with him by the end of the decade. He had suffered bursitis in his hip since 1966, and in 1969 he had to play in the qualifying round to earn the right to compete in the U.S. Open. Chief among the critics of the decision not to award Palmer an automatic bid to the Open that year was Jack Nicklaus, who had a gentleman's respect for his friendly rival. Less gentlemanly were members of Arnie's Army, the collection of fans who followed the popular Palmer from hole to hole in his tournament appearances. Palmer qualified for the Open, but he finished well back. He did muster the strength to win the last two tournaments on the PGA tour, though, vindicating the loyalty of his army. Palmer was the only golfer in 1969 to win back-to-back tournaments. He never won another of the four major titles, but he continued to attract the respect and attention of fans for the next two decades.

Women's Golf

Women's golf did not attract the sponsorship or the audience that men's golf did. The outstanding lady golfer of the decade was Mickey Wright. She won the Ladies Professional Golf Association championship a record four times—in 1958, 1960, 1961, and 1963—and she took the women's U.S. Open four times as well. In 1964 at the Tall City Open, she shot a 62, the lowest score for eighteen holes in the history of women's golf. Three other women have since matched that feat, but none has ever shot a better game. Then she retired in 1965 to attend college. No other woman controlled the women's game during the decade as Wright did.

Source:

Collier's Encyclopedia Yearbooks.

GOLF

The Golfers' Sacrifice

Americans enjoyed their golf throughout the war, although in a limited fashion. Three-quarters of the clubs in the United States remained open without interruption. Only a few took the suggestion of the United States Golf Association (USGA) and plowed their roughs into victory gardens for club members. Yet thousands joined in the recycling craze to find quality golf equipment without affecting war supplies. The Black Rock Club in Atlanta, like many courses, drained its lake and rescued sixteen thousand balls for reprocessing. For the first time members caddied for themselves when bag-toting caddies joined the military; members also pitched in to maintain their courses when the army of groundskeepers who kept the fairways and greens in playable shape went to war. Power mowers were at a premium; when they broke, parts were unavailable to fix them. Quality golf balls, of the type most duffers had grown accustomed to, were unavailable.

The Pros at War

From 1942 to 1945 all major USGA events—including the Open, the Amateur, the Women's Amateur, and the Amateur Public Links Championship—were suspended; even so, there were plenty of tour events for civilian golfers. When the U.S. Open was canceled in 1942, it was quickly replaced by the Hale America Open, played in Chicago as a benefit for the war, raising $20,000. In 1943 the Augusta National Golf Course, home of the suspended Masters, was turned over to grazing cattle in order to help the war effort. By that time golf stars Sam Snead, Lawson Little, Jimmy Demaret, and Lloyd Mangrum were among 350 Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) members in military service. That year their professional association sent them each a carton of cigarettes as a Christmas gift.

Byron Nelson

Golf in the war years was unquestionably the era of Byron Nelson. His performances in 1944 and 1945, when he swept twenty-six of fifty-one starts, with eight tournament victories in 1944 and eighteen in 1945, persuaded thousands that he was at least the peer of the immortal Bobby Jones. It is difficult to measure Nelson's greatness because he played during the war years when competition was light. Yet during that time the steady and consistent Nelson dominated not only the world of golf, but the courses themselves. Assuming that par on the courses he played averaged 71, Nelson was approximately 320 under par for 1945 tournament play. Nelson's average score for eighteen holes over his 120 tournament rounds was 68.33, one of the most remarkable golfing achievements of the decade.

Money

In 1945 alone, Nelson collected $66,000 in war bond prizes, the largest being the $13,600 for winning at Tarn O'Shanter. The cash value of his year's winnings, $52,511, was a record, topping his 1944 total of $35,000. Despite his bad back, Nelson had been in the money in every tournament he had entered and was able to double Ben Hogan's record of finishing in the money in fifty-six consecutive tournaments. During one stretch Nelson won eleven tournaments in a row, with Harold "Jug" McSpaden his closest competitor. In 1945 the average total purse in an official PGA event was $12,183; ten years later it had grown to $21,722, and forty years later to $538,000. Professional golf was not yet a major sport in the 1940s.

