Editor’s Note: With the CGA celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding in 1915, this is the fourth monthly installment of a series of stories looking back on the last century of golf in Colorado. All the articles are being published on coloradogolf.org. This chapter focuses on the period from 1945-54. For the previous installments, CLICK HERE.

When it comes to the first decade after World War II, golf in Colorado received a nice boost from a pair of Babes, along with Bantam Ben. Even Bing and Bob played a role.

Alliteration aside, in some ways the period from 1945-54 was a golden era of sorts for the game in the Centennial State.

Though two major championships had come to Colorado in the previous decade — Cherry Hills Country Club hosted the 1938 U.S. Open and the 1941 PGA Championship — Denver landed a regular PGA Tour event in the post-war era. The Denver Open was held on and off from 1947 to ’63, with Cherry Hills, Wellshire, Meadow Hills and Denver Country Club playing host at one time or another.

Ben Hogan — the aforementioned Bantam Ben — was by far the biggest name to win the event, prevailing in 1948 at Wellshire, marking his sixth consecutive victory on the PGA Tour. The Denver Open was one of 10 PGA Tour wins Hogan posted that year, including both the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship. But Hogan didn’t make any points with event organizers as he failed to show up for the trophy presentation. Apparently, he didn’t feel his 18-under-par 270 total was going to be good enough for victory, so he departed immediately after completing his final round, saying, “I can’t win.”

Though Hogan would come back to compete in Colorado on several other occasions — including the 1952 “Hillsdilly” at Cherry Hills — an even bigger name made her mark in Colorado during this time, one Mildred “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias. (The two are pictured together at left in the early 1950s. Zaharias is also pictured above.)

Zaharias was six times AP’s Female Athlete of the Year, and several of those awards were won while Babe and her Pueblo-born husband, George, lived in the Denver area. They moved to Colorado in 1943. Zaharias went on to win the 1946 U.S. Women’s Amateur and the U.S. Women’s Open three times from 1948 through ’54. And in 1947, she traveled to Scotland and became the first American to win the British Ladies Amateur.

When Babe and George Zaharias subsequently returned to Denver, they were given a 250-pound, 15-foot-high key to the city. Some dubbed her “Denver’s Queen of the Fairways”.

It’s said that during the 1946 and ’47 seasons, Zaharias won 17 consecutive tournaments while representing Park Hill Country Club.

Zaharias, who was also a regular at Lakewood Country Club during her years in Colorado, captured one of her major championships in her adopted home state. She defeated Peggy Kirk in the finals of the Women’s Western Open at Cherry Hills in 1950 to claim her fourth and final title in the event, the first three having come as an amateur.

Also in 1950, the Associated Press named Zaharias its women’s athlete of the first half of the 20th century.

In addition to the Women’s Western Open, tournaments Zaharias won in Colorado include the 1946 Women’s Trans National at Denver Country Club and three consecutive Broadmoor Ladies Invitations starting in 1945.

Zaharias, one of the founders of the LPGA and a World Golf Hall of Fame inductee, finished with 41 LPGA Tour victories, including 10 majors, before dying of cancer in 1956 in her native state of Texas. She’s part of the inaugural class of the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame, being inducted in 1973.

Another inductee that year was Charles “Babe” Lind (left), who likewise made a significant mark in Colorado golf after World War II. Lind has the distinction of being the first Colorado native to compete in the Masters. That berth came thanks to outstanding performances in 1946, most notably at the Trans-Mississippi Championship held at Denver Country Club.

In the first Trans-Miss conducted since 1942 due to World War II, Lind advanced to the final in grand fashion by holing out a sand shot for birdie on the 36th hole of his semifinal match. And though Skee Riegel beat him in the final, it was quite a showing for Lind in one of the nation’s top amateur tournaments of those days.

Lind, a standout player and coach for the University of Denver golf team in the 1940s and early ’50s — he was named the AAU’s Outstanding Athlete of the Year in 1946 — also won the 1946 CGA Match Play and his third CGA Stroke Play, in 1948. He would go on to become director of golf for the city of Denver in 1955, holding that position for three decades.

