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| Ed Dudley signature putter |
I knew from my father's stories that Ed Dudley served as the first golf professional at Miami, Oklahoma, that Dudley was an outstanding golfer and teacher, whom my father admired greatly. My father, also, developed great friendships with Ed's close friends George L. Coleman Jr, Ky Laffoon, and John F. Robinson in the 1950’s which created a circle of friendships from coasts to coast. Several of the connections are attributed to my father, who became a teaching pro at Santa Anita Golf
Course after the war. In those few years my father played golf with several stars, Johnny Weissmuller, Tarzan and Olympic swimmer, being a favorite. Mother loved to tells stories about meeting Bing Crosby, and sometimes going to the horse races at Santa Anita Race Track where she wore a mink coat.
Rockdale Country Club's first golf professional (later called Miami Golf and Country Club) was Ed Dudley.
1922 (story from a 1933 article by MNR Ross Jones)
Back in the dim dark ages of 1922, when golf was at its height in Miami, Oklahoma, G.C. Warren of Tampa, Florida, then in charge of the old Brownhead mine near Pitcher, became interested in the Miami County club course.
Warren was a golf enthusiast, and way back in the Georgia canebrakes before he came to the mining district in 1921 he had become interested in a youthful caddy at a Tampa course. He was so firmly convinced that in the young aspirant of the greens there was a material of champions, that he had made a mental note concerning him. That caddy was Ed Dudley.
The Miami Country club was forming plans to hire a new professional for the course. Warren heard the discussion and his mind flashed back to that sunny southland where this same youthful caddy was still plugging away, but now advanced to the rank of caddy master. He immediately began to canvass the executives of the country club here, and was high in his praises of what he believed was a coming star and an already finished product of the fairway.
The country club officials heeded his high praises and the result was that the caddy came from Tampa to Miami, Oklahoma. It was his first real chance to prove his prowess, and he set out to do it. It was a start and a start he wanted. Not yet out of his teens, he vowed that someday his name, Edward Dudley, would be known throughout the sporting world.
1923
In 1923, Ed branched out a bit. (At this time the Rockdale Country club was only four holes built in 1916.) In 1923 Ed Dudley and several members designed the layout for the new five hole, creating what was known as the original nine hole golf course). His duties at the Miami club didn’t keep him so very busy and he managed to work his way into a job at Bartlesville. He brought his younger brother, Bill, up from the South to assist him.
While in Bartlesville he picked up a few more things necessary in his golfing life, including among them a wife. The wife proved a great asset to him rather than a hold-back in his campaign, and his rise during the following year was almost phenomenal.
*From the time that Ed Dudley began his career in Miami,
Oklahoma he used his skills as a ball striker and his drive to make a name for
himself, as he moved from country club to country club, all the while playing
in state championships to major opens from coast to coast. Our home town newspapers kept the public up to date on Ed's golfing career.
1925 June 14 MNR (Tulsa, June 13) “Ed Dudley Wins State Open Golf Championship”
Ed Dudley, professional at Oakhill Country Club in Joplin, Missouri, and darkest of the dark horses, today won the open golf championship in 36 holes medal play. Dudley’s score (gross) was 151. The match was the first event in the sixteenth annual tournament of the Oklahoma State Golf association.
Bill Creavey, Oklahoma City professional, took second. Dudley, who formerly lived at Bartlesville and Miami, made his low score by playing a consistent game throughout. His approach shots, his opponents said, were almost perfect. He played the third nine of the 36 holes in 34, one under the course par. Dudley’s morning round shows 39 38 for a 77; afternoon rounds of 34 40 for a 74 total of 151. (No golf course was named for this event.)
1925 September 10 MNR Ed Dudley, formerly professional at the Rockdale Country club here, and now acting in the same capacity with the Oak Hill club in Joplin, is continuing on his way toward a high place in the golfing firmament. Tuesday he tied his own record on the Oak Hill course by shooting a 64. Dudley went out in 31 and came in with a 33. His record for nine holes is 29. In order to shoot his remarkable score, Dudley bagged two eagles and seven birdies. He went over par on only one hole, No.1.
1925.11.16 JOPLIN HERALD “Ed Dudley”
Just as many predicted when Ed Dudley gained so much fame during the summer, he will not be at Oak Hill next year. Dudley has accepted an offer of the Oklahoma City Club and will begin his duties there in January. Dudley has been at Oak Hill two seasons. He succeeded Dewey Longworth. He captured the Oklahoma championship last season at Tulsa and came near bagging the Missouri Open at Shifferdecker.
32.1.3 MNR NEA SERVICE SPORTS WRITER, by CLAIRE BUCKY.
If all those interested in lowering their golf score would send a stamped and self-addressed envelope to Edward Bishop Dudley, Jr, Wilmington, Del. The mail would be flooded. The recent batting averages of big league golfers for 1931 showed that Ed Dudley was the champion swinger in the P.G.A. league, yet they didn’t tell half the story. Big Ed has chiseled just exactly four strokes per 18 holes off his average in championship play since he stepped into the big time five years ago. His record since 1927 might well be lesson No.1 in the golf primer.
