Byron Nelson had befriended Bing Crosby during World War II, when
the pair would often team up at Red Cross and other war effort benefits,
so Nelson wasn’t particularly surprised to see the famed crooner standing
near the first tee at Riviera Country Club during the first round of the Los
Angeles Open, the season’s inaugural PGA Tour event in 1945.
“You going to go with me some?” Nelson asked Crosby.
“I’m going to follow you till I feel you’ve made a bad shot,” the singer
replied. It wasn’t until the twenty-ninth hole, number eleven in the second
round, that Crosby gave Nelson a wave and walked off to watch some of
the other action. It was a thin six-iron approach that landed short and in
a greenside bunker that sent Crosby on his way.
Good thing, too. If Nelson hadn’t hit that shot, Crosby might have had
to follow him from city to city, course to course, tournament to tournament, from January until around mid-October. Byron Nelson, you see,
didn’t hit many bad shots in 1945.
With 61 career victories, 52 of them in PGA-sanctioned events, five
major championships, two Ryder Cup appearances (he was selected for two
others that were not played during World War II), and a streak that began
in early 1941 and saw him finish “in the money” in 113 consecutive PGA events, a record to this day, “Lord Byron” can hold his own with any and
all of the great players in golf history.
When the subject is 1945, though, none can even come close. Nelson
won eighteen tournaments that year, eleven of them in succession. The previous record for consecutive wins? Four. The best since? Six—by Ben
Hogan in 1948 . . . the same by Tiger Woods in 2000.
Nelson finished second seven times and had 100 subpar rounds out of
112 played, highlighted by a 62. He set records for the lowest tournament
score (21-under-par 259) and lowest single-season stroke average (68.34).
The former stood for a decade, the latter for fifty-five years, until Woods
bested it.
The best golfer of all time? Probably not. His career lasted, for all intents
and purposes, for just eleven full seasons. It wasn’t until 1935 that Nelson
played in more than five tour events during one year, and 1943 hardly
counted with only three official events on the then-Tour schedule.
At the end of the 1946 season, just one year removed from his recordsetting campaign, Nelson retired without a career grand slam and with only
two money titles. Sam Snead, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, and Arnold
Palmer all won more tournaments.
So, no, not even computer wizardry can elevate him to the status of alltime best. But when it comes to a single season, no one has done it better,
before or since. Three major titles in the same year by Hogan in 1953 and
Woods in 2000 are certainly large blips on the radar screen, and some fans
might put them in the same category as Nelson in 1945. But eighteen
single-season wins, eleven of them in a row, one after another after another
and so forth, well, these are numbers that will never, ever be touched.
Any discussion of Nelson’s season in ’45 must begin in 1944, his last of
five years as head professional at storied Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio.
He finished sixth or better in all twenty-one PGA events he entered, winning eight times, averaging 69.67 strokes per round, and banking Tourhigh earnings of $38,000, combining cash and war bonds ($8.78 million
in New Money). But he wasn’t satisfied. “I kept a record of every round,
and when I went back at the end of the year I saw too many references to
poor chipping and just plain careless shots,” Nelson recalled recently. “I
really wanted to set records like scoring average and for the lowest tournament score, records that might stand awhile.” Nelson had another motivation as well, one that only he and his wife,
Louise, knew about. Leaving Inverness at the end of 1944 allowed him to
concentrate solely on tour golf, but he didn’t intend to do it for long. He
dreamed of owning a ranch, of making that his life, but neither he nor
Louise, both products of the Depression, wanted to borrow the money. It
had to be a cash purchase, and his accomplishments of 1944 led him to
believe his dream could be realized with one or two more great seasons.
“My game had gotten so good and so dependable that there were times
when I actually would get bored playing,” Nelson wrote in his autobiography, How I Played the Game. “I’d hit it in the fairway, on the green, make
birdie or par, and go to the next hole.
“The press even said it was monotonous to watch me—but having the
extra incentive of buying a ranch one day made things a lot more interesting. Each drive, each iron, each chip, each putt was aimed at the goal of
getting that ranch. And each win meant another cow, another acre, another
ten acres, another part of the down payment.”
Beginning with a runner-up finish to Sam Snead at Los Angeles, Nelson posted three victories and five seconds in his first eight events of 1945.
