Wise About Golf

Wise About Golf

By Ken WiseSportsGolfHistory
Download on the App Store

Wise About Golf episodes

  • EP. 6: The Texas Open, Our First Tournament

    A San Antonio sportswriter did some math in 1921 and built the oldest golf tournament in Texas. From hickory clubs and rubber tees at Brackenridge Park to J.J. Spaun at TPC San Antonio, this is 104 years of Texas Open history — Hogan, Nelson, Palmer, Crenshaw, and the records that still stand.

    In 1921, Jack O’Brien of the San Antonio Evening News noticed that the U.S. Open champion took home $500 while a single prize fight paid $25,000. He decided Texas golf deserved better — and the Texas Open was born.

    Host Ken Wise traces 104 years and 95 playings of the tournament now known as the Valero Texas Open: the third-oldest event on the PGA Tour, and the only professional tournament held in the same city for its entire existence.
    In This Episode
    • Why a $25,000 boxing purse launched the oldest golf tournament in Texas
    • Brackenridge Park, A.W. Tillinghast, and the rubber mats the pros teed off until the 1960s
    • John Bredemus — Princeton man, Olympic-caliber athlete, and the first resident golf course architect in Texas
    • Bob MacDonald, Cyril Walker, and the 1922 tournament that drew about 90 players and 6,000 spectators a day
    • Gene Sarazen: “We’d play in a cow pasture for $5,000”
    • The 1928 rain delay at Willow Springs when Tommy Armour drafted bylaws for a touring pros’ association
    • A 17-year-old Ben Hogan’s first professional tournament — and why he went home to practice
    • Byron Nelson’s 1939 playoff win, the only Texas Open he ever took
    • Mike Souchak’s back-nine 27 and 72-hole 257 in 1955 — records that stood for decades
    • Tony Holguin, the Pan American Golf Association, and a 1953 win on his home course
    • Wesley Ellis Jr. and the last Texas Open at Brackenridge Park
    • Arnold Palmer’s three straight titles — and the Pecan Valley plaque for a shot he missed
    • Ben Crenshaw winning his first official start as a full PGA Tour member
    • The 19th Hole: where to play San Antonio golf history yourself

    Listen & Follow

    New episodes of Wise About Golf, the Texas golf history podcast, are available wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoy the show, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts — it helps other golf history lovers find us — and share it with a friend who loves the game.
    Links
    • Website: https://wiseaboutgolf.com
    • Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/WiseAboutTexas
    • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wiseaboutgolf
    • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wiseaboutgolf
    • X / Twitter: https://x.com/wiseaboutgolftx
    • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WiseAboutTexas
    • Story ideas and interviews: [email protected]
    • The original Texas history podcast: https://wiseabouttexas.com

    36 min
  • EP. 5: The First Muni- Brackenridge Park

    Show Notes

    In this episode:
    ● The layers of history buried under one San Antonio park — irrigation, war, industry, and sport.
    ● How a parks commissioner, a herd of buffalo, and a golf course accidentally created a zoo.
    ● Why a city hired one of America's greatest architects to build a course anyone could play.
    ● A sportswriter's idea, a big purse, and the tournament that reshaped the professional game.
    ● The Mount Rushmore connection sitting quietly on the property.
    ● A refreshment stand by the 12th green and the four-star general who grew up beside it.
    ● The five golfers whose borrowed entry fee launched a national association.
    ● What a highway took away, what a restoration brought back, and how to go see it today.
    Plus the 19th Hole, where we tell you how to go visit the places in this episode.
    Connect With the Show
    Website: wiseaboutgolf.com
    Instagram: instagram.com/wiseaboutgolf
    Facebook: Wise About Golf
    Twitter/X: @WiseAboutGolfTX
    Email your episode ideas and Texas golf connections: [email protected]
    Support the Show
    If you enjoy Texas golf history, the best free thing you can do is leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts — it helps like-minded folks find the show. Telling a friend works too.
    Patreon: patreon.com/WiseAboutTexas

