The Style of Walter Hagen
By O.B. Keeler
A Close inspection of America's leading professional
The American Golfer 1923
Walter Hagen, rated the premier professional match-play golfer in the world, has been about all the kinds of champion a professional golfer can be in America-National Open, Western Open, Metropolitan Open, P. G. A. Champion, North and South Open, Florida West Coast Open, and a good many more. But his winning of the British Open in 1922 probably was the crest of his championship career to date, being the more noteworthy by reason of a startling contrast. In his first venture in that classic three years previously, he finished a sorry fifty-fifth in the great field, so his bound into first place caused even our staid British cousins to raise their eyebrows a bit.
Hagen is a thoroughly interesting type to study, on the course and off it; and before the end of this little sketch is reached I hope to let you in on a factor of his amazing success as a golfer that, to my way of thinking, has at least as much to do with that success as his fine, sound style and his powerful play. Perhaps more; you can't tell about such things. No man can be a golf champion these days without a sound style and plenty of power. But there are many who possess both these requisites and are not champions, and have not been champions, and very possibly never will be champions.
The first impression you get of Hagen's golfing style is that it is free, slashing, and of enormous power. I was interested in the views of Damon Runyon, the well-known sport writer, who saw his first golf at the National Open Championship at Skokie in 1922. It was getting the view of an intelligent chap and a good writer utterly unsophisticated in that particular line. He called Walter Hagen "The Big Fellow" in his articles.
And it was easy to see where Mr. Runyon got the idea. Hagen is not a "big fellow," in the sense that Dempsey and Firpo and Ted Ray are "big fellows." Hagen is a well-proportioned man of about five feet ten, weighing, I should guess, around 175; not a "big fellow" at all.
But watching him tear into a golf ball for a full shot, with the tremendous drive of his right side carrying all his weight far forward onto his left foot, it is impossible to escape an impression of bulk; the vast power of the man seems to dilate him; the action is expansive, in a way. I do not wonder that Runyon called him "The Big Fellow."
And this dynamic style is most interesting toanalyze; easy, too, if you go about it the right way, taking the swing by sections and not allowing yourself to be dazed by the smashing effect of the stroke as a whole.
Walter shoots from a firm foundation. He employs an exceptionally wide stance; I know of no golfer of his height whose feet are more spread for the full stroke. The stance is fairly open; it has to be, to permit the astounding use of his right side that is one of his leading characteristics.
As he takes his stance and addresses the ball, you may note another Hagen characteristic. Since you took up golf you have been told to keep your eye on the ball; but have you ever paused to wonder which eye? There is a master-eye in golf, the same as in rifle shooting; and in most golfers, as in most riflemen, it is the right eye. With Walter Hagen it is the left eye, as with Bobby Jones. Offhand, they are the two leading exponents, so far as my observation goes, of the left-eye style of address-and it is the style that favors the righthand golfing swing, because with the left eye lined on the ball the head naturally is turned slightly in the direction the body must turn in the pivot that brings the club back; hence, there is less strain in keeping the head in one place as the backswing progresses.
Hagen and Bobby Jones, when concentrating on a stroke to the limit, give the impression of "cocking" the head, so immobile is the cranial pose as the club starts back. You may see this in any photograph of these players at the moment of address.
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Hagen's swing is neither upright nor flat, but is nearer the former. He takes the club back smoothly to a position just dipping past the horizontal; a full swing, it would be called these days, though far short of the "St. Andrews' swing" of a generation ago. The left arm all through the stroke, until the ball has gone, is rigidly straight; but that is a characteristic of all first-class players, practically; only Harry Vardon, the Old Master, eases the backswing at the top by a slight bend of the left elbow, and he brings it out straight again early in the downswing.
At the top of the swing, Hagen's right leg is rigidly braced and his weight seems to have moved back on to it, but the left foot is gripping the ground firmly; the foundation is solid all through the stroke. But once the downswing is under way, Hagen does not hesitate to shoot the left hip into a leading position, and at impact his right heel is well off the ground-his weight is coming through with a rush as his right side goes driving on. But his head remains still until the ball has gone; the rush of his right side fairly yanks it from its position. I never have seen Walter play in a hat or cap, but I firmly believe that that terrific snap would flip his head from under its covering. He finishes the stroke with his right shoulder the nearest portion of his anatomy to the objective, and his weight so far forward that a photograph of his finish looks as if he were running after the ball.
This is his big shot, and it is a grand effort, and an impressive one. He is one of the greatest wood-club players of our generation; perhaps of golfing history. But there is another stroke of which he is master, a wee one, that I fancy even more as a bacon-bringer.
This is the chip-shot, that inestimable economist of golf; the greatest shot-saver of all the game, when it is working for you. And Walter is peculiarly adept with it.
A casual inspection of Walter's game around the green might incline you to the notion that his chipping game is complex: he uses this club one time; that club another; a thirdeven a fourth-for a tiny shot up to the pin. But Walter has his very good reasons for the change of clubs, and as he explains it himself, the use of three or four different tools actually tends to simplify the business.
