Golfing Popularity.

Like virtually every other sport in America during the 1920s, golf experienced an extraordinary increase in popularity. The number of weekend golfers doubled between 1916 and 1920 to a high of one-half million. The sheer volume of players meant that new golf courses, private and public, had to be constructed. In the past golf often had been viewed as an exclusive game for the upper classes, but during the 1920s the game increasingly appealed, as a participant and a spectator sport, to the middle class, who enjoyed more leisure time and relative prosperity than ever before. These were the same people who thrilled to the exploits of a trio of American golfing heroes.

America's Golfing Dominance.

Bobby Jones, who was the dominant golfer from 1923 to 1930, is widely regarded as the sport's greatest practitioner. Jones's two major rivals during the 1920s were Walter Hagen and Gene...