Harry Vardon
Leader
of the Great Triumvirate
Harry
Vardon was golf's
first superstar. He lived 66 years from May 9, 1870, to March 20, 1937—and along the way suffered bouts
of tuberculosis, but did not let that take him down.
He was the first pro to play in knickers, with fancy-topped stockings, a hard
collar and tie, and tightly buttoned jacket, but still had great freedom of
movement.
This
forgotten golf legend is one of Britain's famed “Great Triumvirate” of golfers. The
other two are J.H. Taylor and James Braid.
Vardon won The Open Championship a
record six times and won the U.S. Open. In comparison, Taylor
and Braid each won five Open Championships.
Vardon was
born in Grouville, Jersey, a Channel
Island between the U.K. and France. As a child he didn’t have a chance to play
much golf, but showed a natural talent for it. He came from a large, poor
family of six boys and two girls. His father worked as a gardener and
discouraged Harry from playing golf. Harry never had a lesson but started
taking a serious interest in golf at age 13, while working as an apprentice
gardener, and played successfully in a few tournaments in his late teens.
At age 20,
he followed his 18-year-old brother to England and landed a job in Yorkshire as
a greens keeper. Vardon hadn’t considered making professional golf his
livelihood until his brother Tom turned pro and was doing well in
tournaments—persuading him to test his skills against the top pros in the U.K.
and Europe. It came easy for him.
His technique
He developed a demanding practice
routine, with numerous swing drills, using set-up and alignment aids. Only 155
pounds, at 5-feet 9-inches tall, he nevertheless had large hands that fit the
club beautifully. Vardon possessed a calm and relaxed demeanor. Self-taught, he
made effortless, upright swings he would use successfully and steadfastly—never
making adjustments to them the rest of his life.
Vardon became renowned for a consistent
repeating swing that was more upright than his contemporaries and a higher ball
flight. This gave his approach shots greater carry and a softer landing. He
picked the ball clean and took just the tiniest of divots. Vardon was possessed
with a talent and method so impressive he was considered a shot-making machine
in the primitive era of hickory shafts and gutta percha balls.
He allowed his left arm to bend as he reached
the top of his backswing, and there was no muscular stress in his swing. “Relaxation,
added to a few necessary fundamental principles,” he said, “is the basis of
this great game.”
Vardon
was famous for the “Vardon grip,” an overlapping grip most popular among
professional golfers. He actually took up this grip after Johnny
Laidlay, a champion Scottish amateur player, invented it. In all fairness, the
grip should be called the “Laidlay grip.” On the other hand, Vardon was the
superstar of his day who made the grip famous.
Within
a few years of turning pro, Vardon became golf's first known star since the
days of Young
Tom Morris.
(The story of Young Tom Morris is
every bit as tragic as it is astounding. He played during the ancient days of
professional golf, when The Open Championship consisted of just 36
holes—contested over three 12-hole rounds. He is the only golfer to win four
consecutive Opens, starting in 1868 at the tender age of 17.
Despite
the brevity of the tournament, Young Tom was known for blow-out victories. He
won his second and third Open titles by 11 and 12 strokes, respectively. That
is equivalent to winning by 22 and 24 strokes, under the 72-hole format that
the tournament was increased to 1892. For a brief period he dominated his
nearest rivals. However, at age 24, his wife and newborn baby died at childbirth.
The grief was more than he could bear and he died just four months later of a
broken heart—on Christmas Day.
However,
I feel that Old Tom Morris lacked a bit of discretion by throwing a party the
day after Christmas to celebrate his good fortune of (finally) having a chance
to win the Open again, with Young Tom out of the picture.)
In 1896, Vardon he won his first Open
Championship. He won it again in 1898, 1899, 1903, 1911 and 1914. He was second
on four occasions. His record of six Open Championships still stands today. In
1900, he became golf's first international celebrity when he toured the United
States, playing in more than 80 matches and capping it off with a victory in
the U.S.
Open at Chicago Golf Club.
