A FAMOUS CHAMPIONSHIP AT BROOKLINE, U.S.A., AND AN ACCOUNT OF HOW MR.
FRANCIS OUIMET WON IT, WITH SOME EXPLANATION OF SEEMING MYSTERIES.
Abiding wonders of the past, perplexities of the present, the greatness
of the game where it is still greatest, have been among recent thoughts;
and yet one is conscious all the time that something which sure enough
comes near to being the eighth wonder of it all has lately happened, and
will for long enough be high in the minds of this community, something
that will never cease to be discussed and will always be regarded as a
matter for argument and speculation. Only because it is so very new, so
utterly modern, so contrary to much of our olden faith, so inharmonious
with the smooth story that we have learned and liked, has a witness
hesitated to give it a forward place well won. Yet do we not know that a
hundred years from now, when so much of golfing history yet unmade will
have been piled on to the dusty records that we hold, this new wonder
will still be a theme for club-house talk, and if by then matches are
played with the people of other planets, will they not wish to know in
Mars how this strange break came about? Then there shall be as many
readings and explanations of the mystery of Brookline and of Ouimet as
there have been of the moods of sad Prince Hamlet. So from the old
traditions, the famous players, the ancient links, the scene may move to
new America.
* * * * *
To the Fourth of July there shall now be added the Twentieth of
September. In the year of nineteen hundred and thirteen it fell upon a
Saturday, and that day at Brookline, near Boston in Massachusetts, was
dripping wet. Clouds had run loose for two whole days and nights before,
unceasingly, and still sent their torrent down. When, dull and
splashing, the morning broke, with expectation in the air, it seemed
that this had been planned by fate for a day of wretchedness and misery,
one that might with convenience afterwards be blotted out from memory
and considered as a _dies non_. But good Americans will now recall no
clouds, no rain, no damp, no mud when they remember the Twentieth of
September. I too, though my feelings then were more of wonder and real
admiration than of joy which my own patriotism could not sanction, shall
be glad to remember in time to come that then I was at Brookline and was
one of only two or three from Britain who saw the amazing thing that was
done that day, the most remarkable victory ever achieved in any golf
championship anywhere at any time. It was something to have seen; it is
a distinction to have the remembrance. On that day Francis Ouimet, a boy
of twenty, bred to the game on the cow pastures of Massachusetts, played
Harry Vardon and Edward Ray, great champions of British golf, for the
championship of the United States--and won. They three had come through
the great ordeal of a full championship and tied for first place
together. They played, not against blank possibility as men, knowing not
the exact nature of their task, have to do in Open Championships where
the test is play by score and each is against all others, having then
some fears stilled by sweet hope which is ever the golfer's sustenance,
but in sight of each other, together, one with another, man against man,
ball against ball, seeing what was being done, knowing what had to be
accomplished next. Could there ever again be such a three-ball golf? It
is one of the compensations of having been so very wet at Brookline on
that awful day that one knows that for the wonder and the drama of the
thing it can never happen more, not ever. If such facts could be
repeated, the wonder would be missing and the drama gone.
An American and two Englishmen. These championships are mainly matters
for individuals after all; the "international element," of which we read
so much in newspapers, is not generally so deeply felt as we try to
think it is. Golf, not being a game of sides as other games are, and, if
it comes to that, not generally a game in which national peculiarities
exert an influence, hardly lends itself to international treatment.
Players who feel internationally before a contest relapse to
individualism completely when they are pitching to the green and putting
to the hole. Do not tell me that in the throes of a six-feet putt that
shall win or lose a day a man thinks of his trusting country and not of
his tortured hopeful self. It is not possible in the combination of golf
and human nature, and there is no blame to the men. But on the Twentieth
of September international feeling in the game of golf did for once rise
high, and became a very real thing. What of individualism had been
maintained by Vardon and his companion during that week had nearly
disappeared on the nineteenth, when the tie was made, and there was
hardly a trace of it when the curtain went up on the fifth act of the
amazing drama of Brookline, none at all when it was rolled down again.
This point is now emphasised because when I write of the wonder of the
thing I have to show that not only was this Brookline boy, of no
championship whatever save one of Massachusetts, pitted against two of
the greatest golfers of the home country of the game, but that, the
international feeling being now alive and intense, he for America was
opposed to those two of England, and therefore in a very full degree he
was playing their better ball. The boy was playing the better ball of
Vardon and Ray! He beat them! A long time has now elapsed since the
dripping day when I saw him do it, and wonders have a way of softening
with age, yet to me now that achievement is as wonderful as it was when
new, and so it will remain. The American golfers are justified in their
pride and their exultation upon the result of that event, and there is
nothing whatever to be said against it. No such feat had ever been
performed before, or has been since. I shall describe the circumstances
which led up to this amazing triumph, and what ensued.
