Walter Hagen: The Man Who Made Golf’s Professionals Matter

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Every good story is about the journey, and this is the story of our journey of trying to play the top 100 courses in the UK and Ireland in just 10 years. This is the Top 100 in 10 Golf Podcast. There are only two men in the entire history of golf who have won more major championships than Walter Hagen. One of them is Jack Nicholas, the other is Tiger Woods. And yet, for many golfers today, Walter Hagen’s name barely registers. He won eleven major championships, he dominated the Ryder Cup, he reshaped the status of professional golfers. And still, he remains one of the most overlooked figures in the history of the game. This episode isn’t just about remembering a great golfer. It’s about understanding a man who changed what golf allowed its professionals to be. But before we carry on with the episode, could I ask you to hit like or subscribe wherever you listen to or watch this podcast? It would help us greatly to be able to get the subscriber numbers that we know we can get so that we can bring bigger and better content to you in future episodes. Now back to this great special profile episode. Before I dive into more details about Walter Hagen’s life, I would urge you to give him a quick Google. I’m not going to fill today’s episode with stats and numbers. I think they all stack up. However, I think you should go on that journey yourself because this is one of the behemoths of our great game. So I’m hoping that I’m going to give you a flavor of the character that he was, and I used the word really advisedly. He was an absolute character of the game. So strap yourselves in. Let’s learn about Walter Hagen. Walter Hagen was born in eighteen ninety two in Rochester, New York. He didn’t arrive in golf through privilege. He didn’t grow up inside exclusive clubs or behind lots gates. He learned the game as a caddy, carrying bags, watching quietly, absorbing how the sport really worked. And that perspective really mattered. Because in Hagen’s era, golf wasn’t just a sport, it was a social order. Amateurs were considered gentlemen, professionals were mere employees. Professionals ate separately, changed separately, entered through side doors. In many clubs, they weren’t even allowed into the clubhouse. Golf had a very clear idea of where professionals belonged. Walter Hagen looked at that system and decided, calmly and confidently, that he wasn’t going to live like that. Not by shouting, not by protesting, but by behaving as though it no longer applied to him. On the course, Hagen was extraordinary. He won eleven major championships, which included five PGA championships, four Open Championships, and two US Opens. He won at least a major in seven consecutive years, a level of sustained excellence that still stands out to this day. Much of his success came in match play, which was a dominant format of his era, and that really matters. Match play isn’t about perfection, it’s about nerve, timing, and presence. It’s about standing opposite someone and letting them feel the moment. And Hagen was a master of exactly that. But if you reduce Walter Hagen to just numbers and stats, you do miss the point entirely in my opinion. Because Hagen didn’t just want to win golf tournaments. He wanted golf to notice him. He wanted a legacy. This for me is where Walter Hagen becomes something more than a champion. While other professionals accepted the limitations placed on them, Hagen challenged those limits with his trademark confidence and style. He dressed impeccably, he travelled well, he lived openly and unapologetically. When questioned about it, he once famously said I never wanted to be a millionaire, I just wanted to live like one. That line isn’t flippant, it’s a statement of intent. Hagen understood that respecting golf wasn’t handed out, it was performed. If professionals wanted status, they had to behave as though they already deserved it. So he did. One of the clearest ways Hagen asserted himself was through timing. Hagen was famously late, not accidentally late, deliberately late. He knew exactly when he was due to tee off. He knew the crowd would already be gathered, and he knew precisely how long he could keep them waiting. While other players were already on the range, quietly loosening up, Hagen would arrive at the last possible moment, and there is an art to doing that. He was immaculately dressed, completely unhurried, and he’d let the murmur ripple through the gallery as heads turned, ever the showman. Before he’d hit a single shot, he’d taken control of the whole day. This wasn’t arrogance, it was awareness. Hagen understood that anticipation was his power, and he wielded it absolutely effortlessly. Then there were the hotels. In Hagen’s day, professionals were expected to stay in modest accommodation. The finest hotels were only reserved for wealthy amateurs and officials. However, Hagen refused to accept that arrangement. It just wouldn’t do for him. Wherever the tournament was held, he booked the best hotel available. Not discreetly, not hiding his name, not apologetically. He didn’t argue for it, he didn’t explain himself, he simply booked the room. Every reservation forced organizers to confront an uncomfortable question. Why shouldn’t the best golfer in the field be treated like the main attraction? Hagen didn’t demand change. He lived as though it had already happened. And slowly the sport began to shift. Perhaps the most famous stories about