One promising Friday.

 

One black Thursday.

 

A total of 2,092 days passed between Feb. 1, 1924, when Davenport Country Club officially was incorporated, and Oct. 24, 1929, when the United States crashed into one of the darkest decades in its history.

 

The Great Depression was an excruciating and tragic time of struggle for Americans — for those on the farm, on the margins, and in the boardroom.

 

It took its toll on golf clubs across the country, as well. By 1939, the number of country clubs that had grown to 5,500 in 1927 had decreased by 800. Across the nation, memberships declined by a staggering 78 percent.

 

Including a nine-hole version of Oakwood that had opened in south Moline in 1925, Quad Cities clubs survived the decade of financial hardship. Some, though, fared better than others. Ultimately, Black Hawk Hills would close in July of 1943. It was purchased in January of 1944 by the Rock Island County Forest Preserve District for the sum of $30,000, and resurfaced as the county-owned public course Indian Bluff.

 

“War conditions” were cited as cause for Black Hawk Hill’s closing, per the Rock Island Argus, but World War II, awful though it was, actually restarted the economy some five years before. The almost certain reality is that Black Hawk Hills never fully recovered after a prior decade of financial losses.

 

DCC had to fight hard for its own survival.

 

In the summer of 1936, attorneys from Lane and Waterman filed a petition for reorganization under the U.S. Bankruptcy Act in a federal district court in Des Moines.

 

Approved on July 31 of that year, the plan called for the appointment of a trustee representing bondholders and creditors to assume control of the acreage that comprised the club. The trustee would lease the ground and all holdings back to the incorporated club over a 25-year period.

 

The depressed economy had left DCC with a funded debt of nearly $114,000, as well as unpaid loans from members totaling $65,000 and unpaid interest and taxes equaling another $30,000.

 

Families fighting to keep their farms and their homes faced far greater difficulties, of course. Even those with successful businesses made do.

 

“I went through the Great Depression,” Dick Schmidt remembered. “I grew up in the early part of it and it lasted through the 30s. We ate a lot of macaroni! My dad said we’ve always got something to eat. Cookies. Macaroni. Crackers.”

 

Other DCC members had cash in reserve, however. Enough to keep the Country Club open.

 

“A half dozen members carried it,” Dick Schmidt said. “There were about a half dozen of them who forked out all the money. I think they got paid back.”

 

They did, but not before the club on the bluff parted with valuable real estate along Valley Drive, including the Lane estate that years prior had yielded its function as clubhouse to the dairy barn alongside the first hole.

 

“The trust had to sell off all the land on that side of Valley Drive,” said Bern Hofmann, a future club president who, while born years beyond the Depression, makes his home today in the former Joe Kimmel estate above the 16th green. “The name of the plat where all the houses are located against the golf course is still the Davenport CC Liquidation Trust Plat.”

 

Ultimately, the sale of those homesteads and the resourceful reorganization plan proposed by a committee consisting of Chairman D.J. Fisher, Charles J. Johnson, Reinhardt Schulz, George D. Thompson, Henry C. Wurzer and C.D. Waterman ensured the Country Club would survive for decades to come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Best Come to the Bluff

 

Life went on.

 

A month before Judge W.W. Scott approved the club’s reorganization plan, Davenport Country Club welcomed a field of the world’s finest professionals and amateurs for an event that would mark a milestone moment in DCC history, and also significantly influence the history of golf in the Quad Cities.

 

The Western Golf Association was formed, in a fashion, in April of 1899 at a meeting in downtown Chicago, where representatives of 13 Chicago area clubs agreed to create the Associated Golf Clubs of Chicago. Although the hope was to bring every course within a 35-mile radius of Chicago’s city hall into the fold, only six courses initially met an additional requirement — sanction  from the United States Golf Association.

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Thus, a bigger idea emerged, with a number of delegates in favor of forming a sectional group called the Western Golf Association. As detailed in author Tim Cronin's "A Century of Golf: Western Golf Association 1899-1999," that plan gained support in a second meeting later that month, where the AGC of Chicago became the WGA, and the 35-mile radius for member clubs was expanded to 500 miles.

