Talk:Francis Ouimet

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The movie opens in theaters across America on Spetember 30, 2005 and is receiving amazing reviews.

Photo Caption

Surely the photo caption has the figures backward. Ouimet, tall and walking with only a golf club in his hand, is at the right; his much shorter 10-year-old caddy carries the bag on the left. (I'm not editing the article with this correction, because I have no inside knowledge -- I'm just reasoning from the evidence at hand).

The Movie

The movie is simply superb. A must see for golf lovers!

The movie easily became my favorite as it is inspiring and even maked golf look interesting and exciting to people who may think it as boring. It's a quality film!

I saw it when I was seven years old, and it was great! I still watch it all the time. I have even downloaded it on my PSP! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.14.146.125 (talk) 21:44, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling

I see his name is very often spelled Quimet? Just a mistake?

Yes, that would just be an (understandable) mistake. It is Ouimet. Carl Lindberg 02:12, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It would be great if someone could post the pronunciation of his name. Is it "We-met," "We-may," or something else?

We-met, according to [1] (1951 article) and [2] (1913 article). Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:47, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

French Open

The article interviewing his daughters specifically mentions a trophy he won for the 1916 French Open. And Top 100 Golf Courses also mentions a 1916 French Open, claiming that 1916 was the inaugural year. However the article and website for the Open de France says the tournament started in 1906 and that there was no tournament in 1916 due to World War I. Does anybody know how the 1916 "French Open" relates to the Open de France? —MJBurrage • TALK • 17:36, 12 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My guess is that the article was referring to the 1914 French Open Amateur ("open" in the sense it was open to foreigners, not professionals). I can't imagine any significant golf tournament being held in France in 1916. Duncan won the 1913 French Open,[3], and I think 1906 was its inaugural year (won by Arnaud Massy). Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:56, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tournament wins - U.S. Open

Is there a special reason the US Open is bold? All the others are not. Would anyone care to fix this? Thanks Kvsh5 (talk) 16:17, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Both the US Open and US Amateur are bold because they're majors. Groink (talk) 09:24, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

An Essay on the Movie

An Essay on the Movie, The Greatest Game Ever Played.

A film not to be missed by golfers and golf fans anywhere, the movie may nonetheless be critiqued. The largest error in the movie is portraying Francis Ouimet winning the 1913 U.S. Open playoff by a stroke when Harry Vardon barely misses a long putt on the last hole. Ouimet is then shown nervously addressing his shortish putt, backing off, then holing it by a side drop. Actually, Ouimet won by 5 strokes and the outcome was settled well before on the 16th hole. Nothing of this sort in the play happened on the 18th green, where Vardon actually made 6 to Ouimet’s 4, with Ted Ray out of the hunt. While Ouimet was putting, the Englishmen Vardon and Ray stood by helplessly on the final green in the championship Ouimet had already won. Final playoff scores were Ouimet 72, Vardon 77, Ray 79.

Ouimet is portrayed as a once-good young player who had given up the game he loved (due to parental pressure) because he failed to qualify for the Open. Actually, Ouimet was the reigning Massachusetts State Amateur champion in 1913 and a well-known golfer in America and particularly in Boston. He was a member of a golf club there.

Inexplicitly, the famous 17th hole at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts (a Boston suburb), where Ouimet holed an equally famous long, curving downhill putt that tied him with Vardon and Ray in the 4th round, and later where Vardon tried to cut the dogleg during the playoff, is shown as a dogleg right. The hole is actually a dogleg left, although there is indeed a bunker at the inside corner of the turn into which Vardon drove in the playoff round. One has to wonder why this hole was reversed for the movie, since it could just as easily have been shown in its correct configuration. The green, incidentally, was virtually across the street from the Ouimet home.

The scoring system is modern and anachronistic for the movie. The players’ scores in a given group were not shown in carried score standards at the time (or indeed in any comprehensive scoreboard), and not shown in relation to par until the mid-nineteen fifties when the over/under system was introduced at the Masters. Before then, players almost always did not know where they stood in relation to other players who were not in their group except from their supporters, rumors spread by the galleries, and other often unreliable sources, such as boys running around the course with news updates.

