MIAMI GOLF AND COUNTRY CLUB 1930-39--Man of the Decade

 

GOLF'S MAN OF THE DECADE--GENE SARAZEN

1930-39

January 16, 1940

(Author's note: I selected this article because my father thought of Sarazen as a role model and fellow competitor. In the golf shop of the 1950's my father arranged a dozen pictures of professional golfers who were stunning examples of professional golf. I never met Sarazen but I remember his picture on the wall along with Snead, Hogan, Jackie Burke, and others.)

1940 January 16 MDNR AP article by  Dillion Graham

Golf's man of the decade must be an internationalist, one who won on both sides of the Atlantic. He must be an athlete who shone both under the strain of medal play, where a single sliced putt brought disaster, and in match play, where psychology sometimes takes hold and where nerves must be of steel.

Our nominee is that stubby little Roman, Gene Sarazen, a cocky and courageous competitor who captured virtually all the laurels offered to a professional golfer. Looking back over the Thirties one can find a handful of standout golfers. The most recent sensations were Ralph Guldahl and Sam Snead. The stoop-shoulder Norwegian's game was characterized by great finishing bursts like those that brought him two successive National Open championships. In the first of these triumphs he set a new scoring mark of 281. Guldahl also won the Western Open three straight years, copped the Augusta Masters' and was second in the Open in 1933. 

Snead was the good-looking young glamor boy of the decade, a long hitter and a low scorer, a big money-winner, a naïve West Virginia "hill-billy" who rushed out of obscurity to become a top figure in no time at all. Snead almost won the Open in his first bid, finishing two shots behind Guldahl in 1937. Last summer he had the blue ribbon all but won, then blew up on the last hole and kicked it away. 

Sarazen won all six of the major championships, five of them in the Thirties. In 1932 he garnered both the U.S. and the British Open crowns, setting a scoring record in England. A year later he won the Professionals' match play tournament. In 1935 he scored his famous "double-eagle" to tie Craig Wood and win the playoff. He was the Western Open champion in 1939 and the Metropolitan ruler in 1925. Once he finished second and twice he wound up third in the British Open. 

*Sarazen was the first of five golfers to earn the career grand slam, along with Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods.  Information from The Squire Gene Sarazen

** For the sake of the “Timeline of Miami Country Club” I have chosen to use the exact words from the newspaper writers because they date the times and the language of golf, and the cultural standards from the war and depression years.

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