He
was the joint runner-up of the 1913 U.S. Open—a historic event that was falsely
depicted in Bill Paxton’s movie, “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” At the age of
50, Vardon led the 1920 U.S. Open by four strokes with only seven
holes to play. It looked like he had an easy victory in the bag. However, due
to a nasty change in the weather and a shaky putter he wound up finishing
second to his close friend, Ted Ray.
During his career, Vardon won 62 golf tournaments, including one
run of 14 in a row, a record likely to last forever. Harry was known for his
accuracy and control with all clubs, the greatest ever seen. However, after
winning The Open Championship for the third time in 1903, Vardon was struck
down with tuberculosis. It put him out of commission and into sanitariums
off and on until 1910—after which, the game that had come so
naturally for Vardon would never be easy again.
In his
prime, Vardon was virtually unbeatable
In
the image above Vardon gets ready to nail his drive on the first hole of the
1903 Open, with Old Tom Morris looking on in the background. Vardon won by six
strokes over his brother, Tom Vardon—earning him a whopping £50. Sadly,
Harry was struck with tuberculosis a few months later. As great as his record
was, he lost 13 of his prime playing years, eight to his illness and five to
World War I.
Vardon
complained that playing on the lusher turf conditions in the U.S. led him to
bad habits. The wound-rubber Haskel ball everyone started using reduced his
shot-making advantage over the field. Vardon had to have been one of the few
golfers in history who mourned the demise of the gutta percha ball. He was used
to the harder turf of a British Open course, where it was easy for him to pick
the ball cleanly.
After
Vardon’s return to the game in 1910, he was plagued by the dreaded jerky
yips—before the word was coined—from nerve damage to his right hand. Yet Vardon
played in the U.S. Open in 1900, 1913 and 1920. In 1900, the event was played
at the Chicago
Golf Club, and he won by shooting 313 (79-78-76-80). Harry was also credited
with winning 70 exhibition matches in 1900, touring the U.S. and Canada. In
that year, Vardon only lost two head-to-head matches in singles play, becoming
golf’s first international celebrity.
Vardon’s 1913 U.S. Open playoff loss to
Ouimet—
dispelling a 100-year-old myth
This
victory was a nice accomplishment for Francis Ouimet. However, at 43, with his
health issues, Vardon wasn’t quite up to playing back-to-back 36-hole rounds in
the miserable cold and rain that hit the Boston area that week in late
September.
Much has been said, in the past 100 years, of how Ouimet, the
underdog, scored an incredible upset victory over Harry Vardon. But that’s a
bunch of hogwash. Ouimet was no underdog! In that nasty weather,
Ouimet’s youth vs. Vardon’s older age and ill health, Ouimet’s win two months
earlier in the Massachusetts Amateur, and the fact that the event was held on
Ouimet’s home course—all placed Vardon at a disadvantage to Ouimet.
Vardon was the true underdog to Ouimet in the 1913 U.S. Open.
It was an amazing accomplishment that old man Vardon was able to keep up with
young gun Ouimet for 72 holes, with odds stacked against him. The notion that
Ouimet hadn’t been playing much golf prior to the 1913 U.S. Open is ridiculous!
The guy had to have played a lot of golf that summer in order to win the
Massachusetts Amateur in July and make it to the quarter-finals of the U.S.
Amateur in August.
Vardon was four strokes up on Ouimet after the first day
(shooting 75, 72) and it was obvious Vardon was on track to win the tournament
had the weather not turned bad. His dismal, un-Vardon-like scores of 78, 79
were clear evidence that Vardon had run out of gas and was still recovering
from the tuberculosis. Ironically, Vardon’s illness, forcing him to delay his
trip to America, is what caused him to play in the cold, rainy New England fall
in the first place.
After 72 holes, Vardon, Ouimet and Ray tied for first with a
total score of 301 (+8). In the playoff, after the skies cleared, it didn’t help
Vardon much. The bad weather had weakened him. He virtually handed the U.S.
Open playoff win to Ouimet. To Ouimet’s credit, however, his playoff
performance was nothing short of textbook.
