“If you don’t know history, you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.”
– The late author Michael Crichton
PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA | Chris Little is not that leaf. He knows he is part of a tree. A beautiful tree, a dignified tree, a proud tree.
Chris Little is here to tell his tree’s story. Poignantly. Proudly. Passionately.
“My mission, where my head is at, is to take my dad’s table of contents to his book ‘Little by Little’ and see that it gets done,” he said. “Maybe it will then be ‘Little by Little by Little.’ ”
And here is where Chris Little smiles pleasantly and shows you that he has what it takes to be a true historian. His spirit is not stirred so he can profit from this book; rather, it is a book to be savored by family, by friends, by people who want the truth to shine upon people they love.
That truth will come from Chris Little.
He never knew his grandfather, Lawson Little Jr., but Chris believes he is discovering in his searches through family scrapbooks and various archives that the world didn’t quite know the World Golf Hall of Fame golfer either.
He did know his father, Lawson Little III – “a good man, a man who was a mentor and who supported his community,” said Chris – but he died before he could complete his research on his heralded father, the golf champion.
Chris Little would like to complete that research and possibly do a “coffee-table book.” He believes his grandfather and his father deserve his best effort.
• • •
Where this story was given birth is fitting: an exquisite antique shop, Golf Links To The Past, at The Lodge at Pebble Beach. Chris Little is the general manager, and when he’s in the shop he’s about 400 yards from where his grandfather grew up.
“He was an Army brat,” said Chris, who confirms that Lawson Little Jr. was born in Rhode Island in 1910 and lived part of his childhood in China and Oregon. But when William Lawson Little, a colonel in the Army Medical Corps, finally settled into a position at The Presidio of Monterey, a U.S. Army installation, he chose to buy a home at Pebble Beach.
The family home was to the left of the first fairway, up near the green, so the opportunity to play and polish his golf game by taking a few steps out his front door was a luxury that Lawson Little Jr. did not let pass.
Thus began the long and distinguished connection between Lawson Little Jr. and Pebble Beach Golf Links.
The colonel played the game but was not as smitten with it as was his son. Though it’s true that Lawson Little Jr. (he was given William as a first name, just like his father, but never used it) would tell people he actually learned to play golf in China, it was definitely Pebble Beach where he mastered the game.
The family home was to the left of the first fairway, up near the green, so the opportunity to play and polish his golf game by taking a few steps out his front door was a luxury that Lawson Little Jr. did not let pass.
When it comes to how Lawson Little’s star was born, the foundation is magnificent.
In the 1929 U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach, Little beat Johnny Goodman in a battle of 19-year-olds the day after Goodman had ousted the legendary Bobby Jones. And by 1934 when he was done with Stanford, Little was clearly the best amateur in the country.
In the 1934 Walker Cup at the Old Course in St. Andrews, Little recorded an 8-and-6 win alongside Goodman, then dismantled Cyril Tolley, 6 and 5, in singles. What’s more, he stuck around in Scotland and two weeks later posted a 14-and-13 win over Scotsman James Wallace to win the British Amateur at Prestwick.
“The long-hitting Californian set a back-breaking pace that the Little Scotchman just couldn’t contain,” wrote T.C. Watson, in a dispatch back to America.
That Little repeated a sweep of both titles in 1935 put him in the company of the great Bobby Jones. His match-play record in those two amateurs and the Walker Cup in 1934-35 was 34-0. Little had all the credentials to be an American hero, following in Jones’ footsteps.
Four months later, Lawson Little captured the U.S. Amateur with a dominating 8-and-7 triumph at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was just the third player to win the British Amateur and the U.S. Amateur in the same year.
That Little repeated a sweep of both titles in 1935 put him in the company of the great Bobby Jones. His match-play record in those two amateurs and the Walker Cup in 1934-35 was 34-0. Little had all the credentials to be an American hero, following in Jones’ footsteps.
That it never quite worked out that way is part of Chris Little’s mission. Lawson Little Jr. needs to be remembered in a better light.
• • •
Chris Little concedes that when he was growing up in Carmel Valley, not far from Pebble Beach, “golf was not on my radar.” He shrugs. “I don’t know the reason why.”
