The Game's the Thing

**Tournament golf has evolved dramatically during Golf World's lifetime, but from Lew Worsham to Zach Johnson, its essence remains the same**

Related Links: The Game's the Thing: Dave Anderson; Present Tense: By John Hawkins; Player of the Decade: 1947-1956; Player of the Decade: 1957-1966; Player of the Decade: 1967-1976; Player of the Decade: 1977-1986; Player of the Decade: 1987-1996; Player of the Decade: 1997-2007

By Dave Anderson June 15, 2007

Wedding anniversary jewels are as familiar as your favorite driver. Something silver for 25 years, something gold for 50 years. But if Golf World were your wife or husband, as this magazine has been for some people for 60 years, you wouldn't shop for something as traditional as a diamond, the 60th-anniversary jewel. You surely would search for something much more useful, like bookends. Distinctive bookends: one of persimmon, the other of titanium.

Persimmon drivers were what golf was all about in June 1947 when Bob Harlow published the first issue of Golf World, and titanium drivers (or variations thereof) are what golf is all about now. And in all those bound volumes of the magazine between the bookends are the golfers and the game itself.

The golfers come and go, but the game really is the same. In the evolution from persimmon's consistent accuracy to titanium's dazzling length, the game hasn't really changed. In the pro tournaments or in your weekend match, the game usually boils down to its simplest form: making or missing a putt. Sixty years ago Lew Worsham made a short putt to win the U.S. Open after Sam Snead missed a short putt. Two months ago Zach Johnson made birdie putts to win the Masters while Tiger Woods missed birdie putts.

The game of golf is different from other games. At most other sports events you often hear the chant, "dee-fense, dee-fense." But there's no dee-fense in golf. Snead couldn't tackle or foul Worsham, just as Woods couldn't block any of Johnson's birdie tries.

The game is simply too difficult, too elusive to allow even the best to win all the time--not Ben Hogan or Babe Zaharias, not Arnold Palmer or Mickey Wright, not Jack Nicklaus or Kathy Whitworth, not Tom Watson or Nancy Lopez, not Tiger Woods or Annika Sorenstam.

Win or lose, the game, and all those famous golfers, were the reason to read what is in those 60 years of bound volumes between the bookends. In the decades before Golf World, the game had its first American idol, the teenager Francis Ouimet, then it had the plus fours elegance of Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen, then the steel-shafted skill of Byron Nelson, Snead and Hogan, but with the image of a rich man's game, golf had a limited appeal. Baseball, boxing and college football were the sports America rooted for. But early in 1949, after a head-on crash between a black Cadillac and a Greyhound bus on a foggy Texas highway, America suddenly had a golfer to pray for.

Ben Hogan, the 1948 U.S. Open champion, was in a Fort Worth hospital, his body and legs battered, his life threatened. At best, he was unlikely to ever play the game again, certainly not on a champion's level.

America could identify with that. America remembered all those who had been killed or wounded in World War II in Europe and northern Africa or on Pacific Ocean islands where Hogan served as an instructor of Army Air Force pilots. But slowly, Hogan recovered, chipping and putting at first, then competing in occasional tournaments while preserving his stamina for the 1950 U.S. Open at Merion that he won in an 18-hole playoff with a 69. Three years later, as the only golfer ever to win the Masters, U.S. Open and British Open in the same year, he was accorded a ticker-tape parade up lower Broadway in New York City, but the Thursday after his 1950 U.S. Open triumph, only a few dozen people were at Wykagyl CC in suburban New Rochelle to see him tee off in the Palm Beach Round Robin, the New York stop on the PGA Tour in those years.

If you were at Wykagyl that morning, as I was (as a Holy Cross college student home for the summer) to see the feature foursome of Hogan, Snead, Jimmy Demaret and Jack Burke Jr., the tees and greens were roped off. But if you followed the golfers, you walked along the fairways with them. You even walked along with Ben Hogan. Then you stopped, stepped back and stood still while he hit a shot.

Tournament golf was like that then. No fairway ropes, no television cameras and not much prize money. For some of the smaller tour events, the total prize money was $5,000. No galleries to speak of, either. When the Palm Beach Round Robin moved to the old Meadow Brook Club not far from Roosevelt Field (where Charles Lindbergh took off for Paris in 1927), I was a spectator when Lloyd Mangrum's tee shot on a par 3 thudded into the green, took one bounce, then spun back into the cup. Hole-in-one. After his drive on the next hole, I walked off the tee with him.

"Great shot, Mr. Mangrum," I said. "How many holes-in-one have you had in your career?"

I forget the number he told me--maybe seven or eight--but I was still talking to him walking up the fairway when, very cordially, he said, "Excuse me, son. We're almost to my ball."

Arnold Palmer changed all that. Arnold Palmer, Dwight D. Eisenhower and television.

When Palmer was winning the 1958 Masters, soldiers at nearby Fort Gordon working the leader boards put up a sign announcing themselves as "Arnie's Army." All those Masters patrons and television viewers immediately enlisted. So did millions of golfers and nongolfers, especially the women who considered Palmer to be golf's version of the young Marlon Brando. When photos appeared of Palmer playing Augusta National with President Eisenhower, who had been the supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II that conquered Hitler, golf was no longer a rich man's game. It was a he-man's game.