Ranking The Best PGA Championship Competitors Of All-Time
By Bill Felber
PGA Championship Era: 1940 to 1949
To the extent professional golf could be played during the World War II era, it was largely a three-person battle. Among them, Byron Nelson, Sam Snead, and Ben Hogan account for six of the decade’s nine contested titles and three runner-up finishes.
Only in 1947, when Nelson retired to his Texas farm, defending champion Hogan was the victim of a stunning first-round upset and Snead lost to an aging Gene Sarazen, did the PGA Championship fail to include at least one of the three.
Here’s the decade’s top 10:
1. Byron Nelson, -1.42
2. Sam Snead, -1.00
3. Ben Hogan, -0.98
4. Lloyd Mangrum, -0.76
5. Jim Turnesa, -0.49
6. Craig Wood, -0.42
7. Harold McSpaden, -0.36
8. Ky Laffoon, -0.35
9. Mike Turnesa, -0.29
10. Claude Harmon, -0.14
Nelson competed in each of the decade’s first six PGAs. He won in 1940 and 1945 and was second in 1941 and 1944. The 1944 and 1945 events both featured war-weakened fields bereft of Snead and Hogan – as well as Lloyd Mangrum — due to their military commitments.
Snead won in 1942, besting a field not yet stripped by the war, of Hogan, Mangrum, Wood, Jimmy Demaret, Shute, or the era’s other most prominent names. He repeated in 1949, this time against a field of 64 that included neither Nelson (retired) nor Hogan (recovering from his bus crash injuries).
Hogan emerged at the war’s end to make the 1946 PGA his breakthrough victory. In the process, he delivered Demaret a resounding 10 & 9 semi-final humbling. Following his first-round exit as defending champ in 1947, he returned as U.S. Open champ in 1948 and survived a series of harrowing escapes. They included 1-up decisions in his first three matches. A pair of 2 & 1 wins got him into the finals against Mike Turnesa, who Hogan destroyed 7 & 6.