The 1936 Western Open’s most lasting influence on golf in the Quad Cities would manifest through a pair of teen-aged caddies and future Davenport High School golf teammates on hand for that rousing Sunday finish.

 

The names Jack Fleck and Franklin “Whitey” Barnard today are ingrained in the history of the game in this community, and both men's roots ran deep at the club on the bluff.

 

Born to a Bettendorf family of modest means, Fleck grew his golf game in the DCC caddie yard. Years beyond his hardscrabble upbringing, he remembered his earliest experience with a golf swing came by wearing the grip off an old 7-iron while waiting for loops.

 

“They called me ‘Gopher’ because I was always digging holes,” Fleck remembered in 2005. “I just kept swinging. You can groove yourself.”

 

On one such occasion, Fleck benefited from a brief but memorable moment of instruction from Scottish-born DCC head pro Tom Cunningham.

 

“Caddie, hol’t on to that club,” he was told.

 

A teen-aged Fleck did indeed grip it tighter, and he would find confidence in his game from a semifinal upset of future Iowa Hawkeye and Tri-City Blackhawk basketball standout Vic Siegel in a DCC caddie tournament. He subsequently worked for Cunningham during winter golf school sessions at the Blackhawk Hotel, and signed on as a DCC pro shop assistant following his high school graduation.

 

The famously cantankerous Fleck left that job within months, though, following a squabble with another assistant. A series of very briefly held factory jobs also didn’t take, and in 1940 Fleck declared himself a professional golfer. He worked as an assistant at Des Moines Golf and Country Club for $5 a week prior to enlisting to serve in the second World War. The latter assignment found him aboard a British warship firing rockets at the cliffs above Normandy’s Utah Beach on June 6, 1944.

 

Fleck returned home from the war, chased the winter PGA Tour with middling success, and, in 1948, was named head professional at Davenport’s two municipal courses, Credit Island and Duck Creek.

 

In June of 1955, Fleck ventured to the Olympic Club in San Francisco, and returned home with the 18-inch, sterling silver trophy awarded to the champion of the United States Open. In one of the most epic upsets in the history of the game, he tied the legendary Ben Hogan with a 72nd-hole birdie and easily won an 18-hole playoff a day later.

 

Caddie, hol’t on to that club, indeed.

 

“Whitey” Barnard was a pretty fair stick in his own right. He never won a U.S. Open, but did claim multiple DCC and Tri-City championships, while holding his own in big-time amateur events around the world.

 

His influence on Quad Cities golf is arguably more indelible even than that of Fleck. Barnard, after all, was a critical player in the creation of the Quad Cities Open/John Deere Classic. And, years beyond the first QCO tee shot at Crow Valley Golf Club in 1971, Barnard said his first inkling of the impact a professional tournament could have on his hometown occurred to him while slinging the bag of Tommy Armour around DCC as a 13-year-old caddie at the ’36 Western.

 

Fifteen years later, Barnard was a DCC member in good standing at age 28 when he welcomed Western Golf Association icon Chick Evans into his home on a frigid January afternoon to finalize plans to bring the Western back to the bluff. He played only a back scene role thereafter as the Quad City 200 Civic Golf Association made preparations for the summer event. Yet along with fledgling head pro Pete Pelcher, and fellow DCC members Joe Von Maur, Al Howard, Paul Barton and Bud McCabe, Whitey did tee it up in the 1951 event.

 

How’d that go?

 

Stay tuned.

 

The Years Between

 

In the years between the 1936 and 1951 Western Opens, countless more precious memories were manufactured on the bluff.

 

At the annual meeting in January of 1937, plans were unveiled for additions of a lounge and pro shop to the old-barn clubhouse, and membership chair Dr. A.L. Syverud declared a drive for membership wouldn’t be necessary. From a long waiting list, the handful of vacancies from the previous year’s full roster of 250 members already had been filled.

 

On Jan. 2 of the following year, the society pages of the Davenport Democrat included among the Quad Cities parties of the year the May 1 grand opening of the renovated clubhouse.
 

A few weeks later, a Democrat and Leader report noted over 100 caddies would be ready for duty when the season got underway that spring, and treasurer John Soller shared a detailed financial report. Stating “total receipts were winning the race over total expenditures by a comfortable margin,” Stoller declared the club in sound financial condition.

