Bow ties, bathtub gin, jazz, and the Charleston. Wall Street, Fords, and
flappers. The Roaring Twenties. It was the most colorful decade in American history, as well as an era of intense, rapid change. Long-held traditions
and standards were challenged repeatedly. A booming economy produced
millionaires in every walk of life and helped fuel a Golden Age of Sports.
Golf thrived and changed with the new prosperity. Mounds of sand
became factory-made tees, hickory shafts hardened into steel. A new international rivalry, the Ryder Cup competition, was born. The game’s stars,
like the decade in which they played, were some of the brightest ever, but
none of them outshone Walter C. Hagen, the charming, well-built son of
a poor, immigrant family from Rochester, New York.
A true original, “Sir Walter” perfectly suited his times. Hagen was the
first “unattached” touring pro, as well as the first player to dress flashily
during competition, to endorse a matched set of irons, to employ gamesmanship, to hire a full-time agent—and to make a million dollars in golf.
In competition Hagen was the first American-born player to win the British
Open, the first U.S. Ryder Cup captain (and competitor), and the first
player to win the same major championship four years in a row. Grantland
Rice, the Golden Age’s top sportswriter, considered Hagen “the irrespon sible playboy of golf, and at the same time a keen and determined competitor.” To some, Sir Walter was an arrogant rebel; others saw him as their
personal champion, leading the way to golf’s future. On one point all were
agreed: Walter Hagen embodied change.
There was nothing in Hagen’s humble background that suggested future
wealth and fame. He entered the world on December 21, 1892, in a small,
two-story home built by his father, William Hagen, on the outskirts of
Rochester, New York. Before Walter came along, all of the Hagen men
made a living as manual laborers—and none of them had the wherewithal
to play golf. Walter’s dad worked as a blacksmith in the railroad yards of
East Rochester, and his mother, Louise Balko Hagen, was a German immigrant who raised five children while keeping up the house and garden on
the quaint two-acre Hagen homestead.
Young Walter developed a lifelong passion for the outdoors, especially
hunting and fishing. He passed the long winters of upstate New York by
sledding and skating with his four sisters. When the snow melted, he loved
to play baseball, and although his pitching prowess has been exaggerated
over the years, Hagen was good enough as a teenager to excel in tough local
semipro leagues. School was one of the things Walter didn’t enjoy, and like
so many from his social class, he dropped out early, barely finishing the
sixth grade. In all, Hagen’s childhood was rather ordinary.
There was one crucial difference, though, between Hagen’s background
and that of most other working-class kids. The Hagen house happened to
be located near property that was purchased by Rochester’s wealthy sportsmen for the purpose of constructing the city’s first golf course. If not for
that coincidence, the persona of “Sir Walter” would probably never have
been born. But in 1895 the Country Club of Rochester (CCR) was formed,
and soon after, golf was played within a mile of the Hagen land. By his seventh birthday little Walter was caddying at the CCR, toting and cleaning
clubs for the city’s elite.
Hagen quickly became a favorite with club members, and the feeling
was mutual. He remembered admiring “the ease with which they spoke of
huge money deals—and I certainly eyed wishfully their fancy golfing outfits.” Rochester’s professional, Andrew Christy, noticed Hagen and took
the young caddie under his wing. When Hagen turned fourteen, Christy
offered him the assistant professional’s job. Christy taught Hagen the fine
art of club making and repair, management of the pro shop, and the basics
70 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
of greenkeeping. Hagen also learned how to swing the club; actually, the
most valuable aspect of Hagen’s job promotion was the chance to play more
rounds at the country club, many under the instructional eye of Christy.
By 1912 Hagen was ready for his first competition. Never one to think
small, he made plans to enter the U.S. Open, but Christy encouraged him
to wait another year and instead play in the Canadian Open. Hagen reluctantly agreed, traveled to Toronto, and finished a respectable twelfth place.
Weeks later Christy resigned his post at the CCR, and at nineteen years
old Hagen became one of the first American-born club professionals.
Hagen spent most of 1913 settling into his new job, but by September
he was ready for more competition and took the train to Brookline, Massachusetts, to play in his first U.S. Open. Hagen fought hard at the country club and ended in a tie for fourth place, behind leaders Harry Vardon,
“Big Ted” Ray, and Francis Ouimet, a young local amateur who put American golf on the map the next day by defeating the British professionals in
a play-off. The valuable experience Hagen gained at Brookline helped him
break through the following year at Chicago’s Midlothian Golf Club, where
he edged out rising amateur star Charles “Chick” Evans by one stroke to
capture his first national Open in only his second attempt.
The Midlothian victory launched Hagen’s competitive career. He would
eventually win another U.S. Open (1919), four British Opens (1922, ’24,
’28, and ’29), five PGA Championships (1922, ’24–’27), and five Western
Opens (1916, ’21, ’26, ’27, ’32). During the early 1920s, before Bobby
Jones ascended to the emperor’s throne, Sir Walter was widely regarded as
the number-one player in the world. In the summer of 1924, after Hagen
won his second British Open, the New York Times declared him the “greatest golfer who ever lived—bar none.”