His ninth tournament was a different story, a sixth-place finish behind
Snead in Jacksonville, who won for the fourth time in the still-young season. “I played terribly,” Nelson said of the Jacksonville tournament. “I guess
I got a little steamed.” How steamed? The next event, the Miami Four Ball,
was played March 8–11. Nelson teamed with his close friend Harold (Jug)
McSpaden to win that, and the Texan would not taste defeat again until
August 19, when he finished tied for fourth, six shots behind amateur Fred
Haas, Jr., at the Memphis Invitational.
In eleven straight tournaments over a period of more than five months,
Nelson poured it on, winning five times by seven or more strokes. He played
the nine stroke-play events in 109 under par. He won the PGA Championship, a match-play event in those days, by finishing seventeen-up in five
matches. For the record, he played 204 holes en route to that major title at
Moraine Country Club in Dayton, Ohio, in thirty-seven under par.
Of course, as is often the case with streaks, this one hardly got started
before someone threatened to end it. And that someone was Sam Snead,
no mild threat, who seemingly had the Charlotte (N.C.) Open won, not
once but twice.
Quiet Texan Music • Byron Nelson 15
One week after winning with McSpaden in Miami, Nelson found himself number seventeen when his second shot flew over the green and outof-bounds markers behind it only to hit a car and carom back into play.
“Slamming Sam” was able to save par there, but not on the eighteenth hole,
where his approach was short and he three-putted from a distant fifty feet.
That bogey forced an eighteen-hole play-off the following day, and
Snead again lost a late lead, this to a Nelson birdie, producing another
dead heat. Another eighteen holes were called for but almost didn’t take
place. In a bizarre development, a Charlotte newspaper columnist wrote
of rumors that Snead had deliberately bogeyed the seventy-second hole
of regulation so that a play-off would be required and he would be able
to claim a share of the extra day’s gate receipts. Snead was incensed by
the report, at first threatened not to play, and was obviously distracted en
route to a round of 73. After reading the morning paper, fewer than two
thousand fans bothered to attend as Nelson shot a 69 for a four-shot victory. From there on Lord Byron was rarely challenged, winning twice more
in North Carolina before cashing winner’s checks in Atlanta, Montreal,
Philadelphia (where he rallied with a final-round 63), and Chicago.
Even the nation’s top courses fell into some state of disrepair during the
war years, and the 1940s Tour rarely made those stops. Nelson instead won
at courses called Myers Park, Starmount Forest, Hope Valley, and Capital
City—mostly ragged courses, fairways often a mix of hardpan and unattended weeds—to the extent that many events were played using “winter
rules,” allowing competitors to move the ball a few inches into playable lies.
Nelson handled the quality courses equally well, however, surviving a
second-round scare in the PGA Championship at Moraine Country
Club—Mike Turnesa was two up with four holes to play, but Nelson finished birdie-birdie-eagle-par for victory—before scoring his largest win (by
an eleven-stroke margin) in the biggest-money event of the year at Tam
O’Shanter Country Club in Chicago and then making it eleven straight
victories at the Thornhill Country Club, near Toronto, in the Canadian
Open.
Nelson admitted years later that the pressure was “really getting to me”
and that he was battling both mental and physical fatigue when he arrived
at the Memphis Invitational. His concentration was wavering and with a
second-round 73 putting him behind the eight ball, Nelson said he was
genuinely relieved when Fred Haas won to end his incredible streak.
16 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
But it didn’t put an end to the winning. Nelson scored again by ten shots
in his next tournament at Knoxville, captured a seven-stroke win at the
Esmeralda Open, and won his last two events of the year, in Seattle and
Fort Worth, by a combined twenty-one shots. Prior to that strong finish,
Nelson finished a distant second behind Hogan in Portland as the latter set
a new all-time, 72-hole scoring record of 261.
“I remember some writers asked me how long Ben’s score would hold
up,” Nelson said. “I told them it could be forever or it could last a week.”
Close. It was two weeks later that Lord Byron won in Seattle with rounds
of 62-68-63-66 for a new record, 259.
So he had his records, his incredibly low stroke average—another money
title. He had, simply, the greatest single season ever authored by a golfer,
one so incredible that it has quite appropriately reached mythical proportions through the years.
Something else has happened through the years, too. Critics, for one
reason or another, have tried to cheapen Nelson’s accomplishments in 1945
by suggesting that World War II allowed him to feast on weak fields and
easy courses. Nelson was excused from military duty because of a blood
condition, but Hogan, Snead, Horton Smith, Jimmy Demaret, and others
were in uniform at one time or another, although most never saw overseas
duty and spent considerable time on military-base golf courses. Regardless,
many were back on tour in time for considerable portions of the ’45 season. Snead played in twenty-six tournaments, winning six times, and
Hogan played in sixteen events, winning twice. Among the most formidable of opponents was Nelson’s close friend Jug McSpaden, who also set
another tour record that year by finishing second thirteen times. At the
time Nelson and McSpaden were nicknamed “the Gold Dust Twins,” and
for good reason.
