How this Masters champion spawned the modern player-coach relationship

Horton Smith is much more than the answer to the trivia question “Who was the first Masters champion?” “The Joplin Ghost” was Tiger before Tiger. That’s no exaggeration: The Missouri native won more professional titles (28) than anyone before the age of 30 until Woods appeared on the scene seven decades later.

Smith had eight wins in 1928 alone, and in 1930 was the only player, pro or amateur, to defeat Bobby Jones during his Grand Slam year, at the stroke-play Savannah Open. The PGA Tour launched in 1934, and in 1936 Smith topped the money list, propelled by his second Masters triumph. He eventually accumulated 30 Tour titles and later served as PGA of America president. In 1939, however, Smith was just a player struggling with his swing following his first winless season. At the Masters that April, he tied for 26th, 21 shots behind the champion, Ralph Guldahl. Later that month, Smith did something downright revolutionary. He sat down at his typewriter and drafted a letter/contract to Alex J. Morrison. 

Morrison was a former exhibition golfer on the vaudeville circuit turned publicity-happy instructor who taught Babe Ruth and Douglas Fairbanks. At the time, he’d written a well-regarded book, A New Way to Better Golf, but likely more important to Smith was the fact that Morrison coached Henry Picard, the 1938 Masters and soon-to-be 1939 PGA champion. So it wasn’t that pros didn’t have coaches (although many didn’t), it’s just that they worked informally on handshake agreements and were meant to stay deep in the background.

As any golfer who’s been in the midst of a slump (i.e., any golfer) can attest, it’s not the time to stand on ceremony. Like a nervous suitor trying to find just the right words for his mash note, Smith typed up at least two versions of his proposed deal to Morrison, whom he knew (like himself) to be a stickler for details as well as passionate about swing theory and the specific moves of the game’s best players.

“Dear Mr. Morrison: I should like you to supervise my golf game and help me to change my technique,” one draft began. “I feel that this supervision and the changes you can help me make will improve my game enough to benefit me financially and otherwise.”

“Dear Alex,” began another, less formal attempt. “I would like to follow your system of playing golf. I believe that the following arrangement should work to our mutual advantage. If this arrangement and its terms meets with your approval, your signature on this copy will make it a working agreement between us.”

We have access to these words and subsequent Smith-Morrison dialogue because of two dedicated collectors from Smith’s native Missouri: banking executive Monte McNew and his friend, GOLF Top 100 Teacher Emeritus Rick Grayson. The duo has collected a treasure trove of Smithiana and Morrisonalia. What follows is a sampling of the two-decade-long Smith-Morrison correspondence — the letters comprising the bulk of their work together, given the peripatetic nature of their jobs and Morrison’s home bases in New York and California. It demonstrates many things, among them that their arrangement — the first known such contracted agreement between pro golfer and teacher — became the template for the modern player-coach partnership. Also, that much good teaching is timeless — as a trio of Top 100 Teachers will tell you.

Weighty matters

Moving past thinking to simply doing has always been the goal and the difficulty for any student in the midst of swing changes, a process that begins by paring down swing thoughts to their essentials.

June 17, 1939, from Morrison to Smith 

“To be conscious of whether your weight is on the left or the right side is handling the matter of body balance the hard way. All you should be conscious of is the even distribution of weight between the heel and ball of the foot supporting most of the weight. This, coupled with the looseness of your midsection and head position, will insure the proper weight handling from side to side. — The consciousness of side-to-side handling of your weight could easily upset your whole swing and cause your midsection to lock— this in turn causing your arms to raise too high in the backswing in an effort to compensate to the lack of body action.”

Business is personal

Smith and Morrison clearly developed a relationship that transcended swing instruction.

January 11, 1946, from Morrison to Smith 

“Mighty glad to get your letter despite some of its items. The turn of your marital status is unfortunate but, at the risk of being trite, it may all be for the best. We are sure you did all you could, have nothing to be ashamed of and therefore should not allow the difference to make you find fault with yourself or have anything but an optimistic, if wiser, outlook toward your future….”

Top 100 Teacher Jamie Mulligan, coach of Patrick Cantlay

Sometimes the perspective of the public is that a swing coach flies in, fixes the problem and away they go. There’s more to it than that. We like to use the phrase “Life is golf, and golf is life.” Even when there are things going on in players’ personal lives, they learn how to balance everything in order to still play well. This has to be key

Confidence game

Morrison didn’t lack for self-assurance, as his thoughts on catching the dominant Byron Nelson, coming off his 18-win (including 11 in a row) 1945 season, make plain.