Walter Hagen involve his behavior during rounds. He was a showman, but golf at the time was really rigid. It was formal, it was almost painfully polite. Anything out of the ordinary was severely frowned upon. Well Hagen delighted in pushing those boundaries. During exhibition matches and high profile rounds, he would sometimes order a drink mid round, calmly, casually, without embarrassment. Opponents didn’t know how to react to it. Was it disrespect? Was it gamesmanship? Was it confidence bordering on insolence? For Hagen, it was none of those things. For Hagen, it was all about absolute control of the situation. He wanted his opponents thinking about him, his ease, his composure, his apparent indifference, rather than their own swing, and more often than not, it worked, which is shown by his record in match play. Hagen was also a master of psychological pressure in match play. As we said, that was the dominant format of the era. He understood match play wasn’t about beating the course. It was about beating the person standing in front of you, and all of those psychological tricks would come to help him. He would chat when others wanted silence. He’d slow things down when others wanted rhythm. He would look completely relaxed when others were visibly tense. Opponents often spoke of feeling as though they weren’t just playing golfer, but a presence, an aura. Someone entirely comfortable with attention and entirely happy to let you feel it instead. As we run through some of his achievements and some of his antics, which a lot of this episode is about, it’s plain to see there are some other great people, particularly ones who exist on the masters and major winners lists, who have also got that magic word, and that’s aura. Nowhere was Hagen’s understanding of theatre more apparent than in the Ryder Cup, the ultimate team competition. He captained the United States team six times, and he never lost once. It was an era of pure dominance for the US team. Hagen treated the Ryder Cup not as a solemn responsibility, but more as a travelling show, smart dress, confident speeches, an air of inevitability. He believed confidence was contagious, and so was doubt. He understood something fundamental about pressure. It doesn’t disappear, it simply changes hands. And Walter Hagen was exceptionally good at handing pressure to someone else. To understand how radical Hagen really was, it helps to contrast him with his contemporaries. Golf at the time prized restraint. You had to be modest, you had to have a quiet dignity, particularly amongst the amateurs. Hagen offered something entirely different and more brash. He was confident, he was visible, he was unapologetic, and he was proudly professional. He insisted that playing golf was enough to deserve respect without needing inherited status or social permission. That just feels obvious now, but at the time it was totally revolutionary. Of course, living boldly came at a cost. He never really managed money very well. He spent it very freely. That was obvious. He lived fully, and later in life much of what he earned had all gone. His final years were quieter, far removed from the glamour he once embodied, but it would be wrong to frame that as a failure. Walter Hagen didn’t lose his money. He spent it, proving that professional golfers and professional golf mattered, that they were worth watching, worth paying, and worth respecting. He paved the way for what modern golfers get and get rewarded and remunerated with now. When critics accused him of chasing money and attention, Hagen replied very simply Well they don’t come to see the trees, they come to see us. That sentence explains modern professional sport better than many business plans ever could. Spectators matter. Personalities matter. The shows matter, and athletes are allowed, even expected to be worth watching. Walt Hagen changed golf without asking permission. He didn’t just win championships, he changed what winning meant. He made it acceptable for professional golfers to have ambition, to have confidence, to have a presence beyond the scorecard. Without Hagen, there is no swagger in Sam Sneed, no magnetism in Arnold Palmer, and no aura around Tiger Woods. Jack Nicholas mastered excellence. Tiger Woods mastered dominance. But Walter Hagen mastered presence. And without him, golf never becomes the game we recognise today. Now before I sign off, and I did promise I wouldn’t give you a load of stats, it is important to get a couple of them out there, in case you don’t have time to do the research into this great man of golf. And that is his win record. So I mentioned that he’s won eleven major championships previously. He also won 45 PGA tour titles. He never won the Masters because it didn’t exist at the time that he was playing. But when we compare him to his contemporaries, those being Jack Nicholas and Tiger Woods, we have their major records 18 for Jack, 15 for Tiger Woods, 11, third on the list, Walter Hagen. Now if we look at his winning percentages, Hagen won 9 of his 11 majors in the 1920s. He had a 25% win percentage in majors played during his prime. That’s higher than Jack Nicholas’s 16% and Ben Hogan’s 19%. We mentioned his match play mastery. Hagan is widely considered the greatest match play player that has ever lived. And his competitive record in match play was 35 matches played, 32 matches won, three matches lost. And he never lost once in the Ryder Cup. Ladies and gentlemen, that was my ode to Walter Hagan. Until next time on the Top 100 in 10 Golf Podcast.