    33 min
  • Ep 4: The First Golf Pro

    In this episode

    Topics in the order they appear. No timestamps included — add them from your final audio file.
    • Why a Scotsman who barely set foot in Texas counts as Texas golf history, and a recap of Episodes 1 through 3
    • Musselburgh: golf documented to 1672, certified as the oldest course in the world, and the charge that Mary, Queen of Scots played there days after her husband was found murdered
    • Leith, 1744: the Gentlemen Golfers of Edinburgh, what links land actually was, and surgeon John Rattray named Captain of the Golf
    • The first written rules of golf, lost until 1937 and found in the back of a club minute book — including teeing within a club length, “stones, bones or any break club,” and the invention of the free drop
    • 1836: the club moves to Musselburgh and lays its holes inside a horse racing track, the same year Texas wins independence
    • The Park family: Willie Park Sr. wins the first Open in 1860; his brother Mungo wins in 1874
    • How a blacksmith’s hole cutter set the golf hole at four and a quarter inches
    • British clubs sharing public links versus American country clubs that buy their own land
    • The Park–Morris feud with St Andrews: newspaper challenges for £100 a side, a crowd so unruly the referee stopped play, and the tragedy at North Berwick in 1875
    • The name Mungo: a sixth-century saint and a West African explorer
    • Mungo Park Jr., born 1877, sent to run the family’s New York office in 1897, laying out courses across New York and Vermont
    • Galveston, the Queen City of the South, brings him down to build its course on the beach near 53rd Street — how they found him is still an open question
    • Argentina: the first Argentine Open in 1905, plus 1907 and 1912; his wife Grace becomes the first Ladies champion; he dies in Scotland in 1960
    Also mentioned
    Old Tom and Young Tom Morris · Allan Robertson · Willie Dunn · the featherie and gutta percha balls · Royal Musselburgh, the Royal Burgess Golfing Society, and Bruntsfield Links · Muirfield · Prestwick · the Dutchess Golf Club, Mount Anthony, St. Johnsbury Country Club, and Mohonk Mountain House · St. Andrew’s Golf Club, New York
    Connect with the show
    Leave a five-star review to help other golfers find the podcast. Instagram and Facebook: Wise About Golf. X/Twitter: @WiseAboutGolfTX. Send Texas golf history ideas to [email protected]. Also from Ken Wise: the Wise About Texas podcast.
    Related episodes
    Episode 1 — Introduction to Wise About Golf · Episode 2 — The earliest golf in Texas · Episode 3 — Galveston Country Club

    30 min
  • EP. 3: The First Country Club

    In 1898, a group of Galveston businessmen chartered Texas's first official country club and brought in a Scottish pro with genuine golf royalty bloodlines to lay out nine holes on the beach — protected from wandering cattle by brand-new barbed wire. Two years later, the deadliest natural disaster in American history wiped the course out along with much of the island. What followed is one of the great survival stories in Texas golf: a club that rebuilt, moved inland, burned down, moved back, hired Donald Ross to design a course between the Gulf and a bayou, burned down again, and relocated a third time — all while hosting Bobby Jones, Byron Nelson, Walter Hagen, and Babe Zaharias along the way.

    38 min
  • EP. 2 Golf Comes to Texas

    In Episode 2 of Wise About Golf, host Ken Wise traces golf's wild journey from Scotland to Texas—where a preacher and a Saint Bernard helped spark a sport that defined Lone Star golf.

    24 min
  • Ep. 1: Welcome to Wise About Golf

    For over a decade, Ken Wise has told the stories that built Texas on Wise About Texas — nearly two million downloads in 178 countries and a top 1% ranking worldwide. Now he’s turning that same back-porch storytelling toward a game he’s loved his whole life. In this introductory episode of Wise About Golf, Ken explains why he’s spending his next chapter on golf history: a 500-year-old game that scholars have largely left alone, a sport whose equipment and courses have changed constantly while its rules on honor and self-policing haven’t, and a country in the middle of a genuine golf boom that makes this the right moment to look back. Texas is the launching point — but if a story’s good enough, the runway goes worldwide.

    7 min

About Wise About Golf

From the publisher's feed

What do Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Harvey Penick, Lee Trevino, Babe Zaharias, and Ben Crenshaw have in common? They’re all Texans — and their stories are only the beginning. Wise About Golf is the…