WPA and LPGA

The Women's Professional Golfers' Association (WPA) was formed in 1946 by a pioneer woman pro named Hope Seignious, with the help of her father. The event was a modest success, and the Seigniouses published a magazine that served as the association's house organ. Yet the WPA failed to serve as a unifying organization. In 1949 the rival Ladies' Professional Golf Association (LPGA) was headed by Babe Didrikson Zaharias's manager Fred Corcoran, who had formerly guided the growth of the men's PGA. He provided the leadership and promotional expertise to stimulate the development of the women's tour. During those early days Alvin Handmacher, the entrepreneur who founded Weathervane clothing, helped bring money and exposure to the sport. Handmacher used the LPGA to promote his products nationally through a four-stop transcontinental tournament with a total purse of $15,000 and a $5,000 bonus for the winner. The tournament started in San Francisco and went to Chicago, Cleveland, and New York. Helen Lengfield, publisher of the National Golfer magazine, later subsidized the spring tour with an additional $15,000. Two golfers, Patty Berg and Zaharias, dominated the tournament in those days and set the standard for play in the 1950s.

Sources:

Editors of Golf Magazine, Golf Magazine's Encyclopedia of Golf (New York: HarperCollins, 1993);

Herb Graffis, The PGA (New York: Crowell, 1975);

Herbert Warren Wind, The Story of American Golf (New York: Knopf, 1975).

GOLF

A Game with an Elitist Reputation

Like tennis, golf in America was a game that had grown around the nation's country clubs. Its participants were white and affluent—men and women of leisure who could afford to spend four hours of their day touring the lush, rolling links that were cared for by those who could not afford to play the game.

The Hogan Era

In the 1950s, however, golf was no longer just a game for the idle rich: the game became a sport. This transformation had much to do with a wiry, poker-faced Texan—Ben Hogan. Hogan attacked the golf course with a single-minded ferocity that came closer to evoking an image of a linebacker than that of a golfer. His mental and physical toughness were beyond question. After suffering serious injuries in a 1949 car crash, he came back to win the 1951 Masters. His win at the 1951 U.S. Open, however, was the one that stunned sports fans. That year the Open was held at long and treacherous Oakland Hills in Birmingham, Michigan. After shooting an unheard-of final-round score of three-under-par sixty-seven, Hogan announced with the grim arrogance of a pugilist, "I'm glad that I brought this course, this monster, to its knees."

Changing of the Guard

By the mid 1950s it had become clear that the era of Hogan was approaching an end. With the old guard, consisting of Hogan, Jimmy Demaret, and Sam Snead, no longer golf's dominant force, many wondered if the sport would return to being a game. By the close of the decade, however, a new generation of stars was on the rise. In 1958 Arnold Palmer of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, won the Masters with a game and a swing seemingly more suited for a public course than for Augusta National—one of golf's sternest tests. He gripped his club as if he were attempting to choke the shaft to death and would beat down on the ball with all his might. In the 1960s Palmer and his blue-collar style of play were responsible for golfs unprecedented popularity. Middle America began to take to the links in droves.

OUR GOLFING PRESIDENT

Although his score for a round of eighteen rarely broke ninety, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had much to do with the increasing popularity of golf. By the time he entered the White House in 1953, he had already gained a reputation as a golf addict, and during his two-term presidency he took great delight in playing highly publicized rounds with golfing greats such as Bobby Jones and Ben Hogan. In February 1953 the Public Golf Association offered to build a putting green on the south lawn of the White House. The green was placed just outside his office window, and on his way to and from work he would stop to practice his approach shots and putts. The many squirrels that populated the White House lawn, however, found the green an ideal site for burying acorns and walnuts. Furious, Eisenhower told the Secret Service, "The next time you see one of those squirrels go near my putting green, take a gun and shoot it." Secret Service men convinced the President that deadly force did not have to be used: traps were set and the squirrels were relocated.

Source:

Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984).

Women Turn Professional

Women's golf came of age in the 1950s. Not only did Babe Zaharias-Didrikson help found the Ladies' Professional Golf Tour in 1949, she won all three major tournaments (U.S. Open, Titleholders, and Western Open) in 1950. It is hard to imagine just how good an athlete she was: winning Olympic medals in 1932 and leading national championship teams in softball. Zaharias won nine major championships in her all-too-brief career, dying of cancer at the age of forty-two on 27 September 1956. As founding mother of women's professional golf, however, she made it possible for talented golfers to prosper playing the game.

Sources:

Tom Flaherty, The U.S. Open [1895-1965] (New York: E. P. Button, 1966).

Golf. Although “golf balls and sticks” from Scotland arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, in the mid–eighteenth century, not until the late 1880s did upper‐class easterners and midwesterners found the nation's first permanent courses and country clubs. Representatives of the five most exclusive clubs met in New York in 1894 to organize the U.S. Golf Association. The USGA staged the first national amateur and open championships in 1895 and soon emerged as the game's governing body in America.