According to P.G.A figures Dudley whacked the 1931 “balloon ball” 71 times or 1-3 times per 18 holes in 30 championship matches. From that, try to figure Dudley a bush-whacker! Yet, he was only a big, smiling southerner of twenty-four and some ambitions in 1927. Somehow he managed to shoot enough sub-par golf in Oklahoma that winter to give him an average of approximately 75 strokes for every round of championship play.
Not bad, thought Ed, so he went after the big prizes. He wintered in California the next year, showed them some fancy shots and established a connection there. Meantime, he lopped off another stroke in his average, bringing it down to a fraction under 74 strokes.
From the major league golfers fortune-hunting in California, Dudley learned that he would attract more attention by moving east. He did, settling in the Philadelphia district, and soon became a member of Walter Hagen’s Ryder cup team. That was 1929. His average in more than 100 championship rounds was pared to 73.
Recognition then came. His fine golf strokes, his big colorful physique and his ever-ready smile were sought for all the events of 1930. He was close in all of them, but won only two minor titles. Still his batting average improved to 73 strokes a round.
Now Dudley faces a new campaign with the best average in the game. He’s a 71 average man, a sub-par shooter. He can spot Walter Hagen and Harry Cooper one stroke each. Gene Sarazen and George Von Elm two strokes each, Tommy Armour and Leo Diegel three strokes apiece and beat them, the figures say.
Smiling Ed is a chance-taker with nerves of steel in the pinches. Von Elm tied Johnny Golden for the Agua Calinte prize of $10,000 and then twice tied Billy Burke in the National Open. But Dudley put $2,000 on one shot in the Los Angeles Open last year and made it. It was the eighteenth hole-a 445 yarder and dog-legged hole to boot in the final round. Ed’s drive went 230 yards straight down the middle. From there all he had to do was pitch to the green surrounded on three sides by a ditch with a 10 foot drop. His second shot went wild. It went too far to the right and stopped behind a big tree. Besides the tree in front of him there was the ditch to the right again and the postage stamp green some 75 yards beyond both.
The safe and sane shot would have been back to the fairway. But Dudley was neither safe nor sane. He laid back his pitcher, took a smooth swing at the ball and lofted it over the big tree to the tiny green. He was down in one putt for a 68 and $3,500.
(This was the first article where I have seen Ed Dudley referred to as “Big Ed” or “Smiling Ed” Dudley. He received the nickname “Big Ed” because he stood 6’4” and weighed 200 pounds.)
*For better images of Ed Dudley please search his name and images.
1933 February 2 MNR by Ross Jones "Job as Pro on Bobby Jones "Ideal Course" Climaxes Golf Career Begun Here by Ed Dudley."
The greatest honor ever conferred upon Dudley, though, came recently (1933). Bobby Jones, the sentimental gentleman from Georgia, built what he calls an ideal golf course—probably the outstanding course in the land. Someone was needed to take charge of it, for Bobby spends some time at his law practice, as well as on the links. (We know this golf course as Augusta National, home of the Masters Golf Tournament.)
Ed Dudley got that job, and became the first golf professional at Augusta, Georgia.
1938 May 27 MNR (Toledo, Ohio) Big Ed Dudley of Philadelphia and Ky Laffoon, the Miami, Oklahoma star, ripped eight strokes off par today with a 63 to beat Lawson Little and Jimmy Demeret 6 up, snatching the lead at the end of the first round of the $4,600 Inverness Invitational best-ball matches. Little and Demeret had a 69.
*The stories show the attributes of Dudley, not only in Oklahoma but in the years after he was appointed the first head professional job at Augusta National, by Bobby Jones, the designer. Among Dudley's most famous students were President Dwight Eisenhower, singer Bing Crosby, and comedian Bob Hope.
1942 September 25 MNR “Dudley and Bing”
Ed Dudley, the pro golf star and Bing Crosby, the movie crooner, played one unscheduled match in the state when they stopped in Oklahoma on their recent bond-selling tour. That was over the Miami Country club course, where Big Ed served as professional 22 years ago.
Dudley and Bing stopped at Miami on their way to Tulsa. Dudley wanted to pay a call on his old friend, Jack Guild, now pro at the Miami layout. Big Ed recalled that when he was at Miami the club had sand greens back in 1920—the year he started his meteoric rise in the golfing world that has carried him to the present rank as one of the nation’s best and President of the Professional Golf Association.
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| Note the signature of Crosby across the bottom of the tee top. |
Crosby and Dudley didn’t attempt to tear the course apart on their leisurely round of golf with Mrs. George L. Coleman, Jr., and Miss Patty Fullerton, Miamians. In fact, no score cards were kept.
There are numerous journal stories about Big Ed Dudley with photographs. The websites listed below are some of the best stories that recall the years when Ed’s name was well known.
“DID YOU KNOW”
Ed Dudley saved golf during World War II?
Dudley's Augusta Years Nearly Lost to History
Edward Bishop Dudley (February 19, 1901 – October 25, 1963).
* For other stories about golf and Miami, Oklahoma please click on the link to my personal blog Literally Letty
For previous stories of Dudley and the Rockdale Country Club please click on the link Rockdale Country club 1914-1929
*For the sake of the “Timeline of Miami Country Club” I have chosen to use the exact words from the Miami New Record writers because they date the times and the language of golf, and the cultural standards from the war and depression years.
