Hagen's Last Nine Holes

A Most Exciting and Memorable Nine Holes of Championship Golf

BERNARD DARWIN

TWO years ago I wrote an article—I think it was the second I ever wrote for 'Vanity Fair'—called "Walter Hagen's Championship". Now I must write another with some variant of the old title. But the two stories of Hagen's victories in the British Championship arc quite different from one another. Two years ago Hagen had finished his last round and placed himself in an apparently unassailable position; and then came Duncan with that mad, inspired, long-drawn-out rush of his that failed only by the veriest inch. This time it was Hagen's turn, not to be pursued but to pursue; and after seeming almost hopelessly out of it, with but half of the last lap to go, he won on the tape by a tremendous and memorable spurt. Of the two, the latter was the more dramatic manner of winning, and the more in keeping with Hagen's temperament as a golfer, since he seems to have spent most of his golfing life in coming up from behind when the bell rings.

THE last few hours of this Championship were as hectic, as blood-curdling, as full of dying and reviving hopes, as any that a watcher of golf matches is ever likely to experience. The only way in which I can try to convey an impression of them is to give an account of my own rushings to and fro, and of the hopes and fears that surged through my own mind. Even a golfing journalist, (I may interpolate, since I am often asked this question about the laws of nature) cannot be in more than one place at one time.

With one round to go there were, roughly speaking, six men in the hunt. Hagen and Whitcombe leading dead level, Macdonald Smith, Duncan, and Ball three strokes behind, and one stroke again behind them the glorious Taylor, fifty-three years old, very tired and rather lame, but still of so indomitable a spirit as almost to be capable of the impossible.

Duncan I knew had broken down. That was one gone: we—my companion and I— counted them as the knitting women counted the heads that fell before the guillotine. Ball and Macdonald Smith were somewhere out in the country. Of Ball we knew nothing, but rumour said that Macdonald Smith was going very strong. Whitcombe was just about to start on his last fateful round, and out we went to look at him. He started with a five. That was a stroke dropped, but still, we said, it was a difficult hole; there was no harm done. He was bunkered again at the second and then over the green in long grass. Six! two more strokes lost at one fell swoop and three gone in two holes. Our faces grew long, patriotic Britons that we were. The next two he played steadily; and we began to remember that only the day before, after an almost equally poor start he had come home in a miraculous 32. And then another blow at the fifth, an easy hole where everyone would be getting fours. Whitcombe's ball kicked rather unluckily into a bunker and there was another five. We could bear it no more, and being now near the club house said we would go and watch Hagen, certain in our own minds that he would enjoy a march of easy triumph round the course.

After all we did not go out with Hagen because two crowds drawing near home, swirling and eddying and jostling one another bespoke the approach of Ball and Macdonald Smith. We must know how they finished, and so raced out to meet Smith. He had been but one over fours with four holes to play; but then the fours began to turn into fives, and a splendid chance was being dissipated. At the 17th, only the unyielding body of a spectator saved his ball from going out of bounds; and still he took five. As he was going to the last hole we heard that Ball had finished with a gallant three, and his total for the four rounds was 304. Macdonald Smith had a four to beat it. I don't know if he knew it or not, but his ball went plump into the cross bunker in front of the green. "Ah" we cried, perhaps too patriotically "if that bunker was what it used to be, he wouldn't get out so easily. Why, why did they make it shallower?" Out he got sure enough but not very far: the next putt was a bold one and five feet past. "This to tic for the lead" and in it went. America and England equal at 304 and practically only two people left who could beat them. Hagen and Whitcombe, England and America again.

Hagen was gone far into the distance by this time. We must start away after him, but first to pick up the rumours. "Hagen began with a six" cried one excited person. "He was bunkered and then—" "He got another six at the third" panted a second patriot "I saw him. He—" "What's the good of that?" said a third. "Whitcombe's out in 43. He's broken down altogether." "Oh, has he?" joined in a fourth truculently. "He started home 4, 3, 4, 3. He's playing like a jewel on the way home. He's only four over fours going to the fifteenth."

THERE might be some hope for poor old England after all, if it was true, but people who look at golf matches arc such liars. We shaded our eyes and looked away to where the fifteenth hole runs away into a corner. "Whitcombe's got a big crowd with him still," said one skilled in portents. "He wouldn't have that if he wasn't doing well", and at that moment there came a faint burst of clapping. "That's a four, I'll bet. By Jove, it must be true."

What was to be done now? We were torn this way and that. Finally we decided to leave Whitcombe to finish without us and go out to find Hagen at the tenth hole. So off we set, meeting the great old Taylor on the way. He was still trying nobly; but his score was not quite good enough. So it was only Whitcombe or Hagen now.

