Other than mini-golf, I've never played golf. I don't watch golf, either. Just not my jam.
But golf was a part of my childhood and youth, something I probably wouldn't be thinking about if not for the U.S. Open, which is being held this year at The Country Club in Brookline. Or for the fact that someone has bought Francis Ouimet's childhood home - which overlooks The Country Club - and it turning it in to a golf shrine.
Ah, golf.
My father played golf. He was an excellent athlete, and like most folks who excelled at sports from a young age, he was pretty good at whatever sport he picked up. Baseball and football had been his main games growing up, and through his twenties he played "semi-pro" baseball: weekend games in which they players passed the hat and split the proceeds. I believe that he played Navy League ball during the war.
He was also a terrific skater, and it was always a great pleasure to watch him skate around - fast, backwards - when he took us skating at Elm Park. So fluid, so graceful.
But golf was the game of his adulthood, and he played most weekends during the spring and summer.
Nothing fancy. He was in the Holy Name League that played at Hillcrest Country Club, a nothing fancy place just outside of Worcester. And he played at other clubs, with friends and business colleagues. For golf spikes, he converted Florsheim wingtips that were too beat up to wear to work. I seem to remember that the local cobbler - an old Irish geezer, who always wore on a baggy navy blue pin-striped suit, a collarless shirt, and a scally cap - screwed the spikes in.
My father enjoyed playing, and he also liked watching golf.
He watched televised matches on Sunday. And when the PGA Tour swung through Worcester - as it did in the 1960's, with tournaments played at Pleasant Valley Country Club in Sutton - he got tickets and went.
Sometimes he got extra tickets and gave them to his kids.
So my friend Marie and I got to go a few times when we were in our teens, and I much enjoyed roaming up and down the hills of Pleasant Valley, watching Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Billy Casper... All the big names of the era. I was an Arnold Palmer fan.
Today, you couldn't pay me to watch golf, but back then I enjoyed it.
When my father had golf balls with a slice in them, he gave them to us kids to play with. Two of my great childhood pleasures: Whacking one of the old golf balls with a baseball bat and seeing how far it could sail. The answer: pretty darned far. My other golf-related pleasure: using a razor blade to cut the outer coating off, unraveling the taut rubber "string" on the inside, and uncovering the tiny little rubber ball in the middle. Those little suckers could just crazily bounce, but they were so small, they were easy to lose.
Fast forward, and I spent many weekends at a golf course in Western Mass, a club that my husband's aunt and uncle (who were like my in-laws) owned (partially) and managed (fully). It had been a tobacco farm, which somewhere along the line, they decided to convert into a golf course. It was in a quite pretty setting, and it was great fun walking around - making sure to stick to the fringes to avoid getting hit by a ball - or, better yet, tootling around the course in a golfcart of pickup truck with Uncle Bill.
Neither Jim nor I played. Nor did Uncle Bill, Aunt Carrie, or Cousin Steve and his family. They just ran the place.
So much for my life in golf.
But golf is all over the news this week, as hosting the U.S. Open is a very big deal, and the eyes of the golf world - at least the eyes of those not fully distracted by the new Saudi golf league that's challenging the PGA for golfing primacy. And is paying big name golfers hundreds of millions of dollars to join. (Rumor is that Tiger Woods turned down an offer worth nearly a billion dollars. As if I needed another reason to dislike golf and/or the Saudis.)
The Country Club, where the Open is being held is one of the oldest golf clubs in the U.S. And one of the most exclusive. It's estimated that it costs $500K just to join. That's if they let you in. Tom Brady was initially turned down; former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and his wife were blackballed.
For a long time a Brahmin-only club - Jews, Italians, Irish set up their own clubs - over time, slowly and not all that surely, The Country Club opened up to Catholics, Jews, and African Americans. The place remain ultra exclusive. And plenty hush-hush.
But it was a local kid, Francis from the 'hood, who was responsible for putting The Country Club on the map - and for creating the groundswell of interest in golf that turned it from an upper class only sport to one that became more universal. Or at least more open to the middle class.
Although he lived just outside The Country Club's grounds, Francis DeSales Ouimet is not someone who would ever have been welcome as a member. He was a working class Catholic kid with a French Canadian immigrant father, and an Irish immigrant mother.
But he was allowed to caddy at The Country Club. And it was there that he taught himself to golf. He taught himself pretty well. He had a lot of success as an amateur - he never turned pro - and in 1913, when Ouimet was just 20, he won the U.S. Open at The Country Club, improbably:
.
...beating the two leading players at the time, Great Britain’s Harry Vardon and Ted Ray. The story is told in Mark Frost’s book, “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” and in a Disney film by the same name.
...With 10-year-old caddie Eddie Lowery by his side — Ouimet’s usual caddie, Eddie’s older brother Jack, had been nabbed by the local truancy officer — Ouimet recorded a victory that changed the course of golf.(Source: Boston Globe)
Gotta love the idea of a 10 year old caddie who got to be famous because his brother was caught playing hooky. As an aside: Lowery, the son of Irish immigrants, stayed in and around golf for his life.
“I was not a history buff and I was not a golf buff, but I had an understanding of how that house was important and how to get it back into circulation and into the
game of golf,” said Hynes, who also lives on Clyde Street. “It was actually pretty simple: Buy it, and then go figure it out.”
It's not a particularly imposing house. And Brookline is full of imposing houses. But it's small-h historic, and Tom Hynes wanted to preserve it. The house is being spruced up, and Hynes even has period furniture ready to plunk in place. The interior is pretty much done. The vinyl siding with eventually (post-Open) be replaced with Ouimet-period clapboard.
In the course of the restoration, a couple of ancient putters - early 1900's vintage - were found in the attic. They may even have belonged to Ouimet.
The restored house is going to be gifted to The Country Club. If they look the gift house in the mouth, Hynes will have two houses on Clyde Street.
Anyway, here's what Ouimet accomplished with his win over Vardon and Ray:
“Up until that, it was a rich man’s game, and if you look at some of the press clippings from their time, it was worldwide front-page news that this kid beat the best in the world,” said Hynes. “The common man and woman figured, ‘Hey, I can play golf — if he can, I can — it’s not just an elite game anymore.’ That’s probably the most important single win in the history of golf in the United States.”
By the way, I don't think Ouimet ever joined The Country Club, where as a Catholic, he probably wouldn't have been allowed in. He was a member of Charles River (one of the local Irish clubs) and Woodland (where two of my older cousins caddied; maybe they even caddied for Ouimet. Ouimet died in 1967. Charlie would have been caddying from the mid 1940's through the early 1950's; Rob from the late 1950's through the early 1960's.
My father was an Irish Catholic kid from Worcester, Massachusetts. He was a year old when Ouimet won the Open. But he knew all about Francis Ouimet. An may even have been inspired by him.
Fore, you mashie niblicks!
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Mashie-niblick? An old time golf club, equivalent of a 7-iron. My father used to mention them quite often. I think he just got a kick out of the name.
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