They were Mac-Mc-O'-less surnames
but it's reckoned that eight signatures (three by
birth) to the United States Declaration of Independence
were of Irish descent. Twenty-two American Presidents
and some seventy million people can claim an Irish
birthright - over half are American. So it'll be
no surprise to learn that golfers to, whether Irish,
Irish American or Scots Irish American, left their
mark on the history of golf in the US whether it
was because of, or in spite of their Irish gene.
Golf was
taking off in Ireland since the formation of the
Royal Belfast GC in 1881 and the number of golf
professionals was by the early 1900s beginning to
follow suit. While Jim Larkin and James Connolly
mobilised the Irish working classes leading up to
the 1913 lockout likewise the golf professionals
tried to improve their conditions with the institution
of the Irish Professional Golf Association ("IPGA")
in June 1911 but in truth it probably did little
to improve their lot. Despite this the migration
of Irish born golfers to America in the first quarter
of the twentieth century was a rarity but a few
brave souls sought passage to the New World settling
mainly in New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
The last piece of Irish soil emigrants destined
for America would see is Fastnet Rock ("Ireland's
Teardrop").
One such
emigrant was Patrick
J. Doyle, nicknamed, the Smilin' Irishman,
a granduncle of Eamonn Darcy, the star of the 1987
Ryder Cup at Muirfield Village. Common folklore
has it that the late arrival of Doyle's train to
Queenstown (now Cobh) saved him from boarding the
S.S. Titanic but if it did he clearly didn't get
the next boat either as the following month he was
runner-up (despite a three-stroke lead and a course
record by the halfway stage) to Michael
Moran in the 1912 IPGA Championship either that
or he had one hell of a commute. Upon his arrival
to the US he was engaged as resident professional
at the exclusive Myopia Hunt Club in Massachusetts,
a frequent venue for the US Open at the turn of
the twentieth century.
Doyle
first made his presence felt by qualifying for an
'Irish Open' championship at Portmarnock G.C. only
to be beaten by Ted Ray by 3 and 2 in the first
round of matchplay. Doyle was an accomplished golfer
capable of shooting low scores and despite being
a back-marker qualifying for the US Open at Brookline
C.C. in 1913, a 73 on the third round vaulted him
up the field finishing in tenth place earning him
the princely sum of US$ 20. In 1916 Doyle lost the
Massachusetts State Open to Mike 'King' Brady, a
first generation Irish American. Doyle was a successful
teaching professional and tutored William Howard
Taft, the first US golfing president, Joseph Kennedy,
Jack Dempsey, and Joe Louis. President Woodrow Wilson
commended Doyle for his efforts raising money at
golf benefits during WWI, his playing career stopped
around the time of the Great Depression and he died
on 29 March 1971 at 82 years of age after a long
illness at the Mount Vernon Hospital.
Another
golfer to seek the fair land was John
Edmundson, a native of Portrush, emigrated
in 1913 on board the Merion and joined the Country
Club of Lansdowne and Llanerch County Club. John
was the younger brother of James
Edmundson, the 1907/08 Irish Professional
champion, and appears to have played little competitive
golf in Ireland but did enter for the 1912 Irish
Amateur (Close) while playing out of Bushfoot G.C.
and managed to beat H.M. Cairnes the 1907 champion
leading a golf correspondent to suggest the winner
from his third round match would win the championship
as it turned out it was prophetic unfortunately
it was his opponent Craig who eventually took the
honours. The 1911 Census lists his occupation as
night porter. The older brother, James, joined him
in 1921 after seeing action in a World War I artillery
division and was engaged as a professional at the
North Hills CC. Two years later he would win the
Pennsylvanian Open and was runner-up in the 1925
and 1927 East Falls Open and was one of the founding
members of the Philadelphia Section PGA. James'
son Jack was mayor of Aldan, Pennsylvania for seventeen
years where there is a park named after him.
Peter
O'Hare was the first of the O'Hare (or O'Hara
as it became known Stateside) brothers from Greenore
G.C. to emigrate in 1915 and was engaged by Haworth
GC then followed by Shackamaxon CC where he was
joined by his brother Patrick,
the reigning Irish professional champion in 1919,
in the Spring of 1920. Later Patrick joined the
Richmond County CC but not before the two brothers
joined forces to record an incredible 6 and 5 victory
over Vardon and Ray at Shackamaxon CC - the year
Ray took the US Open title at Inverness by beating
Jack Burke Snr, more of him later. The year before
Patrick left for America he had taken James Braid
to the twenty-fourth hole before succumbing now
he had gone one step further against another member
of the triumvirate. His crowning glory was victory
in the 1922 North and South Championship at Pinehurst
and involved, according to Grantland Rice, the pre-eminent
sports journalist of the time, "winning a big
championship twice from a field that included Hagen,
Barnes, Hutchison and some of the finest professional
stars in the game." Winning the championship
twice was a reference to his sensational 69 in hurricane
conditions, but later the round was cancelled as
the water wasn't draining quickly enough leaving
the course unplayable, and Paddy had to start all
over again to secure his victory ('What I can do
today I can do tomorrow'). Following this Paddy
returned to Ireland ostensibly for a two-week vacation
but never returned and in 1927 was coaxed to playing
in the IPGA Championship, which he won by nine strokes
throwing in a course record for good measure. In
fairness to Paddy the whole idea of Prohibition
was completely anathema to his lifestyle to which
regular lubrication was a prerequisite. Peter was
not as accomplished a player but was no slouch either,
in the 1917 Western Open Championship to he finished
fifth behind Barnes and Hagen and was runner-up
in the North and South Championship in 1921.