“I think some people have a hard time now believing the numbers,” Nelson said. “Maybe it’s easier to believe them if they also believe no one else
was playing.”
Jack Burke, Jr., who won four tournaments in a row during the 1952
season, has no difficulty appreciating Nelson’s accomplishment. “I don’t
care if he was playing against orangutans,” Burke said. “Winning eleven
straight is amazing.”
Golf legends always seem to come in threes. Jones, Hagen, and Sarazen.
Nicklaus, Palmer, and Player. At the dawn of the 1940s it was Nelson,
Quiet Texan Music • Byron Nelson 17
Hogan, and Snead, certainly good company, although only Nelson had
won a major championship by then. The three couldn’t have been more
different. Snead was a rough-edged hillbilly from Virginia—considered
crude by many, despite a graceful swing that would produce eighty-one
PGA Tour victories and a bunch more not incorporated into today’s official records, more than any other player in history.
Hogan was cool and distant, opening himself up to only a select few
friends, working at the game harder than anyone before or since, most
likely, and playing with what the great writer Herbert Warren Wind called
“the burning frigidity of dry ice.”
Nelson was a seven-day Christian, a tall man who seemingly had no enemies, someone who always said he hoped he would be remembered as
much for being a kindly gentleman, an ambassador of the game, as for his
playing record.
Nelson and Hogan were both sons of Texas, and their career-long rivalry
dated to the earliest of days, when both were caddies at Glen Garden Country Club in Fort Worth. They faced off for the first time in the 1927 caddie championship, and Byron narrowly won, a trend that would continue
for most of the next two decades.
Less than three years after that caddie match, while still in his teens,
Hogan turned professional. Nelson was not quick to follow. Instead, young
Byron dropped out of high school, worked a series of jobs, and played a
lot of golf. He mowed the greens at Glen Garden, worked as a file clerk for
the Fort Worth–Denver City Railroad, then took a position that he
described as both flunky and gofer for a banking magazine. Meanwhile,
Nelson found plenty of opportunity to hit the links. Jack Grout, later a
famous teaching pro who became Jack Nicklaus’ coach, was the assistant
pro at Glen Garden, and he and Nelson teamed up to win just about every
pro-am event within driving distance.
His success in those competitions as well as numerous amateur tournaments in Texas helped Nelson realize that while he might not have the background or skills for a business career, especially during the Depression, he
did indeed have a flair for the game of golf. So, after being invited to play
in an open tournament for both professionals and amateurs in Texarcana,
Texas, in November of 1932, Nelson got off the bus dragging a suitcase
and his golf bag and asked the tournament organizers how one went about
18 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
becoming a professional. Turned out it was pretty simple. No tour schools,
no qualifying tournaments. Plunk down a $5 entry fee, state your intentions, and you were considered a pro. Nelson did just that, finished third,
and won $75. Just that quickly, he was on his way.
By the midway point of the 1938 season, Nelson had seven professional
victories, including the ’37 Masters, and had earned a Ryder Cup berth.
Hogan had won nothing and had yet to be invited to Augusta National.
Away from the tour, Nelson had landed a sound and lucrative club-pro job
at Reading (Pennsylvania) Country Club, making around $4,000. Hogan,
on the other hand, was glad to take the assistant pro’s position at Century
Country Club in White Plains, New York, earning just $500 a year.
In 1939, when Nelson signed a contract to move to Inverness the following spring, the president of the Inverness Club sat down to write a letter informing the other finalist of the club’s decision. It began: “Dear Mr.
Hogan.”
Less than a week after signing the contract, Nelson traveled to Philadelphia and won the ’39 U.S. Open. How did the Inverness folks react to having an Open champion in their immediate future?
“They were happy for me, but they didn’t renegotiate,” Nelson recalled,
laughing. Actually, they did. At the next board meeting the governors
approved a recommendation made by the club presiden
competition during those years amounted to $53,192 in cash prizes and
nearly another $20,000 in war bonds. Big money back then, and truly staggering if stated in New Money terms: $68.2 million between 1934 and
1946.
Nelson made no secret of his belief that playing the Inverness course,
which by then had hosted two Opens, and against the club’s best golfing
members, was a key ingredient to the success he enjoyed on tour. Most of
those members held a certain measure of awe for their head professional,
but there was one cocky young lad who responded differently.
