Modern golf cannot be understood without the figure of Gene Sarazen, one of the greatest golfers in history, who dominated the sport in the 1920s and 1930s. The son of Italian immigrants, Gene, who changed his birth name because his Italian name – Eugenio Saraceni – sounded like a violinist, treasured many triumphs in his long life and was the first golfer to win all four Grand Slam tournaments.
The Landowner, as he was known for his ownership of large tracts of land, was born in Harrison, near New York City, on February 27, 1902. The son of an Italian emigrant who never understood golf, Gene changed his name after winning his first tournament, where he managed to win twenty dollars. He had scored a hole-in-one in his first tournament and when it appeared in the newspapers he did not like the way his name looked “as it sounded like that of a violinist”, as he said.
When he started caddying when he was only eight years old, no one could have imagined that this small boy (he was no taller than 165 cm.) with a very slight build would become one of the best golfers in history. Moreover, at that time only stockbrokers and bankers practiced this sport, so in order to become a professional he had to overcome a series of social barriers.
In 1918 he nearly died from a flu epidemic. When he was cured he moved to Florida, where he worked unloading bricks, while improving his game. And he really did, because only four years later he had won his first two Grand Slam tournaments (the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship, both in 1922) and a year later, at the age of 21, after repeating his triumph in the PGA, he would win three of the most important tournaments in the world.
Gene spent the rest of the twenties competing mainly in exhibition tournaments. It was not until 1932 that he won another major, the US Open. Thus began his best year, in which he also won the British Open. In the English tournament his victory was possible, in addition to his game, thanks to one of his brilliant inventions: he designed and used a special club to get the ball out of the sand of the bunker. Although its creation dates back to 1931, he did not take it out earlier to avoid its prohibition. Today it is part of every golfer’s bag of clubs.
Sarazen won his third victory in the PGA tournament in 1933, becoming two years later, in 1935, after his victory in the Masters, the first golfer to win all four tournaments that make up the Grand Slam (British Open, Masters, U.S. Open and the U.S. PGA). Besides him, only four other players have achieved it subsequently: Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.
The victory in the 1935 Augusta Masters has also gone down in history because when Gene was three strokes behind the leader on the last day, he hit an albatross on the 15th hole, which is considered the best shot of all time. It went down in history as “the shot the whole world heard”. The following day he won the first hole of the playoff.
Over the years he began to alternate tournaments on the PGA Tour with the Senior Tour. He won the US PGA Senior in 1954 and 1958. He made the newspaper pages again when in 1973 he became the oldest player -71 years old- to get a hole in one in the British Open.
Sarazen was a member of the Ryder Cup team six consecutive times (between 1927 and 1937). He has been a member of the American Professional Golfers Association Hall of Fame since 1941 and was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974. As one of the pioneer participants of the Augusta Masters, since 1981, along with Nelson and Sam Snead, he was one of the official openers of the tournament each year. When the American Tour introduced the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996, Gene was the first recipient.
Gene Sarazen passed away in Florida on May 13, 1999 from pneumonia. He was 97 years old and left behind an incomparable golfing legacy.
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