* * * * *
Only once before had British players gone across the Atlantic to take
part in the Open Championship of the United States, and that was in 1900
when Harry Vardon and J. H. Taylor did so. At that time Taylor was the
Open Champion, Vardon having finished second to him in that year's
tournament at St. Andrews. American golf was then comparatively a baby,
and practically all the opponents of the British pair were players who
had been born and bred in the home country and had gone out to America
as professionals there. Good as some of them were, they were no match
for their visitors, who had the competition comfortably to themselves
and finished first and second, Vardon becoming champion. Much happened
in the next thirteen years. Most significant was the breeding of an
American champion on American soil, a "native born," in J. J. M'Dermott,
who tied for first place in 1910, but then lost to Alec Smith on playing
off, and tied again the next year when he won, and again in 1912. About
the same time two other native players in Tom M'Namara and Michael Brady
came to the surface from the raw mass of rough golfing material that was
taking shape under the American sun. Both are good men, and from my
knowledge of them I like their manner and their style; but M'Dermott,
despite some serious faults of which he has been made aware, is
undoubtedly a marvellous golfer for his age. I think he has to be
considered as the most wonderful prodigy the game has so far known. At
twenty years of age, when he came over to Muirfield as American champion
to compete for the great Open Championship, he was even then a most
accomplished golfer, high in the topmost rank. Not tall in stature but
well and lithely built for a golfer, he has a full, easy, and graceful
swing. It is round like most of the American swings--but not so round as
it used to be--and M'Dermott is often afflicted with what is commonly
known as the American hook, being a most persistent tendency to pull the
ball. It is remarkable also that he has been in the habit of using
wooden clubs of most abnormal length, and it has been a wonder to me how
he has controlled them as well as he has done. The history of the Open
Championship, marked with so many crosses for tragedies and the
blighting of fair hopes, embraces few incidents more pathetic than the
driving of three balls into the Archerfield woods by M'Dermott in the
event of 1912 at Muirfield, and his failing to qualify in consequence.
But he was only twenty then. The first expedition made by a native
American to this country in quest of Open Championship honours
consequently failed. In the following year we saw him again at Hoylake,
and with him his brother natives, M'Namara and Brady, and some of the
Scoto-Americans also. M'Dermott did the best of the three, and his play
for nine holes one morning was very nearly perfect. His swing was a
little more compact than before; it was beautifully timed, and his
straight-up style of putting with his heels touching and his grip upon
the end of the shaft was most attractive. He found the conditions on the
last day too severe for him, as nearly all except Taylor, the champion,
did; but he made a fine display and became the first real American
player to get into the prize list of the Open Championship, which he did
with a score of 315--eight more than Taylor--which made him tie for
fifth place. M'Dermott undoubtedly excels in temperament.
* * * * *
Here was a menace. It was felt that America was making very good in
golf. And there came vaguely into the minds of British golfers the idea
that a demonstration of their strength should be made in this new
country, for satisfaction and for the sake of national pride. Yet, with
their conservatism, our British golfing people are slow to move in
matters of this kind. They are content with the game, and perhaps wisely
so. But there was the feeling that something should be done. With
initiative demanded, Lord Northcliffe, who had become a keen lover of
the game, made a characteristic movement unobtrusively, as the result of
which Harry Vardon and Edward Ray were sent across the Atlantic to test
the strength of American golfers in their own Open Championship. Vardon
was then five times Open Champion of the world; Ray was the holder of
the title. Two other Europeans sailed the seas with the same object in
their minds, one of them being Wilfrid Reid, the clever little
professional attached to the Banstead Downs club near London, a man who
had gained international honours constantly and has much fine golf in
him, and the other Louis Tellier, the professional of the Societe de
Golf de Paris at La Boulie, Versailles. Four good men; two great
champions; one the greatest golfer the world has known. They seemed to
be enough. Their design was to win the American championship.
* * * * *
Those who were not at Brookline during the week that followed, and only
received a result that was amazing and inexplicable, were ready enough,
perhaps not unnaturally, to suggest that this course of the Country Club
could not have afforded a proper test, that it was so far different from
a good British course, so mysteriously American, that the native players
must have been favoured by it, and the superior skill that the British
golfers possessed had no opportunity for an outlet. As I say, this was
not an unreasonable supposition in the light of the amazing events that
occurred; but it was entirely wrong. There are few courses in America
that are better than this one, and to this judgment I would add that
though there are inland courses in England that are superior there are
not many. Judged upon the best standard of inland courses in Britain I
would call it thoroughly good.
It has seven holes of over four hundred yards each, one of them being
five hundred and twenty, and, the total length of the round being 6245
yards, it was good enough in this respect. It has three short holes,
well separated, and some of its drive-and-iron-holes are quite
excellent. The Brookline course differs from many others in America in
the quick and varied undulations of its land--heaving, rolling, twisting
everywhere--and thus calling for adaptability of stance, and careful
reckoning of running after pitching at every shot. By this feature the
play is made as interesting as it should be, but often is not. Only two
of the holes on the course are quite flat and plain, and these are
novelties. They are the first and eighteenth, which take straight lines
parallel to each other through the great polo field alongside the
club-house. Polo is a considerable feature of the scheme of the Country
Club, and its comparatively small territory is not to be interfered with
for the sake of the golfers who have so much more of Massachusetts for
their delectation. Yet it is necessary to play through this polo field.
Consequently we start the round at one end of it and play a hole of 430
yards right along past the grand stand. Then away we go out into the
country, over the hills and along the dales, and through the trees and
cuttings where rocks were blasted, and, after many adventures, return to
the smooth plain land of the polo field as to the straight run home at
the end of a steeplechase, and play along positively the plainest
410-yard hole I have ever seen. The tee is at one end of the polo field,
with the grand stand in the middle distance on the left. There is not a
bunker along that field, but there is rough grass on the left of the
part designated for the fairway, and there is the same with a
horse-racing track as well on the right. At the far end of the field,
near to the club-house, the race-track, of course, bends round and comes
across the line of play. Just on the other side of that track the ground
rises up steeply for three or four yards, and then up there sloping
upwards and backwards is the putting green. Thus the race-track becomes
a hazard to guard the green, and the green is on a high plateau with big
trees all round it. The hole is there all complete, with hardly a thing
done to it by man, and it is one of the most remarkable examples I have
seen of a piece of ready-made golf of the plainest possible description,
resulting in something fairly good. It is 410 yards long, and if the tee
shot is a little defective the attempt to reach the green with the
second is going to be a heartbreaking business. With a good drive that
second shot, played with a cleek perhaps, or the brassey may be needed,
has to be uncommonly well judged and true. The margin for error is next
to nothing. At the first glance at it I thought that this eighteenth
hole was very stupid, but it is a hole that grows a little upon you, and
the original impression has been withdrawn from my mind. It was the last
hope of Vardon and Ray, and it failed them. The fairway at Brookline is
far better than on the average American course, and if one says that its
putting greens are among the very best in America, the greatest possible
compliment is paid to them.
There have been many touches of romance in the history of golf at the
Country Club, but none more remarkable than that associated with the
construction of the comparatively new ninth, tenth, and eleventh holes,
two long ones with a short one between them, which are among the nicest
holes in all America. For some years after the beginning of this
century, when golf at Brookline had become a very big thing, these holes
did not exist, their predecessors being embraced in the other parts of
the course. But, for the crossing that they involved, those predecessors
had become dangerous, and it was determined to take in a new tract of
land, and to make three new holes upon it. It was a tremendous
undertaking, for "land" was only a kind of courtesy title for the wild
mixture of forest, rock, and swamp into which a man might sink up to his
neck, but for which about 25,000 dollars had to be paid, while another
thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars had to be spent in making it fit
for golf and preparing the holes, so that these three cost an average of
about thirteen thousand dollars a hole, or roughly L2500 as we may say
if we are English. At the ninth as much rock had to be blasted as some
one afterwards used to make a wall two hundred yards long, and the best
part of a yard in thickness. The tenth hole is a very delightful short
one, with the green in a glade far below the tee. They call it "The
Redan," because Mr. G. Herbert Windeler (long resident in America, but
English in nationality still, despite his past presidency of the
U.S.G.A.), who is largely responsible for the golf at Brookline, and
designed and superintended the construction of these holes, had the
famous piece of golf at North Berwick in his mind when he planned this
one, but before the end he departed far from the original conception,
and all for the good of the hole. When it was being made the place for
the green needed raising from the swamp, and nearly two thousand loads
of broken rocks were deposited there; and after soil to a depth of
eighteen inches had been laid upon the stone foundation a splendid
putting green was made. With all its variety, this is not a course of
such intricacy and such mystery as St. Andrews is, to need long weeks of
study and practice to understand every shot upon it. You may play St.
Andrews from childhood to old age and yet be puzzled and mistaken
sometimes, but Brookline is more candid than that, and it is to its
credit that with all its variety you may be completely acquainted with
it in a very few days. Let me say then that the suggestion that Mr.
Ouimet had a distinct advantage in a knowledge of the course obtained in
his childhood, and maintained thenceforth by frequent practice on the
course near to which he lived, is quite nonsense. He had no advantage
whatever. Vardon and Ray had practised there for several days in
advance, and if they did not know all about it that there was to know it
was their own fault. They did know, and local knowledge, which counts
for far less with great golfers than men a little their inferiors, had
nothing to do with the issue.
* * * * *
Now consider the other circumstances, that the proper meaning and
significance of the result may be understood, and that neither too much
merit shall be awarded, nor too much blame. There were about a hundred
and sixty competitors, and I would call the field a strong one, but of
course not nearly so strong as the field for our Open Championship. Such
men as two of the triumvirate were missing, and a highly respectable
company of past champions, while there were no such English amateurs in
the list as Mr. Graham, Mr. Lassen, and Mr. Michael Scott to make an
occasional disturbance. But there were other amateurs. Compared to a
British open championship field it was weak at the top and weak in the
middle. Everybody who goes to our open championships knows that there,
for three parts of the trial, there are comparative nobodies bobbing up
from nowhere and creating all kinds of excitement by breaking the
records of the courses, and fixing themselves up elegantly at the top of
the list. There they sit like civilians on an imperial dais, but always
they topple off before the end. Not one of them has ever remained to the
finish, so that if the American entry was weak in this respect,
Americans might argue that it did not matter anyhow since this middle
part was not the one to count. Yet it always has its effect. But then
the Americans may also point out that they too had their middle men who
came to the front and created disturbances, only quitting the heights in
time to make room for the winner and his attendants. There was young
M'Donald Smith, and there were Barnes and Hagin, who had come up out of
the wild west--and one of them, saying it respectfully to his splendid
golf, looked a cowboy too--and were distinct menaces until the last
rounds came to be played. Then in estimating the strength of this
American field remember that M'Dermott, who is undoubtedly high class,
and was in the prize list at the Open Championship at Hoylake, was not
nearly a winner here, and remember also that imported players of the
high quality of Tom Vardon and Robert Andrew were not in it either.
