College Golf Museum: 1937 Photo of Oakmont's Last Intercollegiate Champ
We tend to connect best to history through tangible items. It’s one thing to read about past exploits, but seeing a physical artifact helps bridge our minds to a given moment and unlock the ineffable wonder. How do you properly describe what it feels like to hold a medal won in a competition held before your oldest living relative was born? What words do you use to give weight to the delicate feeling of turning the pages of a tournament program that hasn’t ever been scanned? Even souvenirs so modern it feels blasphemous to call them “relics” are hefty beyond their mass, weighed down by their significance to the history of this great sport. As we take a stroll through the college golf museum, hopefully the pictures below plus a healthy dose of context will provide the perfect extra 1,000+ words.
Join me today in examining this original photo of 1937 Intercollegiate champion Fred Haas Jr taken in the final match play rounds of the final college golf championship hosted by Oakmont.
This post is also available online HERE. Additionally, here is an AI-generated voiceover of the info below:
*NOTE: underlined text provides a link to references or sites with more information
OAKMONT’S PREVIOUS CHAMPIONSHIPS
HC Fownes built Oakmont to be a championship caliber test and for over 100 years it has been exactly that. Described as one of the toughest courses in the world, Oakmont Country Club has played host to several USGA championships including eight US Opens. Often overlooked is the fact that Oakmont also hosted three men’s collegiate championships, including one of the last tournaments prior to the NCAA takeover and subsequent rule that collegiate teams had to host the event.
1916 Championship
The 1916 Intercollegiate Championship represented a major point for both the collegiate game and Oakmont. It was the latter’s first major championship event, and it was the former’s first foray into the “West.” Oakmont’s own S. Davison (Davy) Herron led the Princeton team to just it’s second title over the vaunted Yale team that were the reigning champs and already had 13 championships to its name. Three years later Herron would win the US Amateur by upsetting Bobby Jones at this very course. On the individual side, Harvard’s JW Hubbell was a surprise victor out of a daunting individual bracket that included beating Herron at his home course.
1930 Championship
College golf returned to Oakmont a decade and a half later with a new and larger crop of players. Over 100 players from two dozen colleges across the country trekked out to meet Oakmont’s test, most were found wanting1. Once again Princeton came out on top, this time purely through stroke play. They were led by George T. Dunlap (Jr) who shared co-medalist honors with Notre Dame’s Larry Moller. The two faced each other in the individual match play Final with Dunlap winning the first of his back-to-back individual titles.
Fred Haas Jr. Scholarship to LSU
Although the first person to receive a golf-specific scholarship isn’t known with absolute certainty, it’s generally believed that it might have been Fred Haas (Jr). Haas tore up the golf scene in his native state of Arkansas even as a junior, and secured a promise of a scholarship to the University of Arkansas. Before he graduated from high school, however, his family moved to Louisiana where he came to the attention of “colorful” Governor Huey Long who convinced him to instead take a scholarship to play at LSU starting in 1933. That certainly worked out for both of them.
First SEC Championship
Fast-forward a few years and Haas is one of the top amateur players in the country. He was invited again to compete in Bobby Jones’s Masters tournament in 1937, but ended up withdrawing after weather delays threatened his ability to compete in the first ever SEC championship. Haas raced home to Louisiana in time to make that tournament where he helped LSU take the first team title.
1937 INTERCOLLEGIATE CHAMPIONSHIP
More than 150 players representing 40+ schools found a more tame version of Oakmont in 1937, not the beast that infamously shook the confidence of every putter at the 1935 US Open. The club’s historical account2 of the tournament quotes The American Golfer, an illustrious magazine of the time, as saying:
“For the collegians, Oakmont was made somewhat less harrowing. Greens were left in a reasonable state, traps less deeply furrowed.”
No matter the conditions, the team title was practically preordained. Princeton once again came out on top, completing the Oakmont sweep and earning their 11th team championship - the first since...1930!
Individual Championship
Two of the top LSU players made the semifinals, a position both were recently familiar with. Fred Haas had been the runner-up in 1935 to Ed White [Texas], while Paul Leslie was the reigning runner-up to the previous year’s champion, Chuck Kocsis [Michigan]. Leslie got his revenge on the Wolverines by downing Bill Barclay - future Michigan golf coach - 3&2 in the semifinals. Haas got some revenge of his own with his 5&4 victory over Vincent D’Antoni [Tulane], the future 1939 Intercollegiate champion who had defeated Haas a few months prior to become the first SEC individual champion. Interestingly, this set up the first Finals match in intercollegiate golf history to feature the two previous runners-up.
An important detail from the below photo of the semifinalists is that it came from an afternoon edition of the Pittsburgh Press which had accounts from the first half of the 36-hole Semifinal matches. You can see Haas is wearing the same clothes as our museum photo, which gives us an actual date the photo was taken. He’s wearing different, darker colored pants in the photos we’ve found of him and Leslie prior to the Finals. Based on the info we have, I believe our photo was taken on the morning of the Semifinals.
Intercollegiate Champion - Fred Haas Jr
Fred Haas Jr became the first collegiate golf champion in LSU history with his 5&3 victory over teammate Paul Leslie, thanks perhaps in part to the lucky rabbit’s foot he carried3. The win made him the reigning Southern, Canadian, and Intercollegiate champion. The next year he would make the match play portion of the US Amateur hosted by Oakmont, the tournament famously won by Willie Turnesa who happened to be the medalist in this 1937 Intercollegiate Championship!
LSU would continue to be collegiate powerhouse: winning 16 SEC championships as well as the national team title in 1940 (shared with Princeton), 1942 (shared with Stanford), 1947, 1955, and 2015. The Tigers would also produce another legend Earl Stewart who won his individual title in 1941. In 2011 the program made history when they had the individual champion on both the men’s (John Peterson) and women’s (Austin Ernst) sides in the same season!
After leaving school, Haas would go on to have an accomplished career as both an amateur and pro player. He famously ended Byron Nelson’s 11-tournament win streak in 1945 when he won the Memphis Invitational while still an amateur. That was the first of five PGA Tour victories and two senior championships. He was also the first player to represent the United State in both the Walker Cup and Ryder Cup! He has been inducted in several Halls of Fame including the Louisiana Sports HoF.
PARTING THOUGHTS
With original photos from the pre-WWII intercollegiate championships being as rare as they are, this one of Fred Haas Jr is museum-worthy for that reason alone. Adding in the context of it being the final college championship hosted by one of the most well-regarded courses in the world along with the photo being taken on the course the day before the individual Finals match, and you have the makings of one of the coolest photos in our museum collection!
Thanks for reading! Do you have any intercollegiate photos/relics you’d like to share? We would love to hear from you and perhaps feature it/them in a future post!
Among those playing was Sam Parks Jr [Pitt] who would go on to win the 1935 US Open held at Oakmont!
So much research has gone into compiling the history of Oakmont, and I cannot thank historian Dave Moore enough for sharing much of this with me! If you’re interested in Oakmont and/or all of the incredible West Pennsylvania golf history, I’d highly recommend you pick up a copy of his book Battling The Church Pews!!
We’re not superstitious...but we are a little stitious
I love getting to see old photos and newspaper articles!