looking back
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The Tragic Tale of Johnny McDermott In the first installment of a new series, golfing historian Dr Milton Wayne rediscovers some of the unfairly forgotten characters in the history of the Royal and Ancient Game. 44
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h e recent a scent of Ror y McIlroy raised the possibility t hat he could become t he youngest ever winner of a PGA event. Beating Tiger’s record? Not this time. The holder is John Joseph McDermott Jr. Now a name barely known outside of golfing historians, this tragic figure should have been one of the most famous names in the game, feted when he passed on. Instead, one of the few mentions of his death was the headline “Yeadon Man Dies, Won Open” in his local newspaper. Who was J.J. McDermott? What did he achieve? Why is he so little known today? McDermott was perhaps the finest player in his day, a precocious talent with indomitable self-belief and a fiery temper, a multiple Majorwinner, tragically cut down by mental illness in his prime. Johnny McDermott was born in 1891 in Yeadon, Philadelphia, in a routine delivery befitting the son of a mailman. Born of Irish immigrant parents, his upbringing was tough, although he had the good fortune to be able to get out of the city to his grandparents farm. The farm’s location across the street from the Old Aronimink Golf Club led to Johnny joining the ranks of the caddies at the club at the age of nine. The pay was 15 cents an hour, but the tips were good and he persistently played hooky before completely dropping out of high school. The impact of his lack of education and rough upbringing would resurface time and again in his short career. Ph i ladelph ia wa s at t he hea r t of US golf, boasting the oldest golf association in the country, after the USGA. Within that association was Aronimink Golf Club, opened in 1896 and one of the oldest in the US. When Johnny started at the club the professional was the newly appointed Walter Reynolds. Reynolds had taken over as pro from local legend John M. Shippen, a man of mixed Shinnecock Indian and black parentage. Shippen had been recommended to the club by his mentor Willie Dunn, Scottish architect of Shinnecock Hills. Dunn had recruited a number of local Indians to work on building the new course, and he taught several youngsters how to play the game. It is recorded that Shippen beat him by 7 strokes in the first tournament they played in together. Shippen became notorious when several professionals threatened to withdraw from the 1896 US Open due to his presence in the field. In the end, no-one withdrew and at only 17 years old. Shippen finished in fifth place in only the second US Open held. Against this background, it was no surprise that Aronimink encouraged the development HKGOLFERMAGAZINE.COM
of young golfers, and in McDermott, Reynolds found a willing pupil with staggering natural ability. In later years many stories surfaced of his precocious skills, largely apocryphal. Examples include him hitting 200-yard shots onto a target of an opened newspaper, then finishing practice by folding up the newspaper around the balls and walking away. Less told were the tales of his hair-trigger Irish temper, his bullying of other caddies and of his swaggering self confidence, claiming he could beat any pro in Philadelphia. It seems clear that these traits were also coupled with a chronic shyness, especially around women, and a lack of domestic support. Photos show a nervous, gap-toothed, slack jawed boy of slight build and medium height. Even after he began winning tournaments, his father was still totally against golf, telling the boy to “get a trade”. Repeat US Open winner, 1912 (top); McDermott's grip in 1913
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By the time McDermott entered the US Open in 1909 he had already been a professional himself for over two years. Aged 17, he finished 49th (often erroneously reported as a fourth place finish). Nevertheless, he continued to improve and in 1910, aged 18, he stunned everyone by leading after 54-holes before tying with Scottish brothers Alex and McDonald Smith after four rounds at the Philadelphia Cricket Club. Alex Smith won the subsequent play-off, but Johnny had burst onto the national scene. However, in a sign of things to come, McDermott gracefully handled defeat by telling Smith “I'll get you next year, you big tramp!” Johnny was then appointed as professional at Atlantic City Golf Club, at the time one of the best pro jobs in the country. Their faith was rewarded when J.J. McDermott Jr won the US Open the following year, 1911, at the Chicago Golf Club, winning in a playoff against Mike Brady and George Simpson. In doing so, he not only became the first American to win the national championship, he also remains the youngest player to win a PGA event and the youngest ever winner of the US Open. After Young Tom Morris he is the youngest ever winner of any Major. He was 19 years, 10 months and 12 days old. This alone should have made McDermott a household name today. The fact that he isn’t is even more astonishing when one considers that a year later he took the championship again, in 1912, at the Country Club of Buffalo, this time by two shots from Tom McNamara, with a score of 294 on the par-74 course. In doing so, he became the first man to break par over 72 holes in any tournament. McDermot t was por t rayed as a non46
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d rin k ing, pious, pol ite young man, but it seems his inner devils were never too far beneath the surface. By 1913, he cont i nued to improve, winning the Western Open, then seen as a Major championship. He also finished fifth in the Open Championship, which at that time was the best-ever showing by an American. That same year, two of the greatest names in golf, Harry Vardon and Ted Ray were brought to the US for a series of exhibition matches and tournaments, seem i ng ly del ib erately planned to get them in perfect shape to wrest the US Open from American hands again. Vardon had won the US Open on his last visit, in 1900, and Ray was the reigning British Open champion. Their preparation seemed perfect as they steamrollered all opposition in every event they undertook – until they ran into McDermott on the eve of the 1913 US Open at The Country Club in Brookline, at a tournament at Shawneeon-the-Delaware, with a near complete US Open field taking part. McDermott crushed the field, winning by eight shots from “big tramp” Alex Smith, and beating Vardon by 13 strokes and Ray by 14. It was a stunning performance and should have been the springboard to immortality in the game. Instead, it marked the start of a precipitous decline that led to McDermott being all but forgotten. His rout led to him being carried around the locker room shoulder-high in a chair by the other American pros. From his perch, Johnny reportedly declared: “We hope our foreign visitors had a good time, but we don’t think they did, and we are sure they won’t win the National Open!” This seemingly innocuous statement – which McDermott vehemently denied uttering – was seen as unforgivably rude by the standards of the day and was latched upon by an unforgiving press on both sides of the pond. From our jaded experience with tabloid journalism, it seems such an obviously contrived concoction to sell newspapers, but at the time even led to calls for McDermott to be banned from defending his US Open title in 1913. His invite wasn’t withdrawn, but the scandal had devastated Johnny and he finished a distant eighth. More galling was watching the amateur Francis Ouimet hailed as the savior of American HKGOLFERMAGAZINE.COM
