Walter Hagen lost the Wanamaker Trophy 100 years ago, a bizarre tale of deception and legend-making surrounding the PGA Championship. This Q&A explores the strange history behind this incident.
Key points
Walter Hagen lost the Wanamaker Trophy in 1926.
The Wanamaker Trophy is awarded to the PGA Championship winner.
The story involves deception and legend-making.
The Q&A format uncovers bizarre historical tales.
Other strange golf stories include the Oakmont Turnpike and political parade.
Walter HagenWanamaker TrophyPGA Championship
These Q&A posts are becoming something of a tradition around major championships, mostly because there's always some weird story or piece of history that can only be uncovered by a good old-fashioned deep dive. See, for instance, the Oakmont Turnpike, the political parade at Portrush,Tree Island at Sawgrass and the odd history of Masters pairings. Today, though, I think I might have the strangest one yet, and it has to do with that time 100 years ago when Walter Hagen, the people's champion, managed to lose the Wanamaker Trophy, the hardware annual given to the winner of the PGA Championship.
"Wait," you might be thinking, "it's unfortunate to lose a trophy, but not that crazy, right?"
Right. But this story is about so much more than a lost trophy. It's about deception, and legend-making, and lies that last a century, and ⊠well, let's just get to it. Fire up those Qs, and if you're more of a watching type, check out the video we produced here.
Q: Letâs start here: What year did he lose the trophy?
A: That sounds like a simple question, and you probably think there's a simple answer, right?
Right.
WRONG!
Here's the thing you have to understand from the start: Walter Hagen liked to tell tales. He liked to embellish. He liked to burnish his own legend. You see what I mean?
He was a liar?
No! No no no no no. We're not saying that word. We're explicitly not saying that word. We're saying that he was liberal with the details of his own life. We're saying he took creative liberties with the twists and turns ofâ
OK, I get it.
Good. The thing is, this makes him an incredibly unreliable narrator. Also, it has utterly warped the history of this particular incident.
Even so, we need a concrete place to start.
Fair enough. Letâs pick 1927. Hagen at that point was the three-time defending PGA champion, and he showed up to Cedar Crest Country Club in Dallas hoping to make it a four-peat. The winner each year got to keep the Wanamaker Trophy, and his only job was to bring it back the following year. Seventy-four golfers have won the trophy since it was first presented in 1916, and 73 have brought it back.
Q&A
What year did Walter Hagen lose the Wanamaker Trophy?
Walter Hagen lost the Wanamaker Trophy in 1926 during the PGA Championship.
What is the significance of the Wanamaker Trophy in golf?
The Wanamaker Trophy is awarded annually to the winner of the PGA Championship, symbolizing excellence in professional golf.
What are some other strange stories in golf history?
Other strange stories include the Oakmont Turnpike incident and the political parade at Portrush, showcasing the quirky history of major championships.
How did the story of the lost Wanamaker Trophy become legendary?
The story became legendary due to its elements of deception and the lasting impact of the myths surrounding Walter Hagen's loss of the trophy.
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At Cedar Crestâyou guessed itâHagen did not have the trophy.
Uh-oh.
You would think "uh-oh," wouldn't you? It seems like a classic âuh-ohâ situation. But here's the first part where this story gets weird or wild or funny, depending on your perspective: Hagen basically told the PGA officials to chill out. He said he left it at home on purpose because he knew he'd win again, and there was no need to bring it along. Why bother, right?
Wouldn't the PGA of America push back at that point and say, "well, we still want to have a trophy ceremony even if you win"?
You would think, and maybe they didâour historical references are a bit scant when it comes to that year. All we really know is that Hagen did win (to me, this is more epic than Babe Ruth calling his shot), the Dallas Chamber of Commerce presented him with a cup that was very much not the Wanamaker Trophy, and he got away with it.
What? How? I mean, that's badass in its way, but still ⊠how?
The best explanation is just Hagen himself. In todayâs language, weâd call this âWalter being Walter.â This guy was larger-than-life, probably beloved just as much as Bobby Jones, and he (and he alone) had the status and swagger to pull off a wild stunt that nobody else would dream of. Unlike Jones, he lived a life that veered occasionally onto the precipice of disaster. He was simultaneously a workhorseâhe played exhibitions on a grueling schedule outside of competitive tournamentsâbut also a showman and a party animal. The joke about Hagen is that he was the first golfer to make $1 million, and the first to spend $2 million. And speaking of millions, hereâs a quote from the horse's mouth: "I never wanted to be a millionaire, just to live like one." All of which to say, Hagen losing a trophy and engaging in an audacious cover-up that actually worked is not quite as out of character as you might think.
But he still didn't find the trophy?
