Ted Ray 1877 - 1943
By Frank Boumphrey
This article first appeared in the Feb 2006 Issue of the SoHG Newsletter.
EDWARD R. G. Ray was a native of the Channel Islands like his great contemporary and friend, Harry Vardon. He was born on the twenty-eighth of March, 1877 and died in 1943.
Ted Ray is possibly the best golfer not to be inducted into the hall of fame. Although he is best known for loosing a play off for the 1913 US Open with Harry Vardon and the eventual first-time U.S. native winner Francis Ouimet, he was a great player in his own right. He had won the British Open at Muirfield in 1912, and later the U.S. Open at Inverness in 1920. He played several times on the Ryder Cup team for Great Britain, and captained the side in 1927. Among his contemporaries , including his friend Harry Vardon, he had a much greater standing than he does today.
It must be remembered that Ted Ray played his best golf in the days of 'the great triumvirate', and came very near to equaling their achievements, and on occasions he did in fact best them. He was rarely out of the top 5 in major championships, and with a little bit of luck we may have been speaking of 'the great quadumvirate'!
He was known for his prodigious (even if somewhat wayward) drives off the tee- he could carry the ball 300yards!; his resultant awful lies; and his remarkable recovery shots. His recovery powers were said to be phenomenal and cartoonists usually caricatured him with a niblick in hand, festooned with clumps of heather and saplings. This together with an inseparable pipe clamped between his teeth made him a great subject for satirists! On account of his lenght, in many rounds the niblick was the only iron club he employed. His lenght and the fact he could hit the ball almost 150 yards with this club!
Ray was not known for the beauty of his swing here is how Harry Vardon described it:
"Edward Ray is a man I like to watch on the Links. He defies so many accepted principles of the game; he is so very nearly a complete set of laws to himself. He sways appreciably and heaves at the ball. He is a master at recovering the right position at the moment of impact after having moved his head and body during the backward swing in a degree that would spell disaster to almost anyone else. He is the brilliant exception to the safe rule. As he brings his club down ... his tremendous lunge brings your heart into your mouth lest he should miss the ball. You wonder where ... the ball will go in the event of such a catastrophe ...(however)... at the psychological moment he has done everything correctly..." - How to play Golf. Harry Vardon - 1912
Possibly because of his unorthodox style he was not a great teacher. His chief admonition was to "Hit the ball hard like I do." When this failed to work the student was instructed to "hit it harder!".
He was a club pro all his life. At Vardon's recommendation he followed Vardon as professional at Ganton in Yorkshire. Later he was professional at Oxhey Golf Club near Watford in Hertfordshire from 1912 to 1941, when he retired due to ill health. During the first part of the last centuary , in Britain as in American the professional was not allowed access to the clubhouse facilities, indeed in Britain it was even worse. In America Professionals were at least given the run of the locker room; in Britain they were usually expected to change in some small shack. During the 1920 US Open - which Ted won - Inverness Country Club was the first club to open it's doors to professionals. When Ted returned home after his victory Oxhey became the first club to allow their professional into the club. Other clubs soon followed so Ted may well be considered to be a pioneer in breaking down the class barriers of golf.
As an aside Ted was, and still is, at 43 years of age the oldest to have ever won the US Open, and he would not have done so were it not for a melt down by the eventual runner up - none less than the 50 Year old Harry Vardon, who played the last seven holes in seven over par to loose by one stroke!
He was a bear of a man in every way. He was loyal to his friends but he did not suffer fools, or those he considered fools, gladly. Occasionaly obdurate and stubborn to an extreme he was known to take up a line of argument which he knew he was wrong, just for the sake of arguing! It was said after he had ground the other down, he would say a day or two later, with out the hint of an apology, "You were quite right you know".
However in spite of his reputation of being 'difficult to get a long with' he had a legion of friends, and few humans inspired more respect or love. He was deeply mourned when he died at the relatively young age of 66.
F.B 2006-01-15