golf when beating Vardon and Ray in a playoff, his own achievements seemingly ignored. McDermott’s financial situation took a further turn for the worse when stock market investments he had made went sour. In the winter of 1913, he headed for Florida to try and rebuild his confidence and undertook some lucrative teaching assignments. He set his sights on winning the 1914 Open Championship but bad luck intervened and a missed train and ferry led to him missing the start of the tournament. Nevertheless, he was offered a chance to start, but declined saying it was unfair on the other competitors who had complied with the rules. On the way home, things went from bad to worse when his liner, the Kaiser Wilhelm II, collided with a grain ship in fog. Reports of this event in McDermott’s life have been outrageously exaggerated. All accounts of McDermott tell of him taking to the lifeboats, albeit in different places and for different amounts of time. One report tells of his bobbing in a lifeboat for over 40 hours in the midAtlantic after the “shipwreck.” The reality is far less dramatic, and easily verified. The Kaiser Wilhelm II was one of the most famous liners in the world at that time (see
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sidebar), and the collision was reported in The New York Times. It is absolutely true that the ship collided with the steamer Incemore, but it was in the English Channel, not the Atlantic, and records show that the liner progressed under its own steam to Southampton for repairs. Some lifeboats were deployed, but never lowered. Despite several lurid accounts of the ship sinking, in reality it took on very little water. The compelling image of the young maestro’s sanity seeping away with the crash of each midAtlantic wave over his lifeboat for almost two days is a complete fiction. Some see the accident as the straw that broke the camel’s back, but again the reality is more prosaic. McDermott returned to the US and finished ninth in the US Open (behind Walter Hagen, who won his first Major), his fifth successive top-10 finish. More telling was a blackout and collapse he suffered back at his club in Atlantic City. He resigned from his job and after treatment suffered a rapid decline and was placed in several sanatoriums before being committed by his sister to Norristown Hospital, an asylum, as “a lunatic” in June 1916. A Philadelphian golf historian, James Finegan, reported that whilst there, his medical reports
The Shawanee Incident: McDermott (far right) alongside Ted Ray, Alex Smith and Harry Vardon; the Kaiser Wilhelm II
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at various times labeled him as “paranoid, delusional, catatonic, hallucinatory, incoherent, apathetic, silent, retarded, passive, preoccupied, seclusive.” An unfair commentator would say that this description could apply to many professionals today, but McDermott was clearly a very ill young man. Finegan also stated that “He spent endless hours scribbling unintelligibly in notebooks, claiming he was writing his mother's and father's names.” Through either uncharacteristic sensitivity, or more likely indifference, the media of the day made little mention of Johnny’s commitment and he slid into near obscurity over the following decades. His fellow pros held a fundraiser for him in 1924 and in 1928 Walter Hagan visited Johnny in Norristown. It is reported
that they played together on a six-hole course laid out in the sanatorium grounds, and Hagan reported that McDermott ’s swing was “as fluid as ever.” Belated recognition came when he was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1941, although he was “unelected” during the fiasco that followed the consolidation into one single Hall of Fame in the World Golf Village in Florida. Johnny never fully recovered, but left the asylum every so often to play a round of golf and was occasionally seen shuffling around at subsequent US Opens. He was last seen at Merion in the 1971 Trevino-Nicklaus playoff, a solitary figure trudging through the rain. He was reportedly being chased out of the clubhouse due to his scruffy appearance when he was recognised by Arnold Palmer and ushered back in. He died a couple of months later in August, just shy of his 80th birthday. Why is he so little known today? Johnny McDermott is perhaps one of the most tragic figures in the history of golf, but it may well be that the lack of recognition of his outstanding achievements is the bigger tragedy. It is fitting that from generation to generation a new young superstar arises, forcing people to dust off the record books and rediscover the name of America’s first, and unforgivably forgotten, golfing prodigy.
The Scapegoat Steamer
The last known picture: McDermott with PGA President Leo Fraser and Harry "Lighthorse" Cooper at the Atlantic City Golf Club, c. early 1970s.
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The Kaiser Wilhelm II was built by A.G. Vulcan at Bredow, near Stettin, for the Bremen Line (aka Norddeutscher Lloyd). Launched in 1902, at 216m long, 22m wide and with a depth of 16m it was larger than any previous fast steamer. It was the latest in a line of ever faster four funnel ships built by the Norddeutscher Lloyd line and was specifically designed for exceptional speed as well as first-class luxury. When full, passengers and crew totaled over 2,500. In June 1904 it took the coveted Blue Riband for the fastest-ever eastbound Atlantic crossing, at an average speed of 23.15 knots. The ship was interned by the Americans at the outbreak of World War I and became a troop ship when the US entered hostilities in 1917. Renamed USS Agamemnon it carried troops back and forth until 1920 when it was laid up. It languished for years and was finally broken up in 1940.
the open
Turnberry Returns After a hiatus of 15 years, this Ayrshire beauty is back hosting golf ’s biggest event
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