Paul Runyan: PGA Champ, Short-Game Wizard

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Paul Runyan was a professional golfer and golf instructor who won two PGA Championship trophies in the 1930s. He won nearly 30 PGA Tour tournaments overall, and was the first golfer to claim nine such tourneys in a single year. Runyan was a short hitter with a standout short game who later became renowned for teaching the short game.

Full name: Paul Scott Runyan

Date of birth: July 12, 1908

Place of birth: Hot Springs, Arkansas

Date and place of death: March 17, 2002, in Palm Springs, California

Nickname: Little Poison (his drives were short, but his short game was deadly).

Tournament Wins

Paul Runyan won 28 times in tournaments that today are counted as official PGA Tour events. (The full list of those wins, and others he had, appears at the bottom of this article.) That puts Runyan in the Top 20 on the list of golfers with the most PGA Tour victories.

Two of those wins were in major championships. Nine of them happened in just one year, 1933. Runyan was the first golfer to win nine times in a single PGA Tour season. And he remains today one of just six golfers ever to win that many times in a single season on the PGA Tour.

In the Majors: 2 PGA Titles

Runyan first played in a major championship at the 1928 U.S. Open. His final appearance in a major didn't happen until the 1974 PGA Championship, although most of his starts in majors happened pre-World War II.

And he won two of them — PGA Championships in 1934 and 1938.

1934 PGA Championship

Runyan was the hottest golfer in the game over the preceding year when he won the 1934 PGA Championship. He was coming off a year (1933) in which he won nine tournaments, and had already won five more in 1934. His win in the 1934 PGA was his sixth and last of the year.

Runyan's opponent in the championship match was Craig Wood. Wood was nicknamed "the Blond Bomber" because of his booming drives, but playing much-longer opponents was something to which Runyan was accustomed. Wood had also, a few years earlier, hired Runyan as an assistant pro, and had helped Runyan with his game. So in some sense it was also a mentor-vs.-mentee final.

To reach the final, Runyan beat Johnny Farrell in the first round, Vic Ghezzi in the second, Dick Metz, 1-up in quarterfinals, and Gene Kunes, 4 and 2 in the semifinals.

Wood led the championship match, 1-up, after the morning 18. Runyan squared it on the front nine of the afternoon 18, then Wood eagled the 29th to go 1-up. Runyan birdied the 32nd to square the match, and went 1-up on the 33rd. But Wood birdied the 35th to square it again. The match continued into extra holes. On the 37th, Wood had an 8-foot eagle putt to win, but missed. Runyan then made an 8-foot par putt on the 38th hole for the victory.

1938 PGA Championship

Facing another long-hitter in the championship match of the 1938 PGA Championship, Runyan was outdriven by about 50 yards per drive all day by Slammin' Sam Snead. But the short hitter made short work of the young Snead, who was in his second year as a touring pro.

Runyan lost only one hole against Snead, and won the match by the score of 8-and-7. That remained the largest winning margin in any PGA Championship final in the tournament's match-play era. And Runyan never let Snead forget it, needling Snead about it for the rest of his life.

"This isn't golf, it's magic," Snead told Runyan at one point during the match, frustrated by yet again outdriving Runyan by a huge margin only to watch the short-hitter work his short-game magic to win another hole.

Decades later, Snead explained: "On the drives, Runyan would be so far behind I'd lose sight of him at times. On second shots, I'd still be far inside him, and then he'd beat me into the hole. He'd sink a shot from behind a bush or chip dead to the cup from a gully or make a pitching-iron recovery from a bunker that I'd have bet 50-1 against."

To reach the final of that 1938 PGA, Runyan, beat Levi Lynch in first round, then Tony Manero and Ray Mangrum, Horton Smith (4 and 3) in the quarterfinals, and Henry Picard (4 and 3) in the semifinals.

Other High Finishes in Majors

Runyan had 20 total Top 10 finishes in major championships, first in 1934 and last in 1951. He did not have any runner-up finishes, but twice finished third: Runyan tied third in the 1934 Masters, and was solo third in the 1942 Masters (after sharing the first-round lead).

His other Top 10 finishes in The Masters were seventh in 1935, tied fourth in 1936 and fourth in 1938. Runyan played the Open Championship just three times, only once his prime, but did tie for 18th at age 53 in 1961.