Hagen's crowd was still some way off. We sat down and waited. Suddenly from far away, by the seventeenth green, the wind wafted more clapping—not faint this time but a real rousing storm of it. "Whitcombe has done a three at the Royal," cried the optimist. "He may have holed his putt for a four," said the pessimist grudgingly, "or perhaps only got out of the bunker." We calculated rapidly that he might be going to do a 76 and ought not to be worse than 78—"unless he pitches into the last bunker or goes too far over the fence," added the pessimist. But even he admitted that there was still a chance.

And now here was Hagen close upon us as we stood huddled among the big, black crowd fringing the tenth green. He had driven to the ideal spot and was just going to play his second. "Here it comes!" was the cry. It was straight for the pin and pitched in the green, but with just a little slice on it. "Look out there!" came an agonized scream "Let it go!" The crowd tumbled out of the way somehow, and the ball ran over the edge of the green, and down the slope. His next shot was too strong and the ball ran six or seven yards past. And then, as Hagen was studying his putt, a whisper ran through the crowd. Whitcombe had finished in 78. That was 3 02 for the four rounds. Hagen had to do the nine home holes in 36 to win and 37 to tic. The strictest imaginable "par" for those last nine is 34; but that is almost impossibly good, for the 14th, 15th and 16th arc all long holes. No man can hope to play them without a five or two creeping in. 36, when you have just got to do it—even 37 means tremendous golf.

ALL this takes some time to write, but it did not take a minute to flash through the minds of the crowd; and there was Hagen still studying his curly, slippery six yard putt, looking like a cheerful Sphinx: I would have defied anyone to tell whether he was winning or losing, hopeful or hopeless. Finally he hit that putt right into the middle of the hole and "E'en the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer". It was a gallant putt and more than any one shot of his, I think, it made victory possible.

And now there began the most heroic stern chase I ever saw. In the playing of his last nine holes there were two distinct epochs. In the first epoch were the 10th, (which we know about) the 11th, 12th, and 13th holes. At each one of those four holes Hagen made a mistake that would have cost ninety-nine men out of a hundred a stroke. But the four mistakes between them only cost Hagen one single stroke, so gloriously did he recover. At the 11th he lost a stroke but made it up; at the 12th he lost one and lost it irretrievably. At the short 13th, he pitched slap into a bunker in front of the green. "That's done it," said a very famous golfer standing next to me. "He can never do it now,"—and it did seem a knock-out blow. A three there appeared essential; for all the other holes were long and there was no hope of "picking up" strokes any more. Hagen had a good long look, pitched out to wBhin five feet and holed his putt for that essential three amid cheers.

From that moment began the second and last epoch, and with it, as it seemed to me, there came a palpably different feeling in the crowd. There was first the feeling that it was hopeless to fight against such a superb fighter. "My grandsire", said the archer Hubert in Ivanhoe, "drew a good bow at the Battle of Hastings and never shot at such a mark. If this yeoman can cleave the rod, I give him the bucklers—or rather I yield to the devil that is in his jerkin, and not to any human skill". Such was our first thought, and the next was not merely that Hagen was going to win, but that after such surpassing gallantry it would be a black shame if he did not win. We fell, if I may so express it, into an enthusiastic resignation. And Hagen himself, from that moment, went from strength to strength. There were no more recoveries, because there was no more need for them. I said he was Sphinx-like and indeed he always does remain wonderfully unmoved and serene; but now I think one could read something else in his face; he looked like a conqueror. And he played like one! He swept his way along those next three long holes like a flame. To the 17th, a hole that had cost many sixes and frightened everybody else, he played a terrific second shot to within three yards of the pin. To the last he pitched very boldly, thinking, I imagine, that once over the bunker he must get a five, that a five meant a tie, and that a tie meant a win. And after that I saw nothing more of that amazing 18th hole—I should have had to be seven feet high to do so, so dense was the wall of people all round the green. It seemed an eternity before anything happened and then somebody said, "He's short". "How long is his putt?" I asked, and one said three feet and another four and another six, and I do not know now. There was another dreadful silence and then a wild war-whoop. The putt was holed; little boys seethed and surged round Hagen begging for autographs; they were thrust out of the way by larger admirers, who hoisted the Champion on their shoulders. It was all over—and I had to write a good many hundred words about it in a very short time.

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No doubt there will be other finishes to other Championships which other people will deem as exciting as this one. Somebody will again come with a mighty rush, knowing what he has to do and heroically do it. But for myself, I imagine that I shall always say "Ah, but you should have seen Hagen's last nine holes at Hoylake in 1924!"