GolfMagazine

TOP LEFT TO RIGHT: Francis Ouimet, center, is photographed with Harry Vardon, right, and Ted Ray after the 1913 U.S. Open held at The Country
Club in Brookline • Quimet in the red jacket of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrew’s • Francis Ouimet Scholarship Fund Executive Director
Robert P. Donovan • Gene Sauers raises the trophy after winning the 2016 U.S. Senior Golf Open at the Scioto Country Club in Ohio. (Kyle Robertson
The Columbus Dispatch via AP) • Ouimet Caddie Scholarship bag tag at the Golf House at TPC Boston.
Francis Ouimet:
America’s
greatest golf
hero
By BILL BROTHERTON
When the 2017 U.S. Senior Open
concludes on July 2 at Salem Country
Club, the champion will pocket more than
a half-million dollars and get to hoist the
Francis D. Ouimet Memorial Trophy in
front of adoring fans.
Who was Ouimet?
Those of us who grew up golfing in
Massachusetts are well aware of Ouimet’s
legacy. Quite simply, he is the most
important figure in the history of
American golf.
“Francis Ouimet’s victory as a
20-year-old amateur in a playoff in the
1913 US Open Championship over British
professionals Harry Vardon and Ted Ray
was the turning point in American golf,”
said Bob Donovan, executive director of
the Francis Ouimet Scholarship Fund for
the past 26 years. “It propelled golf into a
mainstream American sport.”
The trophy the USGA now uses for its
Senior Open championship had been at
The Country Club in Brookline, the site
of Ouimet’s improbable victory. “TCC
contributed the trophy to the USGA, and it
is thrilled to have it,” said Donovan, adding
that in addition to the Ouimet Museum
at the Scholarship Fund’s home in Norton,
Mass., there’s also a Ouimet Room at the
USGA Museum in Far Hills, N.J.
Donovan said as spectacular as
Ouimet’s Open victory was, his 1914
US Amateur win at Ekwanok CC in
Manchester, Vermont, “was the one he
really wanted to win, to prove that the
Open win was not a fluke.”
Ouimet would go on to win six Mass.
Amateur titles and compile an 11-1 record
as a member of 12 Walker Cup teams,
which pits top American amateurs against
counterparts from Great Britain and
Ireland. Ouimet was an original inductee
into the PGA/World Golf Hall of Fame
along with Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen
and Gene Sarazen.
The Ouimet Museum occupies a small
room at the William F. Connell Golf House
and Museum adjacent to the TPC Boston
course in Norton. The state’s top amateur
golf associations share space in this
modern, welcoming building. Connell,
the late Lynn businessman, philanthropist
and “golf nut,” as characterised by
Donovan, partnered with Bank of Boston
and the TPC Boston partnership in
funding the headquarters.
The museum showcases a red jacket
from the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St.
Andrew’s presented to Ouimet when he
became the first American-born captain of
the R&A. Today, it’s wisely protected in a
frame on the wall; Donovan said “we had
it on a coat rack, and people could touch
it, people with greasy fingers.” There’s
also a painting of Ouimet wearing the
jacket, painted by President Dwight D.
Eisenhower who enjoyed golf, painting
and Ouimet’s company.
There’s a corner exhibit dedicated to
the 2005 Disney film “The Greatest Game
Ever Played,” an entertaining, mostly
factual telling of Ouimet’s and caddie
Eddie Lowery’s improbable U. S. Open
victory at The Country Club, near his
Brookline home. Mark Frost’s manuscript,
red editing marks and all, is here, as are
photos of Shia LaBeouf, who spent two
hours at this very museum interviewing
Donovan and learning as much as he could
about the man he would portray in the
movie, and other cast members at the
premiere at a North Attleboro theater.
Donovan said this year the Ouimet
fund will award $1.8 million to some 340
scholars who caddied or worked at area
golf courses. Since its inception in 1949,
when 13 scholars received a total of
$6,400, it has helped 5,600 young men
and women pay for their college education.
Applications are up 40 perfect in the past
three years, he said. l
For more information on Francis Ouimet or the
scholarship fund, go to ouimet.org.
NORTH SHORE GOLF