Between 1900 and 1920, sporting‐goods companies supported construction of public courses and introduced improved equipment that made golf cheaper and easier to play. Although transplanted English and Scottish professionals initially dominated the game, a “homebred” pro first won the U.S. Open in 1911. When the young Boston amateur Francis Ouimet defeated Britain's two best professionals to win the 1913 Open, the game's popularity soared.

During the prosperous 1920s, the dominance of Americans both in tournaments and in the new Walker and Ryder Cup competitions against Great Britain assured golf’s prominence. The 350,000 American golfers of 1913 increased to more than 2 million ten years later. Golf fans cheered the game's greatest amateur, Robert Tyre (“Bobby”) Jones Jr., and professionals like Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen; Jones's sweep of the amateur and open championships of Great Britain and America (the “Grand Slam”) in 1930 was front‐page news. An unrivaled generation of architects led by Donald Ross, Alister Mackenzie, and A.W. Tillinghast designed private and public courses, many linked to resorts and real‐estate developments. Golf became more democratized, spreading beyond the bounds of the USGA's elite clubs, while gentlemen amateurs lost ground to professionals from poor and/or previously unrepresented ethnic groups.

The Great Depression and World War II took a heavy toll, as many courses disappeared, but the fledgling Professional Golf Association tour survived, with such leading professionals as Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, and Sam Snead displacing amateurs as the game's best players.

The 1950s ushered in another boom. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was an avid golfer, and television made the charismatic Arnold Palmer a national hero whose unique status survived even Jack Nicklaus's preeminence. Suburbanization, Sun Belt migration, and growing numbers of well‐off retirees meant more courses and players.

By the 1990s, baby boomers helped make golf a major spectator and participant sport and a big business. Despite its continued reputation as an elite white male sport, golf made its greatest percentage gains among women and minorities, a trend furthered by the celebrity of the mixed‐race superstar prodigy Eldrick “Tiger” Woods in the late 1990s. Woods won the 2000 British Open at historic St. Andrews golf course in Scotland, joining Sarazen, Hogan, Nicklaus, and Gary Player as the only golfers to have won all four major golf titles: the British Open, the U.S. Open, the Masters, and the PGA championship.

By the end of the twentieth century, the United States boasted more than fifteen thousand golf courses and an estimated 25 million golfers. Ironically, the game's soaring popularity represented its greatest challenge, as skyrocketing greens fees and new environmental restrictions posed daunting problems, particularly in metropolitan areas.
See also Sports.

Bibliography

Herbert Warren Wind , The Story of American Golf, 3d rev. ed., 1975.
George Pepper, ed., Golf in America: The First One Hundred Years, 1988.

Howard N. Rabinowitz

GOLF

Significant Developments

The Depression caused many country clubs to close, but New Deal programs such as the WPA saw to the building of nearly two hundred public golf courses. Enthusiasm for the sport dwindled a little, as smaller crowds came out to see the major tournaments. Still, golfing got better. Equipment—both golf clubs and golf balls—improved. The move from hickory shafts to steel ones provided longer drives. Golfer Gene Sarazen invented the sand wedge in his Florida garage in 1930. More-meticulous attention was paid to groundskeeping and landscaping. Built for Bobby Jones, the Augusta National, one of the most challenging golf courses in the world, opened in Augusta, Georgia, in 1934 and became the home of the Masters Tournament. The new event would be limited to sixty-five or so of the very best golfers in the world. The miniature-golf craze would die out by the end of the decade, but in 1930 the first national open miniature-golf tournament was held in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Searching for Bobby Jones

From the day Bobby Jones retired (after winning the Grand Slam in 1930), people kept hoping another golfer with skill and charisma might come along who could assume the mantle of his greatness. No one, however, was able to fill his golf shoes. Twenty-year-old Gene Sarazen thrilled golf fans by coming from behind to win the 1932 U.S. Open by playing his last twenty-eight holes in a hundred strokes. In 1935 he double-eagled in the Masters to force Craig Wood into a playoff, which Sarazen won the next day. His career was marked by inconsistency but also by longevity and proficiency. In 1934 Stanford's Lawson Little Jr. burst onto the scene, capturing both the British and Amateur titles two years in a row. But even winning the double-double did not endear the stoic Little to fans. Ralph Guldahl also won two consecutive U.S. Opens in 1937 and 1938, but he played too methodically and emotionlessly. By the end of the decade a host of talented young golfers appeared, including Sam Snead and Byron Nelson, who won the Masters in 1937 and earned well-deserved comparisons with golden-age hero Jones.

What Price Pro?

