Fitzpatrick has a chance to make some unique USGA history on Sunday.
Matt Fitzpatrick has a chance to make some unique golf history on Sunday.
Not only does the 27-year-old Englishman have a chance to become just the 12th player to win both the U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open, but he’d be the first to do so at the same course. Fitzpatrick won the 2013 U.S. Amateur at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, and enters Sunday’s final round tied for first at 4 under with Will Zalatoris.
The last to accomplish the impressive feat? That’d be Bryson DeChambeau, who claimed the 2015 U.S. Amateur and the 2020 U.S. Open. Get to know the 12 players who have won both the U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open.
BROOKLINE, Mass. – The opening scenes in what would later become perhaps golf’s greatest storybook ending, a fascinating tale that has resonated for more than 100 years, were set in what can only be called a perfect setting.
Across the street from The Country Club, founded in 1882 and one of the five founding clubs of the U.S. Golf Association, Francis Ouimet grew up in the modest, six-room, 1,500-square-foot home at 246 Clyde Street.
Looking out the window of his second-floor bedroom, he woke to a view of the 17th hole of The Country Club, which he would walk across to get to school and where he would later caddie and fall in love with the game.
And then, at age 20, he became a folk hero and changed the path of the game’s history over the sacred ground outside Boston.
In authoring arguably the biggest upset in the chronicles of golf, Ouimet took down Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, the two best golfers of the time, to win the 1913 U.S. Open in a playoff at The Country Club that drew up to 20,000, mostly blue-collar workers each round.
After winning the 1913 U.S. Open, Brookline’s Francis Ouimet (rear) credited his caddie, 10-year-old Eddie Lowery. Ouimet later dedicated this photo, writing over Lowery’s towel, “This is the boy who won the 1913 Open.”
And as it turned out, it was at the 17th where two of Ouimet’s biggest moments unfolded. In the final round, Ouimet, an amateur who had to be talked into entering the championship by his friends, came to the hole nicknamed “The Elbow” trailing by one shot. At the time, the dogleg-left hole was playing to 275 yards. After reaching the green with his approach, Ouimet made a long birdie putt to tie for the lead and joined Vardon and Ray in an 18-hole playoff the following day after making par on the 72nd hole.
In the playoff, with Ray out of contention, Vardon trailed Ouimet by one when the group arrived at the 17th tee. Vardon tried to cut the corner and wound up in the lone bunker that bears his name. Ouimet found the fairway. Vardon had to lay up and made bogey while Ouimet made birdie again for a three-stroke lead.
Ouimet polished off his startling win on the final hole.
The game exploded across the land. And the 17th took root as the course’s pivotal hole, later home to more magical, game-changing moments to decide championships. If history is prologue, the penultimate hole on the scorecard – which will play out to 373 yards this week for the 122nd U.S. Open and now features four bunkers on the left of the fairway bend and numerous mounds – will play a crucial role in the outcome.
“It’s unique,” reigning PGA champion Justin Thomas said. “Unlike a lot of holes out here that are pretty self-explanatory off the tee, it’s just am I going to hit a driver or am I going to hit a 3-wood, whatever it is? That hole presents a lot of opportunities of different clubs off the tees.
“Especially with how a lot of guys are playing nowadays. A handful of guys are probably going to hit driver, try to hit it right in front of the green. Or if you get a helping wind, maybe the tee is up, you can knock it on the green. But then again, I’m sure the rough is going to be nasty up there to where you get opposition. It’s tough, and then it’s, like, do you lay up? Do you lay up to a good number?
“It’s a hole that you can have a two-shot swing on it pretty quickly for it being a pretty short, easy hole, but it’s really just going to be how you want to attack it or approach it once you get to that point, especially come Saturday and Sunday.”
Julius Boros poses with the trophy after winning the 1963 U.S. Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. Next to him is Francis Ouimet, the 1913 U.S. Open champion and honorary chairman of the tournament. (Photo: Associated Press)
When the U.S. Open returned to The Country Club 50 years later, the 17th was decisive in Julius Boros’ victory. In the final round, Arnold Palmer missed a two-foot putt that put him two strokes behind the leader, Jacky Cupit, who a few holes later made double bogey after an errant drive. That led to a three-man playoff, with Boros joining them the next day. Boros birdied the 17th in the final round and again in the playoff to win the national championship.
Twenty-five years later, the third U.S. Open at The Country Club featured more histrionics. After taking the lead with a 25-foot birdie on the 16th in the final round, Curtis Strange three-putted the 17th from 15 feet. He saved par from a greenside bunker on the 72nd hole to force a playoff with Nick Faldo.
Strange made a knee-knocking four-footer for par on the 17th to secure his victory in the playoff for the first of his two consecutive U.S. Open wins.
Curtis Strange and his wife Sarah kiss the U.S. Open Championship trophy at the 1988 U.S. Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. (Photo: Peter Southwick/Associated Press)
And then there was the 1999 Ryder Cup at The Country Club. Facing a four-point deficit entering singles play, the Americans staged a ferocious comeback that was capped for victory on the 17th hole.
That’s where Justin Leonard, who was 4 down earlier in his match against Jose Maria Olazabal, holed a 45-foot putt that set off a premature, frenzied celebration as the U.S. team flooded the green despite Olazabal’s chance to make his putt and keep the match going.
After the green was finally cleared, Olazabal missed his putt and the U.S. won.
Nineteen-year-old Sergio Garcia played brilliantly for Europe that week; he is one of three players in this week’s field to have played in the 1999 Ryder Cup, the other two being Jim Furyk and Phil Mickelson.
“It’s not overly long, and you have a wedge to the green. But the green is always tricky,” Garcia said. “But it always feels if you hit a decent shot to the green it always feels you have a birdie putt because the green is small.
“It’s tricky, the two-tiered green, especially if it gets a little firm, like it was in the Ryder Cup, and then the back pin is very difficult to get to. There’s a very small area to land your ball and if you hit it too hard it can easily one hop over the green, and then you have a difficult up-and-down.
And if you fly it on the bottom, trying to skip it up there, it’s tough to get up the slope. But that’s the beauty of all the old designs. The greens are small, and the areas where you have to hit the ball are very tiny and you have to be very precise.”
Chances are another eerie moment or two will take place on the 17th hole this week. It will be the latest entry to the legend Ouimet ignited in 1913.
“That’s what’s so good about golf is the history and the tradition and these stories,” McIlroy said. “The fact that he grew up just off the 17th hole here, and we’re still talking about it to this day over 100 years on. That’s so cool.
BROOKLINE, Mass. — Francis Ouimet. Michael Thorbjornsen.
They may be separated by more than 100 years, but the goal is the same: Win the U.S. Open.
In 1913, Ouimet, who grew up across the street from The Country Club, claimed the Open championship as a 20-year-old amateur. Now, 109 years later, Thorbjornsen, who grew up 15 minutes away from the famed course in Brookline, is attempting to do the same.
“It’s really cool the position that I’m in and how it emulates Francis a little bit,” Thorbjornsen said. “But, I mean, I’m a different person than him. I’m going to try to do the same thing that he did and just hope for the best.”
Hometown kid tries to win U.S. Open
This isn’t Thorbjornsen’s first jaunt at a U.S. Open.
In 2018, he won the U.S. Junior Amateur. The victory earned Thorbjornsen a spot in the 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach — where he made the cut as a 17-year-old and finished 79th.
The Wellesley High grad is trying to do a little better this time around. Thorbjornsen will tee off as part of the opening group at 6:45 a.m. ET Thursday.
“My game has definitely gotten a lot better,” Thorbjornsen said. “I’m just excited to go out and play on Thursday.”
This week, Thorbjornsen has enjoyed a growing entourage.
Friends and family flock each fairway during practice rounds. On his bag is longtime friend and now caddie, Drew Cohen, who graduated from Wellesley High with Thorbjornsen in 2020. The two friends even bought matching T-shirts that have “1913” written on the front with a silhouette of Ouimet and his caddie, Eddie Lowery.
“Definitely trying to channel that energy this week,” Thorbjornsen said.
“He’s a hometown kid, he’s an amateur and I feel like that says it right there,” Cohen said. “We’re going to try to pull off something special here.”