The name
McKenna is synonymous with the birth of professional
golf in Ireland, John
J. (or Johnnie)
McKenna arrived in New York in April
1913 for a short duration but after WWI he returned
again and was engaged as resident professional Belleclaire
Golf and Country Club in Long Island. Johnnie, a
much sought after teaching professional, fell on
hard times during the Great Despression and returned
to Ireland in 1933. Johnnie's brother James was
one of the first Irish-born golfing professionals
and a founding member of the IPGA.
There
were others Tom Boyd was born in Armagh,
Northern Ireland, despite his delightful "Dublin
Brogue", Jimmy Law another early arrival in
1910 from Coleraine, County Antrim and Eugene
('Gene') K. McCarthy probably the earliest [1892]
of the Irish immigrants to eventually turn professional
Stateside. Another Boyd this time from Glengormley
was not a professional golfer but no less passionate
about the sport. Stephen Boyd (aka William
'Billy' Miller) played the role of Masala in Ben
Hur and the CIA agent on board Proteus in the Fantastic
Voyage but his abiding passion was golf and he died
unexpectedly doing exactly that. At this juncture
including the leading lady from the Quiet Man would
be opportunistic and self-serving purely by virtue
of her holding, in her ninetieth year, the President's
position at Glengarriff Golf Club, so I won't!.
Of the
amateurs golfers Mrs
Nonna Barlow, a native of County Waterford,
emigrated Stateside in 1898, twice a finalist in
the US Ladies' Amateur Championship at Merion GC
and the Essex County Club and proved a near invincible
force in her home state of Pennsylvania. Another
export was Captain
Ernest F. Carter, a two-time Irish Amateur
Champion and considered one of the best golfers
in Great Britain and Ireland in the early twenties
took passage on the Baltic in 1923 - many consider
his non-inclusion on the 1922 Walker Cup side to
play at the National Golf Links of America a travesty
of justice.
As for
golf course architects probably Arthur
Vernon Macan
("Mac"), the Trinity law graduate,
who emigrated to Canada in 1908 but made his mark
as an amateur golfer and course designer across
all of North American continent. Continuing to play
golf off a four handicap despite losing his left
leg below the knee in WWI went on to design some
great golf courses.
Needless
to say the successes of the Irish American golfers
are far more prominent; Ben Hogan, John
J. McDermott and Francis Ouimet can be
included in this category. John J. McDermott the
brilliant, irascible and, as it turned out, unstable
double US Open Champion became the first US born
winner of the event but whose playing days ended
in 1914 after which he convalesced in various mental
institutions and rest homes. The legendary Ben Hogan's
("The Hawk") genealogy traces his family's
settlement in Mississippi from Ireland, his great-grandfather
was born there in 1847. Other Irish American's like
Michael Joseph ("King") Brady,
Thomas ("Tommy Mac") L. McNamara
and his brother Dan, the caddie-master and
future professional at the Brookline C.C., play
their part in Mark Frost's, The Greatest Game Ever
Played, with the lead role going to Francis Ouimet
(the 'David' that slew 'two Goliaths') whose mother,
Mary Ellen Burke, was born in Belfast. Tommy Mac
would surely have been crowned first American to
win their native championship had he not collapsed
from heat stroke while three shots ahead and in
sight of the finish line. The diminutive Eddie
Lowery, Ouimet's famous caddie, amateur golfer,
golf promoter (notably the careers of Ken Venturi,
Tony Lema and Harvie Ward) and future millionaire,
was of Irish descent as was Fred Corcoran
the last line of whose golf hall of fame bio reads,
'Fred Corcoran was golf'. Henry Chandler Egan
was a second generation Irish American on his father's
side who in 1904 won the US Amateur Championship
at Baltusrol GC and the silver medal in the Olympic
Games and later became a golf course designer.
The Kerrigans'
Tom and George deserve a mention; the
former had the distinction of playing the first
ever shot in a USPGA championship at his home club,
Siwanoy C.C., in 1916 and finishing third in the
1921 Open Championship at St. Andrews. Keeping with
the family theme there was the Burkes', Jack
(christened John) and his son John (Jack
jnr.), the USPGA and Masters champion, Jack was
second generation Irish American his grandparents
were both Irish (probably natives of Cork) but his
mother and father were Scottish and American respectively.
Their story was told by Curt Sampson in Golf Dads;
who else would have the chutzpah or the mischief
to offer Palmer a gift of a spectators' rope and
tell him he belongs on the other side of it. Then
of course there's Johnny
Farrell from White Plains, NY, who defeated
Jones in a play-off for the 1928 US Open Championship
at Olympia Fields CC, and whose parents arrived
in the US from Ireland in 1892 and settled in New
York, his brother James was also a professional
golfer. Then you have the Walsh family of
twelve (at least four John, Martin, Frank
and Patrick jnr. were to turn to professional
golf) whose parents Patrick and Mary settled in
America in 1896. In 1932 Frank lost the USPGA in
a playoff with Olin Dutra
There
were others like John T. O'Shea the professional
at Kernwood Country Club in Salem, Massachusetts
and much later there was Mark O'Meara, whose
great grandfather left Irish shores to seek a better
life, as did John Daly's ancestors while
David Feherty's bloodline oozes emerald,
as does his irreverent and rapier wit. Ireland on
the north-westerly corner of Europe, an Island two-thirds
the size of the State of Pennsylvania, literally
a drop in the Atlantic Ocean, is now punching well
above its weight as G-Mac, McElroy, and Harrington
are just chomping at the bit for their first or
next Major. Dare we dream that another Major (maybe
something august, green, single-breasted and and
tailored this time) is in the offing?
