A Slice of Golfing Literature Part 29: Thirty Years of Championship Golf, by Gene Sarazen and Herbert Warren Wind, is a history lesson for all followers of the sport and a fitting legacy to the friendship and co-operation of two pioneers in different fields of American golf.
Sarazen was born Eugene Saraceni in 1902, and his introduction to golf was as an eight-year-old caddy at Larchmont Country Club, where he learned to study "each player's game, his personality and above all his financial deportment".
He also learned fairly quickly to hit a ball better than most of his employers, but his golfing aspirations were halted when he was forced into the factories during the first World War to make ends meet in a family of New York Italians who were permanently on the breadline. He contracted pneumonia and was placed on the "Death List" at the local hospital.
Warren Wind's upbringing was privileged in comparison, and he achieved Masters degrees at Yale and Cambridge before settling into a lengthy career as a golf writer.
His magnum opus, The Story of American Golf, is a scholarly tracing of the game's development Stateside; his lengthy golfing essays in the New Yorker were eagerly awaited by his fans for the best part of 40 years; and in 1995 he became the first author to be honoured with the USGA's Bob Jones award for distinguished sportsmanship in golf.
The unlikely pair were brought together by Sarazen's achievements on the course. Having resumed caddying at Brooklawn to get out of the stifling factories, he was soon "carrying the colours and the dollars" of head pro George Sparling in money matches against the well-heeled members.
Sarazen usually emerged victorious, and before long he was being bankrolled by the benevolent Archie Wheeler, who had made a fortune in sewing machines.
Sarazen ventured south to the winter circuit in Florida to compete with the likes of Walter Hagen and Bobby Jones and learn the ways of the world. His big breakthrough came in the 1922 US Open at Inverness, where he closed with a 68 to edge out Jones.
He won his first major as a 20-year-old, and later that year also won the PGA and defeated Hagen in a 72-hole challenge for the unofficial "world championship".
Thirty Years of Championship Golf contains abundant detail on these and all of Sarazen's important wins, but at such a remove most readers will find the off-course thoughts and events of greater interest.
Sarazen was determined to maximise his non-tournament earnings. He invented the sandwedge, and began a "pleasant, profitable relationship with the Wilson Sporting Goods Company as the first golfer on their advisory staff", a position enjoyed by Padraig Harrington today.
He thought little of undertaking six-week exhibition tours to South America, Australia and Europe and, unlike many American players today, he embraced the world of golf: "You will find golfers wherever you go. Japanese lay other Japanese stymies, Colombians and Venezuelans press for distance, and a Filipino can three-putt as well as the next man."
When it comes to instruction he believed in simplicity and derided descriptions such as "the pulling down of the left shoulder and a pronounced straightening of the right forearm, while the toe of the right foot gradually curves and points towards Mecca".
Thirty Years of Championship Golf is not a laugh-a-minute, but every golfer should have at least one Herbert Warren Wind book in their collection, and this one tells the tale of a great character who overcame adversity to become a great champion and the first player to win all four majors.
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