Who's going to be Second
by HENRY LONGHURST
From It Was Good While It Lasted 1941
IF I WERE CAST UP ON A DESERT ISLAND, WHICH THE LORD DEFER, AND WERE PERMITTED to choose one man as mv companion in exile, I sometimes think I should call for that great philosopher and good companion, Walter Hagen.
The prospect of being cast upon a desert island with a golfer is one to fill the mind with a horrid anticipation. But to Hagen, third greatest golf plaver of all time, golf was only - a means to an end. He used it as Gene TunneN used prize-fighting, and as Henry Cotton, as I think you will find, will turn out to have used golf.
Hagen was bigger than the game by which he rose to fame. In any walk of life into which he might have drifted he'd have been a success. He probably stuck to golf because it brought himwith the least trouble the things he most desired from life wealth, luuxury-, travel, the limelight, and the company - of famous men and women-on level terms.
That he made a million dollars from golf is certain. It is equally certain that he will not die a rich man. "Easy come, easy go," was Hagen's motto with money, and maybe he was right.
My own affection for Hagen, whose name, incidentally, rhymes with "pagan," not with "jargon," bordered almost on hero-worship. What a character! Staggering self-assurance! wit and Good humour; a bronzed, impudent Countenance with a wide-open smile; inexhaustible zest for life; and a unique ability to combine wine, women, and song with the serious business of winning golf championships - that was Hagen. A fellow whose like youu meet once in a lifetime.
His golf exactly matched his personality. Often brilliant; never, never dull. He won the open championship of this country - four times and ot his own United States twice, and he made more bad shots in doing so than the man who finished second would make in a month. Hc finished at the top because his powers of recovery were almost superhuman. When he won his first championship at Sandvvich, he went through six rounds without taking a six, yet four times he was still in a bunker beside the green in three.
It was only natural that such a man should capture the imagination of the crowd. At first they resented his swaggcr and his multi-hued attire. On one regrettable occasion in the early dayss they even clapped when he missed a shot. But that soon passed when they came to understand the real Hagen, and long after he was past his prime they flocked round with him like sheep.
He took them through all the emotions. He would play a succession of holes as though divinely inspired, while they marvelled at his skill. Then from a clear sky would come a stroke of unbelievable inaccuracy - a wild slice, or a"top," or a quick, semicircular hook and the heart of the duffer warmed to the god that could descend to the level of man. And then,when all wwas apparently lost, he would extricate himself with a recovery which to the faithful seemed nothing less than a miracle.
Where other men strove vainly for consistent perfection, it was part of Hagen's philosophy, typically enough, to expect his quota of downright bad shots in every round he played. He expected them so they did not upset him, as they did the others, when they came. He was, of course, the showman par excellence the master golfer-entertainer. No matinee idol ever had a stronger hold on his audience. I recall a tournament at Porthcawl, when his days of winning championships were already, over. Hagen, still in London, was informed that he was to he partnered next day with a certain British Ryder Cup player and that they were to start at 10:30 a.m.
"I'll start at three said Walter.
He is the only man in the game, who Would not have been disqualified. Instead, they meely replicd: well, you shall start at three."
word went round the little town, and no one bothered to watch the morning play. They stored their energy for the afternoon. The master arrived in a huge Daimler saloon - I can see him now - seated in the small space left by a number of cabin trunks. He had his feet up, and genialy waed a large cigar. In the front seat sat his sixteen year-old son, junior,
Hagen knew he had not the remotest chance of winning the tournament. So did every One else. But did that make any difference? Not a bit. Every spectator on the course was there at three to see him drive off. Thcr followed him eagerly, to the end. He took eighty-one.
Next day they werc, there again. Hagen by this time had no chance of even qualifying for the final day's play, but who cared-, He played deplorably and again took eighty-one. Everv one was happy. They had seen Hagen play golf....
Hagen had- and I suppose I must use the past tense, for though he's only forty-eight now, the days of his glory - are past an overwhelming confidence in his own powers. "Waal, who's going to be second'" he would drawl as he strolled out to the first tee. Then he would win - and win against the best competition the world could offer. His imitators cried: "Who's going to be second?" and then finished twentieth.
Innumerable tales, some of them true, are told of his irrepressible self-assurance. Perhaps The most characteristic concerns the finish of his Hoylake championship. He frittered the shots away in in his last round and was out in 40 or 41. At any rate, he had to come home in 36, and knew it, to beat Ernest Whitcombc's total of 302 and there is no tougher finish in the world than the last five holes at Hoylake.
He got by the tenth with a four and drove into a bunker at the Alps (the short eleventhnth). He blasted it out and holed the putt. Bunkered again at the twelfth, he holed a whoppcr for his four. Then his tee shot to the short thirteenth floated away into the sand, and that, surly, was the end. There were no strokes to be picked up on the last five holes, even by Hagen, and a four at the thirteenth must cost him the championship. He flipped the ball neatly out to within a few feet and got his three.
And so he came to the seventeenth needing two fours to win the Open. At the seventccnth he played what must stand as one of the greatest iron shots of all time, a long, low shot that ran nimbly - through the narrow opening and lay eight feet from the hole. A three there would clinch it, but he rolled the ball casually - along and missed it. Four to win! Every man in Hoylake, and half Liverpool, as it seemed, crowded round the last green. Watchers craned their necks from every window.
Hagen hit his second shot right over the back into the long grass. His approach, not bad in the circumstances, ran within eight or nine feet of the hole. One putt to win!
Where most men would have spent an age in preparation, Hagen strolled up to his putt and with scarcely - a preliminary glance ran it into the hole.
As he walked from the green, having duly been embraced by his wife, a colleague of mine said to him: "You seemed to treat that putt very casually, Hagen. Did you know you had it to win ;,. "Sure I knew I had it to win" drawled Walter, "but no man ever beat mein a playoff!". . .
Life has been very much the richer for having knon Hagen. He was the most colourful, spectactular personality cast up by the game of golf, and will take his place in sporting historv with the giants with "W.G." Jack Dempsy, Babe Ruth. Their statistical records may have been surpassed, but they stay on their pedestals, men who became legends in their own lifetime.
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| Hagen gets a kiss from his wife after winning the Claret Jug at Hoylake in 1924 |