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On May 9, the Rock Island Arsenal Golf Club was among four clubs from well beyond Chicagoland admitted to the WGA. In due time, that roster would grow to include several other newly created clubs in the Quad Cities area, DCC included.

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The WGA-sanctioned Western Open debuted in the fall of 1899 alongside the Western Amateur, but a number of the day’s premier pros found a purse of $150, with $50 promised the victor, to be less than enticing.

 

With the stakes unchanged and the professionals still balking a year later, the 1900 Western Open, scheduled for June at the Onwentsia Club in Lake Forest, was canceled without so much as an announcement, Cronin wrote.

 

The tournament resurfaced the following year, however, then ventured beyond Illinois’ borders to the Euclid Club in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1902. Over the ensuing three decades, the championship grew in stature as many of the biggest names of the era were etched on the trophy. That included Gene Sarazen, Tommy Armour, Willie Anderson, Jock Hutchison, Jim Barnes, amateur Chick Evans and the irrepressible pro’s pro Walter Hagen, who won five Westerns in three different states.

 

By 1936, the Western Open offered a winner’s share of $500, and the $5,000 purse was enticing enough that touring professionals like Byron Nelson conferred upon it “major championship” status.

 

“The Western Open was a prestigious tournament and it still was that into the late 50s and early 60s,” author Cronin said in a spring 2023 interview for this DCC history. “All you have to do is go through the PGA TOUR record book for a particular year and you’ll notice they had the rundown of all the Western Open champions like they did the U.S. Open, the Masters and the PGA. They didn’t do that for every tournament. So it was considered a major in that way.

 

“Byron Nelson said that the Western was a major along with the North and South, the U.S. Open and the PGA because if you won it you got a bonus from your equipment manufacturer. That’s how the majors were recognized until Arnold Palmer and Mark McCormick and network TV came along.  And then things changed.”

 

Nelson was among the Who’s Who of the era who challenged Davenport Country Club over three days in June of 1936. The gentleman golfer from Texas was just a year into a brief but brilliant 11-year career that would see him score 64 professional victories, including 11 in succession and 18 total in 1945 alone before retiring to take up ranching at the age of 34. Yet, Nelson already was a headline attraction, and he wasn’t alone in the stellar 1936 Western Open field.

 

He was joined on the bluff by Hagen, defending champion Johnny Revolta, and former Western winners Harry Cooper, Macdonald Smith, Sarazen, and Hutchison. Top amateur Lawson Little came to play, as did Horton Smith, who won the first Augusta National Invitational in 1934 as well as the third edition of what would become the Masters only two months prior to competing at DCC.

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A Major Moment in DCC History

 

Although the definition of a major championship was ill-defined at the time, there’s little question that playing host to one of the game’s premier events was a major deal for Davenport Country Club and the Quad Cities, especially in the midst of the Great Depression.

 

The WGA was not averse to taking the game to smaller communities. The 1934 Western was contested at the Country Club of Peoria in central Illinois and the 1935 event was played at South Bend Country Club in Indiana.

 

“They went to a lot of places that had not really had big-time golf before,” Cronin noted, but he added, “They went to very high quality golf courses and DCC is a great example of that.”

 

The Country Club raised its hand to host in the fall of 1935, when a preliminary October visit by WGA leaders yielded a positive review. As noted by the Daily Times, the potential to host a big-time sporting event gave “local golfers and other sportsmen, not to mention restauranteurs, innkeepers and others who stand to profit by any considerable number of visitors, something to talk about.”

 

Indeed, as DCC faced reorganization and the Great Depression continued, the tournament was more than just a welcome distraction.

 

“For Davenport to secure the Western Open, it is generally agreed, would be a stroke of extreme good fortune, not only adding to the prestige of this city, but from a financial standpoint as well,” the Daily Times opined.

 

All concerned got an early Christmas gift on Dec. 14, 1935, when the WGA announced its premier championship would take place for the first time in the State of Iowa the following summer.