Altogether it is my judgment that the field was stronger than imagined
in England, yet not nearly so strong as ours. Following a favourite
American practice of reducing to percentages every estimate, however
necessarily indefinite, such as even the comparative charms of wives and
sweethearts, I would give the strength of a British field the hundred,
and I would give sixty-five to this of America. I knew that I should
fall to that percentage system some time, and now I have. For its strong
variety, and for its flavour of cosmopolitanism, it was an interesting
entry. The professionals all over the States--and the amateurs, too, for
that matter--came up to Brookline from north, south, east and west, for
what they felt was a great occasion, and over the border from Canada
they came as well. Up from Mexico came Willie Smith, the Willie who was
teethed in golf at his Carnoustie home, and whom we never shall forget
as he who broke the record--and holds it with George Duncan still--for
the old course at St. Andrews in the very last round that was played at
the beginning of an Open Championship meeting there a few years ago. It
was really a wonderful field, and its units presented a wealth of
material for study and contemplation in matters of style and method
during the first day or two. And yet for all the variety of players I
doubt whether there was so much difference in ways as we see in a big
championship at home. The American golfing system is a little plainer, I
think. Of course it was by far the largest entry that had ever been
received for the American open event, and this fact necessitated a
departure to some extent from established American custom, and one which
we of Britain with unenviable experience of many processes in qualifying
competitions could not congratulate the Americans on having to make.
However, the numbers were not so large as to cause such trouble, even
with a qualifying competition, as we experience in England and Scotland,
and consequently a two-days' affair worked it smoothly through, the
field being divided into two sections, and each man playing his two
rounds off in one day and getting done with it. It was settled that the
top thirty players in each section, and those who tied for the thirtieth
place, should pass into the competition proper for the championship,
which, as here and elsewhere, consists of four rounds of stroke play,
two on each of two successive days.
The United States Golf Association always manages its championships very
well indeed with no more red tape than is necessary, but with an
exactness of method which might serve as a fine lesson to some other
great golfing countries that I have in mind. In this present case Mr.
Robert Watson, President for the year of the U. S. G. A., after all his
splendid work as secretary of the Association, was in charge of all the
arrangements and as administrator-in-chief was the most energetic man
during the whole of the week at Brookline. It was fitting that in his
year of presidency, so well deserved, there should be this ever
memorable happening to mark the season out from all others. Mr. Herbert
Jacques, Mr. G. Herbert Windeler, and Mr. John Reid, the new secretary
of the U. S. G. A., were in the nature also of generals of the
headquarters staff, and they laboured constantly in an upper room late
at night working out the details of business when other persons on whom
responsibility was more lightly cast, with cocktails to help, might be
pondering over the tense problem as to what was going to happen next.
The general idea of the system was much the same as we have it in
Britain, as there is hardly much scope for variety in matters of this
kind.
* * * * *
Now--Ouimet. It is easy for the Americans and others to compose anthems
about him now, but little enough did they know or think of this
Massachusetts boy until they saw that he was really winning, and then
the remark that I heard of an ex-American champion to him in the
dressing-room shortly after it was all over, "Well done, Francis, and
there are lots more in the country like you!" was not only lacking in
compliment and taste, but was not true. America is by no means full of
Ouimets, and never will be. I had met him at Chicago in 1912, and heard
of him next in a letter that I received just before starting for America
in the following summer, which gave me particulars of what happened in
the match in the closing stages of the Massachusetts State Championship
between my old friend, Mr. John G. Anderson, and Mr. Ouimet, in which it
was stated that Mr. Ouimet had done the last nine holes in that match as
follows--yards first and figures after: 260 yards (4), 497 yards (3),
337 yards (4), 150 yards (2), 394 yards (3), 224 yards (3), 250 yards
(3), 320 yards (3), 264 yards (3). So he did the last six holes in 17
strokes, and no wonder that poor John remarked, "I have never played in
any match in my life where I did the last six holes in three over 3's
and lost four of them, as I did on this occasion!" Of course Mr. Ouimet
became State champion, and I determined to have a good look at him as
soon as I got on the other side of the Atlantic. On the day after my
arrival in New York I was down at the Garden City Club, the Amateur
Championship taking place there the following week, and at lunch time
Mr. Anderson, who was at another table with Ouimet, called me over.
"Well, Mr. Ouimet, I suppose you have a big championship in your bag
this season," was just the proper thing to say, and he answered
something about doing his best, but feeling he might be better at stroke
play. "Then," said I, "there is the Open Championship to take place in
your own golfing country," and with that we tackled the chicken. He is a
nice, open-hearted, modest, sporting golfer, and was only twenty years
old in the May of his great championship year. Tall, lithe and somewhat
athletic in figure and movement, he takes excellent care of himself in a
semi-training sort of way. He abstains from alcohol entirely, and though
he smokes a few cigarettes when "off duty" he rarely does so while
playing, having the belief that the use of tobacco has a temporary
effect on the eyesight, such as is not conducive to accuracy of play. He
agreed entirely with a suggestion I put to him, in conversation, that
most golfers make the mistake of playing too much and lose keenness in
consequence, and he thinks that the American players in general are by
no means at such a disadvantage as is sometimes imagined. The winter
rest gives them extra keenness in the spring and summer, and that is
everything. He does not play at all from November to April, but keeps
himself fit with skating and ice hockey, while during the season he only
plays one round three times a week, and two full rounds on Sundays.