As for the other folks we mentioned in the first paragraph of this story, two of the biggest celebrities of this period also happened to love golf, and they came to Colorado to play on several occasions. Bing Crosby and Bob Hope participated in the Park Hill Invitational over the years, as did Zaharias, boxer Joe Louis and Dwight Eisenhower, who also became a fixture at Cherry Hills.

Other highlights of the decade from 1945-54:

— One of the top lifelong amateurs of all time, Charlie Coe, had quite a run at the Broadmoor Golf Club. Not only did he win back-to-back Broadmoor Invitation titles in 1947 and ’48, he captured the ’49 Trans Miss at the history-laden Colorado Springs club. Coe also prevailed in the 1952 Trans-Miss, hosted by Lakewood Country Club.

— Wellshire Golf Course was the site of just the second USGA championship held in Colorado — after the 1938 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills — as the 1946 U.S. Amateur Public Links came to Denver. Smiley Quick won his lone USGA title at the course.

— Denver Country Club hosted its first USGA championship in 1950 as the third U.S. Junior Amateur ever held came to town. Mason Rudoph, runner-up the year before, captured the title. He would go on to win five times on the PGA Tour.

— Two people now in the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame, Jim English Sr., and Jack Vickers, squared off in the finals of the 1950 Trans-Miss in Omaha, with English winning 11 and 10 in the 36-hole title match.

— Two other significant national amateur events were held in Colorado in 1954, with Bruce Cudd winning the Western Amateur at the Broadmoor and James Jackson claiming the Trans-Miss at Cherry Hills.

— In major statewide amateur championships during the decade, Lou North won three times (CGA Match Plays in 1952 and ’53, and a Stroke Play in ’52) and Jim Vickers captured back-to-back victories in the Match Play in ’49 and ’50. Claude Wright claimed the middle two of his four CGA Stroke Play titles in 1947 and ’53, and Bob Clark Sr., won two of his own, in 1950 and ’51.

— Future longtime state legislator Les Fowler, then the golf coach at the University of Colorado, earned the first of his four major CGA championships at the 1954 Match Play.

— In women’s amateur golf, the CWGA started its Stroke Play Championship in 1948. Mrs. James Roessler was among the top players of the era, winning two CWGA Match Plays (1951 and ’52) and two Stroke Plays (1952 and ’54).
 

As Frank Sinatra noted when signing “My Way”, “Regrets, I’ve had a few.”

Then again, who hasn’t?

My biggest related to golf came in 1992. As the golf writer for the (Boulder) Daily Camera newspaper, I was sent to cover the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, primarily because Boulder High and University of Colorado graduate Hale Irwin was just two years removed from his third U.S. Open victory, and because he had an interesting history at Pebble Beach.

Irwin won the 1984 Bing Crosby National Pro-Am after watching his tee shot on the 72nd hole head for the Pacific Ocean before it bounced off the rocks and out into the fairway. He went on to make birdie, force a playoff, then win the tournament.

Anyway, on the final day of the ’92 U.S. Open that Tom Kite won (my media credential is at left), I learned that I was among the winners of a media “lottery”. That meant that I was among a lucky group of journalists that would be allowed to play Pebble Beach for free on Monday, the day following the conclusion of the Open.

That’s when I did one of the stupidest things of my adult life. I turned down the spot because I had some pressing work-related reason to get back to Colorado on that Monday morning. At this point, I can’t even remember the assignment for which I had to get back.

All I know is I’ve regretted that move ever since. I’m sure my boss at the time, Dan Creedon, would have told me to stay in Pebble Beach another day if I had explained. But I dutifully returned on time to Colorado.

Over the years, I’ve brought up this “regret” on occasion, mentally kicking myself each time. Anyway, this apparently made an impression on my oldest daughter, Laura, a former high school golfer.

With that in mind, fast forward to a couple of months ago. My wife and I were at a high school football game when we received a text from Laura seeing if I had anything pressing on my calendar Jan. 14-16 of this year. After replying that there was nothing those days that I couldn’t rearrange, I was told that I should keep those dates free.

