Old School Grip It, Rip It

It happened a century ago, on June 11, 1903, at the British Open at Prestwick. There, battling lightheadedness and extreme fatigue, Harry Vardon matched both Old and Young Tom Morris by winning his fourth Claret Jug with a record-setting four-round score of 300.

Within days, Vardon’s symptoms would be diagnosed as tuberculosis and he would be admitted to Mundesley sanatorium, interrupting, at its peak, a level of golfing dominance every bit the equal of Tiger Woods.

Vardon would return, his ultimate total of six British Open Championships unmatched to this day. Yet despite such status, the mists of time have managed to obscure a man known to his contemporaries as the Greyhound, blurring both the scope of his accomplishments and the impact he had on nearly every aspect of the game.

A product of the English Channel island of Jersey, Vardon won Open Championships in 1896, ’98 and ‘99, a stretch during which, the great Bernard Darwin wrote, he “went up and down the country trampling opponents like some relentless Juggernaut.”

A marathon tour of the United States followed in 1900 and Vardon earned international fame and a U.S. Open title. But then the tuberculosis struck. He spent eight months at Mundesley, and though Vardon made an entry into the 1904 Open -- leading at the halfway mark before finishing fourth -- evidence suggests that he never again enjoyed a full measure of health.

By 1910, his fellow members of golf’s Great Triumvirate -- J.H. Taylor and James Braid -- had equaled or exceeded Vardon’s four British Open victories, but despite turning 40, the Greyhound wasn’t finished. Fighting a balky putting stroke, Vardon equaled Braid by winning his fifth Open championship at Royal St. George’s in 1911, a feat matched by Taylor, at Hoylake, in 1913. Then with war looming and the end of their era at hand, Vardon won his unprecedented sixth title, at Prestwick in 1914, defeating Taylor by three strokes. Peter Thomson and Tom Watson have since won the British Open five times each.

The roots of Vardon’s talent remain somewhat obscured. Although his recollections certainly indicate some youthful proficiency, precisely when or how his skills blossomed remains essentially undocumented. What is clear is that his swing -- a rather upright move with a decidedly bent left arm -- was typical among early Channel Island golfers and bore little in the way of individual innovation.

Blessed with large hands, Vardon experimented at length before settling upon the same overlapping grip used by English amateur J.E. Laidley some 30 years earlier, a grip also employed by Taylor but forever named after Vardon.

But if his swing wasn’t revolutionary, Vardon’s playing style was, primarily in the smoothness of his tempo. Others grunted and thrashed to propel the old gutta-percha ball along; Vardon rhythmically -- almost casually -- ripped it past nearly everyone. Like the overlapping grip (or, for that matter, the wearing of plus-fours), we can be sure that Harry Vardon didn’t invent the concept of smooth tempo. Yet his success and popularity were such that an entire sport retooled its technique to follow his example.

Of similar impact was the manner in which Vardon comported himself. It is difficult to imagine any champion representing his sport with greater reserve or modesty. Vardon was quiet, focused and unfailingly gracious, a man who went about his business as though he was just another member of the field.

In his 1921 volume “Fifty Years of Golf: My Memories,” Scotsman Andrew Kirkaldy cited Vardon as one “who carries his honors as if he had forgotten all about them.” Herbert Warren Wind praised Vardon as a “kind, modest and unusually gentle man.” Vardon, it seems, wandered stoically across the golfing landscape, showing only quiet confidence and his “Vardonic” half-smile as he destroyed the competition, then shook hands and moved on.

He was immensely popular among his fellow professionals and was a close friend of his chief rivals, Taylor and Braid. Even the prickly Kirkaldy -- who never beat Vardon -- was an unabashed fan, noting, “He could laugh with the best of us; the most genial of men.”

With such talent and magnetism, it is hardly surprising that Vardon’s visits to America -- particularly the 1900 tour made on behalf of the A.G. Spalding Co. -- played so enormous a role in sparking golf’s growth in the New World. Period accounts detail not only Vardon’s high standard of play but also the frenzied response his nomadic year generated among the press and public.

