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Gene Sarazen
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Going into the 1922 season, 20-year-old Gene Sarazen (christened Eugenio Saraceni, the son of a New York Italian carpenter) was the archetypal 'unknown'. His anonymity survived only a matter of months. By July he was US Open champion, making a birdie on the 72nd hole for a closing 68 and thereby becoming the first winner to break 70 in the last round. He won by a shot from John Black and the as yet unfulfilled Bobby Jones. The following month he added the US PGA title to his collection, the second of the seven majors he would win.
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When he won the U. S. Open at Skokie in 1922, Gene Sarazen was the second caddy-bred U. S. professional of other than Scotch or English descent to reach the top. He was raised in Bridgeport, son of an Italian contractor. The first man was Walter Hagen, son of a German greenskeeper in Rochester. Now the U. S. tournaments are full of Ciucis, Espinosas, Kozaks, Turnesas, and the U. S. open champion is Billy Burke, born Burkowski, son of a Lithuanian steel worker.
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Gene Sarazen, the son of an immigrant, got a modest education through formal schooling but a world-class education through caddying and playing the game of golf. That education allowed him to become an international figure in the sports world as both a competitor and as an ambassador for the game. He was the first professional golfer to win all four modern majors, including the U.S. Open (1922, 1933), PGA (1922-23, 1933), British Open (1932) and Masters (1935). and U.S. He retired to his farm in New York but was enticed to become a television celebrity on Shell's Wonderful World of Golf. All of this because of being introduced to caddying.
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During his heyday Gene Sarazen was reputedly the highest earning sportsman in the world. During the 1930s he appeared to prefer making money rather than collecting titles, by appearing in exhibition matches and the like around the world. One wonders if his approach would have been different had he begun playing in the 1990's with the pots of gold available to successful players.
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The winner of 39 PGA Tournaments, Gene Sarazen was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974. He was the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year in 1932, a charter member of the World Golf Hall of Fame (1974), and won the PGA Tour's first Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.
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Gene Sarazen, née Saraceni, a first-generation American and son of an immigrant Italian carpenter, was born in 1902 in Harrison, New York. Like all would-be golfers of the working class, Sarazen got into golf as a caddie, at the age of 10.
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Gene Sarazen