The Esmeralda Open was a golf

Golf

Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....

 tournament on the PGA Tour

PGA Tour

The PGA Tour is the organizer of the main men's professional golf tours in the United States and North America...

 that was played in the 1940s. It was held at Indian Canyon Golf Course in Spokane, Washington

Spokane, Washington

Spokane is a city located in the Northwestern United States in the state of Washington. It is the largest city of Spokane County of which it is also the county seat, and the metropolitan center of the Inland Northwest region...

. It was organized by the Spokane Athletic Round Table, a fraternal organization, who used their emblem, a laughing horse named Esmeralda, as the tournament name.

The first event in 1945 was won by Byron Nelson

Byron Nelson

John Byron Nelson, Jr. was an American PGA Tour golfer between 1935 and 1946.Nelson and two other well known golfers of the time, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead, were born within seven months of each other in 1912...

 by seven strokes over Harold "Jug" McSpaden. It was Nelson's sixteenth victory of the year during his record-setting 18-win year of 1945. Several course records were established at the 1945 tournament. McSpaden shot a course-record 30 on his final front nine; Ben Hogan

Ben Hogan

William Ben Hogan was an American golfer, generally considered one of the greatest players in the history of the game...

 had a hole-in-one on the 160-yard par-3 fourth hole; and Sam Snead

Sam Snead

Samuel Jackson Snead was an American professional golfer who was one of the top players in the world for most of four decades. Snead won a record 82 PGA Tour events including seven majors. He failed to win a U.S...

shot a final-round 63 to set another course record.