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Golf on Cape Cod - Golf History
Yesterday's Round - From Caddy to Champion Francis learned the game on a makeshift course in his backyard and at age nine began caddying at TCC. At age 13, a supportive member allowed him to play his first complete round for which he posted an 84. In high school he starred - winning the Boston Interscholastic Championship.
Two professionals from the United Kingdom, Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, were overwhelming favorites to win the tournament. Vardon was recognized as the world's best golfer. After a widely popular U.S. tour in 1899, he had won the U.S. Open and, having battled back from tuberculosis, won the British Open in 1911. Ted Ray, a huge man who hit prodigious drives like John Daly, won the British Open in 1912. Qualifying rounds for the 1913 US Open were held on Tuesday, September 16th and Wednesday, September 17th. Harry Vardon led the Tuesday group with a 36-hole total of 151. Ouimet gave an indication of things to come by finishing one stroke back. On Wednesday, Ted Ray led the field posting a 148. A British journalist, Bernard Darwin, was covering the event with particular emphasis and attention on Vardon and Ray. Darwin had been impressed with Ouimet's play in the National Amateur, and his pre-tournament coverage included comments on the young man's talent and poise. He predicted a great future in golf for Ouimet, never realizing that the future was just around the corner. [The dramatic victory of 20-year-old Francis Ouimet in the 1913 U.S. Open has been captured in a superbly written book, The Greatest Game Ever Played by Mark Frost. The book has also been optioned by Disney Studios - and discussions are underway to produce a movie. ] In 1963, the U.S. Open was held at The Country Club in Brookline - on the 50th anniversary of Ouimet's triumph. At the time, I was Sports Director of WEEI Radio in Boston. I had no television affiliation, but I noted that the three commercial TV stations in Boston, Channels 4, 5 and 7, were doing very little about publicizing the Open. During my four years of television as an analyst on the National Hockey League Game of the Week on CBS TV, I had made the acquaintance of Craig Smith, a producer. By 1963 he had shifted to NBC TV and was in charge of the U.S. Open coverage. I pleaded with him to let me be a reporter on the telecast. (At that time ex-golfers were not used.) Two of the men that Smith had hired, Bud Palmer and Chick Hearn, were announcer-types. I felt that my local knowledge would give me an edge over them, but nothing worked, and I was not hired. My wife Barbara had also grown up on Clyde Street in Brookline, right across from the 17th green of TCC. Her mother had gone to school with Francis Ouimet, whose family lived a few doors away. With that connection, I approached Mr. Ouimet to do a half-hour television interview. Happily, Ouimet agreed. When I approached Channel 2 with the idea of a simple interview at the station, they were eager to try out a new technical innovation - wireless microphones - and suggested, instead, a taped remote at TCC. For this program Francis and I were each paid a dollar. The first part of the interview took place at the clubhouse. Mr. Ouimet discussed the golf clubs that were in vogue in 1913 also talked about becoming, in 1951, the first American to be named the Captain of the Royal and Ancient at St. Andrews in Scotland, golf's oldest and highest office. As we talked, we looked at the picture of him in the red jacket that has become the symbol of the Ouimet Caddy Fund. During the second half of the program, we walked out of the clubhouse - and all the way to the 17th green, a vital hole in his ultimate victory. Ouimet detailed with precise recollection not only his own play, but also that of Vardon and Ray. The Boston Globe sports editor, Jerry Nason, thought so much of the interview that he re-printed a large segment of it. NBC TV never asked for the tape, but they could have used it during the fourth round on Sunday - when the players were slow and the network had to kill an hour before they came into sight on the 14th hole. As the only interview of Ouimet in existence, the United States Golf Association used about five minutes of it in their comprehensive video "The History of Golf." Here, in part, is that interview as we walked toward the 17th hole. C: How was your play as you moved along –let's say first round, second round –Were you satisfied with your play? O: Well, I was quite satisfied. I remember topping my tee shot on the first hole and taking a six, and taking a six on the comparatively short second hole, and after that I got squared away and finished with a 74, which was extremely satisfying to me. C: Of course all the talk, I suppose, was about Vardon and Ray and their great potentialities and their great play. O: Oh yes, altogether. Everybody was keen to see Vardon and Ray. They were regarded as the two best in the world and, of course, we all wanted to see how well the American professionals would do and particularly the imported English and Scotch pros –Vardon was a beautiful player -- he had a picture perfect swing, beautifully balanced. Ray was a huge man and a rather awkward player, but a very effective one. C: Now you moved around first, second, third. When did you feel that you really had a shot at this Open championship? O: Fred, I never really had a shot to win it, but I kept poking along and staying reasonably close to the leaders, and then it gets in your blood and you feel you've got to keep going. While you don't think you're going to win the championship, you do feel that you are going to put together some good holes and make a good round, and let the round stand up, good or bad. C: Moving along to the third round –and the fourth in particular –as you started out that day. What was the situation? Ray had already finished, hadn't he? O: Yes, it's a funny thing. As I was walking down to play my round, Ray was holing out on the 18th green, right in front of me. We had tied at the hree-quarter mark with scores of 225, and he had a 79 for that final round which gave him a total 72 hole score of 304, so I knew exactly what I had to do. C: That was the target there, and later Vardon came in and posted a 304 –yet you started off a little rough in the first nine in the fourth round? O: Oh yes. I fell to pieces in the middle of the nine and struggled out in 43 strokes. C: Then how about the tenth hole-did you have trouble there too? O: That was a nightmare. That was a nightmare. I hit my tee shot off that tenth tee about twenty feet and made a good recovery shot to the green - but ended up taking three putts for a five. C: Well then, it came down more or less, as you tell the story Mr. Ouimet, to the thirteenth hole. You knew the situation; you knew the course that was in front of you, if you wanted to at least tie for this Open championship. Is that right? O: Yes. I knew that somewhere along the line, on the last six holes - I didn't know where they had to come - I had to have 4 pars and two birdies, 2 holes under par. I didn't know which one. I was hoping it would be the first one I was playing. C: Now the thirteenth. What did you do there? O: Well, I didn't play what you would call a very good second shot, but I chipped in from the edge of the green which gave me one of the very desirable birdies. I had a three there. C: So you got one of your strokes there. O: I got one of the strokes I was looking for. Fourteenth was uneventful. Fifteen was another exciting affair. I missed my second shot so badly it passed to the right of the trap - but I recovered nicely within a foot of the hole, so I got my par 4 there. C: Fine. Sixteenth - you might have counted on that as a possibility? O: I was sort of hoping all along that I might pick up two on that hole. It was not a difficult par three and I had been playing it well, and I had not had a two and I thought that perhaps I might get a 2. You might say that it was a wish more than anything else. As a matter of fact, I had to hole a nine-foot putt for a three. C: Oh, what a disappointment. O: Yes it was. C: At least you got your three and were still within range. O: I got my three and still had a chance to get a birdie on the last two holes. C: And we're coming to one now and that's the seventeenth, and I'm sure you would want to point out that it is not exactly the same as you played it, Mr. Ouimet. O: That is right. The whole green was located to the left of that mound - in that general direction, and it was a slanting green - it ran from right to left you see. It was protected by a trap in front and some mounds on the right. But I got my second shot on the green in good position, maybe fifteen feet from the hole, and I was lucky enough to hole that putt for that three that I needed so badly. C: Well, that was your birdie, and certainly a lot of cheers would have gone up. O: Well, they said that there was quite a commotion caused by cars on the street –the gallery. But I was concentrating so seriously that I didn't hear anything. C: I can well imagine. You still, of course, had to play the 18th and get your four to stay within contention. O: Yes, I needed a four to tie. C: And that was fairly uneventful, or how did you feel about it? O: Well, it was not altogether uneventful. I thought I hit a great second shot there, but when I got up to the ball I found that it hit the top of the mound and, instead of kicking forward, it stopped right there, and I finally had to chip within three feet of the hole and was lucky enough to make the putt. C We might comment that your caddy at that time was ten years old - Eddie Lowery. O: Oh yes. Eddie Lowery, he was ten years old. C: How many clubs did he have to carry for you? O: He had to carry ten. I probably used 7 – the outside, 8. C: That's amazing –you tied. O: That gave me 304 for 72 holes and tied me with Vardon and Ray. C: Of course your work was not done. You had the proud privilege, at age 20, of competing against these two top-flight professionals in a playoff. O: That's right. C: What about the playoff? What was the weather like, and how did it go? O: Well, the weather was very humid. It was misty, and we carried umbrellas the early part of the match. When the mist died away, it was one of those sultry, heavy, soggy days. C: As you moved along, there were opportunities for a young Mr. Ouimet to blow up. But you did not. Finally, it was Mr. Ray who sort of blew up on the 15th and moved out of contention. O: Yes, it was anybody's match for thirteen holes. At the end of thirteen holes, I was leading by one stroke. Vardon came next. He was a stroke away from me, and Ray was two strokes away. So anything could have happened on those last five holes. On the 15th, Ray sliced his tee shot into the rough, put his second into a trap, took two to get out, and took a six on the hole to our fours. So that put him four behind me and three behind Vardon, and put him practically out of the running. C: And then it was you and Mr. Vardon. O: Practically speaking. C: Again, the seventeenth was pivotal - right here as we stand on it. O: It was a pivotal hole, for sure. C: What happened there? O: Well Vardon had the honor, by virtue of having a three on the thirteenth, and since the other holes were halved, he still retained the honor playing the 17th hole. He hit a ball to the left, dangerously close to a trap. I couldn't tell whether it was in the trap or not, but I didn't want to take that line. So I hit my ball where I had driven it the day before - well to the right - to the right- hand side of the fairway. When we got to our balls, his ball was in the trap which is known ever since as "the Vardon trap." That trap was a very difficult trap to play out of. It sloped into a bank, and he was left with a downhill lie from which it was impossible to play a normal recovery shot to the green. He had to play out to one side. In the meantime, I put my second shot on the green in two, and he got on in 3 –and I had quite an edge there, particularly when a 15- or 18-foot putt dribbled into the hole for a three. C: Remarkable. Of course, again it was the 17th hole -two birdies on two successive days. O: Yes, it was quite a coincidence that it happened to be that same hole on two successive days. C: And so the 18th - you can't say that it was routine, but more or less it must have been, and so you came through with the championship in this head-to-head match with Ray and Vardon. Twenty years old –US Open champion. That was a very historic victory for you, Francis Ouimet. O: Well, it was one of those things that came out of the blue. I didn't expect to do it. The late Dick Stimets, a longtime member of Oyster Harbors, remembered Francis Ouimet very well. Stimets entered the Oyster Harbors caddy camp at the age of 14 and, after a couple of year's experience, was allowed to caddy for the former U.S. Open champion. Unlike a lot of today's players, Ouimet's bag was not a burden. Ten clubs or less were enough for him to fashion a score in the mid-seventies. Unlike currently numbered clubs, his clubs bore names like "jigger", "clique" and "baffler". On several occasions Stimets had the pleasure of playing with Ouimet. "He was a true gentleman and sportsman,"Stimets remembered. "He hit the ball quite long and had a steady and even temperament." Stimets was proud to later become President of the Ouimet Caddy Scholarship Fund. Despite the early spotlight on his memorable triumph at the 1913 U.S.Open, Ouimet he remained a humble, reticent but congenial sportsman who loved the game of golf and everything associated with it. He became a successful stockbroker and played in tournaments around the world. Twice he won the National Amateur; six times he won the Massachusetts Amateur. Ten times he either played or captained the U. S. Walker Cup team - the biennial amateur competition between America and Britain. His proudest honor occurred in 1949, when the Francis Ouimet Caddy Scholarship Fund was created. The fund has grown to a multimillion-dollar endowment perpetuating the name of the man who brought golf to the masses and college scholarships to its loyal servants. Golf reveals the true nature of its participants, and no one has been a better example than Francis Ouimet. What later Palmer, Nicklaus, Woods and others have done to expand the appeal of the sport, Ouimet did in one week of spectacular play. He is golf's Man of the Twentieth Century.
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In the eventful year of 1913, Ouimet won the Massachusetts State Amateur title and had performed well in the National Amateur. He had no intention of playing in the U.S. Open until Robert Watson, President of the USGA, insisted that he compete. Watson took care of the paperwork necessary for his entry.