Francis DeSales Ouimet
(May 8, 1893 – September 3, 1967) was an
American
golfer. He is widely known for winning the
1913
U.S. Open, and was the first American
elected Captain of the Royal and
Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews
. He married Stella M. Sullivan on
September 11,
1918, with
whom he had two daughters: Jane Salvi and Barbara McLean.
Early life
Ouimet was
born to Arthur and Mary Ouimet of Brookline,
Massachusetts
. His father was a
French-Canadian immigrant and his mother,
was an
Irish immigrant. When Francis
was four years old, his family purchased a house on Cylde Street in
Brookline, directly across from the 17th hole of
The Country Club. The Ouimet family grew up
poor and found themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder,
which was hardly the position of any American golfer at the time.
As far as the general public was concerned, golf was reserved for
the wealthy, and Francis Ouimet was poor. Ouimet found a interest
in golf at an early age and started caddying at The Country Club at
the age of nine. Using clubs from his brother and balls he found
around the course Ouimet taught himself the game. Soon enough his
game caught the eye of many country club members and the caddie
master. It wasn't long before Ouimet was the best high school
golfer in the state. When he was a junior in high school, his
father insisted Francis drop out and finally begin to do "something
useful" with his life. He worked at a drygoods store before a
stroke of good luck helped him land a job at a
sporting goods store owned by the future
Baseball Hall of Famer,
George
Wright.
Career
In 1913 Ouimet won the
Massachusetts Amateur at the age of
20. Soon afterward he was asked personally by the president of the
United States Golf
Association, Robert Watson, if he would play in the nation's
championship; the
U.S. Open. The event was played at the course
Ouimet knew best, The Country Club. He went on to win the
1913 U.S. Open
over
Britons, Harry Vardon and
Ted Ray. Ouimet's victory after an 18-hole
playoff against Vardon and Ray was widely hailed as a stunning
upset over the strongly-favored Britons who were regarded as the
top two golfers in the world. He was the first amateur to win the
U.S. Open.
He also won the
U.S.
Amateur Championship
twice, in 1914 and 1931. He played on the first eight
Walker Cup Teams and was Captain of the next four
for a team record of 11-1.
In 1951 he became the first American elected
Captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St
Andrews and in 1955 was the first-ever winner of the
Bob Jones Award, the highest honor
given by the United
States Golf Association in recognition of distinguished
sportsmanship in golf. Ouimet has been named to many golf
Halls of Fame, and has a room named after him in the
USGA Museum. His wish was to remain an amateur
for his whole career: he decided before his U.S. Open success that
he wanted to work in the world of business. However, in 1916, the
USGA, in one of the most controversial
decisions in their history, stripped Ouimet of his amateur status.
Their reasoning was that he was using his celebrity to aid his own
sports goods business, and was therefore making a living from golf.
This was at the time when caddies were not allowed to continue
caddying after they reached the age of sixteen years old unless
they declared themselves professionals. The decision was greeted
with uproar from Ouimet's fellow golfers. In 1918, Ouimet enlisted
for the
U.S. Army, and the USGA quietly reinstated his amateur
status at the same time. He would go on to win his second U.S.
Amateur Championship 13 years later in 1931. He did not bear a
grudge against the Association, and served on several committees.
Ouimet was
also a golf member of Charles River Country Club, in Newton Centre, Massachusetts,
but was a member of the Woodland Golf Club of Auburndale,
Massachusetts
, when he won the U.S. Open in 1913.
Tournament wins (19)
Professional and amateur
majors shown in
bold.
Major championships
Professional wins (1)
1 Defeated Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in an 18-hole
playoff - Ouimet 72, Vardon 77, Ray 78
Amateur wins (2)
Results timeline
As an amateur, Ouimet could not play in the
PGA Championship.
NYF = Tournament not yet founded
NT = No tournament
DNP = Did not play
WD = Withdrew
"T" indicates a tie for a place
DNQ = Did not qualify for match play portion
R256, R128, R64, R32, R16, QF, SF = Round in which player lost in
match play
Green background for wins. Yellow background for top-10
Source for U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur:
USGA Championship
Database
Effect on U.S. golf
Ouimet's U.S. Open success is credited for bringing golf into the
American sporting mainstream. Before his surprising win over Harry
Vardon and Ted Ray, golf was dominated by British players. In
America, the sport was restricted to players with access to private
facilities—there were very few public courses (the first, Van
Cortlandt Golf Course in The Bronx borough of New York City, had
opened in 1895). Ten years after his 1913 victory the number of
American players had tripled and many new courses had been built,
including numerous public ones.
Depictions
In 1988, a portrait of Ouimet appeared on a commemorative 25 cent
United States Postal
Service postage stamp in his
honor.
In 2002,
Mark Frost wrote a biographical
account of Ouimet's U.S. Open victory titled
The Greatest Game
Ever Played: Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and the Birth of Modern
Golf. Shortly afterward, Frost was tapped by
Walt Disney
Studios to write a motion picture adaptation.
The Greatest Game Ever
Played was released in theaters in 2005. The film starred
Shia LaBeouf as Ouimet, was directed by
Bill Paxton, and produced by
Larry Brezner.
Appearing on the cover of
The Greatest Game is a
photograph of Ouimet at the U.S. Open with his ten-year-old caddy,
Eddie Lowery. This iconic image is one
of the best known in American golf, and was used as the logo for
the
United States Golf
Association's Centennial celebrations. A statue of Ouimet and
Lowery based on the photograph stands in Brookline,
Massachusetts.
References
- Gibson, Nevin H. The Encyclopedia of Golf (A.S. Barnes
& Company, 1958)
- Frost, Mark The Greatest Game Ever Played: Harry Vardon,
Francis Ouimet, and the Birth of Modern Golf (Hyperion,
2002)
Notes
- http://massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=272
- http://www.massmoments.com/moment.cfm?mid=272
- Frost, Mark The Greatest Game Ever Played: Harry Vardon,
Francis Ouimet, and the Birth of Modern Golf (Hyperion,
2002)
- http://www.hickoksports.com/biograph/ouimetfrancis.shtml
Ouimet, Francis D.
- Scott
catalog # 2377.
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