Kessler Chronicles: Like Nicklaus or Jones?

by Peter Kessler

In the 150 years or so that golf has kept track of its best players, most every star has first burned red hot. Then, as quickly and fiercely as they appeared, they faded away in a startlingly short time. Old Tom Morris admittedly had his best days as a player behind him when he won four of the first seven Open Championships through 1867. His son, Young Tom, won four starting the year after his father’s last, but his star burned out by 1873 and he died at the age of 24 — on Christmas Day of 1875. His father was the game’s first architect, its first greenskeeper, the first Grand Old Man of golf.

From the 1870s until the 1890s, there were a number of wonderful Scottish players, but no one really was able to dominate longer than a season or two until English amateur John Ball won the Open Championship in 1890 and won the Amateur Championship eight times starting in 1888, with the last coming in 1912. He won five times with the gutta percha ball, or gutty as it was known, and three times with the rubber ball — the first version of the ball played today. So the Morrises left the game as players in a flash and Mr. Ball continued to demonstrate his championship form for 24 years.

In the case of the Morrises and Mr. Ball we can say that they were great golfers in their time, but in the case of Harry Vardon, the comparisons are hard to resist. Now no one can be better than the best of their time, and comparisons are the source of arguments that never end, but there are accounts of players and writers who saw Young Tom and Harry Vardon in their prime and swear that no man did or ever could have a greater genius for hitting a golf ball than Harry Vardon. Courses and balls and clubs change, so it’s of no use to compare scores of players from one era to another. But according to Bernard Darwin, who invented the whole business of writing about golf in the early 1900s and did it better than anyone who came along to try his hand thereafter, and who saw every great player from Vardon to Nicklaus, said of Vardon that “at the zenith of his game the impression of supreme genius will abide.”

It seems as though the modern impression of Vardon is that he was a glorious player up to the green and a very poor one once he arrived there. Darwin assures us that the first part of our impression is correct and the second false. He was not a putter in the same league with Jones or Hagen, Nicklaus or Woods, but he was a very, very good approach putter and sound inside of six feet. And as Darwin saw it, Vardon gave himself very little putting to do. After a long bout with tuberculosis that ended in 1907, Vardon was never again the same player although good enough to win more championships. In total, there were his record six Opens along with one U.S. Open, in 1900. His total of seven Opens between the two has never been surpassed, though Jones and Nicklaus share the record. Vardon won his first Open in 1896 and his last in 1914, and the U.S. Open in 1900 when he gave the first series of golf exhibitions in America that anyone ever gave anywhere.

Vardon was said to have left something of his game here before he returned home and then caught the disease that would cause his right hand to twitch uncontrollably on short putts at the end of his career, hence our impression that he was a poor putter. He had one last chance at our Open in 1920 at the age of 50, but he bogeyed five of the last seven to lose to Ted Ray. And, of course, he and Ted Ray lost to 20-year-old Francis Ouimet in 1913 at the U.S. Open in a playoff we later realized was the official beginning of golf in America.

J.H. Taylor was a great golfer too — and would have been no matter in which era he played — and he plied his trade in the same era as Vardon. He won five Opens and was second so often that his consistency may be his greatest accomplishment — reminiscent of Nicklaus many years later.

He was born near and worked as a caddie at Westward Ho! — which even at that time was very famous golf course. He loved the game like Palmer loves the game and only gave it up when he couldn’t produce his finest stuff any longer. The game tortured him like it did Jones, and like Bobby, he had great self control but  paid for it internally with wicked flames searing their soul. He won five Opens and while no one part of his game stood out because he had no weaknesses, his greatest strength was his accuracy accomplished through a short, brisk, compact swing, which was more around and less up and down than the modern swing Vardon invented. His career, like his contemporary and very close friend Vardon, was long and illustrious. Taylor won his five Opens between 1894 and 1913.

The third of this great triumvirate was James Braid. Braid was Scottish, whereas Taylor and Vardon were Englishmen. And Braid’s candle was shorter, winning his five Opens between 1901 and 1910. Unlike Taylor and Vardon, Braid was prone to slicing and wild hooking and was an unreliable putter, but he made his scores with deft approach play and unerring little touch shots around the green. After 1910, his failing eyesight cost him his game, but five championships in 10 years during the heyday of Taylor and Vardon made him an indisputable member of the first great triumvirate in the game’s history.

We know that Walter Hagen won the first of his 11 majors in 1914 and the last in 1929.
Jones first won majors beginning in 1923 and won 13 of the last 21 in which he played until, in 1930 at age 28, he gave up competitive golf. Sarazen won his majors from 1922 until 1935, the first player to win all four of them over the course of his career,

Byron Nelson’s five majors all took place in less than 10 years as did Hogan’s nine championships, which included all four majors. Sam Snead won majors from 1942 until his epic victory over Ben Hogan in the playoff for the ’54 Masters, the last major either would win.
Palmer would win them from 1958 until 1964,  Nicklaus from 1962 — for 24 years — until 1986, and Player would win them from 1959 until his last Masters win in 1978. Faldo won his six from 1987 until that last incomprehensible win over Greg Norman in the 1996 Masters. And, of course, there was the original charismatic Spaniard, Seve Ballesteros, winning his five big ones from 1979 until the last of three Open Championships in 1988.

So now we have to consider 31-year-old Tiger Woods, with his richer and fuller life, joined by his wife Elin and their first baby, a girl, Sam Alexis, born the day after he finished tied for second in the U.S. Open. Tiger builds courses now and has a goal to reach every child who wants to play golf through his foundation work. He’s a busy businessman with a full schedule, but the Sunday back nine in majors is “what he lives for.”

Counting his U.S. Amateur wins, he has 15 majors, two more than Bobby Jones’ total, three more than Hagen and five less than Jack. There can be no doubt that he will forge ahead in search of besting Jack’s record of 20.

Will he pull a Jones and quit when the record is broken? Will he stay until he can no longer produce his best stuff except on the odd occasion as Jack did at age 46 when he won his last major from behind at The Masters?

It says here that he’ll go on to win 25, just to make sure that, as Babe Ruth said while rounding the bases after his record 60th home run cleared the wall in 1927, “Let’s see some son of a bitch try to catch that.” FG