Byron Nelson

Byron Nelson

John Byron Nelson, Jr. (February 4, 1912 ‚œ September 26, 2006) was an American PGA Tour golfer between 1935 and 1946. Nelson and two other well known golfers of the time, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead, were born within seven months of each other in 1912. Although he won many tournaments in the course of his relatively brief career, he is mostly remembered today for having won 11 consecutive tournaments and 18 total tournaments in 1945. He retired officially at the age of 34 to be a rancher, later becoming a commentator and lending his name to the HP Byron Nelson Championship, the first PGA Tour event to be named for a professional golfer. In 1974, Byron Nelson received the Bob Jones Award, the highest honor given by the United States Golf Association in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf.

Nelson became the second recipient of the PGA Tour Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997, and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974. He received the 1994 Old Tom Morris Award from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, GCSAA's highest honor. Nelson received the Congressional Gold Medal shortly after his death in 2006.

Early life and career
Born near Waxahachie, Texas, Byron Nelson was the son of Madge Allen Nelson and John Byron Nelson, Sr. His parents set a precedent for him not only in their long lives ‚ Madge Nelson lived to age 98, and her husband to age 77 ‚ but also in their religious commitment. Madge, who had grown up Baptist, was baptized in a Church of Christ at age 18, and John Byron Sr., raised Presbyterian, was baptized in a Church of Christ soon after meeting Madge. The senior Byron Nelson went on to serve as an elder in the Roanoke Church of Christ, and the younger Byron Nelson was a committed member of that congregation ‚ even performing janitorial services there from time to time long after he became famous ‚ he later placed his membership at the Hilltop Church of Christ in Roanoke from 1989 until 2000 when he moved his membership to the Richland Hills Church of Christ in North Richland Hills, Texas in later life.

When Nelson was 11 years old, the family moved to Fort Worth, where he barely survived typhoid fever after losing nearly half his body weight to the disease, which also left him unable to sire children. Soon after his baptism at age 12, he started caddying at Glen Garden Country Club. On his caddying days, Nelson said, "I knew nothing about caddying at first, but it wasn't difficult to learn. The other caddies, though, didn't like to see any new ones, because that might mean they wouldn't get a job sometime." An article on Nelson in Sports Illustrated noted that initially caddies were not permitted to play at the club: "[H]e would often practice in the dark, putting his white handkerchief over the hole so he could find it in the darkness." The club later changed its policy and sponsored the Glen Garden Caddy Tournament, where a 14-year-old Nelson beat fellow caddy and future golf great Ben Hogan by a single stroke after a nine-hole playoff. Nelson and Hogan were rivals but close friends in their teen years, and for the first part of their professional careers as well, but Nelson's early success was difficult for the struggling Hogan to deal with, and they gradually grew apart, while retaining mutual respect.

In 1934, Nelson was working as a golf pro in Texarkana, Texas, when he met future wife Louise Shofner, to whom he was married for 50 years, before she died in 1985 after two severe strokes.

Championship heyday
Father of the modern golf swing
After turning professional in 1932, Nelson served as a club professional in Texas, and played as many significant tournaments as he could afford, to develop his game. Money was tight, as Texas was hit very hard by the Great Depression. A pair of top-three finishes in important Texas events encouraged him. He then took a club professional's job at the Ridgewood Club in New Jersey in 1935. He worked hard on his game, having earlier realized that with the technological change from hickory to steel shafts, which was gathering momentum in the early 1930s, that the golf swing would have to adapt as well. Nelson was among the first of a new generation of players who developed a full swing with increased leg drive leading the downswing; this is the forerunner of modern golf technique as practised by top players, right to the present day. Nelson is sometimes credited as being the father of the modern golf swing. He refined the changes for a couple of years, and then took his game to the highest level of competition, the PGA Tour. Nelson waited until 1935 to post his first significant victory, at the New Jersey State Open. He followed this up with a win at the Metropolitan Open the following year. He reportedly won this tournament with "$5 in my pocket".

Nelson was hired as the head professional at the Hershey Country Club in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and worked there until 1940, when he took a new job as head pro at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio.