A Masters Peace: How Horton Smith helped avert a player revolt at the 1950 Masters

Throughout the history of professional golf in the United States, there have been several notable player revolts. Given events of the past couple of years, the first thoughts that pop to mind are of the recent defections of PGA Tour players to the Saudi-funded LIV Golf tour, a fascinating and controversial split that has been expertly detailed by Alan Shipnuck in his book LIV and Let Die. Another coup-in-the-making occurred in 1983, engineered by two of the game’s biggest stars–Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer–and headed off by then-commissioner Deane Beman. Adam Schupak gives an excellent accounting of this saga in his book, Deane Beman: Golf’s Driving Force. Then there’s The Big One, the rebellion in 1968 that saw tour players form an independent association, American Professional Golfers, Inc., which–after a settlement with the PGA of America–evolved into the present day PGA Tour. Few people, if any, have ever heard of the pre-quel to this uprising that came to a head the week of the 1950 Masters Tournament.

It all started that January in Long Beach, California, and true to the script of all subsequent revolts, it centered around two things: money and control. A group of about twenty touring pros met secretly at the Wilton Hotel the week of the Long Beach Open to air their grievances. Those in attendance that Thursday night–some of the legends of professional golf–signed a letter of intent to form a new tournament organization and elected a board of governors that included major championship winners Sam Snead, Jimmy Demaret, Ben Hogan, Lloyd Mangrum, and Cary Middlecoff, along with Clayton Heafner, Johnny Palmer, Ellsworth Vines (later replaced by Lawson Little), Bob Hamilton, Tony Penna, and Jimmy Thompson. Chairing the group was the PGA’s Tournament Bureau Director; a thirty-nine year-old pro from Ogden, Utah, named George Schneiter.

George Henry Schneiter

George Schneiter had cut his teeth with the PGA. He grew up across the street from the Ogden Golf and Country Club, where he became an assistant pro at the young age of fifteen, and was named the club’s head pro at eighteen. Two years later, he helped form the Rocky Mountain Section of the PGA and served as its president for the next ten years. He was named a PGA vice president in 1937 and moved to Salt Lake City, where he became head pro at Salt Lake Country Club. He tried his hand at tournament competition, traveling the PGA circuit from 1944 until 1947, the year he was tabbed to replace Fred Corcoran as the PGA’s Tournament Bureau Director (the modern day equivalent of PGA Tour commissioner). In serving as spokesman for the group of rebel golfers, Schneiter was pitting himself squarely between the tournament pros–of which he was still one–and the organization that provided his monthly paycheck.

With golf’s increasing post-war popularity, purses on the PGA circuit had increased from $117,000 in 1940 to $459,000 in 1950. Tournament sponsors were shelling out record amounts of money to an organization seemingly dominated by teaching pros. Out of 3,000 active members of the PGA of America, only about 300 were regular tournament players. The remainder, who had numerical voting advantage, were club professionals who could only afford to play a few events a year, spending the rest of their time running pro shops, teaching lessons, and overseeing golf course maintenance.

At the PGA’s winter convention in December of 1949, club pros took advantage of their legislative power,  voting to spread money from $10,000 tournaments (the new minimum purse on tour) among the top 23 finishers rather than just the top 20. In $15,000 tournaments, they reduced the winner’s usual take of $2,600 to $2,200 with the remainder of the purse spread among the top 40 places. Most touring pros could make more money playing in an exhibition match! The relative reduction in prize money for the tour’s best players did not sit well with the touring pros. Neither did the club pros’ desire to limit the sale of autographed golf clubs and other equipment to country club pro shops. Tournament players, who wanted their equipment available in department stores and sporting goods stores, became increasingly exasperated by the club pros’ ability to have a say-so in their livelihoods, not only by limiting their revenues, but by having a say in tournament affairs as well. 

The PGA’s Executive Secretary, Tom Crane, tried to calm frayed nerves and set up a meeting with Schneiter and his board in Phoenix the following week, hoping to iron out differences between the two warring factions; however, little progress was made. On March 7, PGA President Joe Novak sent a letter to the players containing proposed changes to PGA tournament operations. He had hoped to find a solution within the PGA’s current infrastructure, but again to no avail. “Apparently,” said Crane, “they just don’t like the way the PGA operates.”

Tournament pros saw salary increases in other professional sports like Major League Baseball as a function of commissioner control, and Schneiter was certainly bucking for the job. He called a meeting with the players on March 30, the Thursday of the Azalea Open in Wilmington, North Carolina, and went public with the mutiny, outlining their demands which were as bold as they were straightforward. The players, he explained, simply wanted to solidify themselves as a players’ division and put themselves in position to legislate and execute their own business, and that business was tournament golf. How could a group of non-touring pros legislate for those competing in tournaments? “That,” Schneiter said, “would be like playing pros trying to set the fees for teaching pros.”

Their plan called for a board of governors, elected annually by the players, to plan and execute every phase of the tournament program, which would include controlling Tournament Bureau funds as well as negotiating and signing contracts with tournament sponsors. News outlets reported that if an agreement wasn’t forthcoming, the upstart group planned to secede from the PGA of America. Schneiter tried to walk that statement back the next day, but it was too late. The die had already been cast. 

Schneiter had essentially nailed the players’ message to the PGA’s door but would find out days later that he had overplayed his hand. While most golfers prepared to play their Monday practice rounds at Augusta National, Schneiter and PGA Secretary Horton Smith boarded a flight in Wilmington to meet with the PGA’s Executive and Advisory Committees in Chicago, and after a marathon nine-hour session at the Morrison Hotel, Schneiter–the man who crafted the PGA’s current pairings format, the formula for the Vardon Trophy, and the points system for the Ryder Cup–was summarily terminated. 