To get to Brookline, Thorbjornsen secured one of three spots in an eight-player playoff at the Final Qualifying in Purchase, New York. The Stanford sophomore has had a solid build-up to the qualifying as he compiled a 70.66 stroke average during his 2021-22 season.
Now, he’s competing for a major championship as an amateur.
“It feels like a home event,” Thorbjornsen said. “That’s why it feels really good just having all the support. It’s kind of nerve-wracking out there, just playing in the U.S. Open, especially 15 minutes away from my house. All the help, all the support, (it) definitely helps a lot.”
His father is his coach
Joining Thorbjornsen this week is his golf coach, who also happens to be his father.
The last time Thorbjorsen saw his dad, Ted, in person was in 2019 at the U.S. Amateur at Pinehurst. Ted, who lives in Abu Dhabi, made sure he wasn’t going to miss seeing his son play in Brookline this week.
“It’s nice seeing your son at the U.S. Open,” Ted said. “That’s what you wish for. I know that’s what he’s been wishing for so, so long. You don’t get such an opportunity, again, when you’re 20 years old at The Country Club.”
At a news conference on Monday, Thorbjornsen mentioned he and his father do the best they can with his swing mechanics despite being separated by a couple thousand miles. He also had a special message for his father at the presser.
“It’s really good to have you out here, Dad,” Thorbjornsen said. “Thanks for coming.”
The entire Wellesley community will come in droves on Thursday and Friday to see Michael Thorbjornsen tee it up. He’s hoping to replicate what another amateur did more than a century ago.
“It almost seems like a dream but it’s a reality,” Cohen said.
“I’m just extremely grateful for these two opportunities to play against the best players in the world,” Thorbjornsen said, “and (I’m) just really looking forward to start on Thursday.”
When the amateur won the title in an upset against British veterans Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, he credited his caddie, Eddie Lowery, a 10-year-old boy from nearby Newton who was his loudest cheerleader.
The stunning victory cemented a place for Ouimet and Lowery — and The Country Club, host of the upcoming 2022 U.S. Open — in golf history. Here’s what you need to know about The Country Club.
Who was Francis Ouimet’s caddie?
A 20-year-old Brookline native who had caddied at TCC, Ouimet was fresh off a loss in the U.S. Amateur when the president of the United States Golf Association asked if he would play in the Open. Though he initially declined, Ouimet joined after his boss gave him time off to play.
Finding a caddie proved more difficult.
Lowery and his brother, Jack, played hooky from school to watch the play at TCC, and Jack agreed to caddie for Ouimet after the golfer’s original man bailed. When a truant officer caught Jack, however, Eddie took three street cars over to TCC and pleaded with Ouimet to take his brother’s place.
“I’ve never lost a ball,” Lowery advertised, not mentioning he had rarely caddied, according to TCC historian Frederick Waterman.
After winning the 1913 U.S. Open, Brookline’s Francis Ouimet, rear, credited his caddie, 10-year-old Eddie Lowery. Ouimet later dedicated this photo, writing over Lowery’s towel, “This is the boy who won the 1913 Open.” (Photo: The Country Club)
Knowing the course as well as he did, “Ouimet didn’t really need a caddie,” Waterman said. “What he needed was someone to believe in him, which Eddie Lowery did with all his heart.”
Ouimet’s win kickstarted the American golf boom, Waterman said. Both he and Lowery left lasting legacies at TCC, including a 2005 incident, when an assistant golf professional spotted the ghostly figures of a boy and a young man sitting on a bench, dressed in golf clothing from a century prior.
The Country Club membership
The ghost sightings — there have only been a couple over the years, according to Waterman — are part of the lore of The Country Club, one of the United States’ oldest and most exclusive clubs.
Founded in 1882, TCC only began allowing women as voting members in 1989, and didn’t have a Jewish member until the 1970s, or a Black member until 1994.
So exclusive is the club that former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said he and his wife were “blackballed” from joining. Former New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady — whose previous residence is visible from the TCC course — had a difficult time getting in.
In its early days, The Country Club employed a flock of sheep to keep the greens trimmed. (Photo: The Country Club)
Who founded The Country Club?
