GOLF MAGAZINE - JUNE 2012
Photo Caption: John McDermott with Open Trophy (USGA)
The Curious Case of JOHN McDERMOTT
By John Garrity
A century before 22-year-old Rory McIlroy won the U.S. Open,
19-year-old John McDermott did the same. McDermott defended his title the
following year and then did something even more remarkable: He checked into a
psychiatric ward and all but vanished from the game.
DAMNED YANKEE Before his mental illness, McDermott became
the first American to win the U.S. Open.
THE PRODIGY
McDermott (above) circa 1911, the year he won his first U.S.
Open, at 19.
Above: His champion’s medal and cleek from the ’11 Open.
Above: His champion’s medal and cleek from the ’11 Open.
“McDERMOTT WAS RUDE
Photo Credit: Birth of the Birdie
OLD GUARD Forgotten by fans, McDermott (center) was highly
regarded by such former touring pros as Leo Fraser (left) and Harry Cooper
EVERY GOLF MOVIE SEEMS TO
HAVE A “you-got-to-be-kidding-me” moment that spoils it for real golfers. In
Tin Cup it’s the scene where driving-range pro Roy McAvoy straps on so many
swing aids that he looks like a one-man band. In Bagger Vance it’s the scene
where amateur golfer Rannulph Junuh wanders into the woods for a prolonged
chitchat with his girlfriend while Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen, and thousands of
spectators wait patiently in the fairway, staring at the clouds.
The Greatest Game Ever Played has such a scene. It’s the
moment in the final round of the 1913 U.S. Open at Brookline
That’s the point in the film where I punched the pause
button. “Two thumbs down!” I said dismissively. “I mean, who writes this
stuff?”
So you can imagine my chagrin when I learned recently that
the movie’s golfer-goes-mad scene was genuine.
Genuine, I say, as distinct from accurate. John McDermott
did not, in fact, suffer a mental breakdown on the eve of amateur Francis
Ouimet’s historic playoff victory over Harry Vardon and Ted Ray. Playing for a
large and supportive gallery, the 22-year old McDermott completed his
rain-plagued round without incident and finished at 308, good for 8th
place and a $50 check. Furthermore, he looked nothing like Michael Weaver, the
actor who played him in the 2005 movie. The real McDermott was short, slight,
and clean-shaven, with soft, brown hair combed across a broad forehead.
But you have to grant filmmakers their creative license.
McDermott, an abrasive and combative man notorious for his club-throwing rages,
actually had his nervous breakdown some 13 months later in his pro shop at the
Atlantic City Country Club, and it wasn’t until the summer of 1916 that he was
committed to the Pennsylvania State Hospital for the Insane in Norristown, Pa.,
where he would reside for the better part of 55 years. If anything, the
screenplay’s portrayal of McDermott shows restraint, given that America English Channel within a year of
Ouimet’s triumph.
What’s astonishing is the historic vanishing act performed
by McDermott, who still holds the record for youngest player to win a U.S. Open
(19 years, 10 months, 12 days). The son of a West Philadelphia
mailman, he caddied at Aronimink Golf Club and learned to play on a sandlot
course in an adjoining apple orchard. Dropping out of high school in defiance
of his father – shades of Ouimet! – McDermott apprenticed with Aronimink pro
Walter Reynolds and worked at clubs in Pennsylvania New Jersey Philadelphia
Did I mention that McDermott was famously rude and bigoted?
Mark Frost, who wrote both the screenplay for The Greatest Game and the
bestseller upon which it was based, characterized him as “a rough, half-crazed
professional whom people crossed the street to avoid.” McDermott’s general
dislike of foreigners came to a boil when he encountered British accents –
which was pretty much every day, since English and Scottish pros held most of
the prestigious club jobs and ruled the tournament circuit, winning the first
16 U.S. Opens. In the movie, a smiling McDermott stands protectively by the Open
trophy while delivering a welcoming speech to Vardon and Ray, whom he calls
“the great English champions.”
SCENE: INT . CLUBHOUSE –
NIGHTTIME
McDERMOTT (easily)
As the only born American to ever win this cup, I’d like to
say welcome. We hope you boys have a nice time here in Boston
I’m no film critic, but I didn’t buy that Jekyll-and-Hyde
transformation any more than I believed the falling-to-the-turf scene. Not,
that is, until I burrowed into century-old newspapers and read contemporaneous
accounts of McDermott’s ugly outburst. The movie fibs by placing the incident at
Brookline-it actually occurred a couple of weeks earlier at the
Shawnee-on-Delaware Open, where the boastful Yank had won by a mile, beating
Vardon by 13 strokes and Ray by 14 – but the dialogue and the stage directions
ring true. History records that USGA President Robert Watson, after publicly
apologizing for McDermott’s “extreme discourtesy,” came close to banning the
troubled pro from the Brookline Open.
Truth is, the Philadelphian’s game could be as manic as his
manners. McDermott won the 1911 U.S. Open at the Chicago Golf Club despite
hitting his first two tee shots off the playoff out of bounds. Defending his
title in 1912, he won by two at the Country Club of Buffalo, but a few months
later, in hated Scotland
Nobody really knew, of course, what was coursing through the
youngster’s troubled mind, McDermott cashed in his Open wins with endorsements,
exhibitions and $1,000 challenge matches, but he squandered his newfound riches
in a plummeting stock market. Hoping to recoup at the 1914 British Open, he
somehow missed his ferry and train connections to Prestwick ,
Scotland Isle of Wight .