Business considerations--he is engaged at a Boston athletic store--have
something to do with this system, no doubt, but he thinks it sound. I
looked at his bag of clubs; there are no freaks in it. It comprises ten
items, an ivory-faced driver, a brassey, six irons including a jigger
and mashie niblick, and two putters, one being of the ordinary aluminium
kind and the other a wry-neck implement, the latter being most used. As
to his style of golf, its outstanding characteristics are three: it is
plain, like the style of most American golfers, and free from any
striking individuality; it is straight; and it is marvellously steady
and accurate. A marked feature of most of the American players is that
their swing is very round and flat, and that they get a pronounced hook
on their ball. Mr. Ouimet's swing is rather more upright than that of
most of the others, he keeps an exceedingly straight line and has full
length--as much as Vardon. I said he had no peculiarities, but there is
just this one, that he grips his club with what is called the
interlocking grip. This is a way of grasping the club that some
professionals employed during the early period of general transition
from the plain grip to the overlapping. Mr. Ouimet's little finger of
the right hand just goes between the first and second of the left hand,
while the left thumb goes round the shaft instead of into the palm of
the right hand. Such a grip may suit a man who uses it, but it can
hardly have any advantages. I note as a further peculiarity that the
right forefinger is crooked up away from the shaft, so that the tip of
the finger only comes to the leather at the side. This has to some
considerable extent the effect of throwing that finger out of action,
and as a means of reducing the right hand's power for evil is not to be
condemned. Many other players have sought some such method of crippling
the very dangerous hand.
But after all it is not the shots he plays, good as they are, dependable
as they always seem to be, as the qualities of temperament with which
they are supported. He has a golfing temperament of very peculiar
perfection, wanting perhaps in imagination but remarkably serviceable to
his game. He seems to have the power to eliminate entirely the mental
oppression of the other ball or balls; he can play his own game nearly
regardless of what others play against him. From the mere sporting point
of view he misses something in the way of emotions perhaps, those rare
emotions which some of us derive when we are fighting hard to keep our
match alive and at a crisis become hopelessly bunkered; but he gains
enormously in strokes and successes. When he settles down to his match
or round, he can concentrate more deeply than any other man I know or
have heard of. He sees his ball, thinks what he should do with it, and
has the course and the hole in his mental or optical vision all the
time, just those and nothing else. The other balls do not exist, and the
scores that are made against him do not exist either. He has told me
that in important golf, and indeed in that most mightily important
play-off against Vardon and Ray, he was wholly unaware until it came to
the putting what his opponents had done, and generally he had not seen
their balls after they had driven them from the tee. Vardon and Ray
pounded away as hard as they could, but their shots had no more effect
on Ouimet than the patting of an infant's fist would have on the cranium
of a nigger. He just went on and did better. Andrew Kirkaldy once said
of Harry Vardon at the beginning of his career that he had the heart of
an iron ox, and that is like Ouimet's. This championship will always be
something of a mystery; but in this statement about the Ouimet
temperament there is the nearest thing to a solution of it that can ever
be offered. I know that what I say is the simple truth, partly from
observation, partly from inquiry, and partly from Mr. Ouimet's
statements to me. He said he was unaware of the presence of the crowd on
the fourth day when he made the tie until he was in the neighbourhood of
the seventeenth green.
See how interesting he becomes despite the plainness of his game. When
such achievements as his of the 20th of September are made they rarely
suffer from any want of added romance. On the day in question Mr.
Ouimet, champion as he had become, told me in a talk we had, how he
began the game when he was about four years of age. He was a French
Canadian by blood, but his parents had come over the border and their
little family settled at Brookline close to the sixteenth green of the
Country Club. His elder brothers played a kind of golf, and he watched
them and began to practise himself on some pasture land near his home.
Then he became a caddie at Brookline, played the game more seriously
than before, with three clubs that a member of the Country Club gave to
him, and at sixteen years of age won, at the second attempt, the
championship of his school. They make a feature of school championships
in America. This story was attractive enough, but the next day, reading
the American papers, one gathered that there was some of the romance of
a Joan of Arc about this boy of Brookline. His mother said that when
Francis was a little boy of six or seven he would cross the road and sit
for hours fascinated by watching the members of the Country Club at the
game. Then he wanted to become a caddie, and maternal objections did not
avail. He became a caddie. His mother also said that he learned much of
the game then, and would always try to get engaged by the strongest
players, and he would copy as well as he could their best strokes. He
passed from the grammar school to the Brookline High School, but his
mind was more on golf than on his books. The mother used to hear noises
up in his room at night. Once she was frightened by what she heard, and
went to his room at midnight fearing that he was sick. She found him
putting on the floor, and he then confessed that he had often done that
kind of thing before. On that occasion he had thought while in bed of a
new grip and wished to try it. He did not care to wait until the
morning. The parents desired their son to get all advantage from
education that he could, but after two years at the high school he
insisted on leaving and was engaged at a Boston store where golf goods
are dealt in. All that and more was said of him.
* * * * *
In a narrative of this kind circumstances and reasonable deductions are
everything, and shots are next to nothing, for there is little enough to
be said about a ball in the air or its place of stopping. Only one man
knows the truth about a golf stroke as it is played, and that is the man
who plays it. Very often even the most expert observers are quite wrong
in their inferences and judgments. I have explained most of the
circumstances already. On the first of the two qualifying days, Mr.
