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Tommy Armour
New York/Florida/Chicago

‘The Silver Scot’, probably the greatest Scottish golfer since James Braid, is one of only three British-born golfers, all from Celtic nations, to win three majors, the US Open in 1927, the US PGA in 1930 and the Open Championship in 1931. (In case you need it for a pub quiz, the others were Jim Barnes and Rory McIlroy).

Born 24 September 1896 in Newington, Edinburgh, to George Armour, a baker, and his wife Martha Dickson, Thomas Dickson Armour’s was not the traditional rags to riches story, being educated at Boroughmuir and later at Edinburgh University. I have no idea what he studied at the university but his academic career was cut short by the advent of the First World War at the start of which he enlisted in the Black Watch as a Private and where he was a machine gunner before joining the Tank Corps. He finished the war as a Staff Major. However, in August 1917, he lay in hospital completely blinded after a mustard gas shell hit his tank and he had one metal plate placed in his head and another in reconstructing his left arm.

He regained the sight in his right eye and, after leaving hospital, began playing golf to recover his health. Reportedly, he soon regained power and accuracy from the tee but the lack of an eye destroyed his putting with the loss of depth perception. It is said, on the way back from a tournament, he gathered all his putters and threw them out of the window when crossing the Forth Rail Bridge. Somehow, though, it clicked. He won the French Amateur Championship in 1920, played in the US Amateur Championship, falling in the fifth round to Francis Ouimet and, back in Scotland, won the initial Gleneagles amateur tournament in 1920 also. On his trip to America he met Walter Hagen for the first time and Hagen displayed a paternalistic fondness for the Scot throughout his career (even when Armour beat him!) and invited him to be secretary at the Westchester Biltmore Club. Tommy duly emigrated in 1923 and competed in US amateur tournaments before turning professional in 1924.

In 1926 he became professional at the Congressional Country Club in Washington, DC, a post he held until 1929 and where he had Toney Penna as an assistant and clubmaker.

His win at the US Open in 1927 must have been a sight to behold. It was typical of his comment, ‘It is not solely the capacity to make great shots that makes champions, but the essential quality of making very few bad shots’ a view probably echoed in different words by Hogan and Faldo in later decades. A 78 on the first day, the highest first round score of a winner since the 19th century, was compounded by a double bogey on the 12th in the last round, leaving him to play the last 6 holes in one under to force a playoff with Harry ‘Lighthorse’ Cooper. Still needing a birdie at the last, he drove right down the middle then played a 3 iron to within 11 feet which he holed. Two down at the 11th in the playoff, with Cooper requiring 27 strokes to complete his round, Armour needed only 22.

To demonstrate the fickleness of the golfing gods (or maybe the depth of Armour’s celebrations) he scored the first ever Archaeopteryx (15 or more over par) in a PGA event when he took 23 strokes on a par 5 in a tournament the following week.

In 1928 he became the professional a Rockville, MD, and won the invitational tournament at Shinnecock Hills finishing ten shots ahead of Hagen and overtaking Johnny Farrell and Joe Kirkwood
He won the 1929 Western Open, effectively a major and then the official major of the USPGA against the local favourite, Gene Sarazen in 1930. In 1931 he returned to Scotland where Carnoustie was desperate for a Scottish winner, but it was the success of erstwhile local boy Mac Smith they craved. It was Armour who triumphed and Byron Nelson called him, ‘absolutely the most gifted story-teller I’ve ever known in golf’ yet the encomium Armour delivered on Mac Smith is surely one of the most moving pieces in sports writing and speaks of the man’s humanity.

He reached the final of the USPGA in 1935, losing to Johnny Revolta 5 and 4 and pretty much retired from the tour. Effectively that meant only 11 years as a professionalwith 24 PGA tour wins . He did win another PGA event in 1938 but spent most of his time giving lessons. He had been teaching at Boca Raton in the winter months since 1929 when he became head professional until 1948, with a summer position at Medinah from 1932-1943, and at Winged Foot, which he called his second home, much later and not as a club professional, a club he joined as a member in 1952.

Teaching showed a different side of his character. He enjoyed coaching promising professionals, Julian Boros, Henry Cotton and Babe Didrikson all credited his instruction but he spent much of his time with businessmen who had money to burn. He charged $50 for a half hour lesson, a fee he himself called ‘outrageous’. Charles Price, the founding editor of Golf Magazine wrote, ‘his eyes were as deep as Rasputin's. Tommy was temperamental and acid-tongued, he was not a man you approached comfortably’. He sat in a deck chair beneath an umbrella with a tray of gin bucks, bromo-seltzer and Scotch whisky and had his pupils play usually no more than twenty shots then dissected their swing sometimes to the point of rudeness. It made him the world’s most sought after golf teacher with waiting times for lessons of up to six months. A favourite story told about him in Boca Raton was of a pupil who played two shots. After the second Armour said, ‘That’s all. Lesson’s over, $25 please’. ‘But you didn’t help my swing’, complained the student. ‘You asked me to correct your swing’, replied Armour, ‘There’s nothing wrong with it. Try keeping your head down’.

An athlete gone to seed? Not a bit of it. Giving lessons was where the money was in golf, not the tournament prizes in those days. Armour won the Canadian Open three times, the first time his winner’s cheque was for $500. Sir Henry Cotton stressed the importance of hand strength for golf with drills smacking an iron into a tyre but Armour epitomised it. He could rip telephone directories and packs of playing cards in half and won a contest against prizefighter Jack Dempsey picking up a snooker cue at the tip with two fingers and holding it straight out at arm’s length.

His thoughts on how to play the game were expressed in a book How to Play Your Best Golf All the Time written with journalist Herb Graffis and published in 1953. Still in print it is the top-selling golf instruction book of all time. He followed this with a book on the mental side of the game, A Round of Golf with Tommy Armour.

He came out of retirement briefly in 1968 to be club professional at a new course In Boca Raton but died later that year in Larchmont, NY, on 11 September never properly recovering from a lung operation related to his wartime mustard gas poisoning.

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