You are a journalist and, after the celebrated and historic victory of Jon Rahm in the 2023 Masters, you make a monumental blunder by categorically stating on public television that the man from Barrika is relatively Spanish, that his victory does not spark much enthusiasm, and that golf is an elite sport detached from the majority classes. Before gagging yourself and stepping out to perform an exercise of self-criticism and resolve, which should be even greater than that of some members of royalty, surely, and to find a mitigating factor where there are none, you should ask yourself where this crude social stereotype comes from, which is not exclusive to those who have platforms to make it resonate and is nothing more than one of those shortcuts we humans use to quickly understand the world.
Surely Lucía Méndez, like so many others, got stuck in the memories of the peak era of explicit elitism when golf transitioned from a popular Scottish game, born as the people’s game, to a gentleman’s sport, and certainly with the supremacy of those who played it across the English Channel. This period roughly spanned from 1830, the year from which private clubs proliferated in the United Kingdom, to 1930 when the Great Depression marked the turning point that shattered the apparent moral legitimacy of the previous approach. Then ostentation became indecent, private clubs closed or lost money, public courses appeared in the United States, and the media began to popularise golf.
Before 1930, the ideal was the amateur gentleman who played for honour, that which is the soul’s heritage, and from then on, the professional became the centre of the spectacle, and talent began to be valued more than lineage. Some astute reader will surely want to bring up figures like old Tom Morris and his son, but they were merely tolerated exceptions. They were ‘accepted’ for being too good or even useful, but the system itself remained intact.
And it is here, dear reader, where it is essential to call to the stand a golfer, Harry Vardon, who is not made only of numbers, results, and trophies but also of silences, sometimes complicit and other times intimidating, and elegance. The chosen one to defend my argument is no nobody, -although many in his time thought golf was not made for those of his class-, as between 1896 and 1914 Vardon won six Open Championships and thereby set a record that still withstands the test of time.
What was peculiar about Vardon, moreover, was his way of winning with a long and serene swing, that foundational grip that we all wish we could recognise in our own, and a composure that imposed without the need to raise his voice. He had that mix of precision and calm that, by intellectualising golf, turned it, as someone named Corrochano would say, into art.
In an era dominated by the drive and power where young people are taught to hit it as far as possible, then refine the swing and adjust precision, it is not surprising that there are still players who win as Vardon did, placing the ball on the good side of the hole, protecting against error with a solid strategy and letting precision do the work. Names like Abraham Ancer, Morikawa, Harman, or Tom Kim, or even two renowned Ryder captains like Luke Donald and Zach Jonson, demonstrate that modern golf continues to reward intelligence and strategy as much as distance.
Well, Harry Vardon was in himself another amendment to the caricatured stereotype that golf is a sport of elites. Born into a humble family in Jersey, he entered the game as a gardener and caddie and worked his way to the top through skill, discipline, and talent. In an era when well-off amateurs set the prestige, Vardon not only dignified the figure of the professional but also, I would dare to call him the first golf influencer, paving the way for Arnold Palmer and the DeChambeau of our days.
He was a master and turned golf into a respected profession. Besides designing courses, he travelled the world taking golf beyond the salons to new frontiers and competed even when tuberculosis weakened his body, but not his character, demonstrating once again that resilience eventually bears fruit in the form of victories. In his strokes, there was more than technique: there was dignity, poise, humanity. That is why anyone who discovers his story —whether a weekend amateur or a tournament winner, as I hope some of my respected readers are— ends up feeling a quiet, almost intimate admiration.
The 1913 US Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, was the scene of another notable duel, this time with persistent rain and wind, where it ceased to be looked down upon and began to be recognised for the merit of anyone who dared to play it, and Vardon was one of its star protagonists.
In 1913, the United States was experiencing a time of transition, a new president, a modernising economy, millions of immigrants filling expanding cities, and the country approaching, unknowingly, the tumultuous world preceding the Great War. Golf was still a symbol of British elite.
And it is in this context that the contest that would change history was fought, whose protagonists were Harry Vardon and Ted Ray against a young amateur, Francis Ouimet, who lived opposite the Massachusetts course, one of the founding clubs of the USGA and a historic and iconic setting of American golf.
The 1913 U.S. Open seemed to have a written ending. Vardon represented tradition, elegance, the authority of the old world. Ouimet was the face of a new, humble, hopeful America, still without medals, but full of future. However, the tournament ended in an 18-hole playoff. There, where experience usually prevails, the amateur rookie won. The roar of the crowd can still be heard when one walks through the “Home” and at that moment it was the unprepared alarm that suddenly awakened American golf.
What Vardon did made him a legend beyond trophies because he accepted defeat, which too often is orphaned, with serenity, respect, and class. That afternoon he may have lost a tournament, but he also built a bridge between two worlds.
Many decades later, someone understood that that duel between Vardon and Ouimet was not just a sporting result, but a foundational narrative of the new American golf. That someone was Mark Frost, author of the book The Greatest Game Ever Played and screenwriter of its film adaptation. The same Frost who co-created the emotional universe of Twin Peaks and made us tune in every Sunday to the screen in that unsettling experience that had as its narrative thread the murder of Laura Palmer.
That golf is also a story and can have enormous humanistic power is something I strive to demonstrate with each and every one of my chronicles. And, like Frost, I believe that it is precisely that profile, of humble origin and without fanfare and of a great gentleman of golf, for which Vardon’s story continues to speak to us today.
Vardon not only accepted losing with dignity. That afternoon in Brookline, unknowingly, he helped dismantle one of the great myths that is still difficult to break down today, that golf is only for a chosen few. By losing, he opened a crack in the aristocratic elitist tower from which the game had been viewed for centuries. Through it entered Ouimet, and with him, a way of understanding golf as effort, as opportunity, meritocracy, and a shared history with the world. Since then, the game was no longer just for those born within. It also began to be for those who dared to enter. Lee Treviño, pato Cabrera, or the recently reclaimed for the PGA cause at 62, Vijay Singh, know this. And, if the northeast wind permits, so does Seve, the genius of Pedreña, wherever he may be.
Epilogue: Besides dismantling well-intentioned journalists, I write this chronicle to respond, with affection and with more than just a loose phrase, to my family or soul friends, like Juanjo Siso, who continue to be surprised that I dedicate so many words to something that, according to them, interests so few people, among other reasons because it is an “elitist elite” sport.
Explaining it would be much, much longer. That is why I prefer to tell this story without any intention of ideological moralisation (or maybe so) but with the intention of sharing what, sometimes, without knowing it, brings us back home, like ET. And let whoever wants or knows how to understand it read it.
