With the summer of golf upon us and Brisbane set to host the state and national PGA Championships, we recall Norman Von Nida's defeat of a seven-time major champion at Royal Queensland in 1932. Six years later, Matt Cleary's great uncle beat The Von.
It was folklore growing up in the Cleary house that in 1938, Mum’s uncle, Oswald “Ossie" Short, the club professional at now long-defunct Mosman Golf Club in Sydney, had beaten the great Norman "The Von" Von Nida over 18 holes of matchplay.
A year after that, World War II started and the two 25-year-olds enlisted.
Such is fate, Ossie was killed in 1942, in Libya, during the Battle of El Alamein.
Von Nida, meanwhile, returned from five years service with the Army, in which he didn't touch a golf club, and went on to be one of Australia’s greatest players and the godfather of Australian golf.
And, if an incident at a PGA Tour event in 1948 is any indication, he remained determined to serve...
It was at the Lower Rio Grande Valley Open in 1948 that Von Nida was involved in a post-round fist-fight with U.S Ryder Cup player Henry Ransom.
It was on the first hole that Ransom had made an annoyed swipe at a very short putt. He had missed the ball and then tapped it in. Von Nida alleged that Ransom had actually touched it. Ransom disagreed and wrote down a four, not a five.
Von Nida told the man scoring Ransom’s card, Frank Strazza, that he should not sign Ransom’s card. Ransom became incensed and said: “You mind your business, you son of a bitch.”
Von Nida replied: “It is my business."
In his column in Melbourne newspaper The Argus, published while the tournament was still going on, Von Nida wrote: “Ransom became heated and said he would like to punch my head in. I walked away. He followed and struck me. I naturally hit him back. They were the only blows struck.”
Von Nida was born in Sydney in 1914 and grew up in Brisbane. After working as a caddy, he left school aged 14 to work in an abattoir and developed extremely strong hands and wrists.
“I would break open the heads of sheep after their skulls had been partially split by a machine," Von Nida revealed in his book, The Von.
"My forearms, hands and fingers became incredibly strong. I was unbeatable in an arm wrestle against anyone my size.”
And thus, when Ransom came at him, Von Nida felt well equipped.
“As I stumbled back, I managed to grab him by the throat and closed my fingers on his windpipe. My fingers were still like steel bars after my time at the meat works and Ransom was turning blue before the police arrived to break it up,” Von Nida explained.
“I was so worked up. I couldn’t let go of him and a sheriff had to bash my forearm with his hands a few times to make me loosen my grip.”
Von Nida never really took to America. One of his great beefs was with the PGA Tour’s “winter rules” which allowed players to pick up their ball, clean it and place it back on a nice lie. Von Nida felt a man should play the ball as it lies.
In his piece for The Argus, he added that Ransom’s alleged cheating was “typical of many occurrences in the last two days that have made this the worst tournament in the history of the PGA”.
“Many pros are openly violating the rules. In my opinion, Lloyd Mangrum, who is leading with 196 [and who would go on to win] should have been disqualified three times already,” Von Nida wrote.
Naturally, such unvarnished honesty didn’t endear the man to U.S pros who reckoned the foreigner’s sentiments were just sour grapes.
Harlingen Golf Club professional, Tony Butler, told Australian Associated Press (AAP) that Ransom had told him he was sick of Von Nida talking down American golf and its golfers.
“After three hours, he was sick of it,” Butler said. “The little Australian is angry because everyone over here doesn’t bow and scrape to him. And because he hasn’t been shooting very good golf.”
Harvey Yale, sports editor of the Texas Valley Morning Star added: “The consensus of opinion of several touring professionals is that Von Nida, failing to hit his stride since the winter tour began at Los Angeles on January 2, has been ill-disposed toward his fellow golfers and conditions in United States golf.
“It seems that Von Nida, as a leading money-winner in England in 1947, resents the lack of attention shown him. His complaint is that Bobby Locke, the South African, has received all the acclaim.”
And yet, after all that, PGA Tour authorities sided with Von Nida's side of the story. Ransom was disqualified from the Lower Rio Grande Open and suspended from the Tour.
Ransom would later retire from golf because of an allergy to – true story - grass.
*
In May of 1932, at the age of 18, Norman Von Nida won the Queensland Amateur Championship. Three years later, he borrowed £50 to play against the great Gene Sarazen in an exhibition match at Royal Queensland in Brisbane.
Sarazen was 34 years old and prime. He had won six of his seven major championships. He was touring Australia after ignoring Dr Clifford Roberts' invitation to play in the first ever Masters Invitational at Augusta.
Von Nida would shoot 67 and beat the American 2-up. It was a sensation.
Over a beer in the clubhouse later Von Nida asked the American: “Mr Sarazen, do you think that one day I will be a player like you and travel the world playing golf?”
“Little man, who did you just beat today?” Sarazen asked.
“You, Mr Sarazen,” Von Nida said.
“That’s right,” Sarazen said. “And I am the best in the world.”
After World War II, Von Nida travelled to Britain in one of British Airways’ converted Lancaster bombers.
From 1946 through 1948 Von Nida won 24 times in Europe and Australia. His tally of seven wins on the European Tour in 1947 remains a record. He finished T4, T6, T3 in the Open Championship.
He’d turned up in the UK with 17 pounds. He left with pockets full. Watching at home in Australia was a young Peter Thomson.
“Had he not been the one to leave Australia and try to make a living playing golf tournaments, then I wouldn’t have gone after him and I wonder where we would be today. Norman Von Nida is really the hero,” Thomson said.
In 1950 Von Nida was invited to take the place of Bobby Jones, by Bobby Jones, in the U.S Masters at Augusta National. In five starts he didn’t fare better than T27.
Von Nida also only had two starts in the U.S Open (T59, CUT) and never contested the U.S PGA Championship.
He did win the Australian Open three times, the Australian PGA Championship four times, the Phillippine Open twice, and the Queensland Open seven times, however.
In the early 1980s, Von Nida masterminded the breeding of the famous racehorse Kingston Town which would win the three W.S Cox Plates and over $1.6 million.
He continued to play golf into his mid-80s off a handicap of five – while legally blind.
He died in 2007 aged 93.
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