Francis Ouimet

Ouimet was born to Mary Ellen Burke and Arthur Ouimet in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb west of Boston. His father was a French-Canadian immigrant, and his mother was originally from Ireland. When Francis was four years old, his family purchased a house on Clyde Street in Brookline, directly across from the 17th hole of The Country Club. The Ouimet family grew up relatively poor and were near the bottom of the economic ladder, which was hardly the position of any American golfer at the time. As far as the general public was concerned, amateur golf was reserved for the wealthy, while professional golf provided competition and income for former caddies, prohibited by the USGA from caddying after the age of 16 or lose their amateur status.[3]

Ouimet became interested in golf at an early age and started caddying at The Country Club at the age of 11. Using clubs from his brother and balls he found around the course, he taught himself to play. His game soon caught the eye of many country club members and caddie master Dan MacNamara. It was not long before Ouimet was the best high school golfer in the state. When he was a junior in high school, his father insisted that he drop out and do "something useful" with his life. Ouimet worked at a drygoods store before landing a job at a sporting goods store owned by future Baseball Hall of Famer George Wright.[3][4]

In 1949, a group of Ouimet's friends started a scholarship in his honor, naming it the Francis Ouimet Scholarship Fund.[1] The scholarship was created to give college scholarship aid to young people who worked as caddies at clubs in Massachusetts. The inaugural class had 13 scholars who received a total of $4,600. Since then more than 5,100 students have been selected as Ouimet Scholars, receiving more than $26 million in need-based college tuition assistance. Today's requirements state that young people who have given at least two years of service to golf as caddies or worked in a pro shop or in course superintendent operations in Massachusetts are eligible to receive the Scholarship.

The Ouimet Fund is the second largest caddie scholarship in the U.S. and the largest independent scholarship fund in Massachusetts. Students must go through a rigorous application and interview process before being selected as a Ouimet Scholar. Once selected, students may attend any school they wish, which is one of the major differences between the Ouimet Fund and the Evans Fund, the other major caddie fund in the U.S. Since the Ouimet Fund is a need-based scholarship, awards can range anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $30,000 or more over four years.

The Francis Ouimet Award for Lifelong Contributions to Golf was first presented in 1997 and is presented annually at the Francis Ouimet Scholarship Fund's banquet. Past winners include Arnold Palmer (1997), Peter Jacobsen (2006), Jack Nicklaus (2007), and Annika Sörenstam (2010).[9]

In 1988 a portrait of Ouimet appeared on a commemorative 25-cent United States Postal Service postage stamp in his honor.[10]

In 2002, Mark Frost wrote a biographical account of Ouimet's U.S. Open victory titled The Greatest Game Ever Played: Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and the Birth of Modern Golf. Shortly afterward, Frost was tapped by Walt Disney Studios to write a motion picture adaptation. The Greatest Game Ever Played was released in theaters in 2005. The film starred Shia LaBeouf as Ouimet and was directed by Bill Paxton and produced by Larry Brezner.

Appearing on the cover of The Greatest Game is a photograph of Ouimet at the U.S. Open with his ten-year-old caddie, Eddie Lowery. This iconic image is one of the best known in American golf and was used as the logo for the United States Golf Association's Centennial celebrations. A statue of Ouimet and Lowery based on the photograph stands in Brookline, Massachusetts, and at the World Golf Hall of Fame in St. Augustine, Florida.

Oddly enough, a street is named after Ouimet in Greenside, Johannesburg, South Africa, close to the Parkview Golf Course. A number of adjacent streets are also named after golfers,[11] although the street in Johannesburg is named Quimet Street. How the misspelling occurred is not known. The street is still sometimes pronounced (correctly) without the Q, while it is also sometimes pronounced in the French way (Wee-May).

Ouimet aspired to become a businessman to elevate himself into the middle class. The life of a professional golfer at that time did not offer an avenue to reach that goal. Within ten years of his U.S. Open victory, Ouimet had started to work as a banker and eventually a stock broker, which had always been his intention. He culminated his business career as a customer's financial advisor at Brown Brothers Harriman.

During the First World War he served in the US Army.[12]

He married Stella M. Sullivan on September 11, 1918.[13] They had two daughters: Janice Salvi and Barbara McLean.

Ouimet died in Newton, Massachusetts, on September 2, 1967, at age 74.[14]

• 1909 Boston Interscholastic
• 1910 Boston Interscholastic, Woodland Golf Club Open
• 1911 Woodland Golf Club Open
• 1912 The Country Club Cup, Allston Golf Club Open Championship
• 1913 U.S. Open, Massachusetts Amateur, Meadow Brook Golf Club Open
• 1914 U.S. Amateur, Massachusetts Amateur, French Amateur
• 1915 Massachusetts Amateur, Baltimore Country Club Spring Invitational
• 1917 Western Amateur
• 1919 Massachusetts Amateur
• 1920 North and South Amateur
• 1922 Massachusetts Amateur, Houston Invitational
• 1923 St. George's Challenge
• 1924 Crump Memorial
• 1925 Massachusetts Amateur, Gold Mashie Tournament, Bermuda Handicap Tourney at Riddle's Bay
• 1927 Crump Memorial
• 1931 U.S. Amateur
• 1932 Massachusetts Open
• 1934 Boston Open

Professional and amateur majors shown in bold.

Amateur

• Walker Cup: 1922 (winners), 1923 (winners), 1924 (winners), 1926 (winners), 1928 (winners), 1930 (winners), 1932 (winners, playing captain), 1934 (winners, playing captain), 1936 (winners, playing captain), 1938 (non-playing captain), 1947 (winners, non-playing captain), 1949 (winners, non-playing captain)

• Gibson, Nevin H. The Encyclopedia of Golf (A.S. Barnes & Company, 1958)
• Frost, Mark The Greatest Game Ever Played: Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and the Birth of Modern Golf (Hyperion, 2002)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Francis Ouimet.

• Francis Ouimet Biography from the Francis Ouimet Scholarship Fund
• World Golf Hall of Fame profile
• 1913 U.S. Open by Bernard Darwin
• Electronic Resources From SoHG Archives
• Hagen Swing Sequences – Brassie, Iron and Putt From SoHG Master Classes
• Francis Ouimet at Find a Grave