Ouimet came very near to taking first place in the list, for he had a
score of 152, and only Harry Vardon beat him, and by one stroke only, as
the result of a long putt on the last green of all. The weather was fine
and the greens were fiery on that Tuesday. Next day there was more wind
and there were indications of a change of weather coming. Autumn gusts
were breaking the leaves from the tree-tops. That day Ray headed the
qualifying list with 148, Wilfrid Reid was next to him with 149,
M'Dermott was 161 and Mr. Travers was 165. This was good business for
England, even though it yielded nothing but a little temporary prestige.
Then came Thursday, and in the early morning and up to a little while
after play began there was much rain, and the greens were considerably
slowed down. They were, indeed, reduced to a soaking state in time, and
Tom M'Namara told me that once or twice he had actually, instead of
putting, to root his ball with a niblick out of the greens, into which
they had buried themselves on pitching. But Brookline stood the weather
test very well.
First rounds are seldom eventful; the value of the play done in them
seems to be discounted by the circumstance that there are three more
rounds to come. M'Dermott did a 74 in this round, Vardon and Reid 75's,
Mr. Ouimet 77, and Ray 79, but even M'Dermott was three strokes behind
the leaders. In the afternoon round Ray recovered brilliantly with a 70,
Vardon and Reid both did 72's, and Mr. Ouimet 74; and at the end of this
first proper day Vardon and Reid were at the head of the list with
aggregates of 147, Ray was next with 149, while Mr. Ouimet was seventh
with 151. Again the British invaders looked well in their place, and
that night they were strong favourites for the championship. "America
has a fight on hands," "Little left but hope," and such like, were the
headings in newspapers. As I lay in bed at the Country Club that night,
I heard the rain pour ceaselessly down. It rained all through the night
and alas! all the next day as well, and the great events of that Friday
were watched through a heavy downpour. In their third rounds Vardon did
78, Ray 76, and Mr. Ouimet, who was playing nearly a whole round behind
the others, and with wonderful steadiness, did a 74: and so it came
about that with the competition three parts done, all these three were
at the top with aggregates of 225. Now was the time for the Englishmen's
efforts if they were to be made. To their own chagrin they could not
make them when they needed. Ray took 43 to the turn, in his fourth
round, Vardon, whose putting all the week was distinctly moderate, and
the chief cause for his inefficiency, took 42, and though both finished
better, their two 79's were bad and seemed to have cost them the
championship. Vardon certainly thought they had, and took a very gloomy
view of things. I spoke to him a little while after he had finished, and
he said he was sorry and that they could not win then. His putting had
let him down, he said, as he had been afraid it would, though he felt
that the rest of his game had never been played better. "There are three
or four out there who will beat us," said the melancholy Vardon. It
looked like that, but the American hopes one by one failed to
materialise. Hagin fell out; Barnes fell out; M'Dermott fell out.
Goodness! it was going to be a tie between Vardon and Ray after all, and
these two Englishmen would play off here at Boston for the American
championship! Hereupon said Englishmen came out to see what was
happening, and looked happy again. They smiled. Then men came running
and breathless from distant parts with tidings of Ouimet. He had had a
worried way to the turn, but had improved afterwards, so rumour said. I
went along with our British champions to pick him up at the fourteenth
green, and there when he came along, we found that if he did the last
four holes in a total of one under par he would tie with the leaders,
or, in other words, if he did the miraculous and practically impossible
he might be permitted to have a game next day.
I shall never forget watching that boy play those last four holes; that
was the real fight for the championship. Their respective lengths and
par figures are 370 yards (4), 128 yards (3), 360 yards (4), 405 yards
(4). They were stiff pars, too, you will see, with nothing given away,
especially as the turf was soaking. At one of those holes he had to gain
a stroke on par if he were to tie, and the others must be done in par. A
slip anywhere would surely be fatal. It seemed that that slip was made
with the second shot at the fifteenth, for he was wide of the green on
the right and had to pitch from the rough, but he was dead with his
third and got the 4 after all. At the sixteenth he holed a three yards'
putt for the 3 and still was level with par. The much-wanted stroke was
given to him at the next hole, which is a dog-legged thing bending to
the left, with rough and bunkers to be avoided. He played it with good
judgment always, and this time, on the green with his second, he holed a
nine-yards putt for a 3. Thus he was left to get the home hole in 4 to
tie, and by holing a five-feet putt with not a second's hesitation, just
as if everything in golf had not seemed to depend upon it, he tied.
Jupiter!
* * * * *
According to American golfing law and precedent the tie had to be
decided by one extra round, all three playing together. I have no fault
to find with this arrangement; perhaps the result would have been the
same if two rounds had had to be played. I know, however, that Vardon
thought it would have been better and proper if each had played
separately, with a marker. Most people thought that as Ouimet was almost
playing the better ball of the two Englishmen he could not possibly win.
Theoretically he was sure to have slept badly overnight and to be in a
terrible state of nerves in the morning. They might see him top his
first tee shot and be three strokes to the bad on the first green.