SCENE: EXT. FIRST CLASS DECK
– DAYTIME
Paniky passengers fight over access to a starboard lifeboat
as crewmen crank the winches. Evacuation sirens blare. McDermott,
expressionless, leans heavily against a shuddering bulkhead. He slides slowly
to the deck, oblivious to the surrounding chaos and the seawater soaking his
trousers.
STEWARD (urgently)
I’ll need you to get up, sire. We’ve been ordered to the
boats.
(shaking McDermott’s shoulder) Sir? Sir?
Okay, that’s from my own, unfinished screenplay, based
loosely on James Cameron’s Titantic. In reality, neither ship sank, nobody
died, and McDermott made it safely onto another liner. His family, though,
would partially blame the accident for his deteriorating state of mind.
McDermott had one more Open in him, and he played
respectably, finishing in a ninth-place tie at Midlothian Country Club, outside
Chicago Atlantic City Philadelphia
But McDermott never quit the game. He played on the asylum’s
six-hole course, and he ventured out for two cracks at real competition,
finishing last in the 1925 Philadelphia Open and next-to-last in that year’s
Shawnee tournament, 59 strokes behind Willie MacFarlaine. For decades
thereafter, his sisters Gertrude and Alice signed him out of the asylum for day
trips that included rounds of golf or tournament spectating.
“You must play a round with him to get your fill of
amazement,” said the Philadelphia
So no, McDermott didn’t quit the game. But neither did the
game quit him. In 1924, golfers in New York New Jersey Hagen
With the passage of time – picture calendar pages turning –
McDermott slipped into that gray zone between “Whatever happened to?” and “I
thought he died years ago.” He was deeply moved when the PGA
of America, in 1940, selected him as one of its 12 original Hall of Fame
inductees. He was happy, too, when the Atlantic City Country Club named a room
for him and put one of his championship medals on display. But it had to hurt
when he was snubbed by the “official” Golf Hall of Fame (since morphed into the
World Golf Hall of Fame). And there’s the story of the confused old man kicked
out of the pro shop at a certain PGA
championship because the staff didn’t recognize him as a two-time U.S. Open
champion.
Well, that’s one version of the story. Another, widely
circulated, takes place at Philadelphia
SCENE: INT . CLUBHOUSE –
DAYTIME
Arnold Palmer, on his way to the locker room, notices a
shambling old man being ejected from the clubhouse lobby. Recognizing the old
man, the 1960 U.S. Open champions intervenes.
ASSISTANT PRO (baffled)
But he’s just an old bum that’s been hangin’ around.
PALMER (in a kingly manner)
You’re wrong. This gentleman is the oldest living U.S. Open
champion, and he’s my special guest.
Palmer has confirmed the spirit, if not the letter, of the
story. Accounts agree that McDermott, despite his mental state, beat bogey on
Philadelphia-area courses up to his death of heart failure, in 1971, at the age
of 79. His gravestone reads: FIRST AMERICAN-BORN GOLF
CHAMPION 1911-1912.
I knew none of this when I first viewed The Greatest Game.
So I practically howled at the scene where McDermott sits down in the fairway.
Are you kidding? The spectators don’t come to his aid! They avert their eyes
and drift away, embarrassed. And McDermott’s caddie stands rigidly by the bag,
seemingly blind to his employer’s breakdown.
“That’s not believable,” I grumbled. “A champion golfer
doesn’t suddenly become invisible.”
Unless – and this is what I’ve come to believe – he’s the
champion America
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Bill Kelly's Response to this article:
To the Editor, Golf Magazine.
I was quite surprised to read John Garitty’s “The Curious
Case of John McDermott” in the June 2012 issue of Golf Magazine and learn that John
McDermott was a “famously rude, combative, abrasive, embarrassing, insane bigot,
best left forgotten.”
At the Atlantic City Country Club John McDermott still has
the reputation for being a young, brash and determined gentleman who didn’t throw
his clubs, drink or curse and attended mass every day before going to work,
where he was highly regarded as the golf professional. I thought I had
researched the life of McDermott thoroughly while writing the “Birth of the
Birdie” history of the club, but I must have somehow missed the “bigot” and
parts “best left forgotten.”
McDermott had a typical Irish-American view of the British
and Scot pros who dominated the game in America US
McDermott’s “bigoted” view of the British of that era may
have been justified, as it was supported by Walter Travis, who won the US
Amateur at the Atlantic City Country Club before he won the British Amateur,
but was so rudely treated by the British he refused to return to defend his
title, especially after his center-shafted putter was retroactively banned by
the Royal and Ancient Order of what he considered Snobs.
Walter Hagen, McDermott’s friend and colleague, confirmed
their view when he took exception to the British rule that golf pros were not
permitted in the clubhouse dining room, and refused to play until the rules
were changed. And John B. Kelly, another ACCC member and Olympic rowing
champion, was banned from participating in the Henley regatta
because he was a bricklayer and not a considered a gentleman.
It wasn’t McDermott who had bad manners and had to be taught
a lesson, it was the British and UK Shawnee Brookline
That’s when McDermott gave his famous speech, promising to
keep the US Open trophy in America United
States British Empire .
That speech set the stage for the showdown at Brookline USA UK
I hope that Golf Magazine will correct their crude mischaracterization
of John McDermott, and the true story is someday told of the great American
teenage champion who sparked and inspired today’s international competitions.
William E. Kelly, Jr.
Browns Mills , New
Jersey 08015