The Country Club’s unique name, lacking identifiers, hints at its historical status. When he and his friends set out to create the club, founder J. Murray Forbes, an international trader, borrowed the name from a club in Shanghai.
At the time of its founding, The Country Club was the only “country club” in the Western Hemisphere, according to Waterman.
While TCC has hosted many high-profile golf competitions, including the 1999 Ryder Cup, 2013 U.S. Amateur and three U.S. Opens, early activities were primarily equestrian.
Establishing the golf course
Golf came to Massachusetts in 1892 with Florence Boit, who brought equipment back from her studies in Europe and shared the game with her uncle and friends. Smitten, the new golf converts convinced TCC’s executive committee to spend $50 to lay out six holes on the Clyde Park grounds.
Willie Campbell, the club’s first head golf professional, helped expand the course. His wife, Georgina, later became America’s first female golf professional at nearby Franklin Park.
Georgina Campbell, wife of Willie Campbell, the first head golf professional at The Country Club. Willie later moved over to Franklin Park, and Georgina took over after he died in 1900, becoming the first female head pro in the U.S. (Photo: The Country Club)
Meanwhile, TCC rose to the top of America’s nascent golf industry as one of five charter clubs to found the United States Golf Association.
In the second U.S. Open in 1896, European pros threatened to withdraw if John Shippen, a Black man, and Oscar Bunn, a member of the Shinnecock Nation, were allowed to play at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, their home course. The USGA’s president put his foot down, the naysayers backed off, and Shippen and Bunn played.
When the U.S. Open came to Brookline in 1913, TCC — which boasted four of the USGA’s first eight presidents — guaranteed Shippen was welcome. No Black man would play again in the U.S. Open until 1948.
Tricky course: One of the best in the U.S.
Over the years, The Country Club has attracted the world’s greatest golfers, many of whom have loved and lost on the tricky course.
Half a century after Ouimet’s victory, golf was experiencing another boom as the charismatic, telegenic Arnold Palmer rose in popularity. Palmer came to TCC for the 1963 U.S. Open, and spectators watched in horror as his ball came to a rest in a tree stump at the 11th hole. It took Palmer three swings to get it back into the fairway.
During the 1963 U.S. Open at The Country Club, legendary golfer Arnold Palmer watched as his ball came to a rest at a rotted tree stump at the 11th hole. He gamely took three swings and managed to get it into the fairway, but ultimately came up short to Julius Boros. (Photo: The Country Club)
During the 1963 U.S. Open at The Country Club, legendary golfer Arnold Palmer watched as his ball came to a rest at a rotted tree stump at the 11th hole. He gamely took three swings and managed to get it into the fairway, but ultimately came up short to Julius Boros.
Other pros have learned the hard way that TCC’s course requires strategizing, rather than hitting long. Jack Nicklaus “tried to impose his game on the course,” Waterman recalled, missing the cut in both 1963 and 1988, when TCC next hosted the U.S. Open.
TCC, which covers more than 235 acres, regularly ranks among the best courses in the world. In May, Golfweek ranked TCC the best private course in Massachusetts.
“You want a golf course to be like having a conversation with an interesting person, so that every time you meet that person you have a different conversation,” Waterman said. “The best golf courses are the ones where every round is different, but it’s always interesting, it’s always compelling because of the variety, because of what it demands of you.”
The course’s natural features set it apart, particularly the rocky outcroppings and fescue grass-lined bunkers, which look unfinished by design, said Brendan Walsh, TCC’s head golf professional.
The Country Club has played host to golf’s greats, including The Golden Bear himself, Jack Nicklaus.
Walsh listed the third hole as one of his favorites. “It’s our number one handicap hole in the front nine, and it’s a beautiful vista from the tee,” he said. “You look down and the horizon is our skating pond, as we call it.”
Both the third hole and 11th — another of Walsh’s favorites — have similar features, driving down to a generous area that funnels into a narrower path among the rocks, he explained.
Which holes will be used for the 2022 U.S. Open?
The club’s main course consists of the Clyde and Squirrel nines combined, and the upcoming U.S. Open will be played on a composite course including 15 holes from Clyde and Squirrel, as well as four additional holes from the Primrose nine (the first and second holes will be combined, Walsh explained).
