Every sport has its great moments. Usually, they occur during a championship game. Or they occur during a game directly or event leading directly to the championship event, like a playoff game or the semi-finals of a match. What American sports fan can forget the Americans beating the Russians in hockey in the Olympics? Whatever it is, these moments are etched in our minds forever. They're also well known to its fans and sportswriters.
But some great moments in sports are less well known and less heralded. And they don't always involve a championship game, providing golf tips, a teacher giving a golf lesson, or achieving a low golf handicap. They just happen and they don't get much play in the media. Yet they make a major impact on the sport, changing it forever in some way. Golf seems to abound in quite, unheralded moments like these. Below are five of them that have made the game what it is today.
Hogan Invents Practice
One day in 1940, Ben Hogan is standing in a field with a pile of old balls at his feet. One by one, he's hitting 5-irons exactly 163 yards to the base of a flagpole when Hogan's pal, Jimmy Demaret, walks up and asks him what he is doing. Hogan replies that he's practicing. When Demaret asks Hogan what that is, Hogan says he is trying to get his swing to repeat. Demaret nods his head and says, "Oh, okay." Then he says, "Listen if it's all the same to you, I think I'll go have a drink before we tee off."
Vardon Uses The Overlap Grip
It's a day like any other around the turn of the century. Harry Vardon hits his tee shot in a bunch of gorse. When he gets to the ball, he asks his caddie, "What would happen if I gripped the club by putting the little finger of my right hand over the forefinger of my left." His caddie asks, "What's the point, old chap." Vardon replies, "Well, my dear fellow, I been experimenting on the sly, and I believe I can hit it farther and straighter, if I hold the club in this fashion." The caddie kicks the ball with his right foot and says, "Not if I can't find us a better lie."
Bobby Jones Buys Some Land
It's a quiet day in Augusta, Ga., in 1931. Bobby Jones and his friend Clifford Roberts are just driving around. They're looking some land when they come upon Fruitland's Nurseries. Looking at the land, Jones says, "We could put the shopping strip here and the picture show over there." Roberts frowns and says, "That won't leave much room for the drive-in and the washateria." Jones takes a closer look and says, "Too bad there aren't more trees. It would make a good golf course."
Ouimet Wins Open
No one gives him much of a chance to win. But Francis Ouimet decides he's going to play in the 1913 Open anyway. A 20-year old amateur, he goes out and beats Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in a playoff at The Country Club in Brookline, Ma. Ouimet is the first amateur to win the Open and one of only five who have ever done it, the other being Bobby Jones, Chick Evans, Jerry Travers, and Johnny Goodman. Ouiment's victory puts golf on the front pages for the first time and contributes greatly to the game's early popularity.
Ike Practices Putting
When Calvin Coolidge was in office he was photographed wearing a full Indian headdress. This did as much to boost the image of the Indians as anything ever did. Elected President in the 1952, Dwight Eisenhower enjoys putting on the White House lawn. The Presidents interest in golf prompts hordes of people to take up the game. Not all of them end up with a Cottage at Augusta, however.
Except for Ouimet's win in 1913, an event few modern golfers are aware of, none of these events had anything to do with golf tips, golf lessons, or golf handicaps. Yet these unheralded moments forever changed the game and contributed to making golf the game it is today.
Jack Moorehouse is the author of the best-selling book "How To Break 80 And Shoot Like The Pros." He is NOT a golf pro, rather a working man that has helped thousands of golfers from all seven continents lower their handicap immediately. He has a free weekly newsletter with the latest golf tips, golf lessons and golf instruction.
