I love Bryson DeChambeau’s new enhanced incarnation so much that I risked COVID-19 to see (and praise) him in person, and I think he earned a nickname beyond the “Mad Scientist” label he carries. I saw some references to “Brawny Bryson” on Twitter, but I’d like to get away from that delicately since it’s, objectively, a terrible nickname. I still don’t have a good answer – accepted the requests – but it made me think about the nicknames of golf in general.
A great sports nickname is iconic or fun. These are the two options and nothing else really works. Baseball is the sport with the best nicknames and there are many to choose from for each category. Lou Gehrig has been nicknamed “The Iron Horse” for its durability, and is one of my favorites for its simplicity and strength, but from the old days of “Shoeless Joe” Jackson to more modern times with “Oil Can” Boyd and Frank “The Big Wound” Thomas, the sport is full of big iconic names. There are also a lot of fun classics: “Dr. Strangeglove “for Dick Stuart, a terrible defender, or” Old Aches and Pains “for Luke Appling, a genial and hall-of-famer player who complained a lot.
But what are the big nicknames in professional golf? Using the iconic or amusing criteria described above and leaving out those such as “Duf” or “Kooch” whose nicknames are just derived from their real name (more hypocorism than moniker), I have analyzed hundreds of nicknames from various sources coming with the list below.
Let’s start with the most famous man in golf:
Honorable mention: “Tiger” Woods
“Tiger” is technically a nickname and I can’t leave it out without risking the mutiny of the general reader, but the truth is that he has been called Tiger by his father Earl Woods since he was young, and the name comes from a Vietnamese colonel. army named Vuong Dang Phong who fought alongside Earl. So while “Tiger” works incredibly well for the golfer, it’s more of an inherited nickname, hence the honorable mention status.
15. Henry Picard: “The Hershey Hurricane”
It’s a great nickname that has a lot to offer: a force of nature, a sense of place. Picard was the professional leader of the Hershey Country Club in Pennsylvania and won two majors in the late 1930s.
14. Doug Sanders: “The Fairway Peacock”
Even though this nickname is long and a kind of mouthful, and it could be better simply as “Il Pavone”, I can appreciate the effort. You also know immediately what it means: Sanders was a flashy sideboard. In this case, the elaborate coinage works.
13. Sam Snead: “Nude Knob”
Yes, “Slammin ‘Sammy” is a good nickname, and yes, this is a little bad, but some of the best and funniest nicknames in sports, like the ones listed above, are a bit close to the bone. Here is Byron Nelson’s explanation: “Several guys called him Nude Knob,” said Nelson. “Once you got that name, you’ve never seen Sam anywhere without that hat.” And here is a completely free diss from an article in a 1954 magazine that also underlines the fact that Lloyd Mangrum is underestimated: “However, Sammy Sneak, known as Nude Knob, has more hair in the head than Mangrum who has rave notations in the newspaper. “
12. Tom Weiskopf: “The Towering Inferno”
This is a nickname based on anger and height, and fun. As Al Barkow once wrote for Golf Digest, “He boiled when things didn’t go well. It’s not that he launched a lot of clubs or confused the dirty word at Tiger Woods. He just fogged up, the internal anguish rushed the red color in his face like mercury in a thermometer and overcooked his game. “
11. Horton Smith: “The Joplin Ghost”
These two words together would make this list even if I had no idea what they meant. Which, before I tried it, I didn’t – Smith apparently played a lot of golf at Joplin, Mo., and as far as I know, the “ghost” part comes from his sudden appearance on the PGA Tour. It is worth noting that two of Smith’s other nicknames that I came across, “The Missouri Rover” and “Tall Pine of the Ozarks”, are good enough to make this list.
10. Craig Stadler: “The Walrus”
Perfect physical description.
9. Ben Hogan: “The Hawk”
This was not about animal resemblance, but rather about Hogan’s habit of studying a course – and the swing – like a predatory bird. It is a great sobriquet, powerful and threatening at the same time, and you almost feel sorry for the golf courses on which it has descended, ready for killing.
8. Harry Cooper: “Lighthorse”
“Light Horse” Harry Lee was a cavalry officer in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and grandfather of future Confederate General Robert E. Lee. He earned the nickname for his horse and 150 years later, when golfer Harry Cooper won the 1926 Los Angeles Open by finishing his final round in 2.5 hours, the set-up was perfect for sports writer Damon Runyan to baptize Cooper with the same nickname. So “Lighthorse”.
7. Gene Sarazen: “The Squire”
This seems to me a perfect descriptive nickname. Sarazen was a legitimate farm owner in the northern part of New York state, and farm owners at that time were commonly known as squires. It has a sort of earthly nobility and reflects Sarazen’s modest upbringing of the “brokers and bankers” he once described as having the monopoly on the sport. There is also ferocity there; farmers are hard workers and Sarazen, at 5’5 “, was a kind of relentless pursuit of victory.
6. Arnold Palmer: “The King”
“Arnie” doesn’t count, but this does. It is nothing profound, and not even so creative, but it is very evocative. The connection with Elvis also makes it work: he was the great, charismatic entertainer of golf. If anything, this loses some places because, unlike a stereotypical king, Palmer was not regal or distant, but a lot of the people.
5. Gary Player: “The Black Knight”
Just tough. And probably even harder when the Player was young, before he became the self-exhilarating clown prince of golf (who, to his credit, is not afraid of making fun of himself).
4. Jack Nicklaus: “The Golden Bear”
The story here seems to be that an Australian sports writer named Don Lawrence coined the name during a US Open based on appearance and Nicklaus liked the name when he saw it on the headline of a newspaper at the airport (coincidentally, his high school mascot was also a golden bear). When it came time to choose your personal logo, the decision was simple. It’s a great nickname, simple and evocative, and it fits Nicklaus perfectly.
3. Miguel Angel Jimenez: “The mechanic”
Jimenez loves cars and has worked in a garage for a while, but he also has a precise and mechanical approach to the field, which is why this nickname works both ways. It also sounds very good in Spanish and has that ineffable quality of appearance quite right for the half serious and half winking style he embodies Jimenez.
2. Paul Runyan: “Little Poison”
Get the picture: small but deadly. Runyan’s style was short of shirt, phenomenal up close (and, at 5’7 “, he was a little boy himself). It’s a big nickname with sharp edges with a lot of bite, and it’s easy to imagine the type of They fear having inspired their opponents: Runyan has won two PGA championships, including a classic 38-hole match-play game against Craig Wood and an outbreak against Sam Snead, so little or not, the poison was clearly powerful.
1. Ernie Els: “The Big Easy”
Sometimes a nickname fits, like “The Golden Bear” for Nicklaus, and sometimes a nickname fits. As in, it fits so well that a player can wear it as a bespoke piece of clothing. There hasn’t been a better network of game style, physique and attitude – or at least the perception of attitude, since Els can be a fiery personality, within a single moniker of Els and “The Big Easy”. It is a languid masterpiece.
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