Up and down the East Coast, far out into the West and twice up to Canada, throngs turned out to witness the Englishman’s battering of the best local competition and the splendid style with which he did so. Vardon estimated that he traveled more than 20,000 miles to play some 88 matches all told. Of these he lost 13, 12 of which came against the best ball of two or even three players. The tour’s impact on the game’s fledgling American prospects was overwhelming.

He was the most important player of his era, perhaps the most important of all time. But after a century’s worth of golf evolution to muddy our comparisons, just how great a golfer was he?

Golf’s first great writer, Horace Hutchinson, considered the Greyhound “two strokes in the round better than either Taylor or Braid, and, I believe, better than any other man that we have seen.” Darwin wrote “I cannot believe that anyone ever had or ever will have a greater genius for hitting a golf ball than Harry Vardon.” And more contemporarily, Wind, a man hardly given to wild rhetoric, wrote in 1979 that “There has surely never been a better golfer than Harry Vardon.”

Still, comparing Vardon to today’s long-hitting stars is a thorny question. One strike against the Greyhound -- that the relatively primitive equipment of his day made it easier for talent to separate itself from the field -- cannot be disputed. However a second -- the notion that his level of competition was vastly inferior to the present -- is far more open to dispute. In addition to Taylor and Braid, Vardon regularly beat such players as Sandy Herd, Willie Park Jr., Ted Ray, Harold Hilton, Freddie Tait and eight-time British Amateur champion John Ball, plus a host of other well-known champions. Not quite as deep as Woods’ list of pursuers, perhaps, but more imposing than many may realize.

In Vardon’s favor, of course, is the impact of the tuberculosis on his career resume. It reasonably can be suggested that without the illness affecting what figured to be several of his finest years, he might well have won eight or even 10 British Open championships, figures so grand as to scarcely correspond with modern frames of thought.

Still, the numbers as they actually stand are extraordinary. Vardon’s legitimately competitive years stretched from 1895-1914, during which time he entered 20 Open championships (at least five at less than full strength), winning six times and taking four seconds. During this same span, he won more than one-third of the tournaments he entered and finished first or second in more than half.

At his pre-illness peak, he once won an almost inconceivable 17 of 22 events entered, and finished second in the other five. He is believed to have won 14 tournaments in succession.

Thus, when we consider that Vardon won only three of the 18 match-play events in which he competed, then remove the relatively lackluster performances of his illness-plagued years, we find a golfer who, when healthy, was almost invincible.

Also significant were his three attempts at the U.S. Open, the first of which he won at the Chicago Golf Club in 1900. Returning in 1913, he lost a three-way playoff (along with fellow Jerseyman Ray) to the teenage Francis Ouimet at the Country Club in Brookline, Mass. Yet it was Vardon’s final attempt, in 1920 at Inverness, that was perhaps the most stirring. At the age of 50, he held a four-shot lead with seven holes to play before a freak windstorm derailed this final, fanciful challenge in a spate of fatigue and poor luck.

In competitive retirement, Vardon repaired to the South Herts Golf Club in Totteridge, England, where, despite inconsistent health, he played, taught and designed golf courses until his death in 1937. Vardon could, as late as age 60, still provide inspired flashes.

Indeed, 1949 Walker Cup captain Laddie Lucas has written of playing with him at South Herts in 1930, one day after the Greyhound’s return from a long convalescent stint. Not having played in six weeks and too tired to last more than 11 holes, Vardon still managed to hobble around the opening nine in a stunning 29 strokes. “Every drive and every iron flew dead straight,” Lucas reported, “no fade, no draw. I never saw this straightness again. Euclid couldn’t have improved upon it.”

This then was Harry Vardon, a man whose numbers, resilience, character and style still stand above a century’s worth of competition. Do such qualities make him golf’s greatest-ever player? That will remain a matter of opinion. But reaching for some degree of conclusion, perhaps we might settle for the following surmise:

Given a chance to compete with modern equipment under contemporary conditions, Vardon might beat Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus or Woods. But handed hickory-shafted clubs and a gutta-percha ball, none of this threesome -- or anyone else in the game’s long and storied history -- would beat Harry Vardon.