January 11, 1946, from Morrison to Smith

“Nelson is a product of the times. The same position could have been filled as well by you, Pic [Henry Picard] or Ben Hogan. And either of you could, with proper work, catch him within a year. Toward that end I have tried to tell Ben about the things in his swing that are keeping him from better and more consistent performances…. I doubt if he will follow my suggestions…. So you remain the best possibility for a swing improved enough to compete successfully with Nelson.”

Top 100 Teacher Brian Manzella

Nobody’s going to believe in anything you say if you don’t 100 percent believe in it yourself. If you ask the top players on Tour, they’ll tell you that when it comes to the biggest and best-known teachers, it’s more about their belief in their ability to create improvement than it is what exactly they’re saying.

Get a grip

Throughout their interactions, Smith often expressed ambivalence about potential changes, drawn to Morrison’s ideas and thoughts on his game, including a desired grip change, but rarely expressing complete buy-in when it came to putting them into play. He arguably enjoyed their dialogue on swing theory more than the actual practice of it.

September 14, 1947, from Smith to Morrison

“I’ve practiced only a little but did hit free-swinging #5’s tho some were to [sic] ‘slingy’ in using Interlocking grip. Interlock seems to give a very free swing with less ‘control,’ particularly in longer shots. Very bluntly — what do you consider the relative values of the method (yours) and the player who executes it?”

The carrot and the stick

The taskmaster Morrison wasn’t one to gild the lily, so his sparing encouragements carried more weight, even if at times his compliments could still sound like insults. His use of contemporaries as exemplars remains a timeless motivation and goad.

February 17, 1950, from Morrison to Smith

“4.— Hitting position better than you use most of the time, so good that only I would find fault with it. I do so because it still shows chronic faults in minimized form — slack left elbow and knee, head with some downward pressure. Compare your lineup with Hogan’s shown in [picture] I made of him two or three years ago. Note position and firmness in left arm.

5. — Very good. Follow through shows uprightness in body and full release in right side allows maximum freedom in arms and hands.”

Top 100 Teacher Kellie Stenzel

A full release of the right side on the follow-through is especially evident in today’s power players. Unwinding the body forward and making that full release unleashes the torque created by the backswing and helps the hands and arms create a freer, faster downswing. It’s an important fundamental of the modern golf swing.

Mirror image

The relationship of backswing to downswing has been a hot topic since shepherds first started hitting stones with their crooks; it’s been integral to instructors since they first started telling golfers how to better go about their business. In Morrison’s method, the former, done properly, would be essentially mirrored in the latter. 

February 27, 1953, from Morrison to Smith

“After all, ‘folding back’ is nothing more than the proper action for the downswing being done in the reverse order…. And instead of exposing you to errors, it is the best armor against them because it is one of the very best leaders or keys on which to bring into harmony all of the essentials needed for a good backswing and downswing. For example, by consistently folding back you encourage and finally get your body into the positions needed for a good left side windup thus eliminating the need to fly your elbows or otherwise try to compensate for faulty body action by manipulating arms and hands.”

Postscript 

Despite Morrison’s entreaties and efforts, Smith’s top-level career petered out — his last two PGA Tour wins came in 1941. Smith eventually joined Morrison in the teaching ranks, becoming the head pro at Detroit Golf Club in 1946, where he stayed for the rest of his career. 

Smith died of Hodgkin’s disease in 1963, at age 55, and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1990. Morrison passed at age 90 in 1986, a few months after Jack Nicklaus’ remarkable Masters triumph — in which Morrison undoubtedly played a role. Henry Picard, Morrison’s pupil, played the Tour with Jack Grout, his lifelong friend and mentee. Grout began his own lifelong mentoring relationship with a certain 10-year-old blond beginner in 1950 at Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio. 

“Grout taught a young Nicklaus the fundamentals of a steady head and the rolling of the ankles for proper footwork that were staples of Morrison’s teaching,” Grayson says. 

So, for as long as people study the swing of Jack Nicklaus, the work of Alex Morrison will live on — just as his interlocutor, Horton Smith, will always be the first Masters champion.