WILFRED AND MEL REID
When Mel
Reid tees off at the US Women’s Open at the Olympic course in San Francisco, she
will be swinging with a spiritual affinity with the designer of the original
course Wilfred Reid, a distant relative.
Although the course has been expanded and redesigned numerous times,
Wilfred Reid is still recognized as the original course designer.
Mel Reid got an automatic invitation to the Open
based on her winning her first LPGA event, the 2020 Shoprite Classic at the
Seaview Country Club near Atlantic City, where Wilfred Reid was the first golf
pro in 1914.
As the author of The Birth of the Birdie – 100 Years of Golf at the Atlantic City Country Club, I devote a chapter to Wilfred Reid, so when I heard Mel Reid was from England; I looked her up and discovered she is from near Nottingham, where Wilfred was proud to be from Robin Hood country. I then sent Mel Reid an Instagram, asking her if they were related, and she said they sure were.
Wilfred
said that everyone in his family played golf, and he wanted to become a golf
professional, and met up with Harry Vardon, unquestionably one of the greatest
golfers of all time, who took young Wilfrey under his wing and taught him the
ropes.
Vardon
and his usual sidekick Ted Ray were from the British isle of Jersey, off the
French coast, and between them won a dozen major tournaments. Whenever they
came to America to give demonstrations, they usually took the US Open trophy
home with them.
The
first twelve U.S. Open golf championships were won by British and Scottish
professionals, until 1911, when a young, Spunky Irish-American John McDermitt
became the first American and at 19, youngest still to win the US Open in
Buffalo, New York. Inspired by McDermott’s victory, an equally young Walter
Hagen quit his assistant pro job and took up playing tournament golf, changing
the nature of the game completely.
When
McDermott, the Atlantic City Country Club pro won the following year in
Chicago, back to back, Hagen said it was the sign of a true champion. But
neither Vardon nor Ray were in either tournament, so they decided to come over
in 1913, and Vardon brought his protégé Wilfred Reid with him.
After
giving demonstrations around the country, the Englishmen headed for Brookline,
Massachusetts, the site of the 1913 Open. Before hand though they were invited to play a
tournament at Shawnee, a course on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania that
included most of the Open field. At some point, after the days golf was over,
they went to a bar for some drinks, where a fist fight broke out between Ted
Ray and Wilfred Reid. Reid later said that he sparked the fight by asking Ray - how he could be a socialist while making so much money playing golf?
After
John McDermott won the Shawnee tournament by eight strokes, he gloated in the
locker room, promising everyone that neither Vardon nor Ray would take the Open
trophy home with them, a threat that was picked up by the media and took golf
off the sports pages and put it on the front page of every English language
news paper in the world.
The USGA
reprimanded Wilfred Reid and Ted Ray for fighting and McDermott for his rude
outspoken promise, and they all apologized.
At
Brookline Wilfred Reid was tied with Vardon for the lead at the half way mark,
but both Reid and McDermott fell off the lead, leaving young amateur champion,
caddy and son of the groundskeeper Francis Ouimet to full fill McDermott’s promise. The tournament ended in a three way tie
between Vardon, Ray and Ouimet, and played out the next day in what has been
described as “The Greatest Game,” won by Ouimet, who maintained his amateur
status throughout his career.
While
Vardon and Ray went home without the Open trophy, Wilfred Reid liked America
and took up the offer from gas magnet Clarence Geist to be the first golf pro
at his new, luxurious, private club, the Seaview, off bay from Atlantic City. When Geist
couldn’t get a tee time to play the Atlantic City Country Club, he had his own
club built - Seaview. Geist saw Wilfred Reid’s name at the top of the leaderboard in most
tournaments, and named him the Seaview pro.
In 1916
Wilfred Reid attended the first meeting of the PGA, where the first order of
business was to take up a collection for John McDermott, one of golf’s greatest
tragedies. While returning from the
British Open, his steamship was rammed and sunk, and McDermott survived in a
life boat, but when he got home, learned his life’s savings were lost in the
stock market. He had a nervous breakdown and never recovered to play serious
golf again.
After
awhile Wilfred Reid went on to the Wilmington Country Club in Delaware, and
later Michigan, where he not only worked as a club professional – making golf
balls, clubs, giving lessons and playing tournaments, he also designed and laid
out a number of golf courses, some in Michigan, but also the original design of
the Olympic course in San Francisco in 1917, where the US Women’s Open will be
held.
At
Seaview, Reid was replaced by “Jolly” Jim Fraser, from Scotland, whose son Leo
became a golf professional. When Leo returned home from World War II, he
purchased the deteriorating Atlantic City Country Club and restored it to its
former glory, and in 1946 brought Wilfred Reid in to be his golf pro.
In 1948,
while Wilfred Reid was the pro, Leo hosted the third U.S. Women’s Open, won by
Babe Zaharias. At that time Wilfred Reid became known for coaching women golf
champions, both amateur and professional.
