Glen Oaks Club part of rich Met Section history

For all the innate glories of golf, perhaps the most rewarding is its ability to bring you places where you otherwise wouldn’t have traveled and introduce you to people who elsewise wouldn’t have dropped in on your life. It’s part of why Arnold Palmer called golf “the greatest game mankind has ever invented.â€� Yet, one place where golf cannot take you is back in time. Unfortunate, if you happen to believe there might have been an era and a place that would have afforded exponential charm. Like the Met Section in those days of hickory and early steel when gifted players honed their games on our greatest courses with a profound camaraderie. Rich doesn’t even begin to describe the depths of flavor to the golf world in the metropolitan New York area of this period and while most of us can only imagine, there are those who feel blessed to have savored it. “The Met Section was about golf. The pros were players. The assistants were players. The members were players,â€� said Billy Harmon, the youngest of the four brothers whose father, 1948 Masters champ Claude Harmon, for years the head professional at Winged Foot. “In the Met, members stood behind their pros.â€� Picture being chased out of the Winged Foot pro shop by one iconic golf figure, your father, only to wander outside where another future Masters champion and legend-in-the-making, Jack Burke Jr., was the assistant pro now in charge of your care. “He gave me my first golf lessons when I was like 5 or 6. How good is that?â€� said Butch Harmon, the oldest of the Harmon boys. “Years later, when I ran into Jack at River Oaks in Houston, he just looked at me and said, ‘Damn, am I going to have to babysit you and your brothers again today?’ â€� laughed Billy Harmon, whose other brothers, Dick and Craig, were likewise charmed by the aura of being a golf-happy kid raised within the confines of our country’s greatest golf area. Mind you, that is said with the utmost respect to other golf areas in the country. But let’s just come out and say it – the Met Section stands alone and never did it shine brighter than that bygone era.   *    *    *   When the PGA TOUR announced that its 2017 FedExCup playoffs opener, THE NORTHERN TRUST, would be staged at the Glen Oaks Club on Long Island, intrigue set in. What was the history of this club that had never hosted a PGA TOUR stop? Turns out, the club dates to the “Roarin’ 20sâ€� and newspaper reports from those years stated that Leo Diegel, a Michigan native who settled in the Met Section, played his golf for a time out of Glen Oaks. Diegel piled up 28 wins in a colorful PGA TOUR career, but he was in a long line of players who supplied the Met Section with star power. Surely, the people of White Plains, Harrison and the Eastchester villages of Tuckahoe and Bronxville had plenty to boast about. In one glorious 10-year stretch, five golfers who called that area home won eight majors – Gene Sarazen the 1922 U.S. Open and 1922 and ‘23 PGA Championship; Jesse Sweetser the 1922 British Amateur and 1926 U.S. Amateur; Willie Macfarlane the 1925 U.S. Open; Johnny Farrell the 1928 U.S. Open; and Tom Creavy the 1931 PGA Championship. “When I did research, I read how some reporters called that area the ‘cradle of golf,’ â€� said Tom Creavy, who was named after his uncle and can remember shagging balls for him. “The area and the time was so rich in golf and golfers.â€� That will resonate if you simply look at the rollcall of Met Open winners. Consider, for example, the tournaments played between 1916 and 1951. In all but two years (1921, 1929), the winner or runner-up was either a World Golf Hall of Fame member or major winner. We’re talking Sarazen, Walter Hagen, Tommy Armour, Paul Runyan, Henry Picard, Byron Nelson, Craig Wood, Sam Snead and Ben Hogan, and that list takes on a greater shine when you comprehend that many of them either grew up at a Met Section golf course or worked at one. Testaments to the depth of golf talent in the Met Section back in the golden age could have come from many sources, but surely Bobby Jones would have confirmed it. Always, it seemed, his U.S. Open hopes rested on how he fared against a golfer from the New York area. In 1922, Jones finished joint second, one behind Sarazen. The next year, Jones edged Bobby Cruickshank, who worked at the Progress Club. Cyril Walker, who beat Jones in ’24, worked at Englewood. Macfarlane, a playoff winner over Jones in 1925, was a Scotsman who emigrated here and worked at Oak Ridge. Jones won the 1926 U.S. Open by one over a kid named Joe Turnesa, the third of seven brothers from Elmsford who made up the grandest golf-playing family in American history. And on it went for Jones, who had one last U.S. Open tussle with a golfer from the New York area, losing in a playoff to Farrell at the 1928 U.S. Open. “The Gentleman,â€� they called Farrell, who grew up in White Plains, worked at Quaker Ridge and later had a storied career at Baltusrol. Such was the symmetry of that era, so many great players connected. Macfarlane gave Creavy, a caddie at Siwanoy, his first lessons and introduced him to Farrell. The three of them played in exhibition matches together, and each won a major. It was a different time, when being a good golfer meant you worked at a club and oh, how the tree flourished in the Met area. Before going to Winged Foot, Wood was head pro at Forest Hills GC where his assistant was Paul Runyan. Later, Runyan took over from Harry Cooper as head pro at Metropolis, where he was eventually succeeded by Burke, who had served as assistant at Winged Foot to Claude Harmon, who had succeeded Wood. Cooper didn’t go far, settling in Westchester CC where he taught into his 90s. And who moved in as a Winged Foot assistant when Burke left? Guy by the name of Dave Marr. Ted Kroll, Doug Ford and so many Turnesas – they all worked at Met Section clubs. “It was a wonderful area for us to grow up in,â€� said Butch Harmon. “We had the greatest apprentice program and we didn’t even know it at the time.â€� You wanted to learn the golf swing? You wanted to polish your competitive talents? The Met Section provided for it – in Butch Harmon’s days, just as in his father’s time. In 1938, a golfer named Hogan joined the staff at Century CC. A few years earlier, members at Ridgewood CC in New Jersey received a letter from head pro George Jacobus that began: “I have engaged as Assistant, Byron Nelson of Texarkana, Texas.â€� Think Jacobus knew golf and knew golfers? Consider he reached out and hired Jimmy Thompson, Jug McSpaden and Chick Harbert as assistants, PGA TOUR winners each of them. “Incredible, the talent that went through the doors up there,â€� said Butch Harmon, who still holds the record for largest victory in a Met Junior final. He beat Mike Turnesa Jr., 8 and 7, in 1961 at Inwood. But what sticks in his mind isn’t the margin of victory nor the win – it is the indelible image of two men who walked and watched. “I remember dad and Mike’s dad (Mike Turnesa, the fourth brother in line and one of four who played the PGA TOUR) walking around, just watching, not saying much. “Just two great players watching their sons play.”

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