He said the 2022 Open, to be played June 13-19, is meaningful in light of Ouimet’s 1913 win there, which put the game of golf on the map in America.
“For the U.S. Open to come back to that location where the history began and people realized that it’s an accessible game for all is what’s the most exciting,” he said. “To be able to share that around the world is pretty special.”
What he accomplished in 1913 is why Francis Ouimet’s memory is still feted.
This story was originally published June 9, 2013.
Given the width of separation – 127 years from his birth on May 8, 1893, nearly 107 years from his epic U.S. Open triumph and almost 53 years since he died – few people alive can say they met Francis Ouimet.
So how is it that so many can’t forget him?
Ouimet was of niblicks and mashies, spades and spoons – instruments foreign to nearly all of us. But he also was of dignity and grace, conscience and character – qualities still at the core of our being.
What he accomplished on those September days in 1913 – a 20-year-old who walked across the street from his home to The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he had caddied just a few years before, to not only play in the U.S. Open but to win it – is why Ouimet’s memory is still feted.
But it is what he did for the next 54 years that hits at the essence of the man. He never lived off his celebrity.
It is no question to ask a lady, but then Barbara McLean laughs.
At the time this story was first published, she said she was 92, and while “I can’t get around like I used to, from the neck up, I’m fine.”
Her father was “just Dad, a very, very modest man,” and for most of their childhoods, Barbara and sister Jane – both of whom live on Cape Cod – never knew the grandness of what Francis Ouimet had accomplished as a young man.
At a time when golf was dominated by the Brits and the game was only for the elite, Ouimet and his 10-year-old caddie, Eddie Lowery, scripted an incredible story. In the aftermath of their playoff triumph over the greatest players of the day, Britons Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, it has been said that 2 million people began playing golf in the United States, and Ouimet has been hailed as the “Father of American Golf.” A true American sports icon.
But to McLean, Francis Ouimet was the man who greeted them in the mornings at breakfast and sat at the dinner table in the evenings. “Always, he would ask, ‘How was school today?’ He never talked about himself,” McLean said.
Later, when she attended a local college, McLean said she would drive with her father from their home in Wellesley to the public-transportation stop. “He took the train to work; I took the car to my college classes. I should have been the one taking the subway.”
A celebrity who melted into society
Kids turn pro before they can shave. Parents re-mortgage homes to turn their kids into athletes. It’s our world, so how are we expected to comprehend and appreciate the time in which Ouimet lived?
No media blitz, no agent, no endorsement deals. A national hero, yes, but then he melted into society, seamlessly and proudly. Ouimet served a few years in the Army, married Stella Sullivan in 1918 and opened a sporting-goods store with his brother-in-law, Jack Sullivan.
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Never a wealthy man, Ouimet was extravagantly rich in friends. Many reached out to him, including Charles Francis Adams, a self-made man who was awarded the Boston Bruins NHL franchise in 1924. Adams brought Ouimet into the organization in 1931, naming him president of the Boston Tigers, a minor-league team that played in the Canadian-American Hockey League. Ouimet’s first action: Reduce ticket prices.
In the late 1930s, Ouimet was part of a syndicate that bought stock into Adams’ ownership of the National League’s Boston Braves. They sold their interest in 1944.
All the while, Ouimet had gravitated into the world of investments. He worked for Harrison & Bromfield, then for White, Weld & Co., until 1954, when at age 61, he joined Brown Brothers Harriman.
John Sears sat at a desk next to Ouimet and is one of the few people alive who can say he knew the man and played golf with him.
“He was the most wonderful person on the golf course,” said Sears, some 40 years younger than Ouimet and later a notable Boston politician. “He was a grand soul but never wanted to be treated like one.”
A favorite Sears story points to how Ouimet never was ashamed of where he came from. At dinner one night with Sears and Herbert Jaques, a renowned New England industrialist and former USGA president, Ouimet had the attention of a young waitress.