While optics suggested otherwise, Novak insisted that Schneiter’s dismissal was unrelated to the player revolt. He clarified that Schneiter had personally negotiated and contracted the PGA's summer tournament schedule as a representative of the players, rather than in his official capacity with the PGA. Horton Smith further alleged that Schneiter had taken service fees from sponsors and deposited them for undetermined use in a Salt Lake City bank. In response, Schneiter said that his firing was not an adequate answer to player unrest and that his sole intent had been to fulfill his duties as tournament director to the best of his ability. Smith later recalled, however, that Schneiter’s demeanor at the meeting was insolent and oppositional, clearly not reflective of an employee of the organization. He was offered the chance to resign, but declined.

Despite Schneiter’s ouster, Crane and Novak believed that the dispute with the players could be resolved if they could meet with them that week in Augusta, and they considered two-time Masters champion Horton Smith to be the best man for the job. Smith had been a tournament and club professional for twenty-one years, the last four spent doubling as a PGA executive. In 1929, at the age of twenty-one, he became the youngest player ever to make the Ryder Cup team. He won the very first Masters Tournament in 1934, a second Masters in 1936 (the year he led the PGA money list), and had played in four Ryder Cup tournaments, compiling a 3-0-1 record.

1934 and 1936 Masters Champion, Horton Smith

Though he still made his living swinging a golf club, Smith was a company man, committed to advancing the goals of the PGA, and believed that the association should be run on sound operating procedures rather than personal biases. He was a connector. He knew most of the tournament sponsors and equipment manufacturers, and was on a first name basis with executives of both the USGA and the Western Golf Association. Moreover, he was an effective mediator, capable of putting aside personal feelings to solve problems head on. He knew the struggles of club professionals and touring pros alike, and had served on a committee in 1947 charged with ironing out a dispute that arose that year between PGA players and the Tournament Bureau, a skill that would prove invaluable as he tactfully navigated the situation that week in Augusta.

As the Masters got underway on April 6, the players' group showed no sign of backing down. Several players remained hellbent on a path toward separation, going as far as to officially name their group the Professional Golf Players Association. As Smith spoke with the players that week, what he heard concerned him, and a glance at the first round standings told him why. Of the top ten players on the leaderboard, six--Demaret, Little, Penna, Snead, Palmer, and Hogan--were on the rebel group's board of governors. These were the players the patrons were paying money to see. He didn't care that a meeting with the disgruntled group had been set for Monday, or that the PGA had effectively given the players the power they sought as far back as 1946. Time was running out, and the stakes were high. Whispers of rebellion were echoing from Washington Road all the way to Amen Corner. In the heart of the Masters, a storm was brewing, and something had to be done—immediately!

Smith and Crane phoned PGA headquarters and urged that Novak and Moffitt fly to Augusta as soon as possible. They met with players individually and in groups after Saturday's round in the hopes of reaching some sort of agreement. While the group appeared to be led by fire-breathers, some of the players, including Clayton Heafner, Chick Harbert, Jimmy Thompson and Lawson Little, began to inject some sanity into the situation. Thompson and Little reminded the group that support from equipment manufacturers was the lifeblood of a touring pro, and anyone trying to wreck the PGA would cost his manufacturer/sponsor severely in sales to club professionals. Ultimately, it wouldn't matter how many big names one circuit might have. If there were two separate tours, they argued, the resulting conflict would kill competitive tournament golf.

Peace was restored after the Saturday night meeting, putting an end to the players' movement to secede. Crane announced that they players had been given "a program which will virtually provide them with complete self-operation of tournament affairs within the structure of the PGA." A temporary committee consisting of Novak, Smith, Moffitt, Little, Heafner, Penna, Harbert, and Demaret, would take care of tournament operations until June, when a permanent committee would be elected the week of the PGA Championship. Fittingly, the committee's first meeting was held in the Augusta National clubhouse Sunday night, after committee member Jimmy Demaret won his third Green Jacket, coming from behind to defeat Jim Ferrier, whose epic collapse on the tournament's final six holes may have rivaled that of Greg Norman in 1996.

George Schneiter, who hoped to be the commissioner of the Professional Golf Players Association, was completely shut out of the reorganization process. He returned to the rank-and-file of competitive golf as a tournament player and later designed golf courses, including Pebblebrook in Sandy, Utah, and Lake Hills in Billings, Montana. His involvement in the rebellion notwithstanding, Schneiter was eventually recognized for his many contributions to the game and was inducted into the PGA Hall of Fame in 2017.

Horton Smith was elected PGA president in 1952. He served for two years, ushering the organization through racial turmoil and professional golf's first nationally televised tournament—George May's World Championship of Golf—in 1953, before stepping down in 1954. He was awarded the Bobby Jones Award in 1962, the highest honor given by the USGA in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf, and was posthumously inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1990.

Due to the efforts of Smith and other PGA officials, the 1950 Masters marked both the end and the beginning of the Professional Golf Players Association. Later that same year, visionary and innovator George S. May proposed a bold idea: to establish the tournament division as an autonomous entity. However, despite its potential significance, this motion failed to gain traction at the time. It would take eighteen years, and another player uprising, to give it rebirth in 1968 with the formation of the Tournament Players Division, and ultimately in 1975, the PGA Tour. The aspirations for a separate tournament division marked a critical juncture in professional golf, laying the groundwork for the dynamic and competitive landscape we recognize today.