Bill of Rights Golf uses the framework of none holes of golf to test your knowledge of the Bill of Rights.

Orville Moody has died. Moody won 21 professional events, all but one on the Senior Tour. The one exception was his 1969 US Open victory. That victory is more significant because it was the last time a player won after local and sectional qualifying.

Moody won the US Open just 15 months after ending his 14 year Army Career. His nickname on tour was “Sarge.”

A featherie golf ball dating to the “Old” Tom Morris era is expected to fetch as much as $50,000 at a UK Auction in July

Featheries were hand sewn leather balls stuffed with goose feathers. To make one, a pile of goose feathers large enough to fill a top hat were boiled and packed into a boiled, hand sewn cowhide cover. As the ball cooled, the cow hide would shrink, while the feathers would expand. This created a very taut and ball. They may also have been painted.

The balls were expensive at the time, because each represented a half day’s work for a ball maker. In current dollars, they would cost as much as $400 each.

Feathers came into vogue in the 1600s, and lasted until the mid-1800s, when they were replaced by the gutta percha ball.

Here’s a list of all of the past US Open Champions, the club where the Open was held, and the winning score. The US Open’s past winners are listed from the earliest US Open to the most recent

With the EDS Byron Nelson as this week’s PGA Tour attraction, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a brief look at the man for whom the tournament is named. Nelson is just one of two professional golfers with a PGA Tour tournament as his namesake (Arnold Palmer is the other).

Byron Nelson is primarily remembered today for his remarkable 1945 season, in which he won 11 straight tournaments—and 18 overall. It’s a record that likely will never be broken, even by Tiger Woods. He won 31 of 54 tournaments over the 1944 - 1945 seasons and then did the unthinkable: he retired from professional golf at the age of 36. He had by that time, achieved his goal of earning enough to buy a ranch in Texas.

“When I was playing regularly, I had a goal,” Nelson once said. “I could see the prize money going into the ranch, buying a tractor, or a cow. It gave me incentive.”

Nelson had 63 wins between 1932 and 1946, including the Masters in 1937 and 1942, the U.S. Open in 1939 and the PGA Championship in 1940 and 1945.

Some have discounted his victories, saying that during the war years, he was playing against a limited field. However, the 1945 was at the end of the war, and among the players he defeated that year were Sam Snead, Ben Hogan and Jimmy Demaret (all of whom had victories that year). It also should be remembered that in golf, you don’t play against the field as much as you play against the course. In 1945, Nelson destroyed the courses with a 68.33 scoring average, a single season record that stood for 55 years (broken by Tiger Woods in 2000). With a 68 average, he was going to win, no matter who he was playing against.

It’s also recently been revealed that Nelson likely won 12 in a row that year, but always was too much of a gentleman to mention it.

Nelson was home during the war years because of a blood condition, sometimes reported as hemophilia.

The first inductee into the World Golf Hall of Fame, Nelson was given the PGA Tour’s lifetime achievement award in 1997 and was posthumously awarded a Congressional Golf Medal in 2006.

Nelson is considered one of the fathers of the modern golf swing.  His long, smooth motion, combined with more hip action than in earlier eras to get the most out of the “new fangled” steel shafts. He was so consistent that the USGA equipment testing machine is named the “Iron Byron.” A video of the swing is below.

However much Nelson is remembered for his on-course achievements, however, his real legacy may be in the very large number of golfers—both amateur and professional—that he mentored over the years. Nelson apparently always had time to encourage literally thousands of young players, to give them a lesson, and to write them letters. Among those he helped: Tom Watson, Ken Venturi, Scott Verplank, and Ben Crenshaw.

Tiger Woods had this to say about Nelson:

I’ll never forget when he pulled me aside ... and basically gave his opinion on my game and things that might be pitfalls in the future, what I should do. I was pretty impressionable, a really young kid, and he was a guy I idolized. He didn’t have to do that. It really touched me. Without a doubt, Mr. Nelson has been one of the role models of my life.

By all accounts, Nelson was a gentleman in every sense of the word.  A story about Nelson in Mark Frost’s The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever, illustrates the point. In mid 1950s, Nelson was traveling with Ken Venturi, playing exhibition matches, and mentoring the young rising star:

In each exhibition they played against the host club’s head professional and reigning amateur champion in a best-ball match. At every stop, Byron made a point of inquiring who held the local scoring record, which usually belonged to one or the other of their opponents that day. Byron told Ken that wherever he went, no matter how well he was playing, he should never break that record as a show of respect to his host; that was the way gracious visitors were supposed to behave.

Jack Nicklaus on Byron Nelson:

I think the only thing that rivals Byron’s greatness on a golf course is the manner in which he conducted his life - as a gentleman, a role model and an ambassador.

That Byron Nelson has a tournament named after him is a fitting tribute. I just hope that it remains his memorial for many, many years to come.

For Nelson’s career PGA Tour record, see below: