John Taylor

THE GREAT TRIUMVIRATE

John Taylor, Harry Vardon and James Braid were known as the "Great Triumvirate" and in the 21 years from 1894 to the start of World War I they won the Open Championship no fewer than 16 times between them.

Taylor, always known as "J. H.", first played in the Open in 1893 when he was twenty-two. He won it the following year when it was played at Royal St George's, which was the first time the championship had been played in England and, appropriately enough, he was the first English winner. In total, he won the Open five times. He was also runner-up on three occasions, won the French Open in 1908 and 1909, the German Open in 1912, and was runner-up to Harry Vardon in the US Open of 1900. "J. H." was instrumental in setting up the British Professional Golfers' Association and was a much-honoured figure in the world of golf. He was made an honorary member of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, which presented him with a commemorative silver salver on his ninetieth birthday in 1961.

 Harry Vardon

Harry Vardon, the second member of the triumvirate, is known as the inventor of the Vardon overlapping grip, which he popularized but probably did not invent. He won the Open a record six times with his first victory coming in 1896 and his last, when he was forty-four, in 1914. He played countless exhibition matches and also won the US Open in 1900, when he spent a year touring the United States promoting his new ball, the "Vardon Flyer". In fact, the ball, one of the last generation of gutta-percha balls, was soon superseded by the Haskell rubber-cored ball. Vardon became very ill in 1903 with tuberculosis and never really played at his best again. However, such terms are relative, as he won the Open in 1911 and 1914, and finished joint runner-up in the US Open in 1920 when he was fifty. At the height of his game he was said to be two strokes a round better than Taylor and Braid, and he was such a fine striker of a golf ball that he is reputed in an afternoon round to have driven into the divot marks he had made in the morning. He is said to have suffered from the "yips", the jerk which afflicts many players when confronted with a three-foot putt, in his final years.