The very finest local player at Inverness Club was Frank Stranahan, in
his late teens when Nelson arrived at Inverness but soon to emerge as the
best amateur golfer in the United States, if not the world, during a decadelong span that began in the mid-1940s.
Stranahan and Nelson, who was enlisted by Frank’s father to give the
youngster lessons, never exactly saw eye to eye. Stranahan would occasionally challenge Nelson to a match, but the club pro, busy with his own
tournament and teaching schedules plus his club-shop duties, was frequently unable to fit young Frank into his hectic schedule. All that changed
in one day, the moment Nelson read more than a simple challenge in
Stranahan’s request for a head-to-head match.
“He was with a couple of the boys he usually played with, and he made
it clear he wanted to play me, but there was something in the way he said
it that made me feel he thought I was afraid to play him,” Nelson recalled
more than fifty years later. “I guess he got under my skin, because I got hot
and I said, ‘OK, Frankie, not only will I play you, but your two buddies
can come along, and I’ll play all three of you, your best ball against mine.’
I was nicely steamed up and shot a 63, a new course record, beat Frankie
and his friends, and Frankie never bothered me again.” Years later Stranahan said his memory of that round was hazy. But he did praise Nelson as
being “the best of his era, during the war years.”
Stranahan’s recall was clearer on another issue. “There was a professional
named Henry Picard, who worked at a club in Cleveland and then in
Florida at Seminole. Hogan complained to him once that he practiced all
the time, really worked so hard at his game.
“Then Byron would hit town, somebody would pick him up at the train
station, drop him at the course, then he’d head right to the first tee without
20 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
practicing very much and he’d beat Hogan every time. Picard told him not
to let it bother him, to keep working as hard as always, and soon he’d be the
best. And Picard was right. Hogan was the next great player.” True. But not
until after 1945 and, perhaps, not without an assist from Nelson, who
walked away from competitive golf after a six-win season at the end of 1946.
Lord Byron was a meticulous record keeper who could tell you his bank
statement down to the penny. When he earned $152.50 for a thirteenthplace tie at the Pensacola Open early in ’46, he knew it gave him the final
bit of escrow money he needed for a 630-acre plot of land he wanted in
Roanoke, Texas, a crossroads some twenty miles outside Fort Worth. He
and Louise named it “Fairway Ranch,” and once he had it, Byron Nelson,
then just thirty-four years old, wanted for little else. “I finally had to admit
I’d accomplished everything I’d set out to do in golf,” he said. “It was time
to move on. I wasn’t sick, and I wasn’t scared of the pressure like some speculated. I was just tired. And I’d achieved my goal. Once we’d given them
the money and signed the papers and the ranch belonged to us, nothing
else really mattered.”
Although retired from competitive golf, Nelson never really left the
game. He made infrequent appearances at tournaments over the next two
decades, winning his old friend Bing Crosby’s pro-am in 1951, two years
after Hogan’s only win in the event and one year after Snead tied for the
last of his four Crosby titles. Nelson’s last hurrah came on foreign soil, winning the 1955 French Open at the age of forty-three, although he continued to compete at the Masters for another decade. The gentle Texan also
became the first superstar to mentor promising young golfers, most notably
Ken Venturi, Harvie Ward, and Tom Watson. He was the first pro to regularly do live television golf commentary, and he and Chris Schenkel went
on to became the game’s first famous golf-broadcast tandem.
In 1968, Nelson became the first and, to date, only pro golfer for whom
a PGA Tour event is named when the Dallas Open became the Byron Nelson Golf Classic. His name is still on the event.
No, Byron Nelson, gentleman farmer, with the emphasis on gentleman,
never completely walked away from the game. And he didn’t completely
stop playing it until the morning of April 5, 2001.
The day dawned crisp and sunny, the dew just starting to burn off the
emerald fairways, when Lord Byron walked to the first tee at Augusta
Quiet Texan Music • Byron Nelson 21
National Golf Club for the final time after twenty years of service as a ceremonial starter at the Masters.
“OK, little ball, one more time,” the eighty-nine-year-old legend muttered before taking that same pretty, solid, streamlined swing one final time.
The ball didn’t go too far, but it landed in the fairway and, for just an
instant, as the crowd roared and Lord Byron’s well-creased face broke into
that warm, affable smile, it could have been 1945 again, when he authored
a season against which all others will be measured until they no longer play
the game.
