The Hershey Open was a

golf tournament Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

on the

PGA Tour The PGA Tour (stylized in all capital letters as PGA TOUR by its officials) is the organizer of professional golf tours in the United States and North America. It organizes most of the events on the flagship annual series of tournaments also k ...

from 1933 to 1941. It was played at the

Hershey Country Club Hershey Country Club is a country club located in Hershey, Pennsylvania, which was founded in 1930 by Milton S. Hershey. The golf course in the club hosted the PGA Championship in 1940, which Byron Nelson defeated Sam Snead on the par 3 12th ho ...

in Hershey on what is now called the West Course. It was played as a 72-hole

stroke play Stroke play, also known as medal play, is a scoring system in the sport of golf in which the total number of strokes is counted over one or more rounds of 18 holes. In stroke play, the winner is the player who has taken the fewest strokes over the ...

event every year except 1938. That year, it was played as a 126-hole round-robin

match play Match play is a scoring system for golf in which a player, or team, earns a point for each hole in which they have bested their opponents; as opposed to stroke play, in which the total number of strokes is counted over one or more rounds of 18 h ...

tournament with eight two-man teams and called the Hershey Four-Ball; its format was identical to the one used by the

Inverness Invitational Four-Ball The Inverness Invitational Four-Ball was a golf tournament on the PGA Tour from 1935 to 1953. It was played at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio. Format The tournament featured an unusual team round robin format. From 1935 to 1951, the field co ...

. The event was not held in 1940, when the club hosted the

PGA Championship The PGA Championship (often referred to as the US PGA Championship or USPGA outside the United States) is an annual golf tournament conducted by the Professional Golfers' Association of America. It is one of the four men's major championships ...

. Three times it was won by the resident golf pro—

Henry Picard Henry Gilford Picard (November 28, 1906 – April 30, 1997) was an American professional golfer. Born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Picard learned to play golf while caddying at the Plymouth Country Club. Already a talented player by his early 20s ...

in 1936 and 1937 and

Ben Hogan William Ben Hogan (August 13, 1912 – July 25, 1997) was an American professional golfer who is generally considered to be one of the greatest players in the history of the game. He is notable for his profound influence on golf swing theory and ...

in his first year at Hershey in 1941. His win in 1938 in the team event with

Vic Ghezzi Victor J. Ghezzi (October 19, 1910 – May 30, 1976) was an American professional golfer. (Birth year sometimes listed as 1911 or 1912) Born in Rumson, New Jersey, Ghezzi won 11 times on the PGA Tour, including one major title, the 1941 PGA Champ ...

was Hogan's first as a professional; his first win as an individual came in March 1940 in

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

Winners

References

{{Coord, 40.298, -76.63, type:event, display=title Former PGA Tour events Golf in Pennsylvania