History and Past Winners Past Results of the Colonial Invitational

Unlike Arnold Palmer and Byron Nelson, there’s no tournament named for Ben Hogan. But if there was one, it would be The Colonial. Hogan won here at the Colonial Invitational five times (1946, 1947, 1952, 1953, 1959) and considered the Colonial Country Club his home course.

The genesis and inspiration for the Colonial Invitational was the 1941 US Open, which was held at Colonial Country Club. It was the first US Open held south of the Mason-Dixon line, and was thought a huge success. Local organizers hoped to capitalize on that goodwill, and in 1946 launched The Colonial Invitational.

Much of the appeal of the Colonial is that it has been played on the same classic course since its inception. Indeed, it’s impossible to imagine the tournament not being held there. The club, which dates to 1936, was designed by John Bredemus and Perry Maxwell and has among its memorable vistas holes that extend along the length of the Trinity River.

The Colonial National Invitational had no title sponsor until 1988, when it became the MasterCard Colonial Invitational. In 2003, it was picked up by Bank of America. In 2007, it became the Crown Plaza Invitational At Colonial. The current purse is $6,200,000, with $1,116,000 going to the winner.

The Colonial winners’ list looks like a Hall of Fame roster. In addition to Hogan, there’s Palmer, Snead, Casper, Bolt, De Vicenzo, Stockton, Crenshaw, Nicklaus, Price, Watson and Mickelson (Tiger is curiously absent). The strength of the winners’ roster is in part due to the strength of field: The Colonial is an Invitational, with only the top 80 players on the previous year’s money list guaranteed a spot.

A unique tradition at the Colonial is the “Champion’s Choice.” Each year, former Colonial Invitational Champions select two young players to join the field who otherwise would be ineligible. Among the Champions Choices were Al Greiberger, Tom Weiskopf, Craig Stadler, Curtis Strange, Mark O’Meara, Paul Azinger and Davis Love. Dave Stockton won the tournament in the year he was selected.

While the Masters has the Green Jacket, the Colonial offers a Scottish tartan plaid jacket for its champions and committee chairmen. The tournament and Colonial Golf club also is marked by the engraved marble Wall of Champions near the first tee, which features the name and score of each of the tournament’s winners.

A random note: In 2003, Annika Sorenstam played the Colonial Invitational, becoming the first women to play a PGA Tour event since Babe Zaharias entered the Los Angeles Open.

Here are a couple of images of Byron Nelson from Life Magazine from 1945:

Turns out there’s a Byron Nelson High School. And they’ve written a very nice biography to explain how the man stands as a role model to the students. Here’s a key paragraph:

This was Byron Nelson. The youngster who sold his family’s garden produce. The kid who loved practicing chipping with his only golf club. The young man who decided to turn pro on a bus between Fort Worth and Texarkana. The club pro who dreamed of setting records in golf and then having a cattle ranch of his own. The gentle champion who had such a strong reputation for goodness and decency and humility and respect for others, that city leaders chose to name a tournament for him. The hero who invested all his talents in making that event a complete success. That is the man whose name now graces the campus of Byron Nelson High School.

Come visit us in person. You’ll see how we’re putting into practice the values that Byron both believed in and lived out in every aspect of his life. As former sports editor of the Dallas Daily News, Felix McKnight once said, I’ve known all of the greats in sports. Byron’s the only one who’s never disappointed me.

With the HP 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.”

By strange coincidence, the three great golfers of that era—Nelson, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead—all were born within seven months of each other. Two, Nelson and Hogan, caddied together at Glen Garden Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas. Their story is documented in a recent book: American Triumvirate: Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, and the Modern Age of Golf

A video of Nelson’s smooth 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:

Here’s a period photo of the gallery at the 1913 US Open, held at the Country Club at Brookline. That Open was famously won by the young Francis Ouimet against the heavily favored Harry Vardon.

The tale is told in the movie version of The Greatest Game Ever Played

and in the book, The Greatest Game Ever Played: Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and the Birth of Modern Golf

The Arnold Palmer Invitational is one of just two PGA Tour events named after former player (the other is the Byron Nelson). Played since 1979h at Palmer’s Bay Hill Club and Lodge, it’s the successor of the Florida Citrus Open.

The Palmer also is one of just five PGA Tour “Invitational” events, with a reduced field of 120 players, and no Monday Qualifying. The top 70 players from the previous year’s money list are the only guaranteed invitations.

The Florida Citrus Open began in 1966, and was played at the Rio Pinar golf club in Orlando. Palmer had purchased the Bay Hill Club and Lodge in 1976, and the tournament moved there in 1979 as the Bay Hill Citrus Classic. The Tournament’s first five years was as a full field open format. It became an invitational in 1984. Over the years, the tournament has been sponsored by the Citrus growers, Nestle, Hertz, Cooper Tires and MasterCard.

The tournament benefits the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, and the Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies.

Tiger Woods has won the tournament six times—including four in a row from 2000 to 2003. That’s a feat that has been matched only three other times on the tour. The low tournament was Payne Stewart’s 264 in 1987.

For some weeks now, the Romney camp has been lambasting Obama for the number of holes of golf he’s played during his term—which at last count was 1,656. Frankly, I think we should encourage it. We’d all be a lot better off if the Congress and the President spent MORE time golfing and less time messing with our lives.

But now the Obama Media are striking back. Here’s an article noting that Governor Romney actually lived in his private home on a golf course instead of the Governor’s mansion and played an estimated 13,000 holes of golf during his tenure.

Only it’s not Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney the article is referring to, but his father, Michigan Governor George Romney, who served from 1969 - 1973. I think the Obama Media is getting desperate. You can’t crucify a son for the “sins” of the father. If the tables were turned on this one, Obama would look very bad indeed.