As for the number of “majors” Hagen won, it depends on how one
counts them. He collected eleven of the currently designated “major”
events, although only three of them were contested in the 1920s. In that
decade the Masters was but a dream in the young mind of Bobby Jones.
Golf writers, but more important the players themselves, generally considered the Western Open to be a fourth major, and including those victories,
Hagen had sixteen contemporary majors. However one classifies them,
Hagen compiled a record that easily ranks him among the best.
But Hagen’s significance to golf runs deeper than his outstanding competitive career. Hagen changed golf fundamentally by pioneering the pro fessional tour and thereby taking the sport from the private country club
to the public. There were no professional golfers before Hagen, only golf
club professionals, men who served wealthy members by performing the
tasks that Christy had taught Hagen at Rochester.
Club professionals came from the lower classes and early in the century
were almost always British immigrants. Their identity was defined entirely
by their club; they played competitively for small amounts of money only
a few times each year, and they were always listed in newspapers and tournament programs according to home club, such as “Walter C. Hagen,
Country Club of Rochester.” Members generally looked down on their
pros, perceiving them as rough, uncouth, and subservient.
Hagen suffered such prejudice at Rochester and at Detroit’s Oakland
Hills Country Club, where he migrated for the 1918–19 season, because
for a man of his social background second-class treatment at a country club
was more comfortable than first-class treatment in the railroad yard. But
after he won a second U.S. Open in 1919, Hagen had had enough. Displaying an old-fashioned German-bred pride, he decided to break free from
the constrictions and condescension of the private club and become a fulltime touring professional golfer. Never again would Hagen be contracted
to a club. Beginning in 1920, he was identified in tournament summaries
as “Walter C. Hagen, unattached.” Hagen was the first to carry that label,
which denoted economic free agency. Most observers either scoffed, believing that Hagen couldn’t make a living through exhibitions and tournament
play, or criticized him for “unduly commercializing” a gentleman’s sport.
The great British professional J. H. Taylor, for example, castigated Hagen
for playing “unattached,” saying that “real pros” worked for the “honor,
prestige, and dignity of the clubs” they served. Hagen simply went his way,
proving some wrong and cordially disagreeing with the rest.
Hagen carried his challenge further by pushing boundaries at some of
the most famous clubs around the world. In 1920 he traveled to Deal,
England, for his first try at the British Open. Europeans were much more
tradition-bound than Americans, and at Deal the professionals were not
even allowed to enter the clubhouse but rather were asked to use a nearby
shed for their locker room. Upon arrival, Sir Walter alighted from his
chauffeured Austin-Daimler motorcar wearing a Savile Row overcoat,
looked over the accommodations, and concluded that they were no place
for his fine wardrobe. In protest, Hagen used his limousine as a locker room that week, parking it each day in front of the clubhouse’s main
entrance.
Three years later at Troon, Hagen refused to take part in the trophy presentation ceremony, despite the fact that he was the runner-up, because
professionals had not been admitted into the clubhouse during the previous week. If club members deemed him unworthy to enter their sanctuary
during the tournament, Hagen reasoned, then why should he enter it for
their trophy presentation? Instead, Hagen marched up the steps to the front
door, turned to the crowd, and said, “I’d like to invite all of you to come
over to the pub where we’ve been so welcome. If the [tournament] committee likes, they can present the trophy to the new champion over there.”
Democratizing golf and developing respect for its professionals became a
crusade for Hagen.
It was just that cause that led sportswriters to christen Hagen with his
primary nickname, “Sir Walter.” The name conjured up images of honor,
chivalry, and egalitarianism; to his supporters Hagen was like a medieval
knight, slaying unjust prejudices. The crusade required pluck, hard work,
charisma, flair, and a lot of moxie. Sir Walter had them all—in spades. In
fact there was not another golfer in 1920 who could have carried it off.
To help wage his campaign, Hagen recruited Robert “Bob” Harlow to
be his personal manager and agent. Harlow created and then sold “Sir Walter.” He scheduled exhibitions, convinced civic leaders to organize open
events, and negotiated Hagen’s endorsement contracts for products ranging from equipment to knickers to long-playing instructional albums.
Smooth talking, well groomed, and disciplined, Harlow was the perfect
promoter for Sir Walter’s show. With Harlow at his side, Hagen not only
survived as an “unattached” professional but did better for himself than any
other golfer ever had. During the 1920s his annual income was somewhere
between $50,000 and $75,000; H. B. Martin once estimated that Hagen
made $1.5 million throughout his career.
The most lucrative seasons were those immediately after Hagen won a
major tournament, such as the summer of 1922, following his first British
Open victory. Harlow usually invited a headliner, like the entertaining and
skilled “Australian trick-shot artist” Joe Kirkwood, to play in foursome
exhibitions with Hagen, and the troop would cover the country in trains,
boats, automobiles, and even an occasional airplane. The barnstorming tour
quickly became a Hagen-Harlow specialty