Before
eventually retiring to Florida, Wilfred Reid wrote a letter addressed to Leo
Fraser in which he put his career in a nutshell:
My Life in Golf – By Wilfrid Reid
It’s hard to believe it now, but
I almost became a minister instead of a professional golfer. At least my family
had that in mind for me until I was about 14. My family all played golf – my
grandfather, my father, my brother – all of them – so it was only natural for
me to start. I was about five years old when I began and by the time I was 14 I
was a pretty good player.
I was born in Sherwood Forest – an outlaw, you know – and golf was popular in
Nottingham like every place else. The Notts, the gentlemen of Nottingham, allowed
us to play on the golf course. We were artisans, you know, the working men.
Anyway, in 1898 Harry Vardon played an exhibition match there and after seeing
him I don’t think I ever considered any other career besides golf.
Instead of studying for the
ministry I went to Edinburgh as an apprentice to golf professional. Well, this
was a few years before the rubber-core ball came out and people were still
using the guttie. I learned to make golf balls using molds, two halves and put
them together. I used to make several dozen balls a day.
Harry Vardon was very quiet on
the course. The thing I remember most is that there was a great crowd of people
gathered there, and when I stepped up on the first tee I was so scared I
couldn’t talk. Then Vardon came up and said, “What’s the matter, lad?” I
pointed to all the people and he said, “Don’t worry about them, they’re only
trees.” I never forgot how kind he was.
It was during these years that we
had what we were called international matches, between teams from England and
Scotland. I was on the English team seven years – from 1906 through 1913 and my
record was 10 victories, one loss and one match halved. There were some great
matches, as you might imagine, since England has players like Vardon, Taylor
and Ray, while Braid, Herd and Willie Park were on the other side.
It’s funny how some things remain
in your mind, while more important ones are sometimes forgotten. I recall
looking for Ray at the 1913 Open and found him in the bar of the hotel with
Alex Smith. They were having a big argument about socialism. Then I had to open
my big mouth. I said, “Ted, how the hell can you argue in favor of socialism
when you make as much money as you do?”
Well, Ted really got angry at
that, really upset, and he punched me right in the face and knocked me clear
over the table. My face was swollen clear out to the ear, and the next day I
had a devil of a headache. Vardon was very upset and said he was going to
withdraw, but I talked him out of it.
While I was here, I talked to a
lot of fellows I had known in Britain and saw how well they were doing and how
much golf was growing here, and I began to wonder if it might not be a good
thing for me to make the move. As it turned out, I went back home and stayed
there a couple of years, then came here permanently in 1915 and took the job at
Seaview in Atlantic City.
I don’t know what I would have
done in other circumstances, but the war was on and golf in Britain was almost
at a standstill.
I wasn’t too happy there and was
soon looking for another club. Then Gil Nichols came to me and said he was
accepting an offer from Great Neck, on Long Island, and he told me to come down
to his present club at Wilmington and play a match with him. He wanted to
introduce me to the people at the club because he thought he might be able to
get the job. It was a sort of a game of musical chairs because I took Gil’s
place at Wilmington, he took Jimmy Fraser’s place at Great Neck, and Jimmy took
my place at Seaview.
I stayed at Wilmington seven
years and during that time I became an American citizen. I had studied the
material from top to bottom so I answered all of them correctly, and when the
judge congratulated me he admitted he hadn’t known all the answers himself.
Well, I’ve been here and there since
then. I spent several years in Detroit and I used to spend every winter in St.
Augustine. I was around when the PGA was founded in 1916, and after I went to
Detroit I got Leo Fraser and Warren Orlick into the PGA. Both of them later
became president of the association, you know?
I played quite a lot of
tournament golf the first few years I was over here and in fact, I’ve never
completely stopped, because I played in the PGA Seniors.
It’s been a good life and I
wouldn’t have had it any other way, although once in awhile I wonder what my
life would have been like if I had gone ahead and studied for the ministry.
Wilfred
Reid is now buried in a grave in Florida, not far from where Mel Reid lives
when she isn’t on the LPGA tour.
After
winning four tournaments in Europe, Mel Reid turned to the LPGA in America, and
in her first year on the tour, won her first tournament at Seaview in 2020,
during the pandemic when no spectators were allowed.
Just as McDermott, Wilfred and Ted Ray were reprimanded by the USGA for their behavior at Shawnee; Mel Reid was reprimanded by the LPGA for breaking Covid protocols by taking her caddy and friends to dinner at a restaurant, and drinking beer out of the glass trophy mug she won as the Seaview champion.
If Wilfred Reid was looking over her shoulder at Seaview, he certainly will be at the Olympic, and Mel Reid will return to the Seaview to defend her title in October, this time with spectators.
When
asked about it, she simply said, “History will never be forgotten,” and while
it often is, it doesn’t have to be.
William
Kelly
Billkelly3@gmail.com 609-346-0229