 

Speaking of winning races, the DCC squad won the 1938 Velie Cup for a second straight year on the last day of July, nipping Short Hills by a mere seven strokes on the fourth and final day of play at Arsenal Country Club. The DCC squad did so only after losing a seemingly insurmountable 107-point lead to the Shorties on the bluff a week prior. They trailed by 38 points heading to Arsenal Island but won the Cup for the sixth time in the decade-long history of the Velie matches, a comeback every bit as stirring as the Western Open win two years prior by Ralph Guldahl.

 

In September of 1939, Guldahl returned to DCC for the first time since his career-salvaging victory there in ’36, and he arrived as a two-time U.S. Open winner and the reigning Masters champion.

 

Guldahl teamed with DCC women’s club champion Nel Staats to defeat Doc Barton and Ottumwa teen Ruth Smith, who had bested Staats 1-up in the Iowa State Women’s championship the previous summer. Some 250 onlookers turned out to watch Guldahl and Staats emerge as winners of a Scotch foursomes exhibition match.

 

In the fall of 1940, plans progressed toward re-purchasing years ahead of schedule all of the land and buildings south of Valley Drive from the Davenport CC Liquidation Trust. That option was exercised in late January of 1941.

 

Tempting to say Happy Days were indeed here again.

 

Except December 7, 1941, was not a happy day in the least.

 

A surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States into another worldwide conflagration, and young members like Dick Schmidt and caddies like Jack Fleck were summoned to join the conflicts in Europe and the South Pacific.

 

More than 16 million Americans served their country during World War II, and more than 420,000 Americans died.

 

The sum total of DCC members who served in the Second World War is lost to time but a search of local newspaper archives reveals a fair sampling.

 

Throughout the conflict, sports page legend O’Donnell shared letters from Quad Citizens in uniform in a frequently published column called “Dear Joe.” Countless missives included mention of many men in uniform with DCC ties.

 

They included Fred Agnew, the young attorney who chaired the Western Open organizing committee in 1936. He enlisted in the military five years after that Western, and served his country as a Navy admiral.

 

There also was Tom Halligan, who topped Doc Barton for the 1940 DCC club title at the tender age of 17, then sailed just a few years later as  an ensign on the U.S.S. Iowa.

 

George Skinner also was a teen when he lost to Barton in the 1940 club championships semifinals. He served the war effort as an Army lieutenant.

 

Tommy Coleman was described by O’Donnell as “one of the top-notchers at Davenport Country Club” before graduating from medical school at the University of Iowa in 1941. He went on to serve as a surgeon and lieutenant in an anti-aircraft battalion during the second World War, and was one of three fighting Colemans in the war. Brother Jimmy flew a dive bomber as a Marine captain. Robert was an ensign on a mine sweeper in the south Atlantic.

 

“It is a busy life and a good one,” Tommy Coleman wrote in his “Dear Joe” letter home. “In an anti-aircraft division, with not too many doctors available, a fellow puts in a full day with no union hours attached.”

 

A disturbing chapter ended satisfactorily in April of 1945 when 1931 DCC champ Lloyd Nordstrom was freed by American troops after three months in a German prisoner of war camp.

 

Serving their nation out of the DCC caddie yard were fellows such as Fleck, Arlo Theodoropolous, Vic Siegel, and Robert and Edmund Williams.

 

The latter Williams was awarded a Purple Heart for injuries incurred in a battle on the Coral Sea, and later told O’Donnell with a smile, “Some of the battles were as tough as carrying the golf bags of the DCC alibiers.”

 

Also serving the war effort was a DCC caddie turned member named F.L. Barnard. A wartime pilot and flight instructor at a naval base in Florida, Ensign Barnard years later would share with his son Chris stories of harrowing flights in turbulent skies.

 

In battle? “No. To play golf,” the son replied with a grin. Whitey’s service to his country was as a top stick on the Navy golf squad. They also serve who make birdies.

 

Of course, the game also went on back on the bluff, with allowances made for “wartime restrictions.” Those included rationing for use of gasoline, sugar, tires, coffee and even shoes. There was a rush on the local stock of rubber-centered golf balls after production ceased on Dec. 11, four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

 

Velie Cuppers also were in short supply with all the strong young sticks now in uniform. Hence, Nel Staats joined the DCC side in 1944. And Nellie held her own. On the final day, she and partner Doc Barton tied for the lowest score in best-ball eightsomes.