In the PGA Championship, in addition to his two wins, Runyan reached the quarterfinals in 1933, 1935, 1939 and 1940. He also had Top 10 finishes in 1931 and 1937.

Runyan's best showing in the U.S. Open was tied fifth in 1941. He tied for sixth in the 1947 U.S. Open. In the 1951 U.S. Open, at age 42, Runyan was one stroke off the lead following the third round. But in the final round he scored 75 and dropped into a tie for sixth. He also had Top 10s in the U.S. Open in 1935 (t10), 1936 (t8), 1938 (t7) and 1939 (t9).

More About Paul Runyan

Paul Runyan was 5-foot-7, not really short for his era, but weighed only around 130 pounds in his heyday. He was a short driver, a great putter and had a great overall short game — all reasons he was nicknamed "Little Poison." (The nickname was borrowed from baseball, where Lloyd Waner was nicknamed "Little Poison" because his brother Paul Waner, bigger than his brother both physically and in terms of stature within baseball, was known as "Big Poison.")

Runyan had an unorthodox full swing with a pronounced sway back, then a lunge forward in an attempt to get more distance. But he still averaged only around 230 yards on most of his drives.

But, the World Golf Hall of Fame has written, "Runyan was deadly straight, a tremendously accurate fairway-wood player and reliable with the irons. Around and on the greens he was an absolute genius."

In his World Golf Hall of Fame induction speech, Runyan explained:

"Through necessity, I began my lifelong devotion to the short game, searching for shortcuts that would somehow let me compete, and hopefully excel, in a world of stronger players. I have taken some pleasure out of being the little guy who has beaten the big fellows and I would like to be remembered as the best of the truly light hitters."

Runyan got into golf through caddying. There was a country club across the road from the Majestic Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where Runyan's father worked part-time, when he wasn't busy on the family's dairy farm. Hot Springs Country Club is where Runyan learned to play while earning money as a caddie beginning at age 13. He could get in four holes at the course each morning on his walk to school, then five more holes on the walk home from school.

He turned pro in 1925 at age 17, and at age 18 was hired as the head pro at Concordia Golf and Country Club in Little Rock, Ark. Runyan made his first tournament starts on the PGA Tour in 1927. In 1930, he made eight starts and recorded his first two victories, in the North and South Open and New Jersey Open.

Runyan headed north and east in 1930, to the much more fertile golf ground of New England. In 1931, Craig Wood hired Runyan as an assistant pro at Forest Hills Golf Club in White Plains, New York. While based there, Runyan won the first of his Metropolitan PGA titles in 1931. (He won the Metropolitan PGA three times and Metropolitan Open once.) He also won his first Westchester Open title in 1931, a tournament he went on to win four times total.

"I don’t think anybody ever got more out of his short game than Paul Runyan. He could get the ball up and down out of a manhole." — Sam Snead

He won once on tour in 1932, then came his magical, 9-victory season of 1933. Runyan was the first golfer in PGA Tour history to win more than eight tournaments in a single season. And since 1933, only Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan and Snead had single-season win totals greater than nine. To this day, only four times in PGA Tour history has a golfer won more than nine official tournaments in a single year, and Runyan is one of only six golfers (including Tiger Woods) to win at least nine.

Not surprisingly, Runyan topped the unofficial money list for 1933. In 1934, the PGA Tour first created and tracked its official money list, and, with six more wins that year, Runyan was the first golfer to top it. He won $6,767. According to the book Golf's Most Wanted (affiliate link), Runyan's expenses for the year were $6,765, meaning he made a profit of $2 (which explains why virtually all the tour players of that era also held and worked club pro jobs).

Of course, those six wins in 1934 included Runyan's first major championship trophy at the PGA Championship. In 1935 his win total dropped to three, and he led the tour in season scoring average.

By the end of 1935, Runyan was 27 years old and had 23 wins in tournaments that today are counted as official PGA Tour events. He had "only" five wins left on tour, two of them in 1936, one of them his 1938 PGA Championship win. The last of his 28 career PGA Tour wins was in the 1941 Goodall Round Robin.

Runyan twice was a member of Team USA for Ryder Cup play. In the 1933 Ryder Cup, won by Great Britain, Runyan lost two matches. He and Craig Wood dropped a foursomes match to Bill Davies/Syd Easterbrook. In singles, Runyan fell, 2 and 1, to Percy Alliss.

