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.

I showed my AP US History students a biography of Woodrow Wilson  today, and was amused that the following quote came up:

“Golf is an ineffectual attempt to put an elusive ball into an obscure hole with implements ill-adapted to the purpose.” -

The New York Times has an article on this year’s Professional Hickory Golf Championship. I’ve long wanted to don plus-fours or a linen suit and play with hickory clubs and a gutta percha.

In a salute to those stars of the 1920s and the history of golf, two dozen players showed up Monday for the second annual United States Professional Hickory Golf Championship. They walked the venerable 1922 Tom Bendelow course, carrying small bags of wooden-shafted clubs.

Men in ties, caps and argyle socks and women in skirts and stylish hats played low bump-and-run shots into the greens. They used clubs with names like mashie, brassie, niblick and jigger stamped into the tiny club heads, some irons looking more like straight razors than golf clubs. They played with replica rubber golf balls from the 1920s that usually landed at least 10 yards short of typical targets.

“It’s like we stepped into a time machine,” said Kevin Weickel, the 2011 North Florida Golf P.G.A. pro of the year and the tournament director of the P.G.A. Tour’s Children’s Miracle Network Hospital Classic in Orlando. “You almost see the ghosts of those old pros scattered around the first tee.”

He added: “Some of these old trees were here back in 1925, and they were a part of that tournament. Looking around today, it makes me wonder if this is my field of dreams.”

I saw this Soviet Space Propaganda poster on How to Be a Retronaut and it looks to me like that rocket cartoon is carrying a golf club.

Imitating Alan Shephard, perhaps?