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The two names most
associated with Inverness Club in the 1940’s, if not to this
day, were Stranahan and Nelson.
Robert A. Stranahan,
a wealthy industrialist who was chairman of the board and
president of the family-owned Champion Spark Plug Company, not
to mention his status as Inverness’ most prominent member, had a
golfing prodigy in son Frank.
 The Club’s golf
professional, Byron Nelson, was also a PGA Tour player who came
to Toledo in the spring of 1940 at age 28 with two major
championships and a dozen pro wins already under his belt.
Frank, then 17 and
flush with the cockiness of youth, wasn’t that impressed. But
R.A. was certain that someone with Nelson’s credentials could
impact his son’s game.
Nelson, who went on
to become one of golf’s legends and who died on September 26,
2006 at the age of 94, was a bit like Will Rogers in that he
never met a man he did not, or at least could not, like.
Almost 60 years after
he left his job as Head Golf Professional at Inverness Club,
Byron Nelson sat under an umbrella on the lawn behind the
Augusta National clubhouse in Georgia and said he considered the
Toledo club to be his home course.
That was fine by the
folks at Inverness. Until his death, he was listed as an
honorary member on the Club’s membership list.
 The Inverness rolls
decreased by one when Mr. Nelson, the greatest golfer of the
World War II era, author of the most remarkable season in
professional golf history, and the games’ finest gentleman,
died.
Mr. Nelson was the
pro at Inverness from 1940-44. He signed his first contract with
the Club in June 1939 and won the U.S. Open two weeks later.
Mr. Nelson maintained
a PGA Tour playing schedule and won two more major
championships, the 1940 PGA and the 1942 Masters, while
affiliated with Inverness Club.
In 1944, Lord Byron,
as he was nicknamed, won 10 pro events in 11 other tournaments.
He resigned from Inverness at the end of the year to devote
himself to a brief, full-time tour playing career. A year later,
he compiled a playing record that has never been and most likely
never will be, duplicated. He won 18 tournaments, including 11
straight.
In a 2001 interview
conducted at Augusta National, Mr. Nelson told The Blade that he
believed playing the Inverness course against the Club’s best
golfing members was a key to his tour success.
“It was such a good
golf course,” he said. “Still is, of course. And I still think
of it as my home course after all these years. I sure do. You
had to play shots uphill, downhill, over ravines, and to small,
target greens with tremendous speeds.”
“I would go out and
play a threesome or foursome of very fine Inverness players and
I’d play against their best ball. We wouldn’t play for much,
maybe a dollar, and I had to shoot 66 or 67 to break even. Then
I’d go to the PGA [Championship] and play a match against one
man and it would seen pretty simple. So there were a lot of ways
that being the head professional at Inverness enhanced my
playing career.”
 Mr. Nelson played in
an era when it was not unusual for touring pros to also serve as
club pros to supplement their rather meager tour earnings.
After learning the
game while a caddie at Glen Garden Country Club in Fort Worth,
Mr. Nelson turned professional in Nov., 1932, and took his first
club job the following spring at Texarkana Golf Club. He worked
for awhile at Ridgewood Country Club in New Jersey and then
became head pro in 1937 at Reading (Pa.) Country Club.
He came to the
attention of Cloyd Haas, an Inverness past president who was
charged with hiring a new professional in 1939. Mr. Haas got his
man and then sat down to write a letter to the other finalist,
who was then an assistant pro at Century Country Club in White
Plains, NY.
It Began, “Dear, Mr.
Hogan.” Fellow Texan Ben Hogan was also a caddie at Glen Garden
in the 1920s and he and Mr. Nelson would be lifelong friends and
rivals whose stories intertwined until Mr.Hogan’s death in 1997.
After signing his
contract with Inverness and winning the 1939 U.S. Open, Mr.
Nelson soon came to Toledo to compete in the old Inverness
Four-Ball tournament. It was when he first met Herman Lang, who
would become his assistant at Inverness in 1941. Mr. Lang would
become head pro at Highland Meadows after serving in World War
II and, from 1966-79, was head pro at Inverness.