 

Preparations quickly commenced, with Tom Cunningham, the Scottish expatriate who replaced Art Andrews as the club’s head professional on New Year’s Day of ‘36, playing a prominent role.

 

“In preparing for a tournament of this size, there is a great deal of work to be done,” Cunningham told legendary QC sports columnist John O’Donnell weeks prior to the event. “New tees have to be built, sand must be added to the traps, and the greens fertilized every ten days. At present, we are narrowing the fairways down considerably and this should make the course play much tougher.”

 

Fred Agnew, a young attorney and former member of the University of Iowa golf team, helmed a committee charged with directing the tournament. He credited the quality of the course’s old bones as a primary reason for DCC’s selection.

 

An equally critical factor for the WGA’s selection, Agnew said, was “the fact the Tri-Cities is a golf-minded community. Eight golf courses are supported here and there has always been great interest in the local tournaments and match play.”

 

The promised cooperation from other local clubs and the support of the Davenport and Rock Island Chambers of Commerce helped make the case, Agnew said.

 

Costs were to be offset by ticket sales, with daily admission to the Friday and Saturday 18-hole rounds selling for $1, and admission to Sunday’s marathon 36-hole finish priced at $1.50. Tickets for all rounds sold for $2.50. Only 1,000 tickets were to be made available, with 250 reserved for out-of-town guests.

 

Come those guests did. To watch. And to play.

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“In case you don’t think the Western Open is Big Business,” O’Donnell wrote at the tournament’s conclusion, “let us inform you that 60 cities and 14 states were represented. … Two national press services had personal representatives. So did 25 newspapers within a radius of 250 miles. A national publication had two men on deck. Special telegraph wires carried approximately 60,000 words to all parts of the United States. The name of Davenport was heard in distant points — and favorably, too.”

 

Some 19 of the Quad Cities' top players took the tee for the opening round, including Paul Barton, Joe Von Maur, Arnie Huhta, and Tom Schacht, all playing under the host course’s flag.

 

Schacht, Von Maur and Barton advanced to the 36-hole, 65-man Sunday finale, as did seven other QC players, but none were closer than 11 shots to midway leader Ray Mangrum. A native Ohioan whose five career wins included a pair in 1936, Mangrum’s rounds of 67 on Friday and 66 on Saturday earned the veteran pro a two-shot lead on Ralph Guldahl when Sunday dawned.

 

Guldahl was a big man and power player whose swing, per WGA author Cronin, was “described as a motion more akin to swinging a sledgehammer than a golf club.” Guldahl nearly gave up the game after missing a four-foot putt at the 72nd hole of the 1933 U.S. Open and falling a shot shy of winner Johnny Goodman.

 

As 1936 dawned, Guldahl took up selling cars to support his wife and young son. “In theory, that might have worked,” Cronin wrote in his WGA history, “except that in the Depression, nobody was buying cars. The only car Guldahl sold was to himself.”

 

That car is where Guldahl and his family slept somewhere in Davenport prior to rounds of 68 on Friday and 67 on Saturday, O’Donnell would write years later. “When the officials of the Western Golf Association heard of their plight, and after Ralph had two good rounds of golf, they saw to it that the three Guldahls slept off their weariness in a Davenport hotel and that the food was more plentiful,” he wrote.

 

Sufficiently rested and nourished, Guldahl shook off a Sunday morning round of 75 that left him three shots in arrears of Mangrum’s lead. He  closed with a course record 64 that O’Donnell reported was “the lowest score ever made in major competition.”

 

Aided by a deflection off a camera tripod when his approach flew that 18th green Reinhardt Schulz and C.H. Alison never got around to rebuilding, Guldahl bested Mangrum by three shots and Byron Nelson by four.

 

The win was the first of three straight Western Open championships for the man who’d taken his clubs out of hock after a failed attempt at selling cars. His 16 career victories would include the 1937 and 1938 U.S. Opens and the 1939 Masters. In 1981, six years prior to his death at age 76, Guldahl was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.

 

As they did for Davenport Country Club and the United States as a whole, happier days followed hardship for the would-be car salesman as the Great Depression waned.