Runyan turned that around in the 1935 Ryder Cup, going 2-0. In foursomes Runyan and Horton Smith defeated Bill Cox/Edward Jarman, 9 and 8 (matches were scheduled for 36 holes in those day). In singles, Runyan dropped Dick Burton, 5 and 3.

The war years of the early to mid-1940s curtailed tournament play for every golfer, but Runyan never returned to the tour after World War II except for occasional appearances. He did, though, continue making those occasional appearances through the 1950s, much of the 1960s, a few years of the 1970s, and, lastly, in 1980, when he turned 72 years old. (He only played the tour full-time or part-time for about 12 years.)

PGA Tour records show Runyan with 28 official tour wins, 19 second-place finishes and 22 third-place finishes. In 295 career starts on tour, he recorded 101 Top 5 finishes and 161 Top 10 finishes.

There were very few big tournaments in "senior golf" (ages 50 and over) at the time, but Runyan did very well in the one that did exist, the Senior PGA Championship (then called the PGA Seniors' Championship). After being runner-up in the Senior PGA Championship in 1959 (to Willie Goggin) and 1960 (to Dick Metz), he won it in 1961 and 1962. Runyan set a Senior PGA scoring record of 287 in his 1961 victory, then matched it in 1962. Runyan was the third golfer (after Jock Hutchison and Gene Sarazen) to win both the PGA Championship and Senior PGA Championship.

In both 1961 and 1962, he also won the World Senior Championship, beating Sam King both times. (That event was really just a glorified exhibition: A single, 36-hole match pitting the British PGA and PGA of America senior champions.)

Runyan last played the Senior PGA Championship in 1987 at age 79. He did make a handful of appearances on the PGA Senior Tour (which debuted in 1980), but not until 1982 when he was already 74 years old. He final Senior Tour start was in 1988 at age 80.

And he played the Masters Par-3 Contest in 2000 at the age of 91.

Runyan has been inducted in many halls of fame, starting with the World Golf Hall of Fame and the PGA of America Hall of Fame. He is also a member of the World Golf Teachers Hall of Fame, Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, Arkansas Golf Hall of Fame, Southern California Golf Association Hall of Fame, Colorado Golf Hall of Fame, and Metropolitan PGA Hall of Fame.

"Don't let the bad shots get to you. Don’t let yourself become angry. The true scramblers are thick-skinned. And they always beat the whiners." — Paul Runyan

Influential Instructor and Book Author

In addition to his fame earned on the golf course as a tour player, Paul Runyan, later in life, became quite famous as a golf instructor. He was one of the first "short-game gurus," in the modern parlance.

The 1970 Golf Magazine's The Encyclopedia of Golf referred to Runyan as "one of the most respected ... teachers in the game for more than 30 years." And nearly every article about Runyan you'll run across includes somewhere in it words to the effect that he was "widely acclaimed one of golf's greatest teachers."

Golf Magazine once wrote of Runyan that, "since the late 1930s, he has probably been the most influential short game instructor. Untold thousands have been taught his methods for putting and chipping."

Among the famous pro golfers who sought help from Runyan with their own short games were Mickey Wright, Gene Littler, Jim Ferree, Frank Beard and Phil Rodgers. Some of his students became highly sought short-game instructors themselves, such as Rodgers, who used the teaching he got from Runyan to assist Jack Nicklaus' short game.

Runyan put his instruction on the short game on paper with the 1982 publication of his book, The Short Way to Lower Scoring (affiliate links used for book titles). It became a bible of sorts for many golfers (including pros) experiencing short-game problems and is considered a class of golf instruction. A VHS videotape set was issued under the same name and, after going out print, started selling for hundreds of dollars on secondary markets. (A DVD version was eventually issued.)

That wasn't Runyan's first book, though. In 1962 he authored Paul Runyan's Book for Senior Golfers. That book is also today considered a classic on its topic. And he was one of the contributing instructors to the 1963 Golf Digest book How to Solve Your Golf Problems.

Runyan taught from many different clubs and facilities over the decades, starting with his 1931 hiring as an assistant to Wood in New York. For much of his PGA Tour career he played out of Metropolis Country Club in White Plains, N.Y. By the 1950s he was in California, at Annandale Country Club in Pasadena, then La Jolla Country Club near San Diego. In 1969, Runyan was hired as the first-ever pro at Sahalee Country Club near Seattle, Washington. And in 1972, he joined Green Gables Country Club in Denver, where he remained for 10 years.

