October 14, 1916: The 1st PGA Championship

Jim Barnes

October 14, 1916: The 1st PGA Championship is played, at Siwanoy Country Club in Bronxville, Westchester County, New York. Jim Barnes is the winner. The 30-year-old native of Leland, Cornwall, in England's West Country would win it again in 1919, and went on to win the 1921 U.S. Open and the 1925 British Open. He lived until 1966.

NOTE: For a long time, with this project, I resisted putting in references to golf, because of the kind of people who tend to play it. I finally caved in, although I haven't included as many references as I would if it were a real sport, which it is not.

The United States Golf Association (USGA) was founded in 1894, but, in America, golf was still widely considered a sport for wealthy amateurs who could afford the clubs, shoes, and other equipment. Playing it professionally was one of those things that "simply isn't done." By 1916, that had been brushed aside: The Professional Golfers Association was founded in New York that February, and it staged the 1st PGA Championship.

One of the reasons there has never been a Grand Slam winner in the professional era is the timing: For years, the PGA Championship was played the week after the British Open, making it difficult to compete in both events. In 1965, the PGA was moved to August, giving enough space for a golfer to play in all 4 with sufficient rest. In 2017, the PGA was moved to May, making it the 2nd of the 4, rather than the last. Even so, to this day, no golfer has ever gone into the last major having won the 1st 3.

The PGA Championship was not played in 1917 or 1918, due to World War I. It was resumed in 1919, and has been played every year since, except for 1943, during World War II. Jock Hutchison was the 1st American winner, in 1920. After Barnes, no foreigner won it again until 1947, when Australian Jim Ferrier did. From then until Australian David Graham in 1979, the only non-American winner was Gary Player of South Africa, and he did it twice, in 1962 and 1972.

Although a few courses have hosted it 3 times, only 1 has hosted it 4, and that 1 has hosted it 5: Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (UPDATE: In 2023, Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York hosted it for the 4th time. Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky hosted for the 4th time in 2024.)

Walter Hagen and Jack Nicklaus won it 5 times each, while Tiger Woods has won it 4. Phil Mickelson is the oldest winner, at 50 in 2021. The youngest winner is Gene Sarazen, at 20 in 1922. The record low score is 265, by David Toms in 2001.

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October 14, 1916 was a Saturday. The baseball season had ended 2 days earlier, with the Boston Red Sox beating the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series, in 5 games. Actually, the Red Sox, with Babe Ruth pitching, beat the Brooklyn Robins, as the team was known from 1914 to 1931, while Wilbert Robinson managed them.

These notable college football games were played:

* Rutgers played Washington and Lee University to a 13-13 tie at Neilson Field in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The visitors, based in Lexington, Virginia, and named for President George Washington and General Robert E. Lee, the latter buried on their grounds, refused to play unless Rutgers kept their one black player out of the game. That was sophomore tackle and guard Paul Robeson. A friend of his called it "a wound that never healed."

Later in the year, West Virginia University came to New Brunswick, and refused to play Rutgers unless Robeson were held out. This time, Rutgers stood up for him, and said that West Virginia could mix the races or they could take their redneck asses back to Morgantown with a forfeit and no share of the gate receipts. Since they considered green to be more important than white, they played. Robeson made a game-saving tackle near the goal line to preserve a scoreless tie. Afterward, the WVU players lined up to shake his hand.

* Princeton beat Tufts, 3-0 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton, New Jersey.

* Army beat Holy Cross, 17-0 on The Plain at West Point, New York.

* Swarthmore upset Penn, 6-0 at the original Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

* Navy lost to the University of Pittsburgh, 20-19 at Worden Field in Annapolis, Maryland. Three days earlier, they beat nearby Maryland State at home. Four days before that, they beat nearby Georgetown at home. They probably shouldn't have played games 3 games in 8 days.

* In a then-unusual North vs. South contest, Harvard beat North Carolina, 21-0 at Harvard Stadium in Boston.

* In a game that was apparently already a major rivalry, West Virginia beat VPI (Virginia Polytechnic, now usually called Virginia Tech), 20-0 at Charleston, West Virginia, in Mountaineer territory but roughly halfway between the schools.

* In a game that would one day become a major rivalry, Georgia beat Florida, 21-0 at Sanford Field (predecessor of Sanford Stadium) in Athens, Georgia.

* Alabama beat Mississippi College, 13-7 at University Field in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Not to be confused with the University of Mississippi, a.k.a. "Ole Miss" (which beat Hendrix College of Arkansas, 61-0 at home in Oxford), or Mississippi State University, then named Mississippi A&M (which beat the University of Chattanooga, 33-0 away), Mississippi College was, and remains, a Baptist school in Clinton, Mississippi. They now compete in NCAA Division II.

* Notre Dame beat Haskell, 25-0 at Cartier Field in South Bend, Indiana.

* Colgate upset Illinois, 15-3 at Illinois Field in Champaign.

* In a game that was already a major rivalry, Texas Christian University (TCU) beat Southern Methodist University (SMU), 48-3 at the State Fair Grounds in Dallas.

* In a game that never became a major rivalry, the University of Tulsa beat the University of Oklahoma, 16-0 at Boyd Field in Norman.