Ouimet is shown at one point facing a stymie by Vardon. The term “stymie” refers to a situation on the putting green in which the away player’s line to the hole is obstructed by the nearer opponent’s ball. Stymies were never played in stroke play tournaments because one is not playing against the fellow competitor but rather against the course. They were only played in singles match play, and even then only if the opponent’s ball was more than 6 inches from the away player’s ball. Otherwise, and always in stroke play, upon request by the player who is away, the opponent’s ball must have been played or lifted at the owner’s option, which was the rule in the 1913 U.S. Open, a stroke play tournament (Rule 13(3) for Stroke Play, R&A Rules of Golf, 2/1/1913). Incidentally, stymies were eliminated entirely from match play rules in 1952, to the regret of no less a great champion than Bobby Jones. In one of the greatest matches in history, Jones famously laid the great English golfer Cyril Tolley a full stymie on the first extra hole of their match at St Andrews, Scotland, in the 1930 British Amateur on the way to win the first leg of his immortal Grand Slam [In 1930, Jones also won the British Open at Hoylake (Liverpool, England), the U.S. Open at Interlachen (Minneapolis, MN), and the U.S. Amateur at Merion (Philadelphia, PA), the four most important championships of the time. He retired from championship golf that year, at age 28].

Ouimet declining to play when requested is not historical. He was specifically invited and he accepted. Ray did not set a course record during the tournament. The biographical shots concerning Vardon’s childhood have no historical basis. The mysterious strangers have nothing to do with Vardon’s real life story. Vardon wore a mustache during the 1913 Open (as shown in the photos of the tournament), and probably at most other times since every known photograph until about 1920 shows him with one. The actor in the movie is clean shaven.

While Ray was considered a big man at the time, he was not obese like the actor portraying him. He was tall and big-shouldered, but not much taller than Ouimet or Vardon, and only moderately heavy, probably under 200 pounds, judging from comparing the players in the 1913 photos with Ray, Vardon and Ouimet, and the most reliable contemporary accounts of the 1913 Open by history’s finest golf writer, Bernard Darwin, who knew Vardon and Ray intimately (and by remarkable coincidence, correctly portrayed in the movie, served as Ouimet’s marker during the playoff). While taller than Vardon, Ray does not appear in the photos, including the well-known playoff photograph of the three players standing side-by-side, to exceed him in weight by a large degree, perhaps by 30 pounds or so.

The producers and director of the film are not obligated to be historically accurate. It is not a documentary. Most of these objections are minor and one can understand the license taken with the facts to make for tension and interest in the movie. The scoring system, for example, helps the viewer follow the story, even though it never happened. Ray setting the course record, likewise, plays into Lord Northcliffe’s disgust at the time and develops the plot, although not factual. Things like Vardon’s absent mustache and the wrong dogleg on the 17th make little difference to the history or the story; it is just interesting that they are wrong when they could just as well be right.

The two issues that I believe are unjustified are the disservice to Ouimet’s playoff dominance, and the false portrayal of the stymie, which simply does not make sense in a stroke play tournament.

My interest in this film (which I liked very much) derives from my reverence for Francis Ouimet as one of the incomparable amateur golfers of all time, second surely only to Bobby Jones. By all contemporary accounts, at age 20, he was utterly calm and within himself during the 1913 Open, and not only outplayed the English professionals, but did so without any apparent emotion or succumbing to pressure. He later won two U.S. Amateur Championships, played on and captained numerous Walker Cup teams, and has the distinction of being the first American to be elected Captain of the Royal & Ancient Golfing Society of St Andrews (as an amateur!). He was the first recipient of the USGA Bob Jones award, the highest honor from the USGA for distinguished sportsmanship, and is acknowledged in every Golf Hall of Fame. He was deeply respected by amateurs and professionals throughout his lifetime, and had very close friendships with Gene Sarazen and Bobby Jones, as well as the famous lifelong friendship he maintained with Eddie Lowrey, his then-10 year old caddie at the 1913 U.S. Open. At Ouimet’s funeral service in 1967, Sarazen bid him adieu with the simple wish, “Fast greens, Francis. Fast greens.” The famous English player and commentator Henry Longhurst called him the nicest, most gentle man he ever met. Francis Ouimet was a very good man. A champion for all time.

66.139.123.51 (talk) 09:01, 21 June 2009 (UTC)mikewm99[reply]

Later Achievements

The second paragraph under this section says, "Two other aspects of Ouimet's golf career are important," but it only mentions one. What's the second aspect of Ouimet's golf career that is important? It is never mentioned. - Qdiderot (talk) 16:42, 18 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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