If we could gather all of the great golfers in history and arrange them in rows according to their achievements, we would have difficulty finding the right place for Byron Nelson. We would probably settle on a position maybe half a step behind Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, who would have the first row to themselves.

Nelson, or Lord Byron as he was known, is hard to categorize, except to say that he was a player who -- and this remains one of golf's most curious oddities -- came out of the same caddy lot in Fort Worth as Hogan, and astounded the world with blinding bursts of golfing brilliance, shocked the world with his early retirement and charmed the world with his presence for as long as he lived.

Short lives or short careers often enhance the image of a star and so it was with Nelson. He retired at the age of 34, leaving us to wonder how many more championships he might have won, how many more streaks of golfing lightning he might have hurled. But he left a run of golf that, as relatively short as it was, to this day makes us shake our heads in wonder.

He won eight tournaments in 1944, averaging 69.67 strokes per round. It was a wonderful year, but it paled in comparison to the next year when he won 19 tournaments, 11 of them in a row, and averaged 68.33 strokes. His 19 wins and his 11-win streak stand among the most unassailable records in golf.

He won 66 tournaments in 14 years, but the PGA TOUR credits him with 52 because the others didn't offer enough money to qualify as official. Among his victories were the 1937 and 1942 Augusta Masters, the 1939 U.S. Open and the 1940 and 1945 PGA Championship. There might have been more majors but because of World War II, there was no U.S. Open or Masters in 1943-45, no PGA in 1943, no British Open in 1940-45.

Many of his victories came on short courses with little rough and relatively flat greens and sometimes the field was granted improved lies. But traveling by car and playing without today's ultra-scientific equipment, with no yardage book to guide him, on courses that were generally in poor condition, he burned what grass there was off the fairways with shots struck by a swing that would become the model for "Iron Byron," a U.S. Golf Association testing machine. Any way you slice that, he could play.

There are differing views on the quality of players Nelson defeated in rolling up his historic numbers in 1944 and 1945, war years when many players were away in military service.

Historian Herbert Warren Wind wrote, "He had no Hogan to contend with, no Snead. His challenge came from an emaciated pack..."

Robert Sommers, author of "The U.S. Open, Golf's Ultimate Challenge" and a longtime editor of Golf Journal, differs. He wrote, "It is generally assumed that Nelson had no competition when he won those eighteen tournaments, that all of the other great players were in the armed services (Nelson was classified 4F because his blood needed an unusually long time to clot). That isn't true. Nelson played in thirty-one tournaments in 1945, but Snead, who was still in the Navy, played in twenty-seven and won six. Ben Hogan spent most of the year in the Army Air Force, but he had finished second to Nelson in the Tam O'Shanter Open in July, and after being released from the service in August, he joined the Tour full time a week after Nelson's streak of eleven consecutive victories ended. Hogan played in nineteen tournaments that year and won five.

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Captain Byron Nelson, far left, poses for a group photo with the 1965 United States Ryder Cup Team. (Getty Images)

Although some tournaments (including the Masters) in the early 1940s paid as few as 12 places and almost none paid as many as 40, Nelson was in the money in 113 consecutive tournaments. Wind wrote that Nelson was "a miracle of consistency. At his peak, Byron erred so infrequently that it could be boring to watch him."

Although there was a chill to his on-course demeanor (One competitor said that a person receiving a transfusion from Nelson would come down with pneumonia), he was capable of torrid streaks of scoring. During the 11-win streak, he caught Sam Snead with a back-nine 33 in the Charlotte Open, then beat him in a two-day playoff; shot 68-66 on the last day at Greensboro to win by eight; closed with a 65 at Durham to win by five; put together back-to-back 65s to win in Atlanta by nine; posted a final-round 63 in Philadelphia, with birdies on the last four holes; came from four down with two to play in the second round of the PGA Championship with two birdies and an eagle to beat Mike Turnesa, who was 7 under for the 36 holes.

He won the All-American Open by 11 strokes. Hogan and Gene Sarazen tied for second.

Fittingly, almost eerily, his 19th victory of the year came at Glen Garden, where he and Hogan had caddied together. He won that one by seven shots. When the season ended, someone figured that if par on the courses he played averaged 71, which was likely in those days, Nelson was 320-under par for the year.

Perhaps his most memorable spurt, though, came in the 1939 U.S. Open at Spring Mill when, in a playoff with Craig Wood, he birdied the third hole with a short putt, then hit his drive 240 yards on the 453-yard fourth and holed a 1-iron for an eagle-2 and a lead he would not relinquish.

Nelson had for years planned to retire from regular competition when he got together enough money to buy a ranch. In 1946, weary and battling stomach problems, he retired at age 34 and later said, "I had accomplished all the goals I had set for myself. I played as long as I wanted to. If you lose your desire in anything, you don't do it well. Leaving when I did was the best thing I ever did. If I had to do it again, I'd do it the same way."

The last time we saw him swing a club was in 2001, when he hit a ceremonial shot off the first tee to open the Masters tournament. The ball didn't travel far or straight, but the crowd who had come early for the ceremony felt privileged to have seen Lord Byron swing a club.

Former U.S. Open champion Ken Venturi said, "You can always argue who was the greatest player, but Byron is the finest gentleman the game has ever known."