Winners of the Tournaments

THE POST-WAR YEARS

The American domination of golf was to continue into the 1940s. The game in Britain slumped in popularity with the administration and prize money falling far behind that in the USA. Ben Hogan came and won the Open in 1953 as Sam Snead had done in 1946, but after that few Americans bothered to come and play in the oldest championship of all. The Open was dominated by Bobby Locke and Peter Thomson, who won it eight times between them between 1949 and 1958, with Thomson adding a fifth tide to his tally in 1965.

Locke was a dominant player just after the war and won a number of tournaments in the USA but he was banned from the US Tour in 1949 when he decided to stay in Britain after winning the Open. The USPGA claimed he had violated a number of contracts but there was probably more than a touch of jealousy over his success. Hogan was the leading player in the USA but his success came after that of Byron Nelson who was an exact contemporary of his. Nelson was a great player who won the Masters in 1937 and 1942, the US Open in 1939 and the USPGA Championship in 1940 and 1945. As a haemophiliac, he was not allowed to serve in the armed forces in the war and he continued to play golf to help boost morale in the country. He won 13 out of 23 events on the Tour as it existed in 1944 and in 1945 he won 18 out of the 31 events he entered, coming second in another seven. In that year he had a stroke average of 68.3 per round. He had a friendly rivalry with Ben Hogan which was temporarily settled when he won the Seattle Open in 1945 with a world record score of 259, with Hogan some twenty shots behind. Shortly after that he retired with a chronic stomach illness, though he won the French Open in 1955 on a vacation trip to Europe. He might well have qualified as one of the greatest players the world has ever seen had his career not coincided with the war. Another great American player of the immediate post-war period was Jimmy Demaret who was also a great showman. He won the Masters in 1940, 1947 and 1950. Other names that are frequently remembered are Lloyd Mangrum, winner of the first post-war US Open in 1946 and Cary Middlecoff, who won the US Open in 1949 and the Masters in 1955. These two must hold some son of record: after a tie at the 1949 Detroit Open they played 11 extra holes in a sudden-death play-off in gathering darkness, before giving up and agreeing to share the title..