By Michael Arkush
The Met Area has produced its share of great golfers over the years. They include Walter Travis, the Australian native who captured two U.S. Amateurs and a British Amateur in the 1900s; Jerry Travers, who won four U.S. Amateurs and the 1915 U.S. Open; and Johnny Farrell, the 1928 U.S. Open champion (in a playoff over Bobby Jones) who picked up 22 victories, including seven in 1927. He also dated Fay Wray, the woman King Kong carried to the top of the Empire State Building.
Yet, as I researched my new book, The Golf 100: A Spirited Ranking of the Greatest Players of All Time, which came out April 1 and chronicles the best men and women since Old Tom Morris in the 1860s, one name from the Met Area rose to the top (No. 14). And stayed there: the Squire, Gene Sarazen, from Harrison, N.Y.
That wasn’t his original name, by the way; it was Eugenio Saraceni, the son of Sicilian immigrants.
Only he didn’t like the way it sounded when, as a teenager, he read it in a newspaper headline after recording a hole-in-one at a course in Bridgeport, Conn. “It sounded like a violin player,” he said. “So I changed it … I like the way (Sarazen) looked. It sounded like a golfer.”
Sarazen secured the first of seven major championships in the 1922 U.S. Open at Skokie Country Club outside Chicago. A month later, he captured his second, the PGA at Oakmont. He was only 20. A third followed in 1923, when he prevailed in another PGA.
Surprisingly, he didn’t win another major for another 10 years.
During the interim, he made a contribution that would impact the game for generations. He invented the sand wedge. Well, inventing is going a bit too far, as there had been an earlier version. But the one he developed is the one we’re familiar with today.
And he had Howard Hughes – yes, Howard Hughes – to thank.
When Hughes, a friend, showed him how to fly a plane, Sarazen had a revelation: “When I took off … I pulled the stick back and the tail went down and the nose of the plane went up. Something flashed in my mind, that my niblick should be lowered in the back … what I did was put a flange on the back of the club and angled it so that flange hit the sand first, not the front edge, which was now raised. It was just like the airplane when it took off.”
Sarazen, of course, is known best for his double eagle on No. 15 in the final round of the 1935 Masters (then referred to as the Augusta National Invitation Tournament), which tied him with Craig Wood; the Squire beat Wood by five strokes in an 18-hole playoff the following day.
For me, it was a blast gathering information about Sarazen – I only wish I had met him and seen the double eagle in person – just as it was learning a great deal about Travis, Travers, Farrell, and the 96 other men and women in the book.
I was constantly traveling back and forth between the past and present.
One day, I’m rooting for McIlroy to hold off Bryson DeChambeau in the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst. The next, I’m reading about Babe Didrikson Zaharias in the 1954 U.S. Women’s Open, which she won by 12 strokes … wearing a colostomy bag. I kept feeling like I was in a Twilight Zone episode.
A big motivation for me was to check in with some of the players I got to know in the late 1990s, such as Hale Irwin. I covered Irwin when he was dominating the senior tour. Listening to him again, as he was approaching 80, he sounded exactly the same. I found that comforting. Same for Gary Player, who is approaching 90. He, too, hasn’t changed one bit.
I don’t for a second assume I got everything right. Because as much as I went with the numbers – my metric system placed a heavy emphasis on major championships – I factored in subjective elements as well. For example, I gave bonus points to those who had a huge impact on the game, such as Young Tom Morris, Francis Ouimet, and Bobby Jones.
One thing I’m certain of, however, is that Gene Sarazen is the best golfer ever from the Met Area.