Byron Nelson, 94; Set Pro Golf Record of 11 Consecutive Tournament Wins

Byron Nelson, whose record of winning 11 consecutive professional golf events in 1945 remains one of sport’s most unassailable records, died Tuesday at his home in Roanoke, Texas. He was 94. The Tarrant County medical examiner’s office announced Nelson’s death, according to the Associated Press, and said he died of natural causes.

Reaction poured in from his admirers in the world of golf

Arnold Palmer, a legend of the game in his own right, called Nelson “a fantastic person” and said he had admired him “from the time I was a boy.”

“I don’t think that anyone will ever exceed the things that Byron did by winning 11 tournaments in a row in one year,” Palmer said.

Ben Crenshaw, a two-time Masters champion, said Nelson was “possibly golf’s most consistent player ever.”

“His passing marks the end of arguably golf’s most prolific era,” Crenshaw said.

Born on his parents’ cotton farm near Waxahachie, Texas, Nelson worked his way off the farm and out of the caddie shack to become a superstar in a golden generation of golfers that had more than its share, including Ben Hogan, Sam Snead and Gene Sarazen. Known as Lord Byron, Nelson won 52 tournaments in all -- more than any other player except for Snead, Jack Nicklaus, Hogan and Palmer -- and five major championships.

Nelson’s pinnacle was the 1945 season, in which he won 18 of the 30 official tournaments he played, including a record 11 in succession, an almost unimaginable feat that spanned 4 1/2 months.

It remains the best year for any golfer in history.

Over the course of 118 competitive rounds of stroke-play events in 1945, Nelson’s scoring average was 68.33 and he was 320 strokes under par.

Nelson also finished second seven times that year, and his worst finish was a tie for ninth.

Hogan and Tiger Woods came closest to Nelson’s total, each with six consecutive victories. Hogan’s streak was in 1948 and Woods’ was in 2000.

“Scoring and playing are two different games,” Nelson said in 1985. “And if I was playing well, I’d just go play. I remember Bobby Jones saying when he was playing well, he was only thinking about one thing. But if he had to think about two things, he would play mediocre and if he thought about three things, he would be terrible.”

Nelson never tired of speaking about his streak, which was often compared, at least in terms of difficulty, to Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak with the New York Yankees.

“The way people talk about the streak, you’d think I only played one year,” Nelson once said.

Nelson turned pro in 1932, but there was no professional tour to speak of. Not until 1944, after years of working as a club professional, did he devote himself full time to the still-developing tour.

Nelson won six more times in 1946, but found the burden of playing the circuit too much. He experienced extreme stomach problems which he linked to the pressure, and yearned for a quiet life back in Texas. He walked away from the professional tour at age 34.

“I asked him once, ‘Why did you quit?’ ” Snead once said. “And he told me, ‘I got so sick when the streak was over. I don’t know. It did something to me. I didn’t care for it anymore.’ ”

John Byron Nelson Jr. was born Feb. 4, 1912 -- the same year as Snead and Hogan.

As a teenager, Nelson learned that he could make extra money as a caddie at Glen Garden Country Club in Fort Worth, where he met another young caddie for the first time -- Hogan. They would become both contemporaries and rivals.

In 1926 when Nelson was 14, there was a nine-hole caddie championship played at Glen Garden, and he sank a long putt on the last hole to tie for the title.

“I tied with a small boy named Ben Hogan,” Nelson wrote. “The members decided to play nine more holes. I was fortunate and won by one shot. I had met Ben before, of course, but I hadn’t really gotten to know him. He was quiet, serious and mostly kept to himself.”

Nelson soon learned that he had a gift for golf, a game that seemed to come easily to him. His swing was smooth and naturally repetitive. In his massive hands, the grips on the shafts of his clubs would nearly disappear. Nelson said that was part of the reason for his success.

“I have big hands, but with a lot of feel,” he once said. “The Lord gave me good coordination, a great rhythm and wonderful balance. I had an absolutely uncanny judgment of distance. And even though folks couldn’t always see it, I had a very big desire to achieve. I got pretty steamed up inside.”

A down-to-earth work ethic and simple, homespun goodness often overshadowed Nelson’s competitive nature. In truth, he succeeded in golf beyond his wildest dreams with equal parts of the divergent personalities.

He would become one of the greatest and most beloved golfers in history, although Nelson’s early career offered little indication of his future stature as a sports icon.

Nelson turned pro at 20 in 1932 and was not successful. In his first two years on the tour, Nelson won a total of just over $100, so he needed another way to support himself. In 1935, Nelson married Louise Shofer, also a golfer, and took a job as an assistant club pro at Ridgewood Country Club in Ridgewood, N.J. Now he could work on his swing when he wasn’t giving lessons. It turned out to be time well spent.

