Walter Hagen - Legacy

Legacy

In 2000, Hagen was ranked as the seventh greatest golfer of all time by Golf Digest magazine. Hagen was ranked as the eighth greatest player of all time by Sports Illustrated / Golf Magazine in a major 2010 ranking.

Hagen's major victories were as follows:

• U.S. Open: 1914, 1919.
• British Open: 1922, 1924, 1928, 1929.
• PGA Championship: 1921, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1927.

There is some debate among golf historians as to whether Hagen should actually be credited with 16 major championships, second only to Jack Nicklaus and two ahead of Tiger Woods. (However, counting the U.S. Amateur, which is no longer considered a major championship, Woods's three Amateurs titles gives him a total of 17, three behind Nicklaus's 20.) Hagen captured the Western Open five times (1916, '21, '26, '27 and '32), at a time when the Western Open was considered one of the premier events on the world golf schedule, second only to the U.S. and British Opens.

The concept of the "four modern majors" wasn't precisely initiated until Arnold Palmer's Masters and U.S. Open wins in 1960; Palmer stated his intent at that time of going for a modern Grand Slam by winning the Open Championship and the PGA Championship that same year; this was taken up by the world's golf media, and has gained increasing credence with time. In Hagen's prime, the Masters had not yet been founded, and the Western Open (the championship of the Western Golf Association) was, by today's definition, a "major", insofar as it was one of four elite tournaments in which most of the top golfers in the world could be counted on to participate each year.

Hagen captained the United States in the first six Ryder Cups, and played on the first five U.S. teams: 1927, 1929, 1931, 1933, and 1935.

Hagen has been inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, in the charter class of 1974.

Hagen has been portrayed by Bruce McGill in the 2001 movie The Legend of Bagger Vance, and by British actor Jeremy Northam in the 2004 Bobby Jones biopic Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius.