The Trophy In the Taxi

The Overlook

By Tom Clavin

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          Recently, I was interviewed by a New York Times reporter for an article to be published sometime this week to coincide with the PGA Championship. The year’s second major tournament is being played in Tulsa. The reporter was especially interested in an anecdote about Walter Hagen and the championship trophy . . . which I’ll get to in a few moments. Apparently, I am considered an expert on that great golfer thanks to my book Sir Walter: Walter Hagen and the Invention of Professional Golf.

          The PGA Championship has often been considered the least prestigious of the four majors. This is unfair because often it features the best field of players of the year. Yet it does not have quite the stature of the U.S. Open and British Open or the mystique of the Masters. It hasn’t helped in recent years that the PGA Tour disrespected the PGA by moving it from its traditional spot as the last major of the year, in August, to May, like it can be plugged in anywhere. What this means for the tour is that once the British Open is completed in July, there is not another major tournament on the PGA Tour for the rest of the year.

          Yet the PGA Championship is older than the Masters by 17 years, and its founding represented a sea change in golf. In 1916, the department store magnate Rodman Wanamaker convened a meeting in New York of business executives, professional players (of whom there were few), golf course professionals, and other interested parties to propose that there be a Professional Golfers Association. Up to that time, professional players – meaning those who competed for money – were in the minority. Amateur players – like Walter Travis, Francis Ouimet, and, soon, Bobby Jones – were the princes of the fairways because, presumably, they competed only for the love of the game. Earning money was a rather blue-collar endeavor.

But amateurs were not bringing money into the sport which in America, especially, was poised to grow and people like Wanamaker were set to profit by selling equipment and clothes. Once the PGA got going the transition was inevitable, and eventually the PGA Championship was included as one of the four majors.

Until well into the 1950s, what distinguished the PGA from the other three majors – aside from no amateurs were allowed to participate -- was that it was match play. For you novices: With very few exceptions, the tournaments you see on TV are “stroke play,” meaning the leader and the end of the day is the player who struck the ball (strokes) the fewest number of times. A player who shoots a 70 would be leading a player who shoots a 72 by two strokes.

For the first 40 years of the PGA Championship, it was match play, meaning from the first day to the last the competition was between two players per match. There were two matches a day of 36 holes each. Whoever was left undefeated after six matches was the winner. Clearly, a big challenge the PGA Championship presented was endurance. And nerves, because every match was sudden death. In a stroke-play tourney, you can shoot a so-so 73 one day but come back to shoot a sizzling 66 the next day and have a chance to win it all. In match play, an off day is your last day.

This makes the accomplishment of Walter Hagen all the more remarkable. Not only did he win the PGA Championship five times – the most of any player in the tourney’s history – but he won it four consecutive times. No one else – not Jack Nicklaus, not Arnold Palmer, not Tiger Woods –has won the PGA more than twice in a row. Sir Walter won it for the first time in 1921, did not play in 1922 because of a far-flung exhibition tour, lost in a bitterly contested final match to Gene Sarazen in 1923, then earned victories in 1924, 1925, 1926, and 1927. Over that span he was 24-0 in match-play rounds which, to me, is as astonishing as any record in golf.

Hagen was a fierce competitor, but there was another reason why he kept winning the PGA Championship: He had a secret that would stay hidden only as as long as he kept winning.

At French Lick, Indiana, in 1924, Hagen defeated two-time PGA champion Jim Barnes to collect his second championship. He repeated as the winner in 1925 at the Olympia Fields Club near Chicago. That night he went out on the town and at some point he got tired of toting around the Wanamaker Cup, so he put it in a taxi and gave the driver $5 to bring it to the guest cottage where he was staying. That was the last Hagen saw of the trophy.

He did not tell anyone, hoping it would turn up. It didn’t. The following year when he arrived at the Salisbury Club on Long Island to defend his title, reporters asked Hagen where the trophy was. With more bravado than honesty, he declared he had left it at home because he had no intention of losing the PGA Championship. And he didn’t. The same for 1927, when he won for the fifth time overall in Dallas. Finally, however, when he lost to Leo Diegel in 1928, Hagen had to fess up. Subsequently, a copy of the Wanamaker Cup was created to give out to winners.

By the way, in 1930, the trophy Hagen lost was found in the basement of a warehouse in Detroit. Its journey there remains a mystery.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books including Blood and Treasure (with Bob Drury), To the Uttermost Ends of the Earth (with Phil Keith), and Lightning Down. To purchase a copy, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.