Background
Francis Desales Ouimet was born on May 8, 1893, in Brookline, Massachussets, the son of Arthur Ouimet, a gardener from Canada, and Mary Ellen Burke.
(Francis Ouimet (1893-1967) was an unknown twenty-year-old...)
Francis Ouimet (1893-1967) was an unknown twenty-year-old amateur when he upset famed British golfers Harry Vardon and Ted Ray to win the 1913 U.S. Open. That spectacular victory at The Country Club (TCC) made him America's first golf hero, drew new fans to the sport, and forever altered the image of golf as a stuffy, rich man's game dominated by British and Scottish players. In this memoir, first published in 1932, Ouimet reminisces about his life in golf and gives sage advice on playing the game. He vividly chronicles his boyhood he spent at his modest home across the street from The County Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. He recalls how he scavenged for golf balls and clubs, learned to play on a homemade three-hole course in his backyard, and sometimes sneaked onto The Country Club's fairways to practice in the early morning hours. He recounts his caddying years, starting at age nine, the early amateur competitions, and the momentous 1913 U.S. Open tournament on his neighborhood course.
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(This short article, originally published in 1920, was wri...)
This short article, originally published in 1920, was written for a young audience, but the seasoned golfer may find it of interest. Francis Ouimet (1893 – 1967) is a famous American golfer who won the US Open in 1913 and was the first American elected captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974. Walter J. Travis is another famous golfers of the time that Ouimet mentioned in this article.
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Francis Desales Ouimet was born on May 8, 1893, in Brookline, Massachussets, the son of Arthur Ouimet, a gardener from Canada, and Mary Ellen Burke.
Ouimet graduated from Heath Grammar School in 1908. He then attended Brookline High School, where he organized the golf team, but he did not graduate.
Whenever his older brother, Wilfred, worked as a caddy, Ouimet borrowed his club. He played in the cow pasture behind their house, where there were swamps, brooks, and a gravel pit. He called it the most difficult course he ever played. Ouimet started working as a caddy at the age of eleven. He often played golf at 5 A. M. , until chased away by the greenskeepers. Samuel Carr, who was kind to the boys who carried his clubs, gave him a driver, a lofter, a midiron, and a putter. In 1909 he won the Greater Boston Interscholastic Championship. He failed to qualify for the National Amateur Championship by one stroke in 1910, 1911, and 1912. But in 1913, at Wollaston, he won the Massachusetts State Amateur Championship. While working as a clerk at the Wright and Ditson Sporting Goods Company, Ouimet joined the Woodland Golf Club. The president of the United States Golf Association, Robert Watson, persuaded him to enter the United States Open at the Brookline Country Club. The 1913 Open was one of the most publicized tournaments in the United States, and it helped change the image of golf, which, until that time, did not have mass appeal in the United States or players who could compete with the best Europeans. Harry Vardon, five-time Open champion of Great Britain, and the long hitter Edward ("Ted") Ray were favored to win at Brookline.
On September 19, after fifty-four holes in the rain, Ouimet was tied with Vardon and Ray at 225. Both Englishmen finished the seventy-two holes with 304. Ouimet needed to play the last six holes in 2 under par to tie. At the seventeenth hole, Ouimet needed a 3. Ray recalled, "Ouimet's ball finished twelve feet or so from the tin, leaving him with the most difficult kind of putt in the world, with a down-slope and a side-slope to negotiate at the same time. Only perfect judgment of both line and strength would get the ball in. The ball took the slope down in a gentle curve, and hit the very centre of the cup. " Ouimet finished in a three-way tie with Vardon and Ray. In the playoff the next day, Ouimet was steady, while the Englishmen beat themselves. His caddy and lifelong friend, Eddie Lowery, was a serious ten-year-old. Ouimet said, "Eddie kept telling me to keep my eye on the ball. He cautioned me to take my time. He encouraged me in any number of different ways. " Ouimet took the lead on the tenth hole and never lost it, finishing with a score of 72, beating Vardon by 5 strokes and Ray by 6. The unexpected victory made him the first major American golf hero. Ten years later the number of American golfers had increased from 350, 000 to 2 million.
Ouimet won the United States Amateur Championship in 1914, at the Ekwanok Country Club in Manchester, Vermont. He won the French Amateur and the Massachusetts Amateur championships that same year. In 1915 he formed a sporting-goods partnership with his friend Jack Sullivan. After he won the Western Amateur Championship in 1917, he entered the United States Army and was stationed at Camp Devens during World War I. Ouimet was the winner of the Massachusetts Amateur in 1919. The next year he won the North and South Amateur Championship and was runner-up in the United States Amateur. In 1922 he won the Houston Invitational and the Massachusetts Amateur and was a member of the United States Walker Cup Team. He played on, or captained, every Walker team sent to Britain until 1949. He won the St. George's Challenge Cup in 1923, the Crump Memorial in 1924, the Massachusetts Amateur and the Gold Mashie Tournament in 1925 (the year he lost the United States Open by one stroke), and the Crump Memorial again in 1927. In 1931, Ouimet once again won the United States Amateur Championship, saying that one of the factors in his favor was that Bobby Jones did not play in that tournament. In 1932 he won the Massachusetts Open.
Ouimet became a stockbroker in 1919. From 1932 he worked in the Boston office of White, Weld and was active in sports businesses. He said that if he had not been a golfer, he would have been a baseball player. In 1942 and 1943 he was vice-president of the Boston Braves baseball team. The Francis Ouimet Caddie Scholarship Fund was founded in 1949 to help former caddies. In 1951, Ouimet became the first American elected captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower painted a portrait of him (from a sketch by Thomas Stephens), which the president gave to Bobby Jones, who presented it to the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland, the most prestigious golf club and the world's last arbiter of golf rules. In 1954, Ouimet joined the Boston office of Brown Brothers, Harriman, where he worked as a stockbroker until his death. He died in Newton, Massachussets.
(Francis Ouimet (1893-1967) was an unknown twenty-year-old...)
(This short article, originally published in 1920, was wri...)
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Francis Ouimet was a member of Charles River Country Club in Newton Centre and the Woodland Golf Club of Auburndale.
Modest and low-keyed, Francis considered "a clear head" the best asset in golf and was usually the calmest man on a course. He was admired by fellow golfers for both his temperament and ability.
On September 11, 1918, Francis Ouimet married Stella Mary Sullivan (whose brother had eliminated him in the first round of the Boston Interscholastic in 1908); they had two children.