No, he didn't, and this is the second jaw-dropper: At the 1928 PGA Championship at Baltimore Country Club, he tried to con them again. Same script (âwhy would I bother bringing it?â), same refusal to admit it was lost.
This man is insane.
Possibly. But this time, reality came calling ⊠and he lost. In the quarterfinals, as a matter of fact, to a man named Leo Diegel who would go on to win the whole thing. That ended a 22-match win streak at the PGA Championship for Hagen (incredible), but now PGA officials really wanted their trophy back, and they werenât getting it.
So it was time to face the music?
Kind of. It would be more accurate to say it was time for someone else to face the music. Hagen quite literally skipped town, and it fell to Bob Harlow, Hagen's longtime manager, to tell everyone that they didn't have a trophy. Harlow, we can guess, probably hated this jobâinterestingly he would go on to found Golf World magazine, which Golf Digest once ownedâand he's quoted in Time Magazine saying of Hagen and the trophy, "it's hard enough getting him out of bed in the morning without picking up after him."
Isnât that a bit sketchy of Hagen not to take accountability himself?
Well, keep in mind that he was going through some stuff that year. He had his winnings at that very PGA Championship frozen because of one lawsuit in New York, and his wife had sued him two weeks earlier (no, thatâs not a joke). That might give you an idea of what I mean when I say he lived life on the edge.
They gave Diegel a trophy they found in the Baltimore CC clubhouse called the "Maryland Cup," which he couldn't keep, and yes, Diegel was pissed. "Gee," he said, according to a story that ran later in the month, "I beat Hagen, Sarazen and Espinosa to win the darn title, but the PGA seems to think that I don't need anything but newspaper clippings to prove that I'm champion."
Well, it depends on your interpretation of "good news," but earlier that year, Rodman Wanamaker, the furniture store magnate who had originally commissioned the trophy two-plus decades prior when the PGA of America was formed, died. Which means he didn't live long enough to know that his trophy had been lost.
But hold on ⊠you said earlier that Hagen first showed up in 1927 without the trophy, but then you said that the question of when he lost it has a messy answer. What gives?
Well, let me direct you to a CNN story and also a New York Times story, both written in the last five years. Both say that Hagen lost the trophy after his win in 1925, when the tournament was held at Olympia Fields south of Chicago.
That seems pretty definitive. I mean, those are two very mainstream outlets reporting 100 years after the fact, so it has to be right ⊠right?
You would think. But here's the problemâthe historian David Mackasey, who has studied this period of time extensively and has written about it at length, once thought and wrote the same thing. But then he spent time at Olympia Fields trying to find evidence that Hagen had lost it there in â25, came up with nothing, and instead found something completely different: A newspaper photo of Hagen holding the trophy at the ceremony for the 1926 Championship on Long Island.
So it couldn't have been lost in 1925!
Nope. He still had it a year later, safe and sound.
You truly cannot blame themâthey were simply following a long tradition of reporters getting it wrong, and it was all because Hagen was a fabulist. It wasn't until Mackasey cracked the case that anyone knew it hadnât been lost before '26 ⊠we'll get to that later.
OK. So what did the PGA do for 1929, now that they knew the trophy was gone?
Well, they had to make a new trophy, and that was probably a pain considering they had a lot of other annoyances happening at the same time, including a host course that bailed out three months before the event followed in short order by American history's most notorious stock market crash. But they got the trophy made, and they called itâbrace yourself for some ironyâthe Perpetual PGA Championship Trophy. Diegel won again in '29 and got a legitimate trophy for his troubles this time. He proved far more responsible than Hagen, bringing it back in 1930 when it went to Tommy Armour.
Because, guess what? Shortly after Armour won in 1930, Hagen found the original trophy!
Where???
In the first article that came out, in the New York Evening Journal, Hagen said he found it himself while going through some old trunks. He "unearthed a bulky package," and there it was. In that story, he said he had no idea where he had lost itâmaybe a hotel, maybe a taxi or maybe someone stole it.
Does he say how he possibly missed this package for two-plus years when he should have been looking nonstop?
He does not. The next year, though, talking to a group of reporters in Florida, he said that it was a porter in an equipment factory basement in Detroit who found it, and now he had a cleaner story: He had given it to a taxi driver on his way back to Manhattan, and that was the last he saw of it. At some point he filed an insurance claim, he said, but he had waited too long and had no receipt from the driver.
Is this where he said he lost it in 1925 instead of 1926?
I wish it were that simple, my friend. No, in this version, Hagen told the writers in Florida that he had lost it in âŠ
Wait for itâŠ
1924!
Thatâs right, we now have a third year to consider.
