IT HAS LONG been accepted as fact and entered into worldly lore that Byron Nelson won eleven tournaments in a row and eighteen for the season in the sunny year of 1945, when the war was finally—and elatedly—coming to an end.
These two records were said to be impossible to break, ever. They would last longer than the game of golf itself, or the end of the world, whichever came first.
But here am I, all these years later, armed with nothing but a screen, a keyboard, and a mouse, to break both of those records.
The fact of the matter is, as politicians love to say, I actually credit Byron Nelson with thirteen wins in a row and twenty for the year of 1945. These two added competitions were “unofficial,” but the money was spendable.
They weren’t anything Byron bragged about, or wished the record books would correct, but when I’d bring them up with him in relaxed conversation, he’d smile knowingly.
The first one took place after the fourteenth tournament on the ’45 Tour. It was a 72-hole match between Byron Nelson and Sam Snead for the “World Championship of Golf.”
The Nelson-Snead match was held over two days, May 26 and 27, when the Tour was in a two-month lull, or what some called a hiatus if they could say it and spell it correctly.
Byron and Sam were chosen as the combatants by Fred Corcoran, director of the PGA Tour back then, for an obvious reason. They had combined to win twelve of the fourteen Tour events so far in ’45. Eight for Nelson, four for Snead.
Earlier in the year Snead had won the L.A. Open and at Gulfport, Pensacola, and Jacksonville. Byron had won at Phoenix, Corpus Christi, and New Orleans before his streak began. By the time of the match the streak was in progress. Nelson had won five in a row—the Miami Four Ball with Jug McSpaden, and the tournaments in Charlotte, Greensboro, Durham, and Atlanta.
The first 36 holes were played at Fresh Meadow Country Club in Flushing, New York, on Long Island, a course that had been host to the 1930 PGA Championship and the 1932 U.S. Open, and was a good neighbor to Trylon and Perisphere during the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
When Nelson missed a short putt on the last green, Snead edged him by a stroke, shooting 73-70–143 to Byron’s 73-71–144.
The second 36 holes the next day were conducted at match play at Essex County Country Club in West Orange, New Jersey, which had nothing to recommend it other than age, beauty, and the names A. W. Tillinghast and Donald Ross among its designers.
On a rainy day Byron whipped it around in six under par through 33 holes to beat Sam, 4 and 3. They split the prize money of ten grand in war bonds, but the press chose to add up their 72-hole scores. They conceded Byron and Sam pars on the last three holes of the match at Essex, giving Byron 69-69 and Sam 74-69. For the two days, then, they proclaimed Nelson the winner of the “World Championship” with a total of 282 to Snead’s 286.
“Sam wanted to steal my five-iron,” Byron once recalled. “I hit a lot of good shots with it in that match. It was my safety valve. I could hit it straight and anywhere from 130 to 180 yards. It was my favorite club. The three-iron was my other favorite. In the match I hit my three-iron 200 yards in the rain and reached the fifth hole in two, and sank a 30-foot putt for an eagle. On the next hole I hit my five-iron 170 yards to seven feet and made a birdie. That put me five up and Sam never could catch me.”
The Tour resumed in the middle of June, and Byron went on with his streak by winning the Montreal Open, the Philadelphia Inquirer Invitational, the Chicago Victory Open, the PGA Championship in Dayton, Ohio, the All American Open at Tam O’Shanter in Chicago, and the Canadian Open in Toronto.
That gave him his eleventh in a row, or twelfth by my count.
The “official” streak ended in Memphis on August 19—where Nelson finished tied for fourth—but history overlooks the Spring Lake Pro-Member on the New Jersey shore that came a week before Memphis. It was a 36-hole tournament with a strong field of forty-five touring pros. Byron shot 69-71–140 to win it by one stroke over Sam Snead and Herman Barron.
Granted it was only 36 holes, and granted it was “unofficial,” but the $2,200 he collected was more than the first-place money in all but five stops on the tour. When you count the “World Championship” and the Spring Lake Pro-Member to Nelson’s eighteen other victories that year—he won four more times after Memphis—you come up with twenty wins.
For those who think Nelson may have taken advantage of war-weakened fields, I enjoy pointing out that Sam Snead played in twenty-six tournaments in ’45, winning six of them, and Ben Hogan was released from the Army Air Corps in time to compete in seventeen tournaments, winning five.
Only eight other players won tournaments in ’45. Their names deserve enshrinement: Henry Picard, Dutch Harrison, Sam Byrd, Ray Mangrum, Jimmy Hines, and three amateurs—Cary Middlecoff, Frank Stranahan, and Freddie Haas Jr., who won at Memphis. Middlecoff would become a big star as a pro, Haas would also achieve success on the Tour as a pro, and Stranahan’s career was perhaps the most remarkable. Frank was not just the finest American amateur of his day—he won two British Amateurs along with seventy other titles—he won four times on the Tour while playing for fun, and twice more after turning pro.
Ironically, Byron’s last victory of the year—his twentieth—occurred in the Fort Worth Open, back in his old hometown, and on Glen Garden Country Club, the course where he and Ben Hogan had caddied in their teens.
I was in high school then and spent the week at the tournament being amazed by everything I saw, starting with Byron’s fast play and crisp iron shots that enabled him to run away from a strong field of competitors that included Hogan and Snead.
I was there the day of a practice round when Jug McSpaden arrived from an exhibition in Shreveport in his single-engine airplane. He landed on the fifth fairway, a par-5, realized he’d chosen the wrong landing strip, took off, circled, and landed on the first fairway, a par-4. He taxied over to the pro shop, unloaded his clubs, and took off again to look for a local airport.
Apparently this wasn’t unusual for Jug. His trademark on the circuit was playing golf in a pair of aviator glasses.
Glen Garden in that chilly middle of December looked like a parched prairie decorated with green polka dots. These were the rye greens. It was a strange layout to begin with. Par was 37-34–71, and I have yet to come across a goofier back nine in my travels. It featured back-to-back par-5s once, and back-to-back par-3s twice.
Byron once said, “When I was growing up, I never heard people talk about how different the layout was. Of course I didn’t have much to compare it with. I do know the back nine was difficult. The 15th was a long, uphill par-3—you had to hit a wood—and the 18th was a three-iron to a small green with out-of-bounds close on the left.”
When I reminded Byron of the tall electrical tower in the middle of the fairway on number 12, a par-5, he laughed and said, “Oh my, yes.”
Nelson’s truckload of trophies in ’45 says one thing about his dominance, as does his astounding scoring average of 68.33 in thirty-two tournaments, but as stats go, I’m partial to his margins of victory.
He won by eight strokes over Sam Byrd in Greensboro, by five over Toney Penna in Durham, by nine over Byrd in Atlanta, by ten over Jug McSpaden in Montreal, by seven over McSpaden in Chicago, by eleven over Lieutenant Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen in the Tam, by ten over Byrd in Knoxville, by seven over McSpaden in Spokane, by thirteen over McSpaden in Seattle, where he shot 259—a world record—and by eight over Jimmy Demaret at Glen Garden.
Those margins of victory bring to mind an old saying, source unknown, but it probably came from a football coach:
“It’s not enough to just win, you have to let the loser know he lost.”