The American Ascendancy
From GOLF BETWEEN TWO WARS by Bernard Darwin
Publihers Chatto & Windus, London 1944
Finally, in this preliminary survey, there comes what seems to me the most striking event of all. This is the rise of the great American golfing empire, its supremacy and complete subjugation of Britain for a number of years. Then at the end of our period comes an honourable recovery on our part, its two most cheering pieces of evidence being the defeat of the embattled professionals of the United States in Cotton's championship at Carnoustie in 1937, and in 1938 our victory awaited through sixteen heart-sickening years in the Walker Cup.
It is true enough that long before the war we "had been warned", in the now familiar phrase, about American golf. In 1903 an Oxford and Cambridge Society side had toured the United States. They had done very well; they had lost but a single match, and that against a team representing all America and, should `ifs' ever be permissible, they would not have lost that one if Mr. J. A. T. Bramston had not been already a sick man and so unable to last the course. Here was nothing unduly to alarm us at home. Nevertheless Mr. John Low on his return had spoken of the young Americans who would some day invade us. "Already," he had cried like a prophet on a mountain top, "I hear the hooting of their steamers in the Mersey." And in the very next year there came an event to confirm his words, for an American golfer, not young indeed but middle-aged, Mr. W. J. Travis, came over, a lone invader, and won our Amateur Championship. He too, when he got home, said something; he said that many of our golfing idols had feet of clay.
That win of his had been a wounding blow, but for a number of years nothing happened to' rub it in, so that the sting of it faded and was nearly forgotten. Mr. Jerome Travers came here in 1909 but was not himself and so was not a menace. Two years later came Mr. Chick Evans and he was clearly a beautiful golfer, but he was beaten comparatively early.
McDermott, the first of the really good 'home-bred' professionals, invaded us, but at the first attempt he sealed his fate by hooking numberless balls into Archerfield Wood and at a subsequent one he played well but not quite well enough to threaten the triumvirate. Complacency reigned again and then in 1913 it received a severe and memorable shock when Mr. Francis Ouimet, scarcely emerged from the schoolboy, first tied with Vardon and Ray for the American Open Championship and then beat them roundly on playing off.
Yet even after that unpleasant awakening. we were in a measure lulled to sleep again. In the summer of igrq4 there came here the astonishing Mr. Ouimet, together with the other two best amateurs in America, Mr. Jerome Travers, now hard, fit and well, and Mr. Chick Evans, and another very good player Mr. Fred Herreshoff. We were duly frightened this time, but all the great men went down swiftly like so many ninepins, Mr. Travers, the most feared of all, before Mr. C. A. Palmer, something over fifty and partially crippled with lumbago.
After all, Britons thought to themselves, perhaps they are not so dreadfully good after all. Then came war and for five years and more there was no temptation to think any more about the subject. Nevertheless, the storm was brewing. "It does not take a long. time," said Madame Defarge, "for an earthquake to swallow a town. Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the earthquake?" It was in 1920 that the earthquake shook us to our foundations, when there came over a team of young American amateurs to play in the Championship at Hoylake and to play a match against Great Britain before the Championship. People realized how good some of the visitors such as Mr. Ouimet and Mr. Evans were, and there were many stories of the infant phenomenon Bobby, but it was not generally realized how good they all were. Mr. John Low renewed his old prophecy. After the Committee had sat long in choosing the British side, someone said that we had chosen a good one. "They're a' graund players in our club," quoted Mr. Low to me sotto voce. "I wonder what we shall say tomorrow night." By luncheon-time on the morrow all was in effect over for the Americans had won every one of the four foursomes and by nightfall our side was destroyed by nine matches to three.
In the Championship which followed those conquering invaders fell unexpectedly. It was an odd Championship played on an odd, sun-dried, waterless course and only one of them survived into the last eight, but that made little difference; we had seen how good they were, how smooth and rhythmic their swings, how accurate their, putting, and so when in the following year our first Walker Cup side sailed for New York we knew what was to be expected. When the team returned beaten by 8 matches to .4-incidentally a far better result than that achieved by several of their successors there was nothing to be surprised at.
For the moment I may leave the sad story of the Walker Cup, which was at last to have a happy ending, and turn to the professionals. Their awakening did not come quite so soon as did that of the amateurs, for in the championships of 1920 Walter Hagen toiled bravely round Deal with scarcely anyone watching him to finish very low indeed on the list. Jim Barnes was sixth, but after all he was a Cornishman and not an American. A year later, however, it was the professionals' turn to be shaken, when an American Scot, Jock Hutchison, won the Open Championship after a tie with Mr. Wethered. Walter Hagen came over to win next year. In 1922 Havers gallantly, but momentarily, stemmed the flood and after that for ten years running our Championship Cup was politely brought home only to return instantly across the Atlantic. In 1926 when Mr. Jones won at St. Anne's, seven out of the first nine had U.S.A. after their names, and in the tenth year, at St. Andrews of all places, two Americans tied for it.
That long lean time had been the more depressing because in matches our professionals had more than held their own. Not indeed when they visited the United States but certainly at home. In the first international at Wentworth, which was the forerunner of the Ryder Cup matches, they nearly swept the' board against adversaries who did not perhaps take the match very seriously and had their eyes fixed on the championship. Then when the Ryder Cup had been instituted there came two victories, one at Moortown and another at Southport, as to which no such excuses could be made and the Americans clearly meant to win if they could. Yet as soon as the championship came round there was the same sorry, monotonous story to be told, and so when finally those two invaders tied for our championship it seemed that universal darkness had buried all.
The longest lane has proverbially a turning, and since that year when Shute and Craig Wood tied at St. Andrews, no one from over the sea has won our Open Championship. It is true that save in one year, I937, the invasions were perceptibly less formidable. Perhaps the prize, having been so often won, appeared less worth winning. In 1926 at St. Anne's Bobby Jones and Al Watrous were playing together, and with two holes to go it was almost certain that one of them must win. That one seemed to be Watrous Appearances were deceptive and every schoolboy knows of Bobby's shot to the seventeenth green from the sandy wilderness on the left which transformed the situation, but at the moment when Watrous was about to play his second Mr. Fownes was justified in saying to me as he did: "He's got his shot for 100,000 dollars."
Perhaps by 1933 our championship was not worth so much or perhaps money for the trip here was less easy to come by. At any rate there was a perceptible slackening of the yearly invasion. But having admitted so much, it is right to add that our own men did much to turn the tide by their own efforts. Cotton showed that the cup could be kept at home and Perry, Padgham, R. A. Whitcombe, Burton and he himself profited by that revelation and followed that bright example. Confidence came back and though for a brief while during the qualifying rounds at Carnoustie the old American terror stalked once more across the links, it was quickly and gloriously dispelled. Whatever may happen after the war when everybody has to begin again there will be no `inferiority complex' on the part of our professionals. They will recognise in the Americans magnificent and formidable golfers but not invincible ones. The same is true, I hope and believe, of our amateurs. I have told before in print, but I like to tell again, how when the Walker Cup had been won at last my old friend Sam McKinlay advanced to me in the club-house at St.'Andrews, transfigured with a solemn joy and with hand extended, saying: "Well, Bernard, we have lived to see this day." The spell had been broken, and though we may be beaten and beaten again we shall never approach the match with the same cynical, defeatist and hang-dog air. I shall beyond doubt have much to say later about that victory and all the hard preliminary work that went to gain it. Meanwhile it makes a good ending to this first chapter. The word `impossible' had been expunged from the dictionary and the British amateur, like Mr. Micawber, had recovered his moral dignity and could once more walk erect before his fellow man.