Not only is it not plausibleâsee the 4:15 mark of this video for footage of him holding it in 1925âbut the PGA Championship that year was in French Lick, Ind., and in the same breath that he was telling them he lost it in '24, he also told them he gave it to a taxi driver on the way to Manhattan after the trophy presentation. That's a long cab ride! About 13 hours long, in moderate traffic on todayâs roads. I have to imagine the roads in 1924 were worse.
Iâll let you guess if anyone called him out on this discrepancy.
They did not.
Correct.
But why would he say 1924? What's the point?
Knowing Hagen, I have a pretty ironclad theory. If it was lost in 1924, you see, he could then tell everyone that he fooled the PGA of America not just once, but three times, in '25, '26 and '27, winning each time in a desperate bid to preserve the fiction. Which, by 1931, was his official version. It's a much better, more iconic story, and if there's one consistent part of Hagen crafting his own legend, it's that he always went for the better, more iconic story.
So this is all just layers of misinformation?
You got it, and here's some more: There's an AP story from 1931 saying the trophy was found in Chicagoâif you have a bunch of incorrect stories saying it was lost there, you might as well have an incorrect one saying it was found thereâand in the CNN and Times stories, the location of the discovery changed from Detroit to Grand Rapids.
Why?
I don't know, and at this point, for my own mental health, I have to stop caring. But we do know this: Until David Mackasey came on the scene, Hagen managed to keep fooling people, including established news outlets, for almost 100 years.
So what do we actually know about the timeline?
First, we have the 1928 news story about Diegel where it says that Hagen lost the trophy in transit between "Salisbury and Westchester-Biltmore"âwhich is to say, the site of the '26 PGA Championship and the fancy hotel in Manhattan where he stayed after. That's a very good contemporary source. Even better, we have Mackasey's found photo in the Boston Globe showing him hoisting the Wanamaker in '26. Both of those sources, along with no evidence of the trophy appearing in '27 and concreted evidence that it wasn't around in '28, point to Hagen losing it in New York, not Chicago ('25) or Indiana ('24).
Do we know how he lost it? Is the taxi story true?
Here's what we can tell you for sure: Hagen's schedule after winning in '26 was absolutely bananas ⊠albeit completely normal for him. Newspaper accounts tell us that after playing 195 holes to win that PGA Championship on Long Island, which ended on a Saturday. He then played a 36-hole exhibition on Sunday at Winged Foot with Gene Sarazen, another exhibition at Shaker Heights in Ohio on Wednesday, and then a two-day exhibition on Thursday and Friday with Francis Ouimet at Sandy Burry in Massachusetts. So the next time you see a modern pro taking three weeks off after a major win, think of that schedule and blush in shame for how soft weâve become.
In between Winged Foot and Shaker Heights, he had at least one day in New York City at the Westchester-Biltmore hotel, and it seems pretty definitive that he lost it then. I tend to think the explanation he gave first is best, which is that in the rush of winning and probable partying and all those exhibitions, he had absolutely no clue where it went, or how it got back to the Detroit factory where it was found four years later.
Are there any conspiracy theories? Could he have lost it gambling, or sold it, or anything else?
Surprisingly enough in this era of the grand conspiracy, it's widely accepted that this was just some form of negligence. It was just very Hagen to not really care much about this trophy and to lose it. Feel free to start your own conspiracy, though.
So now that he found it again, what did the PGA do?
They brought it right back into the rotation for 1931, presenting it once more to the winner. At some point a few years later, they had a replica of the original Wanamaker made, and the replica is the one that todayâs winners hoist, and after keeping that replica for a year, they get a replica of the replica to keep forever, whileâI'm starting to get dizzy hereâthe original is on display in Frisco, Texas, at PGA of America headquarters.
And what became of the trophy they made in interval? The Perpetual PGA Championship Trophy?
Sadly, it was not so perpetual. They renamed it the Alex Smith Memorial Trophy after an influential Scottish pro, and started giving it out to the medalistâbest scoreâfrom the stroke-play rounds. As the PGA Championship transitioned away from match play, that trophy was decommissioned and seemingly gathered dust until it was sold at auction ⊠to David Mackasey, the historian, who showed it to me in all its glory on our Zoom call.
Is there a funny and somewhat poignant way to end this whole thing?
Yes, with yet another tip of the cap to Mackasey. After they turned the replacement trophy that Hagen forced them to make into the Alex Smith Memorial Trophy, giving it each year to the medalist, guess who won it in 1935?
No ⊠not âŠ
Yeah ⊠Walter Hagen, baby!
And at that moment, he had the chance to do the funniest thing in golf history. But in a sad twist for comedy, Iâm sorry to report that he managed to keep it safe and return it the next year.