“The guy was walking
on water, in many people’s eye, when he arrived here after
winning the Open,” Mr. Lang, 92, said during an interview after
Mr. Nelson’s death. “That may have been true, too, because he
was a seven-day-a-week Christian person. When I worked for him
in ’41, he kept this jar in the pro shop. Anyone who uttered a
curse word had to put 25 cents in the jar, and he would put the
money in the collection plate at church the next Sunday.”
“He was perhaps the
most considerate and modest man I’ve ever known. He could teach
and play the game as well as anybody. I’m sure nobody ever had
an easier time getting into Heaven. I hope he’ll save me a
place.”
 While at Inverness,
Mr. Nelson tutored Frank Stranahan, the son of wealthy Club
member R. A. Stranahan, who soon became the world’s top-ranked
amateur golfer. Mr. Nelson also joined Mr. Haas in developing
the modern golf umbrella.
For many years, Mr.
Nelson served as vice president of marketing for Toledo’s
Haas-Jordan Company. When the firm celebrated its 100th
anniversary in the late 1990s, a special-edition golf umbrella
with a leather handle wrap bearing Mr. Nelson’s signature was
manufactured in his honor.
Inverness Club’s
formal dining room is named in Mr. Nelson’s honor, and a section
of the wall in the Club’s Mixed Grill is dedicated to
memorabilia from his playing career. His “player of the decade”
trophy is also on display at Inverness.
The late entertainer,
Bing Crosby, used to tell the story about following Mr. Nelson
at the Los Angeles Open, the first PGA Tour event of 1945. Mr.
Nelson was not eligible for military service because of a rare
blood condition, so he and Mr. Crosby became friends while
taking part in Red Cross and other war effort benefits during
World War II.
“You going to go with
me some?” Mr. Nelson asked him when they met near the first tee.
“I’m going to follow you until I feel you’ve made a bad shot,”
he crooner replied.
Mr. Crosby followed
him for the entire 18 holes and then 11 more the next day until
Mr. Nelson hit a thin, 6-iron approach shot that landed in a
greenside bunker. Mr. Crosby gave him a wave and walked away.
It was probably a
good thing. Otherwise, Mr. Crosby would have had to follow him
from city to city, tournament to tournament, because Mr. Nelson
didn’t hit many bad shots in 1945.
He won 18 times—11 of
those tournaments in succession—finished second seven times,
posted 100 sub-par rounds out of 112 played, and set a
single-season stroke average of 68.34 that was a PGA Tour record
for 55 years until Tiger Woods broke it in 2000. That was the
same year Mr. Woods won six straight tournaments, tying the best
mark by any golfer since Mr. Nelson won 11 in a row.
The 60th anniversary
of the streak was celebrated by the PGA Tour in 2005, and Mr.
Woods called Mr. Nelson’s accomplishment “simply incredible.”
Jack Nicklaus called
it “one of the greatest accomplishments in all of sports,” and
Arnold Palmer said that, “Byron Nelson accomplished things on
the pro tour that never have been and never will be approached
again.”
 Mr. Nelson would play
fulltime tour golf for just one more year. His goal was to earn
enough money so that he and his first wife, Louise, could make
the cash purchase of a ranch. Mr. Nelson reputedly was a
meticulous record-keeper who could tell you his bank statement
down to the penny. When he earned $152.50 for a 13th place tie
at the Pensacola Open early in the 1946 season he knew it gave
him the final bit of escrow money he needed.
He sand Louise
purchased a 630-acre plot of land in Roanoke, Texas, a
crossroads some 20 miles outside Fort Worth. They named it
“Fairway Ranch,” and he retired from tour golf at the end of
that year.
Mr. Nelson lived the
remainder of his life on the ranch. Louise, whom he married in
1934, died after a series of strokes in October, 1985. He
married his second wife, Peggy, a one-time Toledoan, in
November, 1986.
Mr. Nelson continued
to play in the Masters through the mid-1960s and later served as
one of the tournaments honorary starters for 20 years.
He didn’t completely
stop playing golf until the morning of April 5, 2001. On a
crisp, sunny day, with the dew just starting to burn off the
fairways, Lord Byron walked to the first tee at Augusta National
for the final time.
“OK, little ball, one
more time,” the then-89-year old legend said before swinging the
club. The ball didn’t go far, but, as always, it landed in the
fairway.
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