During the heyday of the 1920s, a handful of athletes were larger than life characters who were the faces of their sport. There was baseball”s home run king, Babe Ruth, and running back supreme Red Grange. Heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey could easily fill Yankee Stadium for a title bout. The world of golf had a hero front and center in the person of Walter Hagen, a colorful front-page headlining linkster who was just as comfortable on the links as he was hanging out with Hollywood”s elite. It was during the summer of 1914 that Hagen began his climb, not only to the top of golf”s leader boards, but also the very top of the sporting hierarchy.
Born in December of 1892 in Rochester, New York, Hagen competed at a time when professional golf was in its incubation stage. Tournament purses were minimal. No one made a real living as a pro golfer. All the top pros had country club jobs. The top players of the first decade of the 20th century were transplanted Brits and Scots. Walter Hagen changed all that and he got it all started exactly 100 years ago.
Walter was the only boy in a family of five children. Like everyone else who wasn”t wealthy in those days, Hagen got introduced to the game of golf as a caddie at the Country Club of Rochester, a Donald Ross course that first opened its doors in 1895. By the time he was 15 years old, Walter was playing close to par golf and the country club promoted him from caddie to assistant golf professional. He left school, started working in the pro shop, and began to give lessons to the members.
At the age of 19, Hagen made his professional debut at the 1912 Canadian Open. He finished in 11th place. He also played semi-pro baseball, was highly regarded as a pitcher and a shortstop, and was offered a tryout with the Philadelphia Phillies in the summer of 2014. As the fates would have it, the 21-year-old Hagen had to postpone his tryout with the Phillies. It was originally scheduled simultaneously to the playing of the 1914 United States Open. Baseball would have to wait a week or two while Hagen journeyed to Chicago in his bid to qualify into the National Open at the Midlothian Country Club.
In those days, golfers paid their entry fee and then had to qualify into the Open earlier in the week, playing 36 holes. There was no pre-qualifying and no one was exempt, even the defending champ. The heat was stifling that summer in Chicago and the course was baked, allowing some of the bigger hitters to drive par-4s and reach par-5s in two. A total of 64 linksters got through 36-hole qualifying, including Tom McNamara of Boston, who shot 72-73; defending champion Francis Ouimet, who carded a pair of 74s; Walter Hagen, Jack Burke Sr., four-time British Open champ J.H. Taylor, two-time U.S. Open winner Johnny McDermott, amateur great and former Western Open winner Chick Evans, and a relatively unknown San Francisco amateur named Jack Neville. Five years later Neville would design Pebble Beach.
During Thursday”s opening round, Hagen used his power game to card an impressive 4-under-par 68 to get atop the leader board, one stroke ahead of Ouimet. Two golfers shot 72. Evans stumbled with a 76. Back then you played 36 holes on Thursday and another 36 on Friday. In Thursday”s second round, Hagen and Ouimet returned to the pace with Walter carding a 74 while Francis came in at 76. Evans failed to gain ground, shooting a 74.
Friday dawned and the golfers had another 36 holes on tap. Hagen and Ouimet both shot 75 while Evans gained ground with a 71, the lowest score of round three. Entering the final round, Hagen led Ouimet by three strokes and was four shots clear of Evans. It all would come down to the young professional from Rochester and the two amateurs of note, both with victories of note on their golfing resumes.
Francis Ouimet couldn”t get anything going. He stumbled home in 78, finished tied for fifth and failed to do to Hagen and Evans what he had done to Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in the 1913 Open. Evans recorded a 1-under-par 35 on the front nine and got within one stroke of Hagen, who made the turn in 38 strokes. Walter upped his lead to two with a par on the 12th hole, but Evans got it right back with a birdie on the par-5 13th. Hagen birdied the 16th but bogeyed the 17th hole. He headed to the 18th tee with a one-stroke lead. On the par-4 18th hole, Evans almost drove the green, barely missed his chip-in for eagle-two, and tapped in for birdie. Hagen drained a 14-foot putt to win his first of two U.S. Open titles. Interestingly enough, the recap article in Golf Illustrated contended that Midlothian was too easy a course to hold the Open because it was “an old course with its antiquated guttie ball hazards.” Hagen finished at 2-over-par 290 to win by one over Evans.
Of course, Hagen never made it to the Phillies tryout. His victory at Midlothian in the 1914 Open was his first of 45 tour wins during a 23-year period of time. He would also win another 30 non-PGA Tour events, including the 1920 French Open and the 1924 Belgium Open. He also won 11 majors during the course of his career, adding four British Opens and five PGAs to his two Open titles. Only Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods have won more majors. It could have been more except for canceled tourneys during World War I as well as the advent of the Masters in 1934 at the back end of Hagen”s career.
Walter played on the first five Ryder Cup teams and captained Team USA six times. He is credited with being the founder of the PGA of America. Contemporary golfer Gene Sarazen once said, “All the professionals should say a silent prayer of thanks to Walter Hagen. It was Walter who made professional golf what it is.”
Golf”s first true American star died in 1969 in Traverse City, Michigan. Among his pallbearers was the Walter Hagen of the modern era, namely Arnold Palmer. Hagen got professional golf out of the back of the pro shop and onto the front page of the sports section. He was the first to make professional golf a lucrative career with endorsements and exhibitions. And it was some 100 years ago that this icon of American golf first burst onto the sporting scene.
