The PGA Championship’s rise to fame
HAL LENOBEL
Contributing Columnist
golf@lbknews.com
On the sixth hole of the final match of the 1923 PGA Championship at Pelham Country Club in Westchester County, Walter Hagen protested when Gene Sarazen moved leaves where his ball rested on the fairway. Later, after both players had reached the green, an upset Sarazen missed an easy putt.
“I’m glad I missed that,” he said to his opponent, “so when I beat your brains out today there will be no alibi.” Hagen, meanwhile, was left with a one-foot putt that he expected Sarazen to concede. “Hole it,” Sarazen said. “I’m giving you nothing but hell today.” And he did.
Officially, the PGA Championship was founded on April 10, 1916, in New York City, when the Professional Golfers Association of America was formed. It was decided that the first PGA Championship would be held at Siwanoy Country Club in Bronxville that October.
However, the PGA Championship was not yet one of golf’s four majors and was languishing in relative obscurity. It needed a defining moment to boost its stature and capture the public’s attention. That boost came in the 1923 event, when Hagen and Sarazen squared off on the 6,318-yard Pelham layout and played what is often thought to be the finest match play final on U.S. soil. (The Championship consisted of five rounds of match play until 1958, when it converted to stroke play.)
Hagen had been in the limelight since winning his first U.S. Open in 1914 and also captured the 1921 PGA at Inwood Country Club on Long Island. Meanwhile, the 20-year-old Sarazen was bursting on to the scene. In 1922, he won the U.S. Open at Skokie Golf Club near Chicago, with a brilliant 68 in the final round. A couple of months later, he became the first man to hold the Open and PGA Championship titles at the same time, when he won the latter at Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania.
The stage was slowly being set for a rivalry that would captivate the golf world. But the 1923 season had not been kind to Sarazen, and he was already facing criticism from newspaper columnists that he was just a flash in the pan. Finishing 14 strokes behind Bobby Jones in the U.S. Open title defense made matters worse.
Sarazen was almost beaten in his quarterfinal match against an unknown, Jim Barnes. The two battled to a standstill over 35 holes, and then a birdie to Barnes’s par on the last hole gave Sarazen a one-up win. The semifinal was easier for the young Sarazen, as he won 7 and 5 over the popular Bobby Cruickshank.
Hagen, called Sir Walter by the press, in contrast, was on cruise control. In his quarterfinal he beat Fred McLoed, 5 and 4. He then trimmed George McLean 12 and 11 in the semifinal. He looked invincible, and the PGA could not have written a better scenario than the past two years’ champions meeting in the 36-hole final.
Hagen didn’t hesitate to stoke the flames, claiming that Pelham was thickly populated with enthusiastic Italians, and they were all eager for their compatriot to win, he recalled in his autobiography. (Sarazen was born Eugene Saraceni.)
The morning round of 18 holes ended all square. After lunch, Sarazen quickly jumped out to a three-up lead and looked as if he might pull away. However, Hagen won the 29th and 34th holes, and was only one down. After sending his drive out of bounds on the 35th and seemingly losing the match, he coolly took a penalty, dropped and then launched a gargantuan third shot. The ball came to rest 20 feet from the stick. He sank the putt. Rattled, Sarazen missed his four-footer.
The match was square. At the par four 36th and final hole, Hagen’s drive wound up in a bunker, while Sarazen’s tee shot was on the edge of the fairway. Hagen’s recovery shot — this was nine years before Sarazen invented the sand wedge — stopped 15 feet short of the hole. Sarazen chipped to five feet past the hole. Hagen’s birdie putt was not close, but it left Sarazen with a stymie. He could not convert, and it was sudden death for the first time in the PGA Championship.
They halved the 37th hole and on the 38th hole of the day, Hagen’s tee shot landed in the fairway while Sarazen hooked his wildly and looked to be out of bounds. However, Sarazen’s tee shot bounced off the greenkeeper’s cottage back in bounds, giving Sarazen new life. Hagen found the ball and told Sarazen that it had to be his ball because “it’s got spaghetti sauce on it,” adding yet another ethnic barb to a day in which these two competitors engaged in a fierce war of words.
Using the insult as fuel, an angry Sarazen struck. As Grantland Rice reported, “He blasted it out with a niblick, two feet from the flag. For once Hagen flubbed one in the clutch, right into a little bunker. He nearly holed his recovery.”
Hagen made par on the hole, but it wasn’t good enough. Sarazen’s improbable birdie carried him to a one-up victory and national headlines. In the process, he helped lift the PGA Championship to unprecedented popularity and ushered in a golden age of golf in America.
Hal Lenobel was a member of the United States Golf Association Rules and Tournament Committee for 25 years. He officiated at more than 150 tournaments during his tenure.
