Gene Sarazen told Walter Hagen on the ship over to the 1928 British Open that it was one tournament he really wanted to win. Hagen smiled and told him he had no chance to do that unless he could secure a caddie like the ones he had in his victories in 1922 and 1924. Hagen said he would do him a favor and loan him the caddie he had used, Skip Daniels. He said he was very particular about who he caddied for and that he was expensive. When they arrived Sarazen met Daniels, “an old boy, all right, around sixty or sixty-one, old even for the professional British caddie.” He had a wonderful effect on Sarazen, and an “enthusiasm I had rarely observed in caddies a third his age." He limped slightly, but would trot out and retrieve practice balls without a problem. He was a good psychologist, telling Sarazen, “I’ve never seen Hagen hit the shots as well as you’re hitting them, sir.”
Sarazen was contending in the second round when he came to the 14th and took two shots to extricate his ball from the rough. Daniels had told him to play out safely with an iron, but Sarazen let his pride get in the way. “This is no time to lead the field. Tomorrow night is when you want to be in front, sir.” Daniels told him he could make it up and he finished well and played well the final two rounds, but finished two shots behind Hagen. The difference was the 7 he took on that par-5 14th hole, and he told Daniels he should have taken his advice. “There were tears in Dan’s eyes whe he answered, ‘We’ll try it again sir, won’t we? Before I die, I’m going to win an Open Championship for you.’”
In 1932 the Open came to Prince’s Club (now Sandwich), very close to Royal St. George’s where Sarazen had lost to Hagen in 1928. It was Sarazen’s wife Mary who decided that he should play. When he arrived he played a practice round at another club, where he was impressed with the young caddie who carried his bag. The young man said he’d like to caddie for him, but Sarazen said he already lined up Daniels. The caddie said he knew Daniels. “He must be around sixty-five now. He’s too old to carry this bag. His eyesight is gone. On top of that he’s been ill.” He told Sarazen he’s ruin his chances if he hired Daniels, and Sarazen sadly agreed.
When Sarazen arrived at Prince’s, he found Daniels waiting for him. He had become a “very old man” in the four years since they last saw each other, remembered Sarazen. “His speech was slower. That shaggy mustache of his was much grayer, his limp was much more obvious. And his eyes, they didn’t look good.” He informed Daniels that he had decided to go with the younger caddie, citing Daniels’s own poor health as a reason. The man took it well, and Sarazen said “There was great dignity in the way he spoke, but you couldn’t miss the threads of emotion in his voice.” Sarazen soon regretted his decision, as in practice rounds he and new man were not getting along well. The caddie would hand him a club and when Sarazen came up short of the green blame him for not hitting it well. He was slumping as the tournament neared.
He had seen Daniels in the gallery, following him. He hadn’t caddied for anyone else. With the qualifying round only two days away, Lord Innes-Ker, came to him and told him Daniels was heartbroken, and that he could straighten his game out before qualifying. Sarazen agreed and asked that Daniels meet him at his hotel at 7 a.m. the next morning. “On our first round I began to hit the ball again, just like that. “My, but you’ve improved a lot since 1928! You’re much straighter, sir.” He also commented on how better he was from the bunkers.
Sarazen had a secret weapon, something that would change the history of golf – the sand wedge. He had taken a regular niblick (9-iron) and added solder to it to create a heavy flange. By the time the British Open arrived, he knew he had perfected this club. When he got together with Daniels, he told him “‘Don’t show this club to anybody. Turn it upside down.’ So I went over there and in the first nine holes of the British Open, I was in three traps.” And from each one, he put the ball a few inches away. As they returned to the hotel after a final practice session the night before play began, Tommy Armour, the defending champion, ran into them on the front porch. He asked Skip how his boss was playing. “Mr. Sarazen is right on the stick. Right on the stick.”
The second round of qualifying Sarazen woke up and looked out the window to see a gale blowing over the course. “Then I saw this figure in black crouched over against the wind, pushing his way from green to green.” It was Daniels, checking the hole locations. He qualified easily and continued his good play. Each evening after they were done, Daniels would to his hotel and they would talk over the round. “He would take my clubs home with him, although he lived about four miles from the course.” Sarazen remembered.
As I was walking to my ball on one of the holes I heard someone call out to Daniels. I looked around, and saw the Prince of Wales and Daniels shaking hands and quickly exchanging greetings. Later I learned that Daniels had been gassed in the war and had taken to caddying on the advice of doctors who suggested life in the open as a cure for his ailment. Leading by five shots going into the last round, Sarazen faced a blind second shot over a hill on the 8th hole. He swung hard with a fairway wood, and hit the ball flush. “That’s how to play golf, sir,” Daniels told Sarazen, winking his eye with approval. “That’s the finest shot you’ve played on this hole.” He was right, as when they got to the green they found the ball eight feet from the hole. The eagle putt went down and basically closed things out and he finished in style by making a birdie at the last. He bettered Bob Jones’s record score of 285 in 1927 by two strokes.
Sarazen asked officials if Daniels could join him when he received the trophy, but they said tradition wouldn’t allow for this. Just as the ceremony was to begin, Sarazen spotted Daniels “coming down the drive on a bicycle, carrying a grandson on each handlebar.” After the ceremony, the two shared a rather sad goodbye, and Sarazen told him he’d be looking for him the next year at St Andrews. Skip got on his bicycle and said, “We’ll do it again next year.” As he pedaled away Sarazen felt a lump growing in his throat as he thought of how the “old fellow had never flagged for a moment during the tournament and now, pushing himself all the way, he had made good on his vow to win the championship for me before he died.”
It was the last time the two would ever meet. A few months later some English friends of Sarazen’s wrote him to say “Dan” had passed away. The Daily Mail had called him “Lucky” Daniels. He had told three generations of and about that Open, and how “‘Sarazen and I did it at Prince’s.” When old Dan died the world was poorer one champion,” Gene declared.