Byron Nelson: The Most Remarkable Year in the History of Golf - Hardcover

Companiotte, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1572438134 ISBN 13: 9781572438132

Publisher: Triumph Books, 2006

Synopsis

Byron Nelson: The Most Remarkable Year in the History of Golf provides an unparalleled examination of the most amazing feat in golf history. In 1945, Nelson won a jaw-dropping 11 consecutive victories on the tour. Overall, he won 18 tournaments that season, finishing either first or second in 25 of the 30 PGA events that year. No golfer since has come close to such perfection. Nelson accomplished his feats over 60 years ago, long before Tiger Woods began setting records, before Jack Nicklaus won his sixth Masters title at age 46, before Arnold Palmer won the 1960 U.S. Open, before any of the historic wins by golf greats Tom Watson, Lee Trevino, Nick Faldo, or Greg Norman. Byron Nelson achieved what no other golfer will ever likely come close to doing again.

About this title

About the Author

John Companiotte is the author of Jimmy Demaret: The Swing’s the Thing, The PGA Championship: The Season’s Final Major, and the coauthor of Golf Rules & Etiquette Simplified. Byron Nelson was a professional golfer who won numerous tournaments in his career but is most famous for his 1945 season. Phil Mickelson is a professional golfer who has won four major championships and a total of 39 events on the PGA Tour, including three Masters Tournaments.

From the Inside Flap

Byron Nelson: The Most Remarkable Year in the History of Golf celebrates one of the greatest achievements in all of sports: Byron Nelson winning 11 PGA Tour events in a row during 1945, with 18 total wins for the year. Both accomplishments still stand as PGA Tour records. The closest any golfer has come to Nelson s streak is six wins in a row (Ben Hogan in 1948 and Tiger Woods from 1999 to 2000) and 13 victories in one year (Hogan in 1946). The consensus is that Nelson s records will never be broken.

Ben Crenshaw said of Nelson s record of 11 straight victories in 1945, "It will stand forever. Jackie Burke won four in a row one time, and he told me that to do that, he literally did everything right hit every shot, holed every putt, and had every good break in the world besides. The mind boggles at 11 straight and the pitch of perfection that had to entail."

Each victory had its own challenges and special circumstances. While seven of the wins were by at least a 7-stroke margin, including a 13-stroke margin at Seattle, two of the wins came after playoffs. In New Orleans, Nelson began the final round 5 strokes behind the leader and eventually won the event in a playoff. In the Charlotte playoff against Sam Snead, it took 36 holes to resolve the contest in Nelson s favor.

This book provides a vivid narrative of Nelson s accomplishments during 1945, describing each tournament in which Nelson competed, the exhibition matches, and his personal activities. By the end of that year Nelson had won events from Phoenix to New Orleans, from Miami to Seattle. His victories required exceptional play, sustained focus through the year, and a determination to always play his best. In 1945 Byron Nelson played better than anyone else has over the course of a year on the PGA Tour.

Reviews

This workmanlike history of Byron Nelson's landmark year on the PGA tour in 1945--11 victories in a row, 18 in total--sticks mostly to shot-by-shot accounts, but they are some shots! Nelson's feat remains one of the most remarkable in the history of sports, but it has always been somewhat disparaged on the grounds that it took place during World War II, when many touring pros were in the service. Companiotte, drawing heavily on Nelson's autobiography, How I Played the Game (1993), shows the fallacies in that argument--most of the leading pros played at least some if not all of 1945--but acknowledges the absence of Ben Hogan through most of the year. This would have been a more compelling account if the author had developed the narrative, adding a sense of the personalities involved and the human context behind the scores, much like Michael Blaine was able to do in the recent King of Swings, about amateur champion Johnny Goodman. Still, for those interested in exactly how Nelson did what he did, this volume delivers the goods. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Triumph Books
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1572438134
• ISBN 13: 9781572438132
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 236