Then on Christmas morning, Laura clearly had something up her sleeve in having her present to me being the last opened at our family gathering.

First I read the card: “Didn’t want you to live with this regret. Merry Christmas. Love, Laura” Then, with Laura videotaping, I unwrapped a sheet of paper — a tee time confirmation at Pebble Beach Golf Links for Jan. 15.

Now, having been a golf writer for quite a while, I know what green fees run at Pebble Beach, which is one of the reasons for my regret, knowing that I probably wouldn’t ever be able to justify spending that much on a round of golf.

Laura (pictured at left) graduated from the University of Colorado in the spring of 2013 and had just landed her first full-time job. But I knew the amount she was earning, and suffice it to say that paying for golf at Pebble Beach for her and me was a large portion of her monthly pay. And with her saving up for graduate school, the first words out of my mouth were something like, “Laura, you shouldn’t have done that. That’s way too expensive.”

But, realizing the thought she’d put into it and the exceeding generosity she was demonstrating, the least I could do was be grateful — and very thankful.

Fortunately, Pebble Beach didn’t require us to stay on property in order to play golf, so with an inexpensive hotel and dirt-cheap flights, the only real big expense was the green fees.

So our pilgrimage to one of golf’s meccas became reality last week.

And let me join in the chorus by saying Pebble Beach does live up to its hype, and it’s an experience that will be etched into my memory to my dying days. It was great covering the U.S. Open there 22 years ago, but playing the course takes it to an entirely different level.

I can say that despite finishing with the highest score I’ve shot since I was a beginner at the game. While a good final tally would certainly have been nice, it’s somewhat beside the point. When you’re playing nine holes right on the Pacific Ocean — and the other nine holes very close — on a course with so much history and renown, worrying much about your score seems like quibbling.

I realize plenty of Colorado-based golfers have had the pleasure of playing Pebble Beach, but for many — probably including me — this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. As a guy who plays most of his golf at courses that charge $30-$35 per round, this was very tall cotton indeed.

For someone like me, among the most enjoyable parts of playing Pebble Beach was recounting for Laura some of what’s occurred on different holes of the course — Nick Faldo climbing a tree on the 14th hole in search of his ball during the 1992 U.S. Open; the incredibly difficult 14th green that last week had the toughest pin placement I’ve ever encountered; Jack Nicklaus’ 1-iron at No. 17 in the 1972 U.S. Open and Tom Watson’s chip-in there in the 1982 Open; Irwin’s improbable lucky shot on 18; and Tiger Woods’ incredible 273-yard second shot that sliced around the fairway trees and over the ocean, hitting the green on the par-5 18th during the 2010 U.S. Open.

While there are beaches adjacent to Pebble Beach Golf Links, it was the sand on the course with which I became most familiar. Even though I was hitting my driver very good — by my standards — and my irons OK, I visited 11 bunkers. And with quite a few of them having nasty-deep faces on them, I felt like I was having a Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day” experience — reliving the same thing over and over.

Part of the reason I encountered so much sand was sheer thick-headedness. I knew my shots at sea level carried roughly 10 percent less than in Colorado, but it took a while before I could pull the trigger on an 8-iron from 130 yards slightly into the wind, when 150-155 is the norm at mile-high altitude.

The golf aside, the day was all you’d expect. With 77-degree weather, sunny skies, little wind, a jaw-dropping setting and sharing the experience with my daughter and some very nice playing partners (a German couple), a person couldn’t ask for much more. Even the inexplicable empty water jugs throughout the course didn’t mar the joy of walking Pebble Beach.

And it didn’t hurt that I hit my best drive of the day on the intimidating 18th hole, with my ball finishing just to the right of the two trees in the fairway.

The day was capped off by a little souvenir shopping, looking at the old photos of Bing Crosby in the locker room, and with visits to The Lodge and eating establishments overlooking the 18th hole as the sun set over the Pacific Ocean.

All in all, life doesn’t get much better.

And now, that old regret is long gone.