Really I had no such ideas, and when I saw him hit his first drive as
well, cleanly and straight as any drive ever need be made, I had no
doubts about his having slept. Vardon drove the straightest ball and
then deliberately played short of the muddy race-track in front of the
green, but Mr. Ouimet boldly took his brassey, went for the carry, and
just did it. The hole was done in 5 each, and the second in 4 each; but
at the third Ray, who had driven too much to the right and had a bad
stance below his ball, only just got to the corner of the green, a long
way from the pin, with his second, and then took three putts, thus
dropping a stroke behind the others. At the fourth and fifth, at the
latter of which Mr. Ouimet put a spoon shot out of bounds through his
club slipping in his hands, but recovered splendidly with the same club,
the score remained the same. Then at the sixth, a drive and pitch up a
hill, Vardon approached to within three yards, and the others to within
six yards of the pin, Vardon holing his putt and Mr. Ouimet (who decided
on consideration to concentrate on his 4) and Ray just missing. So
Vardon was then one stroke better than the American, and the latter
still one less than Ray who, by a better run up from the edge of the
green at the seventh, scored over both his opponents. At the eighth
there was a dramatic episode, for Mr. Ouimet laid a low approach
stone-dead and holed for a 3, while Ray ran down a twelve yards' putt
for another 3, Vardon being beaten here though getting a perfect par 4.
All were level and the excitement and suspense intense. Something was
expected to happen at the ninth, the longest hole on the course, and a
great, romantic piece of golf. It is a long, heaving hole carved through
rock, and partly built on a swamp, and away in the far distance is a
high plateau green which, seen through the rain and mist, looked like a
ghostly thing in the clouds. Here Vardon slashed out for length, but
with a hook sent his ball into the woods. Yet he recovered well, and
after stress and strain by all three this tortuous hole was done in five
each. The parties were all level at the turn with 38 strokes each.
Immediately afterwards Mr. Ouimet went to the front, and was never
deprived of the lead. The tenth hole is the short one named "The Redan,"
with a heavily bunkered green low down in a valley below the tee. Each
tee shot was right, but Vardon and Ray were poor on the green and took
three putts, while the American was down in one less. Vardon looked
serious now, and Ray was fidgetty. There were three 4's at the eleventh,
and then Mr. Ouimet reached the twelfth green with his second, four
yards from the pin, Vardon and Ray being just off on opposite sides.
They both took five to hole out. Mr. Ouimet, by boldness, might have
gained two strokes here, but he was a trifle short with his putt and was
satisfied with a profit of one. This was followed by Vardon holing a
three-yard putt and getting a point back, but at the fourteenth there
were ominous signs of the British game collapsing, for Vardon went into
the woods again, Ray shot off wildly to the right with his second, and
they were both well out of it with 5's, like Mr. Ouimet whose brassey
shot went too low to clear properly a bank in front. Mr. Ouimet told me
that at this stage he felt he was going to win. Not one of the three had
been bunkered so far, but at the fifteenth Ray was caught and, needing
two strokes for recovery, was virtually done for.
The last stage of the struggle lay between Vardon and Mr. Ouimet. Both
got 3's at the short sixteenth. Vardon was looking anxious and worried,
for most brilliant play on his own part could not save him now, and he
could only hope that Mr. Ouimet would come by disaster. Instead of that
he himself, trying to cut the corner of the dog-legged seventeenth too
finely in an effort to gain distance, was bunkered. Ray, in wild
desperation, had hurled himself with terrific force at the ball on the
tee in an impossible attempt to carry straight over the bunkers and the
rough in a straight line to the green. As to Mr. Ouimet, he just played
an easy iron shot to the green dead on the line of the pin and holed a
six-yard putt for 3 and a gain of two clear strokes. It was really
finished then, and in the circumstances the playing of the last hole was
a formality. Mr. Ouimet did it steadily for par 4; Vardon was caught in
the race track before the green and took 6, and Ray holed a fruitless
putt for 3. Mr. Ouimet was champion, and there was an end of it. Seeing
that history was made, let me set down the scores:--
FIRST HALF
Ouimet 5 4 4 4 5 4 4 3 5--38
Vardon 5 4 4 4 5 3 4 4 5--38
Ray 5 4 5 4 5 4 3 3 5--38
SECOND HALF
Ouimet 3 4 4 4 5 4 3 3 4--34--72
Vardon 4 4 5 3 5 4 3 5 6--39--77
Ray 4 4 5 4 5 6 4 5 3--40--78
Mr. Ouimet's score exactly equalled that of the better ball of Vardon
and Ray.
* * * * *
I shall say no more about what happened immediately afterwards than that
the American crowd gave a hearty demonstration of the fact that they
were very pleased indeed. A considerable sum of money was raised by a
collection for Mr. Ouimet's little caddie, Eddie Lowry, who was a
wonder of a mite and inspired the new champion throughout the week with
all sorts of advice. He would tell him in the mornings to take time over
his putts as it was then only ten o'clock and he had until six at night
to play; would remind him again at a suitable moment that America was
expecting great things from him, and, above all, whispered gently to him
on handing him his club for each shot that he must be careful to keep
his eye on the ball! It is declared, moreover, that at the beginning of
the tie round he assured his master that a 72 would that time be
forthcoming. Little Eddie Lowry had his share of glory.