Chris’ father was the only son born to Lawson Little and his wife, Dorothy. But there were three sisters – Linda, Sandy and Sonya – and to this day those aunts feed Chris’ hunger to learn more about his father and grandfather. They tell him stories about the house at Pebble Beach and have shared with him scrapbooks and photos and other memorabilia associated with his grandfather and father.
William Lawson Little III – Chris’ dad – was also a golfer and even gave the pro game a try in 1972-73. He was not as talented as his father, of course, but then again, not many were. But Lawson Little III got into real estate and helped develop much of the area around Quail Lodge & Golf Club in Carmel, most notably Quail Meadows. He is a hero to Chris for how he got sober and mentored so many others who wanted to do the same.
“My dad was a good golfer, and once a year we would go out and play for fun,” Chris said. “I loved my dad. He was humble, but people always came to him for support. You could talk to him and confide in him.”
When his father died in 2015, Chris – who had graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara and was living in Austin, Texas, to be part of the creative world of digital – returned to Carmel Valley. There were things he could do to help his mother, Rose, but a transformation settled over him, too.
“Coming back home I saw how my dad had been doing that research on his father, my grandfather, and I started looking at it,” Chris said. “I became connected to my grandfather and, by extension, to my father.”
Having demolished everything that came his way in amateur golf, Lawson Little Jr. turned pro in 1936. That didn’t sit well with golf writers, who suggested the “Colossus of California,” as they dubbed him, was turning his nose up at the amateur world…
He became the head golf coach at his alma mater, Carmel High School, and started poring over all the memorabilia that had belonged to his father and grandfather. Photos, instructional essays written by Lawson Little Jr., hickory golf clubs, and even a copy of the $1,000 check his grandfather received for winning the 1940 U.S. Open.
Bringing a hickory putter into Golf Links To The Past was pure serendipity. The Pebble Beach Co. was looking for a new store manager and in Chris Little, they could check all the boxes.
Enormously grateful how this has all unfolded, Chris Little said the biggest thing is how it has connected him to his predecessors. “I really wanted to understand it all,” he said. “My mission is to honor both of them.”
• • •
Having demolished everything that came his way in amateur golf, Lawson Little Jr. turned pro in 1936. That didn’t sit well with golf writers, who suggested the “Colossus of California,” as they dubbed him, was turning his nose up at the amateur world, which they considered to be more respectable than pro golf.
When Little won the 1936 Canadian Open, then the San Francisco Open Match and Shawnee Open in ’37, golf writers such as Henry McLemore, a columnist for the Hearst Corp., took great offense. He insinuated that Little was resented by the pros for being cocky, although duly noted is how McLemore never quoted anyone who supported his charges.
“I read stuff like that,” Chris said. “But then I have photos of my grandfather with all the great golfers, everyone’s smiling. And there are photos autographed by celebrities (such as Bob Hope) thanking him for his time as he was always helping them.”
If McLemore was upset in ’36 and ’37, imagine his furor in 1940 when Little won the Los Angeles Open (with a final-round 65, no less) and U.S. Open in an 18-hole playoff against Gene Sarazen. Oh, and when Little marched into San Antonio in 1941 and won the Texas Open against Lone Star icons Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Jimmy Demaret and Lloyd Mangrum, well, McLemore was stymied. He wrote that the folks could have handled Nelson winning, or even Demaret, but not this “Californian.”
Little earned all eight of his PGA Tour victories in the 1936-48 window, after which he began to travel less. The World War II years had been tough on everyone, but Chris Little points out that his grandfather had to have had great friendships with his peers because he had been invited to join Sarazen, Harry Cooper and Jimmy Thompson in a series of war-bond exhibitions.
Chris Little takes issue with reports that suggest Lawson Little’s golf career was derailed by his drinking. “My grandfather had a stroke while he was in his early 50s,” he said, “and he died of a heart attack (1968) when he was just 57.” Chris has studied letters and logs that indicate Lawson Little tired of the excessive travel and thoroughly enjoyed being at his Pebble Beach home.
To pay homage to these great men whose love of golf he has inherited, Chris Little wears his father’s shoes whenever he plays and also carries a Wright & Ditson wedge. “It’s called the ‘Exploder,’ ” Chris Little said with a smile.
“It was my grandfather’s favorite club and out of respect, my father carried it,” he said. “So now I carry it.”
“Little by Little by Little,” indeed.