GOLF
A Game with an Elitist Reputation
Like tennis, golf in America was a game that had grown around the nation's country clubs. Its participants were white and affluent—men and women of leisure who could afford to spend four hours of their day touring the lush, rolling links that were cared for by those who could not afford to play the game.
The Hogan Era
In the 1950s, however, golf was no longer just a game for the idle rich: the game became a sport. This transformation had much to do with a wiry, poker-faced Texan—Ben Hogan. Hogan attacked the golf course with a single-minded ferocity that came closer to evoking an image of a linebacker than that of a golfer. His mental and physical toughness were beyond question. After suffering serious injuries in a 1949 car crash, he came back to win the 1951 Masters. His win at the 1951 U.S. Open, however, was the one that stunned sports fans. That year the Open was held at long and treacherous Oakland Hills in Birmingham, Michigan. After shooting an unheard-of final-round score of three-under-par sixty-seven, Hogan announced with the grim arrogance of a pugilist, "I'm glad that I brought this course, this monster, to its knees."
Changing of the Guard
By the mid 1950s it had become clear that the era of Hogan was approaching an end. With the old guard, consisting of Hogan, Jimmy Demaret, and Sam Snead, no longer golf's dominant
force, many wondered if the sport would return to being a game. By the close of the decade, however, a new generation of stars was on the rise. In 1958 Arnold Palmer of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, won the Masters with a game and a swing seemingly more suited for a public course than for Augusta National—one of golf's sternest tests. He gripped his club as if he were attempting to choke the shaft to death and would beat down on the ball with all his might. In the 1960s Palmer and his blue-collar style of play were responsible for golfs unprecedented popularity. Middle America began to take to the links in droves.
OUR GOLFING PRESIDENT
Although his score for a round of eighteen rarely broke ninety, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had much to do with the increasing popularity of golf. By the time he entered the White House in 1953, he had already gained a reputation as a golf addict, and during his two-term presidency he took great delight in playing highly publicized rounds with golfing greats such as Bobby Jones and Ben Hogan. In February 1953 the Public Golf Association offered to build a putting green on the south lawn of the White House. The green was placed just outside his office window, and on his way to and from work he would stop to practice his approach shots and putts. The many squirrels that populated the White House lawn, however, found the green an ideal site for burying acorns and walnuts. Furious, Eisenhower told the Secret Service, "The next time you see one of those squirrels go near my putting green, take a gun and shoot it." Secret Service men convinced the President that deadly force did not have to be used: traps were set and the squirrels were relocated.
Source:
Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984).
Women Turn Professional
Women's golf came of age in the 1950s. Not only did Babe Zaharias-Didrikson help found the Ladies' Professional Golf Tour in 1949, she won all three major tournaments (U.S. Open, Titleholders, and Western Open) in 1950. It is hard to imagine just how good an athlete she was: winning Olympic medals in 1932 and leading national championship teams in softball. Zaharias won nine major championships in her all-too-brief career, dying of cancer at the age of forty-two on 27 September 1956. As founding mother of women's professional golf, however, she made it possible for talented golfers to prosper playing the game.
Sources:
Tom Flaherty, The U.S. Open [1895-1965] (New York: E. P. Button, 1966).