No one else played worth a damn that week. Young Walter Hagen
finished three strokes out of a tie for first at 304 (+11), after closing with
an 80! The following year, Hagen would win the U.S. Open by just one stroke,
closing with a 73 and finishing at 290 (+2) total. That was an 11-stroke
improvement over the low 72-hole scores in 1913.
Vardon
managed to get over that playoff loss in time for the next major – the 1914
Open Championship at Prestwick, Scotland. This was the year Vardon won his
sixth and final Open, over J. H. Taylor by three shots. His win, interestingly,
was aided by a cameraman who distracted Taylor on the fourth hole—which led to
J.H. making a nasty triple bogey 7 while Vardon made par. Taylor wound up
ballooning to an ugly 83 that final round—giving Vardon the chance to win The
Open with an 80. However, Harry managed to avoid the dreaded snowman in
shooting a 78 to collect the champion’s first prize, still the insultingly tiny
sum of $50.
Due
to the outbreak of World War I, that was the last Open Championship held until
1920—meaning Harry (with precious few
competitive years left) had no opportunity, in the next five years, to defend
his title and score a seventh Open win. Nevertheless, Vardon’s record remains
intact after 100 years. Even Tiger Woods, with his reoccurring injuries, seems
to have no clue how to win a major—which is surprising, considering how
dominant he was for so long.
Harry
played in the U.S. Open for the last time in 1920 at the Inverness
Club. This was another Open victory that Vardon was cheated out of due to
vicious weather. With just nine holes to go, 2 over par for the tournament up
to that point, he had a four-stroke lead. Even a 4-over-par 40 on the final
nine would have given him a total of 294, and a one-stroke victory. However, as Harry stood on the tee of the
long 12th (or 66th hole of that Open) a horrific storm
suddenly swept in off Lake Erie. It was too much for poor old Harry, having
recently turned 50. Vardon wound up staggering in with a 42, in complete
exhaustion. Not having played in the U.S. Open since 1913, this was his second
time in a row when he had a comfortable lead in the U.S. Open, before barely
losing it to the onset of nasty weather.
Vardon
tied for second place, one stroke behind Ted Ray, missing a short putt on the final
hole to force a playoff. Harry ended up at 8-over-par 296 (74-73-71-78). Had
Vardon won that year, he would have become, by far, the oldest winner in the
history of the U.S. Open. Instead, Hale Irwin holds that record, after winning
his third Open at just 45.
In his later years, Harry dabbled in
golf course architecture, designing several courses in England, along with
teaching golf, and writing golf instruction books. He continued battling tuberculosis
until his death, living in Totteridge, Hertfordshire, England. After he died,
the PGA
of America created the Vardon
Trophy. It is awarded annually to the player on the PGA
Tour with
the year's lowest adjusted scoring average.
In 1974,
Vardon was selected as an initial inductee into the World
Golf Hall of Fame. His most prestigious medals, including those from his six
British Open Championships, are on display in a tribute to him at the Jersey
Museum. He was, unquestionably, the greatest golfer of the 19th
century and is referred to as “the icon of golfing.”
Quotes by Harry
Vardon
“More matches are lost through carelessness at the
beginning than any other cause.”
“I’m the best and I’ll thank you to remember that.”
“To play well you must feel
tranquil and a t peace.”
“I have never been troubled by
nerves in golf as I felt I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
“Never concede the putt that beats you.”
“A great deal of unnecessary golf is played in this
world.”
“If I get a
hole-in-one it will be a day to remember.”
“Don't praise your own good shots. Leave that function to your partner who, if a good
sport, will not be slow in performing
it.”
“If your opponent is playing several shots in vain, attempting to extricate himself from a bunker, do not stand near him and audibly count his strokes. It would be justifiable homicide if he wound up his pitiable exhibition by applying his niblick to your head.”
“The most successful way to play
golf is the easiest way.”
Golf writer
Bernard Darwin on Harry Vardon: “I do not think
anyone who saw him play in his prime will disagree as to this, that a greater
genius is inconceivable.”
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