The Long Golden Afternoon by Stephen Proctor

Author:Stephen Proctor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

Eyes on America

By July, the golf world’s focus had shifted back to the United States. Vardon returned to America after the Open, continuing a barnstorming tour that saw him compete up and down the east coast, through the Midwest, into Canada, and as far west as the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

He remained all but invincible, playing 47 exhibition matches and winning 33 of them. Again he lost only once in a singles match, falling to the same man who’d beaten him earlier, Nicholls, this time by one hole. Vardon’s goal all along had been to win the US Open, scheduled for the first week of October in Wheaton, Illinois. It would be played at the Chicago Golf Club, designed by one of the founders of the game in America, C.B. Macdonald.

‘I was exceedingly keen to win the American Open Championship,’ Vardon wrote, ‘as I thought it would be a fitting climax to the successful tour which I had so far experienced.’

No sooner had the Open concluded at St Andrews than rumours began circulating in the British press that Taylor would soon be off to America himself, intent on confronting his fiercest rival again at Wheaton. Initially, Taylor denied the rumours, but by early August he, too, was steaming towards New York.

It wasn’t simply the chance to become the first man to simultaneously hold the Open titles of both nations that lured Taylor to America. Five years earlier, he and a friend, George Cann, had formed a club-making business. Taylor had no illusions that he was a club maker, a skill required of all professionals. Teaming up with Cann solved that problem. By 1900, Cann had moved to the States, setting up a branch of their business in Pittsburgh. He persuaded Taylor to capitalise on his third Open victory with an exhibition tour of the country.

The passage across the Atlantic was tough for Taylor. He suffered a terrible bout of seasickness. During his three months in the US, Golf Illustrated reported, Taylor never felt his best, struggling with the heat and finding American food hard on his nervous digestive system. He didn’t pursue a schedule as gruelling as Vardon’s, partly because the minute he landed in New York he was offered a deal no man could have refused.

Colonel G.B.M. Harvey, chief executive of Harper & Brothers, publisher of Golf magazine in the US, learned that Taylor was a capable writer and asked him to become a correspondent. His job would be to cover important matches, write about how to play golf, and produce travel pieces on American courses. Harvey offered Taylor a staggering £2,000 a year to join the magazine’s staff, and agreed to take on all of his expenses in the States.

‘It was my first introduction to the possibility of earning big money in a very pleasant manner and I readily accepted such a tempting offer,’ Taylor recalled. He started each morning by reporting to Harper’s offices to get his assignment, and even bought himself a Stetson hat so he would look the part of a magazine correspondent.

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