More Than Sterling Silver: How the Wanamaker Trophy's Bizarre History Defined the PGA Championship
· Major Golf Hub
It's been lost in a cellar, won by legends, and symbolizes a major's identity crisis. This is the strange, untold story of the Wanamaker Trophy.
Most golf trophies are inert objects, polished symbols of a victory already achieved. The Wanamaker Trophy is different. Its strange and chaotic history is not just an amusing footnote; it is the physical embodiment of the PGA Championship's own tortuous journey from a secondary professional tournament to one of the game's four indispensable majors. Towering at 28 inches and weighing a staggering 27 pounds, the sterling silver cup has been misplaced, duplicated, and hoisted by a lineup of players that tells the story of American golf itself. Its journey is the tournament's journey.
That journey began in 1916. Rodman Wanamaker, heir to a department store fortune, gathered a group of golf professionals in New York City. His goal was to create a formal organization for the game's working class—the club and teaching pros who were barred from the amateur-run USGA. The new PGA of America needed a signature event, and Wanamaker provided the purse and the prize. But this new tournament, the PGA Championship, was fundamentally different: a grueling, 36-hole match-play knockout, designed to identify the best professional fighter, not just the most consistent scorer.
The Hagen Era and a Legendary Loss
No player embodied the pugnacious spirit of the early PGA Championship more than Walter Hagen. "The Haig" was a supreme showman and a ferocious competitor, perfectly suited for the head-to-head format. He captured the Wanamaker Trophy five times, including four consecutive victories from 1924 to 1927. And then, the trophy vanished.
When the 1928 championship concluded, Hagen, the defeated finalist, was asked for the trophy. He admitted he had no idea where it was. He claimed to have dispatched a taxi driver to deliver it to his hotel years prior and simply never saw it again. For five years, the PGA Championship had no trophy. It was an embarrassing situation that reflected a more freewheeling, less buttoned-up era of professional sports. The truth, eventually discovered in 1930, was less dramatic but equally telling: the trophy was found gathering dust in a crate in the cellar of L.A. Young & Company, the firm that manufactured Hagen-branded golf clubs. It had been sent there for safekeeping and was simply forgotten. While the original was eventually secured, the PGA of America quietly commissioned an exact replica, which is what champions receive today. The original now sits in the PGA Historical Center in Florida, too precious to risk losing again.
From Club Pros to Touring Superstars
The tournament's identity, like its trophy, was in flux. The PGA Championship was conceived for the club professional, but it was increasingly dominated by the emerging class of full-time touring professionals. The format, too, began to feel anachronistic. Match play could produce shocking upsets and eliminate star players early, a nightmare for ticket sales and, eventually, television broadcasts. The tipping point came in 1958.
In a move that sealed the event's destiny as a modern major, the PGA of America abandoned match play in favor of a 72-hole, stroke-play format, mirroring the Masters, U.S. Open, and The Open Championship. The change was immediate and profound. The leaderboard became a more reliable reflection of the world's best players, and the championship’s prestige grew exponentially. This was no longer just a guild championship; it was a true world-class test. The names who won in the years spanning this transition—from Sam Snead and Ben Hogan to Arnold Palmer—cemented its new status.
A Roster of Immortals
The stroke-play era solidified the Wanamaker Trophy as one of golf's ultimate prizes. Winning it required four days of sustained excellence, not just a few hot head-to-head rounds. It became a career-defining achievement, and the list of champions on its base is a roll call of golf history.
The Five-Win Club
- Walter Hagen (1921, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1927): Dominated the early match-play era with swashbuckling style.
- Jack Nicklaus (1963, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1980): Defined the modern PGA Championship, his final win in 1980 at Oak Hill at age 40 a testament to his longevity.
These two titans are joined by a litany of multi-time winners like Tiger Woods (4), Gene Sarazen (3), and Sam Snead (3). In recent years, the trophy has been hoisted by players who reflect the game's global nature, from Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy to Americans like Justin Thomas and, as seen at Quail Hollow, Scottie Scheffler. The victory by Aaron Rai at the 108th edition further underscores the international flavor of the event, a far cry from its all-American beginnings.
Key takeaways
- The Wanamaker Trophy, weighing 27 pounds, was created in 1916 by department store heir Rodman Wanamaker to anchor the new PGA of America.
- Walter Hagen famously "lost" the trophy for five years after a string of victories, a story reflecting the event's rugged early days before it was found in a cellar.
- The PGA Championship's 1958 switch from match play to stroke play was the single most important change in its evolution into a modern major.
- The trophy's journey—from lost object to a prized, museum-quality possession—mirrors the tournament's own path from a niche event to a global spectacle.