 

Life around the world and at the club returned to normal on Aug. 14, 1945, when the Republic of Japan surrendered and peace was declared.

 

Six years later, a second Western Open at DCC would further influence QC golf history.

 

Hole of Grief

 

Nancy Von Maur parked Sam Snead’s car.

 

Brice Oakley was standing by the 16th tee when Slammin’ Sammy parked his Sunday tee shot in Spencer Creek, en route to the double-bogey that crashed his bid for a third straight Western Open title.

 

In fairness, Marty Furgol won the 1951 Western more than Snead lost it. Then a 34-year-old pro playing out of Cog Hill Golf and Country Club near Chicago, Furgol closed fast with a final-round 65, and made birdie at the last by hitting a 7-iron to three feet to nip runner-up Cary Middlecoff by a shot.

 

It was the second of five career PGA Tour wins for the New York-born Furgol, who also played on the winning U.S. side in the 1955 Ryder Cup.

 

Still, it is Snead’s name on the plaque that stands by the 16th tee, not far from where Oakley — then a 15-year-old “runner” reporting scores back to the clubhouse for the WOC radio broadcast — stood when Snead’s legendarily sweet swing failed him while holding a one-shot lead.

 

“He pulled out an iron and just hit it dead left,” said Oakley, who then was a young member of nine-hole Oakwood Country Club but has long since made his home near Des Moines. “He was not a happy fellow.”

 

Hence, the 16th hole’s lasting claim to the title of “Hole of Grief.”

 

Snead’s misfortune notwithstanding, the ’51 Open was a very happy occasion for Davenport Country Club, and a qualified success for the Quad City 200 Civic Golf Association.

 

It included locally televised morning rounds on WOC-TV, although, contrary to some memories, that was not the first time professional golf or even the Western Open itself was televised, WGA historian Tim Cronin points out. But the telecasts certainly called attention to the event and brought galleries to the golf course for the afternoon rounds.

 

Then a teen-ager herself, Nancy Von Maur directed patrons and pros to parking spots at her Aunt Nancy MacDonald’s then-vacant Valley Drive property across from the golf course near the club’s horse stables.

 

“We made a lot of money. The players parked there along with public,” she remembered. “We parked Sam Snead’s car. Boy, he was a hot shot. Had a nasty way about him. Cary Middlecoff. There were a lot of nice guys who played. Very pleasant. Talked to the people and they were very nice to us girls.

 

“I didn’t know anything about golf. But we followed these guys around the golf course and we’d say ‘That one is so good looking.’ Comments like that, here and there.”

 

Snead was unquestionably the star attraction in a field that included all but one of the era’s top American professionals. The one missing in action was a doozy, though. Ben Hogan played in only five events in 1951, but won three of those, including the Masters and the U.S. Open. The Western was not on his schedule.

 

In the field, however, was the man who would spoil Hogan’s hopes for a 10th major championship four years later. Jack Fleck was one of two locals to make the cut at ’51 Western, closing with a final round 68 to tie for 37th. DCC member Al Howard also made the cut.

 

Barnard didn’t play beyond Saturday. Still, the experience fueled his interest in bringing professional golf to the Quad Cities to stay.

 

In the immediate aftermath of the successful June event at the DCC, the Quad City 200 Civic Golf Association announced plans to back another $15,000 event the following year, with the Credit Island muni optimistically targeted to host.

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“You have started a golf tradition in the community,” Fred Agnew, the 1936 Western Open chair and erstwhile Naval officer, told the group in November of 1951. “Don’t let it drop now. Build it and you will have a better community.”

 

Yet, after  the Tour failed to offer dates on its schedule in 1952, 1953 and 1954, the Quad City 200 group dissolved and disbursed to local charities the $290 remaining from the 1951 Western’s profits.

 

Whitey Barnard heeded Fred Agnew’s advice, though, and never let the dream drop. In 1971, the vision he first entertained as a caddie at the ’36 Western Open came to fruition with the debut of the Quad City Open.

 

More than a half century and in excess of $170 million raised for local charities later, that dream that began on the bluff lives on and lives large.