Moving Forward, Looking Back
Pasco County’s Claim to Golfing Fame
Gene Sarazen and the advent of the modern sand wedge.
With places like Innisbrook, Cheval and Saddlebrook, here in the Tampa Bay area we are no strangers to the game of golf. But, did you know that Pasco County’s past history actually has a connection and claim to golfing fame? That connection is professional golfer Gene Sarazen, who in the late 1920s, considered New Port Richey his winter home. Locally, Sarazen not only managed New Port Richey’s Jasmin Point Golf Course, but it was here that his invention of the modern sand wedge, with steel shaft, came to life. From Eugenio Saraceni to Gene Sarazen Born February 27, 1902, in Harrison, New York, Eugenio Saraceni was the son of an Italian carpenter from Rome. With his family suffering financially, according to biographies, in 1910, at age 8, …
