The ‘father’ of the American golf revolution was a skinny, jug-eared, soft-spoken 20-year-old from a working-class family who became an overnight front-page hero. Sound unlikely? He thought so, too …

 

“It came out of the blue,” Francis Ouimet recalled in 1963. “I certainly didn’t expect to do it.”

 

Ouimet was referring to the events of 50 years before, when he stepped out of obscurity to win the 1913 US Open as an amateur against the two best professionals of the era in Britain’s Harry Vardon and Ted Ray.

 

Set in modern perspective, it would be like the son of a Carnoustie shopkeeper turning up unannounced and beating Tiger and Lefty to win the Claret Jug.

 

Even in those less sensational times, the newspapers loved Ouimet’s story. He became front-page news, and golf – previously seen as a game for effete snobs – was suddenly ‘the thing to do’. It became everybody’s game.

 

When Ouimet won the 1913 US Open, there were barely more than a hundred courses in America, almost all private. Within years of Ouimet’s bolt from the blue, however, the numbers of American golfers and public courses had tripled.

 

About the only hitch to Ouimet’s Cinderella story is that the USGA stripped their boy hero of his amateur status during World War I and banned him competing because it was learned he had opened a sporting goods shop. Viewed through today’s prism of Tiger’s multi-million dollar endorsements, the USGA’s thinking looks absurd.

 

They later came to their senses, restoring Ouimet’s amateur status in 1919. Ouimet went on to be a staple of eight Walker Cup teams.

 

He never turned professional. His competitive career was capped by a final, sentimental victory at the US Amateur at Beverly Hills in Chicago, aged 38, in 1931. Twenty years later, Ouimet was already a successful stockbroker when he became the first non-Briton to be named Captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.

 

Ouimet was a self-taught genius, and a very, very good player – he was never a great one. But with a free swing from a stooped-over stance and with an odd interlocking grip, Ouimet was uncannily accurate and had a calm confidence on the course, which was probably his greatest asset.

Nothing Ouimet did later matched his first triumph – but few things could.

 

The 1913 US Open is well-documented, particularly because of Mark Frost’s fantastic 2002 book The Greatest Game Ever Played – which, if the golfer on your Christmas shopping list hasn’t already read, certainly needs to. It’s a classic of golf literature.

Since age 9, Francis had been a caddie at Brookline Country Club, just across the road from his family’s house, and practised golf when he could, sneaking on to the course in bad weather and using golf balls he scavenged. His French-Canadian labourer father considered golf a waste of time; Francis’ Irish mother quietly supported his golf.

 

Ouimet had built a decent, but not stunning, record in the few competitions he could afford to play when the US Open arrived at his home course of Brookline – along with the heavy favourites Vardon and Ray, who had steamed across the Atlantic to collect an easy payday.

 

But Ouimet, who knew the Brookline course like the back of his hand, made things very difficult indeed. The precise Vardon – Ouimet’s idol – and the big-hitting Ray jumped out to an early lead, but Ouimet, with a local 10-year-old truant Eddie Lowery carrying his bag, caught them at the end of regulation to force an 18-hole playoff final.

 

The 2005 movie The Greatest Game Ever Played – starring Shia LaBeouf as Ouimet – depicts the playoff as a gripping nail-biter.

It was a great finish to be sure, but trust the film studios to get the Hollywood ending wrong. Ouimet won easily, shooting 72 to Vardon’s 77 and Ray’s 78.