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Harry Vardon, British Golfer Born In 1870.
A well written book, by Audrey Howell, which is packed with information on Vardon's life is the main source I used in writing this article. "Harry Vardon, The Revealing Story of a Champion Golfer" is available, should you too wish to read it, from a link to an online bookseller from my website in the resource box. What makes this book even more interesting to the reader, is that the author is married to Vardon's son, born out of a long term affair vardon had with a singer. Aside from this snippet, the story of how Harry Vardon was introduced to golf is indeed fascinating. The family lived in a small cottage on Grouville common. Philip Vardon, his father made a living as a labourer after the demise of the Jersey shipbuilding industry in the 1860s. Harry Vardon would have been about eight when a golf course was laid out on the common land, on which he lived. The game, that he would have seen being played there for the first time in his home island, must have captured his interest. We can imagine that the “strange gentlemen” who were measuring up the land to set out their golf course, that years later Vardon would write about in his memoirs, My Golfing Life, could have never guessed that the poor boy watching them would be destined to become one of the greatest golfers of all. Harry stopped his schooling, aged 12, and took a job on a local farm; by the time he was fourteen he had entered domestic service in the employment of a Dr Godfrey. His next move, in 1887, was to work as an under-gardener for a Major Spofforth. Luckily for Vardon, his new employer was a keen golfer and would sometimes ask the quiet young man to accompany him on a round of golf. In this era, golf was considered a Gentleman's game and players were selected almost exclusively from the upper classes, the professions and from military officers. The lack of social rank, or finance, would have precluded Vardon from joining the newly formed Royal Jersey Golf Club, who had set up on the land outside his family home. Artisans, such as Vardon, did however form various golfing groups. It was the Major who, spotting the talent his under-gardener displayed in the game, encouraged Harry Vardon to join one such Working Men's Golfing Society. Vardon was playing to a handicap of 3 at this time and years later he would say that that this was overly tough on him, as he considered he was more likely an 8 or 10 rather than a 3. No gentleman would play golf on the Sabbath day in Victorian times and so the working men were able to play their golf on a Sunday, when the course would be allocated to them. Harry Vardon was to win his first prize in a tournament in this company of working-class golfers. Harry Vardon was not, however, the only golfer in the family. He had a younger brother called Tom who was also taken with the game. It was Tom that would decide to leave Jersey first and sail to the English mainland to find work in the north of the country. Here Tom was to learn the art of club-making at Lowe and, in pursuing his love of golf, he entered a golfing tournament at Musselburgh in Scotland. The younger Vardon won the second prize of £12 and 10 shillings. His brother, Harry, was amazed at the value of the prize money. At this time Harry Vardon's annual wage was only £16 and so it was that he resolved to save up for his own passage to England. As fate would have it, at the time that he was ready to leave Jersey, Lord Ripon engaged the Lowe company to set out a nine-hole golf course on his Yorkshire estate. Harry Vardon, on applying for the position as the professional was offered it and so, aged 20, he left his employment in Jersey to set out on the path that would take him to be six times winner of the British Open and the first Briton to ever win the United States Open. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com Nick Thorne is from Jersey. His interest in local history and fellow islander Harry Vardon in particular has led him to set up the website www.harry-vardon.com |
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