The 1913 US Open: The Birth Of Modern Golf

L-R Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and Ted Ray

One hundred years ago, the 1913 US Open changed the sport of golf, with a game described as ‘the birth of the modern game’. The tournament culminated in an 18-hole playoff between Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, the top two professional players of the day, and Francis Ouimet, a twenty-year-old unknown amateur. As the title of Mark Frost’s book covering the event portrays, these three men would play a part in ‘The Greatest Game Ever Played’.

The US Open is a major championship in golf, and one of the most coveted tournaments of those playing the game; from the top touring professionals, to the aspiring young players hacking around courses all over the world. Northern Irish sensation, Rory McIlroy cemented his place as the top golfer in the world when he won the event in 2011 with a record-breaking score. McIlroy is considered one of the most influential people in the sport, with his success at a young age inspiring more and more young people to take up golf. But long before the Holywood ace, Francis Ouimet had polarized interest in the sport to a level never to be emulated by one single player.

Francis Ouimet was born in May 1893 to an Irish mother and French father, in Brookline, Massachusetts. He grew up in 246 Clyde Street, directly across the road from the 17^th green of Brookline Country Club, the course that would host the 1913 US Open. His parents were poor immigrants, and golf at the time was seen as an elitist sport played ‘by gentlemen’, and not by the sons of said poor immigrants. Ouimet began caddying for club members at Brookline as a boy, and on his travels up and down the fairways of the famous course, he collected stray balls, brought them home, and playing with old hand-me-down clubs, taught himself the complex game of golf in his modest backyard. He won his first championship in 1909, and soon became one of the finest high school golfers in his state. John G. Anderson, a Boston golfer and writer at the time, witnessed Ouimet during his high school years, and during the week of the 1913 Open, he wrote: “If there ever was a born golfer, it is this boy.”

Ouimet initially declined a personal invitation to play in the Open from the President of the United States Golf Association, Robert Watson, as he was not in a position to jeopardise his job at Wright & Ditson sporting goods store in Boston. Soon after, it was arranged with his employer for him to get time off, and so he was included in the field for the 1913 Open. The championship had been moved from its usual June date to September in order to facilitate the participation of the seasoned British pros, Harry Vardon and Ted Ray. Vardon and Ray were considered the two finest golfers in the world, and famous golf writer, Bernard Darwin, wrote of the foreseen probability of this British threat: “I cannot in my mind’s eye see any man in this field, save only McDermott, beating Ray or Vardon over four rounds.” Johnny McDermott was the reigning champion, the first American to win the US Open, and was heralded as the home country’s only hope of a challenger.

Brookline Country Club

On September 18, the much anticipated renewal of the Open got underway at Brookline, in earshot of Francis Ouimet’s family home on Clyde Street. Adding to the innocence of this story was the presence of Ouimet’s caddy, a straight-talking, rambunctious ten-year-old boy named Eddie Lowery. The newspapers focussed their headlines on Ray and Vardon, and they shot an opening round of 79 and 75 respectively. Ouimet went unseen with a respectable 77 in the first round, and an improved 74 in the second round. Despite his solid play, he still went unnoticed, while Vardon and Ray were both in the top three after two rounds. However, after the third round of the four-round tournament, the murmurs on the course were building, carrying the name of Francis Ouimet into the same breath of the British mainstays.  After these three rounds, there was a three-way tie for the lead: Harry Vardon, Ted Ray, and Francis Ouimet. This three-way tie would remain after the final round of regulation play, and that meant there would be an 18-hole playoff the following day to decide a winner.

Ouimet with his young caddy

People in higher echelons of the game tried to replace Ouimet’s unorthodox young caddy for a more experienced bagman in the playoff, but Francis wanted to stick with Eddie, and so he did. Lowery offered Ouimet simple words of advice: “you’ve just got to beat those fellows”, he said. The playoff day was dull and damp like the previous rounds, and Darwin described the course as a “rolling meadow land, thickly and prettily wooded, with every now and then a formidable rock that adds a touch of wildness and romance.” That wildness was emanating throughout the swells of people that provided the event with the biggest crowd a game of golf had ever attracted, and the three men teed off together. Ted Ray played poorly, and soon it was evident he would not be winning the playoff, but Vardon and Ouimet remained close on the card. Despite some mistakes, Ouimet stepped onto the 17^th tee with a one shot lead from his more experienced rival, and it was at this hole, on the green adjacent to his home, that Francis Ouimet would all but win the tournament. He birdied as Vardon bogeyed, giving the young pretender a lead that he would not relinquish, going on to win by five strokes from his childhood idol. The New York Tribune wrote of how “a roar went up”, and “Ouimet was hoisted into the air”, while women “tore bunches of flowers from their bodices, and hurled them at the youthful winner.” This moment was captured in headlines across the world, and the defeated Vardon spoke of how “Mr Ouimet played the most wonderful golf” he had ever witnessed.” He was the first amateur to win the US Open.

The Fresh Faced Champion

Francis Ouimet’s victory in the Open one hundred years ago is credited with spawning a new culture of golf in America. Up to 1913, golf had been dominated by Britons and Scots, but in just ten years, the number of golfers in the US had increased from 350,000 to approximately 2.1 million. The number of courses, especially public ones, also grew from 700 in 1910 to over 5,600 in 1929. Never had, and never since, has one player, and one victory, changed any sport in the way in which Francis Ouimet changed golf. American golfer and golf writer, Herbert Warren Wind, once commented on the legacy of Ouimet: “The luckiest thing, however, that happened to American golf was that its first great hero was a person like Francis Ouimet.”

Francis Ouimet died in 1967, but his memory lives on far beyond the 17^th green at Brookline and 246 Clyde Street. The Francis Ouimet Scholarship Fund still bears his name, having been set up by a group of his friends in 1949, and it provides “significant need-based college scholarships to students who have given service to golf by working at a Massachusetts golf course.” It has awarded scholarships totalling over $25 million to date, and they are as proud to be associated with Francis Ouimet, as he was of the fund. Speaking to me recently, Executive Director of the Fund, Bob Donovan said: “Mr. Ouimet often said that of all his honours, the one that pleased him the most was the creation of the Francis Ouimet Scholarship Fund. Mr. Ouimet was always kind to young people, and that started with Eddie Lowery in 1913.”

Eddie Lowery went on to become a self-made multi-millionaire, and he and Francis Ouimet remained lifelong friends. When Francis died in 1967, Eddie Lowery was one of the men to carry his coffin. The iconic photograph of Lowery and Ouimet walking down the fairway together is one of the most memorable in golf’s history, and was used as the logo for the United States Golf Association's centennial celebrations.

One of the players Ouimet helped to inspire, Bobby Jones once said of his friends’ contribution to golf: “There have been many great golfers since Ouimet, but none who gave more to the game. There have been few who played it so well; none who played it so gallantly.”

I sum up in the words of legendary English commentator, Henry Longhurst who once remarked, “Ouimet is a champion for all time.”