He never retired from teaching golf. Into his 80s and even 90s, Runyan was involved in golf schools under the Runyan Short Game School brand, which he ran in Palm Desert, California. He was still giving lessons almost up until he died. His last formal lesson was three weeks prior to his death in 2002. Runyan passed at age 93 after catching pneumonia.

Among his many awards for golf instruction were the 1977 Horton Smith Award from the PGA of America ("for developing and improving educational opportunities for PGA professionals"), the 1990 Harvey Penick Lifetime Teaching Award, and the PGA of America's 1998 Distinguished Service Award.

List of Runyan's PGA Tour Wins and Other Victories

• 1930 North and South Open
• 1930 New Jersey Open
• 1931 Metropolitan PGA
• 1931 Westchester Open
• 1932 Gasparilla Open Match Play
• 1933 Agua Caliente Open
• 1933 Miami Biltmore Open
• 1933 Virginia Beach Cavalier Open
• 1933 Eastern Open Championship
• 1933 National Capital Open
• 1933 Mid-South Pro-Pro (partnered by Willie Macfarlane)
• 1933 Mid-South Open (tie with Macfarlane and Joe Turnesa)
• 1933 Miami International Four-Ball (partnered by Horton Smith)
• 1933 Pasadena Open
• 1934 St. Petersburg Open
• 1934 Florida West Coast Open
• 1934 Tournament of the Gardens Open
• 1934 The Cavalier Open
• 1934 Metropolitan Open
• 1934 PGA Championship
• 1935 North and South Open
• 1935 Grand Slam Open
• 1935 Westchester Open
• 1936 Westchester Open
• 1936 Metropolitan PGA
• 1938 PGA Championship
• 1939 Westchester Open
• 1941 Goodall Round Robin

Runyan also won the 1935 Metropolitan PGA, which some sources cite as a PGA Tour victory, pushing Runyan's win total to 29. However, the PGA Tour itself does not call that 1935 Met PGA victory an official tour win. We've stuck with the tour's accounting, which gives Runyan 28 official tour wins, not 29. In addition, Runyan had non-tour wins at these tournaments:

• 1934 Westchester Open
• 1938 Argentine Open
• 1942 Westchester Open
• 1947 Southern California PGA Championship

In senior (50-and-over) golf, Runyan recorded these wins:

• 1961 Senior PGA Championship
• 1961 World Senior Championship
• 1962 Senior PGA Championship
• 1962 World Senior Championship

Sources:
(Book titles are affiliate links; commissions earned)
Alliss, Peter. The Who's Who of Golf, 1983, Orbis Publishing.
Brenner, Morgan. The Majors of Golf, Volume 2, 2009, McFarland and Company.
Colorado Golf Hall of Fame. Inductees, Paul Ryan, https://www.coloradogolfhalloffame.org/person/paul-runyan/.
Conner, Floyd. Golf's Most Wanted, 2001, Brassey's Inc.
Curtis, Chuck. "Runyan and His Two Specialists," Golfdom, August 29, 1958.
Elliott, Len, and Kelly, Barbara. Who's Who in Golf, 1976, Arlington House Publishers.
Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Paul Runyan (1908-2002), https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/paul-runyan-4693/.
Goldstein, Richard. "Paul Runyan, 93, Winner Of 29 Events on PGA Tour," New York Times, March 19, 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/sports/paul-runyan-93-winner-of-29-events-on-pga-tour.html.
Graffis, Herb. "Pros Tell Ideas That Increase Sales," Golfdom, June 31, 1952.
Metropolitan Section, PGA of America. Hall of Fame, Members, Paul Runyan, https://www.met.pga.com/hall-of-famer/runyan/.
PGA of America. PGA Media Guide 2012, All-Time Records, 1934 PGA Championship, 1938 PGA Championship.
PGA of America. Senior PGA Championship Media Guide 2018, All-Time Records.
PGA Tour. PGA Tour Media Guide 2024.
PGATour.com. Players, Paul Runyan, https://www.pgatour.com/player/02034/paul-runyan.
Scharff, Robert. Golf Magazine's The Encyclopedia of Golf, 1970, Harper and Row.
SoCal Golf Hall of Fame. Inductees, Paul Runyan PGA, https://www.socalgolfhof.com/members/view/paul-runyan-1984.
World Golf Hall of Fame. Members, Paul Runyan, https://worldgolfhalloffame.org/paul-runyan/.