Gene Sarazen on Walter Hagen

Extracted fromThirty Years of Championship Golf by Gene Sarazen with Herbert Warren Wind

Bob [Jones] was a fine man to be partnered with in a tournament. Congenial and considerate, he made you feel that you were playing with a friend, and you were. At the same time, in a unique and wondrous way, Bob quietly unleashed the most furious concentration of any golfer, in those days when it was Jones versus the field. This arduous dedication to the job at hand left him spent and weary after each round. Bob never hung around the locker room long after his day's play was over. Hagen-you could never get him out. The two great champions were completely dissimilar in their attitudes toward crowds. Jones was always polite toward his idolatrous galleries, but I think he regarded them as an element that could deter his concentration if he let it invade his thoughts. Hagen loved the crowd. He hated to have to leave his gallery at the conclusion of a match, and did everything he could to postpone that painful parting. In their one man-against-man meeting in Florida in 1926, Walter administered a decisive lacing to Bob, but it is notable that Walter never was able to win an Open championship in which Jones was entered. Walter had Jonesitis as bad as the rest of us.

Hagen was the poorest wooden-club player of all the great champions. He swayed on his tee-shots and fairway woods. It was the rare round on which he did not hook or slice at least three shots forty yards or more off line. After these chronic lapses, Hagen would have to walk into areas where Dr. Livingstone would have feared to tread.

To begin with, Hagen was the game's competitive genius. He could adjust himself to all conditions. He held his poise at crucial junctures, delivered his most telling, blows when they really counted. He had an amazing reservoir of strength. He could write off his mistakes with no decrease in his confidence. His golf philosophy was, "I'll miss shots and the other boys will miss them too, but I'll save them on the same hole and they won't be able to." He did, too, because he was a masterful short-iron player -I can't think of anyone who could touch him from 140 yards in.

Walter didn't sway on these short irons. He played them with a controlled brief pivot, and how he could feel that clubhead! There wasn't a type of pitch that he couldn't and didn't play, intentional draw shots, calculated fades, the high cut-shot, the low buzzer struck sharply on the downswing which bit like a bulldog, the sensitively gauged pitch-and-run-whatever shot was dictated by his lie, the speed of the green, and the position of the flag. (He also hit more beautiful half-tops than any other golfer.) In the traps-as I say, he was shaky about explosions and there wasn't a one of us who wasn't, Jones included-you ought to have seen those hands work! Walter could nip that ball as cleanly off the sand as if it were resting on top of a three-inch tee, this when the faintest fraction of an inch too much of the ball or too much of the sand spelled instant calamity. Walter won the 1928 British Open with just such a daring recovery on the last round from the difficult trap on the 15th at Sandwich, and this was but one of the numerous instances when he displayed his majestic ability under fire. And on the greens-there you saw that marvelous temperament operating. He putted from a partial crouch, the ball lined up off his left toe. You could play four or five rounds with the old boy before you saw him stroke one putt off the line. I've yet to see his equal as a consistent birdie-holer from 12 to 15 feet.

It was a cruel day for Walter, and indeed a sad one for all who love golf, when the years caught up with Hagen and he reluctantly retired. The British miss him as much as we do. The first question they still ask is, "How's Walter Hyegen?"

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