It all depends on the proportion of chip and roll he desires. If his ball is, say, twenty yards from the edge of the green, and the cup is pretty close to that side, Walter will take a mashie-niblick so as to get more chip than roll, lifting the ball over the intervening fairway, or rough, or trap, and dropping it on the smooth green with the brakes on it, so the roll is curtailed.
If the proportion is fifty-fifty, he will take a deep-faced mashie; and if he is close to the edge of the green and the cup is well back, he will use a mashie-iron or even a mid-iron, giving the shot less chip and more roll.
But in every shot of this nature, and with every club, Walter hits the ball the same way; a smart, crisp blow, the club just snipping the turf and taking the ball fairly in the back. That is the secret of simplicity in his chip shot. In place of varying the stroke to get more pitch and less roll, or vice versa, he varies the club to suit the situation-and hits the ball the same way every time.
To keep the body absolutely immovable-as essential in the chip shot as in putting-he keeps most of his weight on the left foot, well advanced. I do not recall any stance for any shot where his feet are not well separated; his putting stance is about the same as for the chip shot, with the weight well forward.
And permit me to say just here that when Walter Hagen prepares for a chip shot from any location close to the green, he is not trying merely to get the ball close to the cup; he is trying to hole out. And it is astonishing how many times he succeeds. And if the ball doesn't drop he usually has an easy putt for his next shot. Jerry Travers some ten or fifteen years ago, and Alex Smith, the one with a jigger, the other with a plain mashie, were Walter's nearest rivals I can recall at this important detail of play.
Hagen is, of course, a fine iron player, though I never have regarded his intermediate game as up to the long and short ends of it.
So much for the interesting mechanics of the first American home-bred to win the Blue Ribbon of British golf. Briefly I would set out in conclusion a factor that has nothing to do with style, yet has supplied the main impetus, I feel sure, for the brilliant career of the remarkable young man who started the season of 1923 by winning four of the first seven tournaments in which he played and at Belleair Heights, Florida, set a new record for a medal round in competition with a score of 62.
This factor is the competitive instinct, which I believe to be more highly developed in Walter Hagen than in any other modern golfer.
Walter Hagen never steps on a golf course except to win whatever match or competition he may be engaged in. As Ty Cobb will fight just as hard in an exhibition game against a college team as in a championship struggle in the American League, so Hagen "puts out" every time he takes his club in hand. He plays to win, and to win as decisively, as crushingly, as overwhelmingly as he can. A friendly match with Walter is a friendly match, all right-but he will beat you if he can, and as much as he can. He never eases up. In his famous match with Abe Mitchell, the Englishman who, it was said, had not lost a money-match in three seasons, Hagen was four down at the turn of the last round; but he won the match, with an outburst of birdies that swept the Englishman fairly off his feet.
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| This action shot shows Walter Hagen Lacing out a 250-yard drive down the long winding third fairway at Pelham, New York, during the final of this year's P.G.A. Championship. This hole is 530 yards in length. Hagen got his par-five, but it was'nt good enough as Sarazen, after driving 270 yards, played a 260-yard brassie shot to the center of the green. Nosmall part of the crowd was banked in the back of the tee, out of range of the camera - and on beyond the green. |
He plays that way in any game. On tour with his partner, Joe Kirkwood, and their manager, Bob Harlow, the three often played pool in the "tank towns," waiting for late trains. And I have it from Harlow that at the end of a four-hour session at pool, for no stakes at all, Hagen would be found playing the last rack with all the care, all the keenness, all the intent to win, that he displayed at the start.
"I believe," said Bob, "that if Walter got in a game of tiddledy-winks with a couple of kids on the nursery floor, he would try as hard to beat them as he did to win the British Open."
That, if you please, is the competitive instinct. Hagen cannot play any other way; he does not know what it is to ease up, winning or losing.
The finest example of that spirit I know of was shown in one of Walter's most disastrous performances: the British Open at Deal, in which he was hopelessly off his stride and finished fifty-fifth. Yet he played the closing holes of the last round with as much care and as much pains and as much determination as if he were aiming at first place. After the tournament he was asked why he didn't take it more easily. Walter grinned.
"Why," he confessed, "I found I had a chance to beat out the chap I was playing with for some place or other-fifty-fifth, it turned out-so I just kept on plugging."
The difference between fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth places was enough to make Walter Hagen put out all he had. It was the competitive instinct. Nothing else would have kept him "plugging."
And this is the factor of success I promised to tell you about. Walter Hagen is proverbially a fine sportsman; a courteous opponent; a good loser, when he loses. He never kicks about his luck; he takes the breaks as they come. Bob Jones once said to me:
"I love to play with Walter. He goes along, chin up, smiling away; never grousing about his luck, playing the ball as he finds it. He can come nearer beating luck itself than anybody I know."
And always and everlastingly, he plays to win. That is one reason he usually does.