Lord Byron Had a Fiery Side : New Book Reveals the Legendary Golfer Could Storm a Clubhouse

Byron Nelson stormed into the Augusta National clubhouse fuming. Friend and fellow competitor Paul Runyan assumed he had shot 80, but it turned out he’d fired a 66.

“He was almost apoplectic,” Runyan recalled. “He said if he’d had me putting for him he’d have broken 60.”

Nelson, who retired from competitive golf in 1946 at age 34, was said to have all the technical skills of other golfing greats but not the competitive fire. Now there’s a new book that goes a long way toward correcting that impression.

Sixty years after Nelson fumed in the Augusta locker room, golf connoisseurs have come to regard his first 18 in the 1937 Masters as a technically perfect round. He reached the greens on all four of Augusta’s par 5s in two shots and all the other greens in regulation--32 full swings, 34 putts.

More to the point, though, is the bitter dissatisfaction Nelson showed with a round that would have thrilled any other player, and his emergence that weekend as the Masters champion.

Author and editor Martin Davis, who has also worked on coffee-table books on Bobby Jones and Ben Hogan, makes this the central theme of his latest effort, “Byron Nelson, The Story of Golf’s Finest Gentleman and the Greatest Winning Streak in History.”

The book, due out this month, is built around 600 photos unearthed by Davis at the Temple University Urban Archive, and includes articles by Tom Watson, Ben Crenshaw, Dan Jenkins, Dave Anderson and Nick Seitz, and swing analysis by Ken Venturi.

The straight-hitting Nelson, “that tall Texan with the huge hands,” is best known for one of the most impressive streaks in sports history: 11 consecutive tournament victories in 1945.

Davis seeks to debunk the notion that Nelson won those wartime tournaments against token opposition. In fact, by the summer of 1945, the top golfers were returning to tournament play and their names--Hogan, Snead, Demaret and others--appear back in the pack in many of the tournaments Nelson won.

Anderson puts Nelson’s accomplishment in a class with Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, Johnny Unitas’ 47 games with a touchdown pass, and Martina Navratilova’s 74 consecutive matches without a loss. During a 30-month stretch, Jenkins notes, Nelson won 32 of the 69 events he entered.

“Nelson plays golf like a virtuoso,” Tommy Armour says in the book. “There’s no type of problem he can’t handle. High shots, low shots, with the wind and across it, hooks or fades. He has absolute control of all of them. He is the finest golfer I have ever seen.”

Tom Watson, who spent hundreds of hours with Nelson on the practice tee, said he never saw him hit “what I consider a wild shot.”

For a man after whom the USGA named a club testing machine--”Iron Byron”--there was a touch of monotony to Nelson’s game.

“At his peak,” wrote Herbert Warren Wind, “Byron erred so infrequently that it could be boring to watch him.”

In the 1930s, while a club professional at Ridgewood Country Club, N.J., some caddies foolishly bet that Nelson couldn’t hit a flag pole with a 3-iron shot off the stone patio.

“My first shot faded a little. It missed by 6 inches,” Nelson says in the book. “I drew my second shot--bang.”

As one of the early users of steel-shafted clubs, Nelson developed the modern golf swing, a technique that minimized the opening and closing of the hands. His swing was characterized by a ramrod straight left arm, a compact, three-quarters backswing, driving leg action, and a pronounced dip with the lower body that kept the club square well past impact.

Davis points out that Nelson’s pioneering went beyond the swing. He is credited with developing the first sturdy, modern golf shoe and the first true golf umbrella. He was one of the first professionals to move from the club ranks to the pro tour instead of the other way around. In retirement, he became golf’s first expert TV commentator, working with CBS and later ABC Sports.

The 85-year-old Nelson, who lives on his ranch near Fort Worth, Texas, never thought twice about his early retirement.

“Nobody understands it, but I never did feel I quit too soon. I accomplished everything I set out to do,” Nelson said. “There were days when I thought I’d scream if I had to go out on the course.”

Nelson finished with 52 PGA Tour victories, fifth on the all-time list, and five major championships--the Masters in 1937 and 1942, the PGA in 1940 and 1945, and the 1939 U.S. Open. In 1951, six years after he retired, Nelson won the Bing Crosby Pro-Am, and in 1955 he won the French Open. In 1965, at age 53, Nelson shot 2-over 290 at the Masters.

“If whenever people mention great players they think of Nelson, too, that would be nice,” he said. “But I prefer being remembered as a nice man with a lot of integrity.”