Now 6 feet 1 and a lean 170 pounds, Nelson found a new driver and developed a method of striking the ball that eliminated the hook he had built into his swing. What Nelson accomplished has been called the model of the modern golf swing -- an aggressive lower body action and a square club positioning.

Nelson’s game improved quickly and he won the 1935 New Jersey Open. Nelson won another tournament in 1936, but in April 1937, he stepped onto a new, grander stage of his life when he arrived at Augusta, Ga., for the Masters.

Nelson had already played it twice, in 1935 when it was just a year old, and in 1936. He had done well both times, a tie for ninth and a tie for 13th, but Nelson thought he could do better. He opened the 1937 tournament with a 66, finished at five-under-par 283 and won by two shots over Ralph Guldahl.

Nelson also won the 1942 Masters in an 18-hole playoff when he beat Hogan by one shot and finished second twice, to Craig Wood in 1941 and Jimmy Demaret in 1947, the year after he had all but given up competitive golf.

As good as Nelson’s play was in the majors -- he won the 1939 U.S. Open at Philadelphia Country Club in a playoff with Denny Shute and Wood, plus the 1940 PGA Championship at Hershey Country Club in Hershey, Pa., a 1-up victory over Snead -- he was amazingly consistent in regular tournament play as well.

Nelson could have had an even better record in the majors, but he lost in a 36-hole, three-way playoff with eventual champion Lloyd Mangrum in the 1946 U.S. Open at Canterbury Golf Club in Cleveland. Nelson could have avoided a playoff, but he bogeyed the last two holes of regulation.

Nelson also was the runner-up three times in the PGA Championship -- to Henry Picard in 1939, to Vic Ghezzi in 1941 and Bob Hamilton in 1944.

Nelson was rejected from military service during World War II because he was a hemophiliac. He received some offhand criticism for being able to play golf while others, such as Hogan, were called to duty. There were others who hinted that Nelson’s successes and his record of 11 consecutive victories were tainted because they came during a war year.

Snead, who died in 2002, was one of those. “Byron did most of his winning when a lot of guys weren’t on the tour,” Snead once said. “No disrespect to Byron. I mean, 11 straight tournaments. He was a great player. And you can’t take that away from him.”

By 1945, however, many of the golfers who were in the service had returned to the golf course, including Hogan and Snead, who combined to win five of the seven tournaments where Nelson was second.

Nelson insisted that he always did his part, playing for U.S. War Bonds and also in many fundraising exhibitions.

From 1944 to 1946, Nelson dominated the sport. In his last three years as a full-time pro, Nelson played 76 tournaments and won 34 of them.

Nelson once said his primary motivation for playing golf as well as he did in 1945 was to make enough money to buy the 630-acre ranch in Roanoke. Nelson needed $55,000, so he was driven to play as perfectly as he could so he could retire at 34 and at the top of his game.

“What I did in 1945 was mostly a mental achievement,” he once said. “In those days, I could drive the ball so well that I would really get bored. I just decided I was not going to hit one careless shot. Plus, I had the focus of the ranch.”

Nelson wrote: “Each drive, each iron, each chip, each putt was aimed at the goal of getting that ranch. And each win meant another cow, another acre, another 10 acres, another part of the payment.”

Though he became a full-time farmer, he still played tournament golf on occasion. In fact, he won the 1948 Texas PGA, the 1951 Bing Crosby and the 1955 French Open. He also played the Masters until 1967 and was a ceremonial starter, with Sarazen and Snead, until he gave up the honor in 2001.

In these days when tournament winners often take home more than a million dollars in a major tournament, Nelson won relatively little money in his career.

“I only won $182,000 in my whole life,” he recalled years ago. “In 1937, I got fifth-place money at the British Open -- $187 -- and it cost me $3,000 to play because I had to take a one-month leave of absence from my club job to go.”

He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1953.

Nelson’s first wife, Louise, died in 1985. They were married for 50 years. He is survived by his second wife, Peggy.

He also leaves behind a tournament named for him, The EDS Byron Nelson Championship, legions of fans and possibly the most insurmountable record in golf.

In commenting on Nelson’s death Tuesday, Nicklaus recalled seeing him at a clinic at the Los Angeles Country Club when Nicklaus was 14.

“The golf club had just put in an irrigation system, and there was a trench line for the system right in the middle of the fairway in which Byron was hitting balls. It never seemed like the balls he hit moved more than a step off that trench line for every club in the bag he used,” Nicklaus said.

“I have never seen a man hit a ball straighter before or since. It has been forever etched in my memory.”

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thomas.bonk@latimes.com

Times staff writer Jerry Crowe contributed to this report.