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To Whom We Owe Gratitude |
“You don’t have the game you played last year or last week. You only
have today’s game. It may be far from your best, but that’s all you’ve
got. Harden your heart and make the best of it.” -- Walter Hagen
Is
it possible that one of the most important figures in the history of
American golf could have fallen through the cracks of time? That while
his name is known, little else about the man who is the father of
American touring golf really is.
Imagine being third on the
all-time list of majors won and yet you played the majority of your
career during an era when only three of the game’s four majors even
existed? Further, consider that as impressive as that fact is, Walter
Hagen is revered for raising the status of golf professionals above a
simple servant class, as one of the driving forces behind the
development of the Ryder Cup and for his starring role as golf’s
consummate showman.
Hagen was born in 1892 into a humble,
middle-class family living near Rochester, New York. He was one of five
children, four girls and Walter. His father, a Dutch immigrant, was a
blacksmith and seemingly a world apart from the person his only son was
destined to become. Walter’s relationship with his working-class father
was a complicated one, and short of a dossier on its complexities, the
fact that his father never once saw him compete until the 1931 U.S.
Open, two years past Walter’s last Major victory—the 1929 Open
Championship—speaks volumes.
Hagen was one of those rare
individuals who was clearly before his time. He possessed a drive,
intellect, and perhaps most importantly, a vision of the emergence of
the game and his starring role in it that ushered in the modern
professional game as we know it.
Excelling in various sports as
a youth, particularly baseball and golf, Hagen ultimately decided that
golf would be his vehicle to stardom and the lifestyle that he aspired
to live. Blessed with unnerving self-confidence, Hagen first came to
national prominence at the 1913 U.S. Open at The Country Club in
Brookline, Massachusetts. It was at this Open where a twenty-year-old
amateur named Francis Ouimet beat the two top golfers in the world,
Brits Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, in an eighteen-hole playoff, to mark
one of the greatest upsets of all time.
Finishing one stroke
back was a brash twenty-one-year-old assistant professional from the
Country Club of Rochester named Walter Hagen. The following year, at
Midlothian in Chicago, Hagan won the first of his two U.S. Open titles
in a gutsy performance over a highly experienced field. Hagen stumbled
to the tee box on the first day, reeling from the effects of a
less-than-fresh lobster he had consumed the evening before. Coupled
with the stifling heat of a Chicago summer, the young professional hit
shots that were simply ugly, following them with recovery shots that
were brilliant.
His up-and-down round, reflective of the way
he spent the night before, not only established a new course record and
the lead in the tournament, but would also serve as a microcosm of the
rest of his career.
“I never wanted to be a millionaire, I just wanted to live like one.” -- Walter Hagen
Among
his many firsts, Hagen may well have been the game’s first mental
coach, even if he alone was the primary beneficiary of his
philosophies. Hagen was unfettered by shortcomings, mistakes, or even
failure. He saw those mundane consequences as the by-products to
success. Therefore he played a fearless game, for his posture was that
he would take the risks necessary to succeed with a perspective that if
he did not win then it did not matter if he finished second or last.
Further,
he anticipated adversity, even expected it. He claimed that he expected
five bad shots a round (some accounts have the number at seven), so
that when a poor shot would arrive, he did not see it as an omen for
his round collapsing but, rather, with almost a sense of relief that he
got it out of the way and only good things lay ahead. Perhaps this was
the only mental posture one could have when your game was subject to so
many wayward shots, but whatever the root, he played the game with a
liberty that left him unshackled by fear and thus, able to think
clearly when the pressure was consuming his competition.
Augmenting
his mental fortitude was his supreme ability to concentrate on the
here-and-now, the shot at hand, despite carrying on a never-ending
performance for the galleries that was another distinctive feature of
this great champion.
So consummate were his abilities to
recover, persevere, concentrate, and execute that in 1926 he defeated
the great amateur Bobby Jones by a score of 12 and 11 during a
seventy-two-hole exhibition. Hagen displayed his game in all of its
classic eccentricities through the match. Shots veered wildly, both
left and right, without anyone, including Hagen, knowing what direction
they were likely to go. However, each time he would hit amazing
recovery shots and coupled with an extraordinary short game and putting
stroke, he would leave opponents in a frustrated heap.
Jones
was no different, commenting after the match, “When a man misses his
drive, and then misses his second shot, and then wins the hole with a
birdie, it gets my goat.”
Armed with such skills, Hagen was a
consummate match play competitor. Competing back in the days when the
PGA Championship was match play, Hagen won twenty-two consecutive
matches. While his ability to win holes was consummate, his ability to
read an opponent’s psyche was equally as strong. |
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posted on 6/3/2008 by |
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