There was not much money to be made in professional golf, especially during the height of the Depression. Paul Runyon was the big moneymaker in 1934, but he figured that when his expenses were deducted from his earnings he netted about $2. Of the thirty-three or so Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) tournaments in 1935, gross winnings totaled $135,000. Big winner Johnny Revolta won less than $10,000, while more than two hundred professional golfers split the rest. Since amateurs regularly competed with—and often defeated—professionals, the gallery seemed indifferent to status. Women golfers remained amateur, although many of them could hit in the low 70s. Fans saw veteran Glenna Collett defeat seventeen-year-old Patty Berg ("the darling of the Minneapolis galleries") for her sixth national championship in 1935. Virginia Van Wie won three consecutive amateur titles between 1932 and 1934. One major disappointment for Americans was the loss of the biennial Walker Cup to Great Britain in 1938; Americans had won it every other time it was contested since its inauguration in 1922.

Sources:

John M. Gross and the editors of Golf Magazine, The Encyclopedia of Golf updated and revised (New York: Harper 6c Row, 1979);

Herbert Warren Wind, ed., The Complete Golfer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954).

golf. Though the Dutch game of kolf has been claimed as the origin, the first undoubted reference to golf was in 1457 when the Scottish Parliament deplored its popularity, along with that of football, since it took young men away from archery practice. James VI and I is said to have taken golf clubs with him when he moved south in 1603. But the great development of the game was in the later 19th cent. The handful of golf clubs in the early decades had risen to a dozen by 1870 and well over 1,000 by 1914. The first British open championship was held at Prestwick in 1860 and, since professionals dominated, an amateur championship at Hoylake in 1885. The main developments have been the standardization of the number of holes; the evolution of balls from the original wooden or feather-filled balls to cheaper gutta-percha balls in the 1840s and more aerodynamic rubber balls in the early 20th cent.; and the introduction of specialist clubs, up to a maximum of fourteen. The British governing body is the Royal and Ancient Club at St Andrews, founded in 1754.

J. A. Cannon

golf Game in which a small, hard ball is struck by a club. The object of the game is to hit the ball into a sequence of holes (usually 18), in the least number of shots. The length of each hole varies from c.100–550yd (c.90–500m) and consists of a tee, from where the player hits the first shot; a fairway of mown grass bordered by trees and longer grass, known as the rough; and a green, a putting area of smooth, short grass and the site of the hole. A player may have to circumvent course hazards, such as lakes or bunkers. Each hole is given a par, the number of shots it should take to complete the hole. Competition is usually over 18, 36 or 72 holes; the winner decided by the lowest total of strokes (stroke play) or the most holes won (match play). In 1754, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, St Andrews, Scotland, was formed and the basic rules of the game codified. Major tournaments are the US Open, British Open, US Professional Golfer's Association (PGA), and the US Masters.

golf in its modern form was introduced to Ireland by a Scottish teacher of English at the Belfast Academy. In 1881 the first Irish club, the Royal Belfast, was established. By 1891 there were ten clubs and courses in Ireland, nine of which were in Ulster. That year the Golfing Union of Ireland, the first in the British Isles, was founded. A men's amateur championship began in 1893. In 1895 the first professional tournament in Ireland and the first ladies' championship in the world were held at Portrush, Co. Antrim. The sport grew steadily in popularity, encouraged by the availability of land and the patronage of landowners. The social level of players, however, was kept high by the cost of fees and equipment. By 1950 there were 179 courses in the country, and Ireland was promoted as a venue for golfing holidays. Nearly 70 new courses were built over the next 30 years. Golfing tourists now outnumber domestic players, who belong to over 350 recognized clubs.

Neal Garnham

golf Though the Dutch game of kolf has been claimed as the origin, the first undoubted reference to golf was in 1457 when the Scottish Parliament deplored its popularity, since it took young men away from archery practice. But the great development of the game was in the later 19th cent. The handful of golf clubs in the early decades had risen to a dozen by 1870 and well over 1,000 by 1914. The British governing body is the Royal and Ancient Club at St Andrews, founded in 1754.

golf / gälf; gôlf/ • n. 1. a game played on a large open-air course, in which a small hard ball is struck with a club into a series of small holes in the ground, the object being to use the fewest possible strokes to complete the course. 2. a code word representing the letter G, used in radio communication. • v. [intr.] play golf: [as n.] (golfing) a week's golfing. DERIVATIVES: golf·er n.

golf XV. of unkn. orig.

golf •Ralph •elf, herself, himself, itself, myself, oneself, ourself, self, shelf, themself, thyself, yourself •mantelshelf • bookshelf • sylph •golf, Rolf, Wolf •Randolph • Rudolph •Wolfe, Woolf •aardwolf • werewolf • Beowulf •engulf, gulf •Ranulf