“She was really hovering over him, and Mr. Jaques asked Francis if he should tell the woman to stop bothering him. Francis smiled and said, ‘Bothering me? I’m thrilled to death to see my sister.’ ”
‘The most significant U.S. Open’
Born May 8, 1893, to Arthur Ouimet, a French-Canadian immigrant, and Mary Ellen (Burke), of Irish descent, Francis Ouimet had two brothers and a sister. In a world without conveniences, the Ouimets had even less.
Arthur Ouimet didn’t care that Francis had won the State Amateur or made it to the second round of the U.S. Amateur weeks earlier. When the 1913 U.S. Open rolled around and Francis was being pushed to enter, the father sternly said no.
Francis Ouimet during a round of golf in 1910. Photo by FPG/Getty Images
Yet young Francis not only played, he produced “the most significant U.S. Open,” in the eyes of David Fay, former executive director of the USGA.
Ouimet trailed Vardon by four strokes through 36 holes, but a third-round 74 pulled him into a three-way tie. Ouimet, Vardon and Ray shot fourth-round 79s to set up the playoff.
The scores are etched in eternity: Ouimet, 72. Vardon, 77. Ray, 78.
Ouimet had enlisted the services of Jack Lowery as his caddie, but the 12-year-old was hauled in by a truant officer. Lowery’s 10-year-old brother, Eddie, who managed to escape the officer, was hired and received a warm endorsement on that final day, when a club member insisted Francis Ouimet employ a real caddie.
Ouimet smiled. “I’ll stick with Eddie,” he said.
‘He was true to himself’
Sweet symmetry entered the Ouimet story a several years ago, when Caitlin Wallerce went on a job interview at the Boston office of Brown Brothers Harriman. Venerable doesn’t begin to describe this institution. It dates to 1818, the oldest private bank in the United States. Never during the interview nor for years after she had been hired did Wallerce mention why walking past or into BBH’s most private board room, the “Francis Ouimet Room,” filled her with enormous pride.
The great man was her great-grandfather.
“My mother (Sheila Macomber) and my grandmother (Barbara McLean) have told me stories, so I know what kind of person he was,” Wallerce said. “He was true to himself.”
BBH is where Ouimet guarded financial investments for Ken Venturi, Lowery (who became a multimillion-dollar auto dealer in San Francisco) and so many other friends who had entrusted him.
Never did he fail them, but neither did he flash his achievements. Sears marveled at that about Ouimet. He knew of the legendary golf career – the 1913 epic, of course, as well as the 1914 and 1931 U.S. Amateur titles; the nine semifinal appearances in the national amateur; the 1914 French Amateur victory; the six Massachusetts Amateur crowns; 12 Walker Cups as player or captain; and the third-place finish in 1925, when he played in his sixth and final U.S. Open.
Francis Ouimet, George Duncan, Bobby Jones and George Von Elm at British Amateur golf championship. Photo by FPG/Getty Images
Human dignity made Ouimet special, Sears said, and it’s why luminaries such as Bobby Jones stayed close.
Jones had lost to Ouimet in 1920, their inaugural meeting in the U.S. Amateur, but the next three matches were decidedly in favor of Jones (1924, ’26, ’27; twice by 11-and-10, once by 6-and-5). Yet just as a rising pro out of New York named Gene Sarazen turned to Ouimet for mentorship, so, too, did Jones.
“I can remember those times when I’d answer the phone and tell my father that Mr. Jones was calling, his eyes would light up,” McLean said.
His friendships extended to the White House, too, because in the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower asked Ouimet to come out to Palm Springs, California, for some golf. The late Stokley Towles, a former BBH partner, recalled that story in “The Communicator Yearbook.” It seems Ouimet’s request was turned down by company partner Louis Curtis, who said: “I do not recall that the firm does any business with the president of the United States.”
When the White House relented and sent Air Force One to Boston, Ouimet went. “But I’m sure they made him take a day off,” Sears said, laughing.
Later, when Ouimet was made the first American-born captain of the R&A, it was Eisenhower who produced the painting of Ouimet in the red jacket.
Jones, Sarazen and Walter Hagen were three of the first four men inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Ouimet, who died in 1967, rounded out the brilliant foursome, a testament not only to how he had played the game but for how he had lived his life.
“He was the great boy,” wrote Herbert Warren Wind, “who became a great man.”
