WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN

Timing is so important in life. When you were born, when you started a business. Many of the early great golfers had careers hampered by the two World Wars, others by injury or illness.

Tommy Armour was one who was injured during World War I and lost his sight due to a mustard gas explosion. During his recovery, he regained sight in his right eye which allowed him to play golf. Born in Scotland, he moved to the US in his mid-twenties and turned professional in 1924.

He managed to win the US Open, PGA Championship and The Open Championship. He also won the Canadian Open three times and went on to become a great and sought-after coach who wrote a book, titled How to Play Your Best Golf All theTime, which was the biggest-selling book authored on golf until Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book was published. Tommy also put his name on golf equipment which is still sold in the US today, over a hundred years since he became a professional golfer.

World War II affected many wonderful golfers from various parts of the World. The 1951 Open Champion, Max Faulkner (below), was only able to play two rounds of golf between 1939 and 1945 as he served in the War.

Our very own Bobby Locke lost his best golfing years to the War. He had just started to win golf tournaments in South Africa and Europe when the War broke out and he didn’t play tournament golf during that time.

Lloyd Mangrum (below), an American, was involved in the D-Day battle and the Battle of the Bulge. He won the US Open in 1946 and went on to win over 30 Tour events in the US, all after the War. Byron Nelson said, “He’s the best player who has been forgotten in golf.”

Ben Hogan was another whose career was firstly affected by the War, then by a serious car accident. He was still able to win nine Majors, and between 1946 and 1956, he only had one Major finish outside the top 10.

Who knows what these and other players whose careers were shortened by poor health and injury could have achieved?

One player who isn’t often spoken about is Tony Lema (below), who was born in California. Lema was brought up by his mother and at 17 enlisted in the US Marine Corps and served in Korea. When he came out of the Army he was lucky to meet Eddie Lowery, a wealthy car dealer who is best known as the 10-year-old caddie of Francis Ouimet during the 1923 US Open, which Ouimet won.

Lowery loved helping talented young amateur golfers and gave Lema $200 a week to help him play at tournaments. In 1957 Lema started on the PGA Tour. He won the Imperial Valley Open that year and, in 1958, finished 15th on the moneylist.

Lema battled on Tour for the next few years but it all changed in 1962 when he won the Orange County Open Invitational where he said before the playoff: “If I win I will buy all the press champagne,” hence his new nickname Champagne Tony. He made the Ryder Cup team in 1963 and 1965, and his record of 9-1-1 is still the best of anyone who has played at two or more Ryder Cups. He got married in 1963, which further calmed his notorious off-course antics.

In the same year, he lost The Masters by one shot to Jack Nicklaus and finished second at the US Open. In three and a half years he won 12 PGA Tour events including his only Major, the 1964 Open at St Andrews. At the Majors over the same period he had two top-10 finishes at The Masters, three top-10s out of four starts at the US Open, two out of three at The Open and one at The PGA Championship.

In 1965, his last full year on Tour, he finished second to Jack Nicklaus on the moneylist. That year he won the Buick Open and the Carling World Open where he beat the King, Arnold Palmer. Lema’s last win came at the Oklahoma City Open in May 1966.

Just two months later, after The PGA Championship at Firestone in Akron, Ohio, he and his wife chartered a small plane to play at an exhibition match. Tragedy struck when Lema, his wife and the pilot were killed in a crash that occurred only seven miles from the event’s location. Lema was only 32 years old. The San Leandro public golf course near Oakland Airport in California is named the Tony Lema Golf Course.

Many golfers who saw Tony play in the mid-sixties believed he was the closest player at that time to the great Jack Nicklaus. In his short career, he won 22 tournaments. Between 1962 and his death in 1966 he won 11 times and finished second 11 times. Jack and Arnold Palmer won 13 tournaments and Gary Player six. Tony also didn’t miss a cut in those four years.

The great Australian, Peter Thompson, said this about the great golfers he had played with: “Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Tony Lema – wow. That’s good company.” Johnny Miller once said that Lema had one of the most elegant golf swings he’d seen. “Golf lost a great champion far too early, but as he said – Life is not a practice round.”

IMAGES: R&A VIA GETTY IMAGES/THE OPEN/SUPPLIED