Golf Timeline
Golf Timeline - 1930 - 60
1930 saw Bobby Jones complete quite an incredible season with victories in the US Open, the Open, the British Amateur and US Amateur Championships . Shortly after his never-to-be-repeated Grand Slam, Jones decided to retire, aged just 28. In his brief but spectacular career he only played 52 tournaments - winning 23 of them.
In 1931 Britain played France in the first "official" women's international for the Vagliano Cup. The following year saw the dawn of the Curtis Cup, with females from the US taking on a Great Britain and Ireland team every two years
Gene Sarazen won the Open at Sandwich in 1932, and two weeks later tasted success for the second time at the US Open. The following year he won his third US PGA title.
In 1933 Johnny Goodman won the US Open - since then no amateur has lifted any of golf's "majors". The first Augusta National Invitation was issued in 1934 on the splendid course that was brainchild of the great Bobby Jones. Horton Smith won the tournament that was immediately dubbed The Masters. Gene Sarazen was to win at Augusta the following year which included the now legendary final round holing of his four wood second shot at the par five 15th.
Henry Cotton won the Open at St George's in 1934 with opening rounds of 67, 67, 65 and despite shooting a final day 79 won by five strokes. Cotton's finest hour was to come three years later when he lifted the claret jug once again, playing against a strong field and the gruelling conditions of Carnoustie.
In 1934 W. Lawson Little won the Amateur Championships of both Britain and the US and remarkably repeated the same double the following year.
1938 witnessed the first Great Britain & Ireland win in the Walker Cup, at the tenth time of asking.
1940's
The War interrupted championship golf, but there were still some tournaments held, and some great players on the circuit.
The big three around this time were Sam Snead, Ralph Guldhal and Byron Nelson. Hogan would emerge during this decade, but was still developing as a player during the war years.
Snead was triumphant in the 1942 US PGA, an event he was to win on two other occasions, while he won the Open on only his second attempt in 1946.
However, the American was not keen on travelling and did not visit the UK again for another 16 years.
1946 saw the first US Women's Open, with Patty Berg emerging victorious.
Hogan's breakthrough came when he captured his first major trophy in 1946 with victory at the US PGA. Two years later he was to win his first US Open and capture the US PGA again.
A third Open title came Henry Cotton's way at Muirfield in 1948, while Bobby Locke won the first of his four Open Championships in 1949.
Sam Snead captured the first of his three Masters wins in 1949.
1950's
Ben Hogan, having recovered from a serious car crash the previous year, continued his winning ways in 1950 with his second US Open title, while the following year he tasted victory in both the Masters and the US Open for a third time.
1951 witnessed the Open go for the first and only time to Ireland, where the unfancied Max Faulkner was victorious at Royal Portrush.
South Africa and Australia provided the Open's stars of the 1950s, in Bobby Locke and Peter Thomson. Between them they won seven Championships in the period 1950-58 , with Thomson completing a back-to back hat-trick 1954-56, coming second in '57 and winning again in '58.
The exception to this southern hemisphere domination was the legendary Ben Hogan. Hogan had won the US Open and the Masters in 1953, and he believed that he must win in Britain to prove his standing in the game, which he duly did, and with some style at Carnoustie. Sadly for British golf fans it was to be Hogan's only appearance in the event. No other player has ever won three of the modern majors in one season.
1958 saw the US PGA lose its match play format in favour of stroke play, and heralded the arrival of Arnold Palmer as a major force in the game with his victory in the Masters, while the final year of the decade saw the great Gary Player win his first major, with a win at the Open at Muirfield. 1959 also saw Jack Nicklaus emerge as the 19-year-old US Amateur champion.