Harry Vardon (I937)
by Bernard DarwinObituary The Times 27th March 1937
Wikipedia Entry:
Harry Vardon (May 9, 1870 – March 20, 1937) was an English champion golfer.
Harry Vardon was born in Grouville, Jersey, Channel Islands. As a child growing up on the island of Jersey, Harry Vardon did not play much golf. Inspired by his older brother, Tom, he eventually took up the game in his teens and by age 20 he was so good that he turned professional. Vardon was the first professional golfer to play in knickers -- the "proper" Englishman dressed in an uncomfortable shirt and tie with a buttoned jacket. Nonetheless, within a few years he became golf's first superstar.
In 1896, Harry Vardon won the first of his record six Open Championships (a record that 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. Twenty years later, at the age of 50, Vardon was the runner-up at the 1920 U.S. Open.
During his career, Harry Vardon won 62 golf tournaments. He popularized the grip that bears his name, one still used by over 90 percent of golfers. In his later years, Vardon became a golf course architect, designing several courses in Britain. Following a bout with tuberculosis, he struggled with health problems for years but turned to coaching and writing golf instruction and inspirational books. Harry Vardon died in 1937 in Totteridge, Hertfordshire, England. After his death, 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 Harry Vardon was chosen as one of the initial group of inductees 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. In the annals of golf, Harry Vardon is considered one of the greats of the game.
Harry Vardon was a private and modest individual. A biography of Harry Vardon, published in 1991 and authored by his daughter-in-law, Audrey Howell, provides much intimate detail about the life of this champion.
Comparison between players of different generations are, as a rule, futile, and particularly so in the case of golf, since the conditions under which it is played have so greatly changed; but no one who ever saw Vardon in his best days can doubt that his genius was unsurpassable. Those days are now rather distant because, although he won the last of his six Open championships in 1914, it was at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century that he was in his most glorious prime. When he won the third of his championships in 1899 no one so much as dreamed that there could be another champion. He went up and down the country winning tournaments and breaking records, trampling down all opponents in his juggernaut stride. He did what only a very great player can do; he raised the general conception of what was possible in his game and forced his nearest rivals to attain a higher standard by attempting that which they would otherwise have deemed impossible. He had a great influence, too, on methods of playing. When he first appeared his notably upright swing, though so full of grace and rhythm, came as a shock to the orthodoxy of the time, but has now long since been accepted.
Three of his six championships were won after the introduction of the rubber-cored ball in 1902, but it was with the gutty, before his serious illness, that he was supreme. Had it not been for that breakdown in health his tally of victories would surely have been much longer; it was after his illness that his putting began to betray him. The modern golfer believes that Vardon was always a bad putter, but this is not so. He was not an outstanding putter, nor had he quite the same graceful ease on the green as elsewhere, but he was at least a very good approach putter and a competent holer-out. He could never otherwise have accomplished half of what he did.
Vardon's record is so long that it must be severely compressed. He was born on 9 May 1870, at Grouville in Jersey. He learnt the game there as a caddie and continued to play after starting work as a gardener at the age of thirteen. His younger brother, Tom, was the first to go out into the world, as assistant professional at St Annes, and it was he who induced Harry to apply for a post at Ripon in 1890. In 1891 he moved to Bury in Lancashire and thence to Ganton in 1896. He had first played in the Open championship at Prestwick in 1893 (the year of Taylor's debut), but it was at Ganton that he became famous. In the spring of 1896 Taylor, who had been two years champion, came there to play Vardon a match and went home defeated by 8 and 6 and full of his conqueror's praises. A month or two later they tied for the Open championship at Muirfield and Vardon won the play-off by three strokes. In 1897 he fell away slightly, but won again at Prestwick in 1898 and the following year won with perfect ease at Sandwich. These were his two supreme years. It was in 1899 that he beat Taylor, who was playing well, by 11 and 10 in the final of the tournament at Newcastle, County Down, and also beat Willie Park in one of the outstanding matches of his life.
In 1900 Vardon set out on what was practically a year's tour of the United States, though he broke it to come home to defend his title in the championship and finished second to Taylor at St Andrews. In America, where golf was still young, he travelled from end to end of the country playing an enormous number of matches and causing great enthusiasm; he hardly lost a match and won the American championship.
But the hard work of the tour took its toll, and it is doubtful if he was ever so brilliant again. After being twice runner-up in the championship to Braid and Herd respectively, he won at Prestwick in 1903 with a total of 300, and this he regarded as the best of all his achievements, since he was so unwell that he nearly fainted several times in his last round. Soon afterwards he had to spend some time in a sanatorium and made a more or less complete recovery. In 1905 came the second great match of his career, in which he and Taylor beat Braid and Herd over four greens by 11 and 10. Their play at Troon, where they won fourteen holes, was astonishingly fine, and so it was on the last links, Deal, though Vardon had had a haemorrhage the night before and was not really fit to play at all.
There followed a period of comparatively lean years and then, to the general joy, Vardon won again at Sandwich, in 1911, beating Massy so convincingly in playing off the tie that the great French player gave up at the 35th hole. The year 19 13 saw Vardon tie for yet another Open championship, that of the United States, at The Country Club at Brookline. This was the historic occasion on which Mr Francis Ouimet, then little older than a schoolboy, beat Vardon and Ray after a triple tie and may be said to have founded the American golfing empire. It was unquestionably a disappointing blow for Vardon; yet he won his sixth championship next year at Prestwick, beating Taylor by three shots. The two were drawn together on the last day and took the whole of a rather obstreperous crowd with them so that it was a marvel that they could play as they did.
When the war was over Vardon was almost fifty and his victorious days were of necessity nearly over. Yet in 1920 he tied for second place in the American championship, one stroke behind Ray. In all human probability he would have won had not a fierce wind come up as he was playing the last few holes and was tiring fast. That was his final achievement, and during the later years of his life his health put golf to all intents and purposes out of the question. He bore the deprivation with philosophy and sweet temper, enjoying teaching when he could not play and always anxious to watch the younger players. This he did with an eye at once kindly and critical, being a staunch conservative and unshaken in his conviction that the greatest qualities of the game had departed with the gutty ball. From 1903 to the end of his life he was professional to the South Herts Golf Club at Totteridge, where he was an oracle and an institution. He has left a name affectionately regarded by everyone and an ineffaceable mark on the game of golf.