The Greatest Game Ever Played: Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and The Birth of Modern Golf
This is, without a doubt, one of the best golf books I have read.
It combines several elements in a seamless narrative that builds to a compelling finish, a feat not often accomplished when the basic facts are already well-known.
First, it’s a great sports story. Frost describes how a young former caddie of modest means manages his game to a highly unlikely but ultimately extremely popular victory in the 1913 U.S. Open.
Francis Ouimet and his plucky little caddie, Eddie Lowery, overcome all sorts of on- and off-course obstacles along the way to winning one of the most significant Opens in its first century of competition.
Second, Frost gives the readers a well-written social history of America and Great Britain from the late nineteenth century and World War I. This particular period of America’s development has always been of special interest to me. Unfortunately, it has rarely been given the depth of treatment that other segments of America’s past have experienced.
Frost outlines the growth of American golf along with the country, as the United States recovered from the Civil War and began to assert itself on the international stage. His descriptions of the concurrent changes in Great Britain and the European continent are also well-done, putting the exploits of professional golfers on both sides of the Atlantic in their proper context.
Third, the book is a stirring biography of Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and many others whose contributions to modern golf are hard to overstate. For example, Frost treats the readers to America’s first national experience with Walter Hagen’s career as a professional golfer. His path to prominence serves as a counterpoint to the life choices made by Ouimet, a true amateur.
Like Jack Nicklaus in his prime, Vardon played his own highly skilled game with a supernatural calm. He let his constant excellence be the weapon that dispirited his opposition and forced them to make mistakes. He rarely made errors himself, until a bout with tuberculosis injured portions of his nervous system. This caused a real case of yips around the putting green, which gave other players an opening they could and did exploit more successfully than before the attack.
Even so, in 1913 the now middle-aged Vardon remained a significant force. With his friend and compatriot Ted Ray alongside, the two Englishmen played their American exhibition matches leading up to the Open as if the only real debate about the major tournament was which of them would win.
For many readers, this story will be a sort of prequel to Chariots of Fire, the 1982 Best Picture Oscar winner. It takes place 11 years before the 1924 Olympics that formed the core of the movie’s story. Both this book and the movie are fascinating character studies of highly skilled athletes, with World War I in the background.
We can’t read about the 1913 Open without thinking about what would begin the next year. In Chariots, the millions of young men killed in the Great War are ever-present ghostly spectators as the young runners practice for their trip to Paris.
In addition, like Chariots one of this book’s central themes relates to the nature of amateur and professional sports when played at the highest levels of ability. Furthermore, both stories explore the developing symbiotic relationship between the media and sports.
In the first two decades of the 20th Century, professional sports were only just becoming a part of the entertainment business in which people could make a very good living. The normal workweek was finally beginning to shorten for millions of people, leading to increasing options for leisure, including spectator sports.
Advances in literacy also created millions of readers for the journalism industry, leading to expanded coverage of sporting events. All those new readers wanted to know what was going on with their newest heroes, especially in baseball, college football, and golf.
The regional newspaper monopolies throughout this country that are the rule today were the rare exception back then. Frost’s research in preparing this book benefited from Boston’s then-six daily newspapers, whose reporters trooped out to Brookline each day.
Bernard Darwin joined the American contingent to report on the Open for the London newspapers. He eventually became known as one of the best golf journalists ever to grace the sport with his presence. To complete the symbiotic relationship, a prickly British newspaper magnate sponsored Vardon and Ray’s presence at the Open, and accompanied them on their excellent adventure. Frost shows that a certain current owner of the New York Yankees was not the first such magnate to create deeply mixed feelings among the players who accepted his money.
Dealing with the competing demands of family ties and one’s chosen sport is another parallel element in the two stories. In Chariots, Eric Liddell tries to balance the religious convictions that bring him to the ministry against the urgings of those who see no need to limit the display of his awesome talents to every day but Sunday.
Francis Ouimet must contend with the deep disapproval of his father for even playing golf. His home’s proximity to The Country Club was critical to Ouimet’s development as a golfer, but it certainly didn’t smooth his fractious relationship with his father. In both cases, however, other strong family ties help both athletes cope.
(There is one other coincidence. The opening scene in Chariots, showing several dozen British runners along a beach, was filmed next to the first hole at St. Andrews’ Old Course.)
The finish to the book includes a summary of what happened to the major participants after the 1913 Open. It should help readers understand why this particular event was so important to the eventual growth of modern-day golf.
Frost also acknowledges that he created some of the dialogue that appears in portions of the book. Considering the time frame in which the story takes place, this admission is not surprising. On the other hand, the recreated conversations fit in very nicely. Far from taking anything away from the book, these passages enhance the experience. Based on the biographical information Frost obtained in researching the book, these segments also ring true.
I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
Review Date: February 23, 2003