And now what about it all? How is it to be explained? Vardon and Ray
generously and properly admitted they were beaten fairly and squarely on
their merits. They could not say otherwise. I believe that Vardon came
to the conclusion at the end of his American tour that he played worse
golf at that championship than anywhere else, but on that final day on
which everything depended he did not play so badly as he may have
thought, and his putting was better than usual. I would not like to
guarantee either Englishman to do much better in the same conditions at
any time. On the other hand, Mr. Ouimet was blessed with no special
luck, except that negative kind of luck that kept his ball out of
trouble always, and made two putts invariably sufficient. His driving
was as long as Vardon's, and he was the straightest of all, while he
missed some putts by half-inches. He played a bold game too, and the
only semblance of timidity was in occasionally being a trifle short with
long putts, while Vardon and Ray, desperate, but in proper principle,
were giving the hole every chance and often running past it. Mr. Ouimet
seemed to general his own game so thoroughly well. Talking to me
afterwards, he explained completely his policy at every shot in the
match, and showed himself to be a thinker of the finest strain. He was
all for running approaches instead of pitched ones that day, because he
feared the ball embedding itself in the soft turf, and also felt that
when running it would be more likely to shed dirt that it picked up and
leave him a clean putt. Everything was considered and well decided, and
in his argument one could find no flaw. And he insisted that he just
played his own game and never watched the other balls. "Looking back on
it all," said he, "I think it was just this way, that Vardon and Ray
rather expected me to crack, not having the experience for things like
this as they had, and when the time went on and I did not crack but went
along with them, I think it had an unfavourable effect on them. That is
the way I reason it out, because when you expect a man to crack and he
doesn't, you lose a little of your sureness yourself. I began to feel
that the championship was coming to me when we were about the fourteenth
hole, for Ray then seemed to be going, and he was swinging rather wildly
at the ball." I think that Mr. Ouimet's explanation was tolerably near
the truth. Some of the secret history of this championship may never be
written, but I know that Harry Vardon realised when it was too late that
he had been paying insufficient attention to what Mr. Ouimet was doing,
and what the possibilities were in that direction. At the beginning he
felt that the real contest lay between him and Ray, never dreaming that
Mr. Ouimet could hold out against them. Therefore he concentrated on
Ray, as it were, and when he had Ray beaten he realised too late that
there was some one else. It may have made no difference, but a thousand
times have we had demonstrated to us the capacity of our champions for
playing "a little bit extra" when it is really needed. Anyhow it was
Vardon's own mistake, if it was one, and he is very sorry for it.
A consideration of great importance is the way in which this victory was
confirmed, as it were, by the other events of the week. It does not
generally happen that the men who distinguish themselves in preliminary
qualifying competitions go through winners of championships afterwards.
Men can rarely play their best for six rounds in succession, and, the
law of averages being at work all the time, they would rather perform
indifferently in the first test, so long as they qualify, than beat all
the others. I do not recall a case where the champion would have been
champion if all six rounds had been counted in, instead of the four of
the competition proper. But this time at Brookline we had seven rounds
played, and the astonishing fact is that, if all seven rounds were
counted in, Mr. Ouimet would still be at the top with a score of 528
against Ray's 530 and Vardon's 532. I think that this is a point which
has not been much realised, and it is one of importance in dealing with
the idea that a fluke victory was achieved. You can hardly have a fluke
victory in four stroke rounds; much less can you have one in seven. Now
I would suggest that if Vardon and Ray had dropped behind in the
scoring, and had occupied other places than they did in the final
aggregates, there might have been some good support for the fluke
theory. Their defeat by several people would have needed far more
explanation, because it would have been clear that, for some reason,
they were beaten by golfers inferior to themselves. Conditions and
climate would have become considerations of greater importance. But
merely the fact that these men finished second and third in such a big
field indicates that there was little fluke anywhere, for this was a
marvellous vindication of form in competition, in a game where form is
so much affected by fortune. And, finally, the fact that Mr. Ouimet beat
these men in the play-off when he had them both there in sight, playing
stroke against stroke with him, and not an invisible field without any
definite menace as in the previous play, was quite enough to stamp him
as the most thoroughly deserving champion of that week. British golfing
pride will force the suggestion to many minds that such a thing, proper
as it was on this occasion, could never happen again; that if the
championship were replayed in the same conditions Mr. Ouimet would be
beaten. But of how many champions could it be said that if they had to
play the event over again a week or a month later, the luck of the game
being what it is, they would repeat their triumph? Reflecting once more
that this was but a boy of twenty, and the real greatness of our players
being what it is, I am more amazed than ever at what has happened. It
was an American victory and America takes the credit, but, again, the
United States are by no means full of Ouimets. I look upon him as a
first-class prodigy, such as the game has never known before, produced
in the country where such a golfing prodigy was most likely to make his
appearance. He accomplished what had never been done before, and what I
feel sure will never be done again, and because it was such an historic
happening, and there were so few from England there to see it as I did,
I have told the tale in full. Nobody believes that Mr. Ouimet is as
great as Harry Vardon and Edward Ray. He could not be. But also I do not
think that any one else could do what he did at Brookline on that
occasion. I found, a long time after the occurrence, that many wise
American golfers, reflecting dispassionately if still proudly upon it,
gave a certain satisfaction to their reason by suggesting as a final
explanation that a miracle had happened. That is a good way out of our
difficulties, and for my own part I accept it, for it is the only
explanation that will stand all tests. A miracle happened at Brookline
on that Twentieth of September.