The World Golf Hall of Fame inducts its class of 2008 this coming Monday in St. Augustine, Florida. The six inductees include lefty Bob Charles of New Zealand, three-time major champion Denny Shute from the 1930s, lifetime amateur and seven-time USGA winner Carol Semple Thompson, Herbert Warren Wind, the renown journalist who coined the phrase “Amen Corner,” golf course architect Pete Dye, and Craig Wood.
Future articles throughout the winter will feature the careers of Charles and Shute, but for the moment I want to make you aware of the life and times of Craig Wood. Long before there was Greg Norman, a two-time major champion who found a handful of ways to have victory snatched from his grasp, there was Craig Wood, a two-time major champion who lost all four majors in playoffs.
Wood”s career spanned golf”s golden era of Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen, and ended during the time of the post-war triumvirate of Ben Hogan, Sam Snead and Byron Nelson. He was known during the 1930s as the John Daly of his time because of his prodigious tee shots, but he was best known for failing to seal the deal in some of golf”s more memorable major championships.
Wood was born in Lake Placid, New York, in 1901. His road to professional golf was fairly typical for that time as he started out as a caddie and then as a shop assistant. His father was a logger in upstate New York and Craig would work winters alongside him, thus developing enormous physical strength that few professionals had at that time. Wood was nicknamed the Blonde Bomber and was the talk of Scotland in 1933 when he hit a tee shot some 450 yards during the playing of the British Open at St. Andrews.
He had his first breakthrough tour win in 1928 at the New Jersey PGA and the following year he took to the road and won the Oklahoma Open and the Hawaiian Open. Over the course of an active career that spanned from his 1925 Kentucky Open win through 1951, Wood won 21 times, including the Los Angeles Open, the Canadian Open and the San Francisco Open. He played on three Ryder Cup teams.
The 1930s began with Jones” Grand Slam year and ended in 1939 with the upstart Nelson”s victory in the United States Open. During that 10-year period of time Wood was consistently on golf”s center stage of futility. In fact, his runner-up finishes were so dramatic that his nickname was “Number 2 Wood,” a play on words for the commonly used brassie fairway wood of that time.
The 1933 British Open was the only time Wood crossed the pond to play in golf”s oldest championship. He finished tied for first with fellow Hall of Fame inductee Denny Shute and lost an 18-hole playoff the following day. In 1934, Wood worked his way to the finals of the PGA Championship, which was contested at match play. In the final match, Wood and Paul Runyan were tied after 18 holes and he lost the PGA title in extra holes.
In 1935, Wood was victimized by arguably golf”s most famous shot. Leading the Masters by three shots with just four holes to go, Wood was caught in one swing by Gene Sarazen. Sarazen holed out a 4-wood from 220 yards on the par-5 15th for an improbable double-eagle. Wood lost a 36-hole playoff to Sarazen on Monday and Sarazen was forever a part of golfing history for his “Shot Heard Round the World.”
In 1939, Wood completed his runner-up version of the grand slam by losing to Byron Nelson in the U.S. Open at Philadelphia Country Club in a playoff along with Shute. It was at Philadelphia that leader Sam Snead made an eight on the final hole to miss out on the three-way playoff. The playoff”s defining moment came when Nelson holed out a 1-iron for an eagle.
The legacy of Craig Wood took a turn for the better in 1941. During a year when Ted Williams batted .406, Joe DiMaggio hit in 56 consecutive games, and 60,000 fans crammed into the Polo Grounds to watch Joe Louis knock out Billy Conn in the 13th round of their heavyweight battle, Wood came up big in the Masters and the U.S. Open.
Tied going into the final nine with Nelson, Wood posted a 4-under-par 32 to win the Masters by three shots. He was the first to win the Masters wire to wire. In June at Colonial in the United States Open, Wood prevailed over Shute, turning in a pair of even-par 70s during Saturday”s 36-hole final to win by two shots.
By December of 1941, America was at war and most professional tournaments were canceled for the duration of World War II. Wood served as head professional at Winged Foot during that time and when he returned to a full schedule on the PGA Tour in 1946, he was by then 45 years of age and well beyond his prime.
Wood continued to play in the Masters as a past champion through 1964. He shot 66 as a 66-year-old at Winged Foot. He was the teaching pro for captains of industry such as Henry Ford and celebrities such as Babe Ruth. His prot?g?, Claude Harmon, got his start as Wood”s assistant at Winged Foot. Harmon would not only go on to be Winged Foot”s longtime head pro, but he would also capture the Masters in 1948. Harmon”s five sons would go on to be professionals, and while his son Butch is known for his affiliation with Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, another one of his boys is the longtime pro at Oakland Hills and is named Craig Wood Harmon.
Wood passed away 40 years ago in 1968. Over all those years, his memory has lived on in his hometown of Lake Placid. In 1954, the Lake Placid Country Club was renamed the Craig Wood Golf Club. While Wood”s legacy will live on in the World Golf Hall of Fame and at the golf course that bears his name in upstate New York, his namesake, Craig Wood Harmon had the most profound line of all. Harmon was quoted as saying, “Craig Wood not only was a Hall of Fame player, he was a Hall of Fame human being.”
