America's First Golf Hero: Francis Ouimet and the 1913 U.S. Open‪.‬

Introduction Golf is currently riding a crest of popularity in the United States. In 2006, 28.7 million golfers played the game on nearly 16,000 courses across the country. (1) The golf economy in 2005 was $76 billion, including $6 billion spent on equipment and supplies. The total economic impact of golf on the U.S. economy that year was $195 billion. (2) In addition, television ratings for golf have soared over the last dozen years. That trend shows little sign of changing anytime soon when one takes note of the television ratings for the Monday playoff round of the 2008 U.S. Open, which were the highest ever for golf on cable television) As a consequence, golf's Tiger Woods now ranks as America's favorite athlete. (4) This growth in both interest and participation in golf is quite significant since the sport only took hold in the United States just over a century ago. To be sure, a few golf clubs were formed in the United States as early as the 1780s, but none survived. Then, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, three events led to golf's firm entrenchment in the pantheon of American sports. In 1888, the first permanent golf club was established. This was accompanied by the formation of the first governing body of golf in the United States. (5) The biggest boost to the sport, however, came when Francis Ouimet, a young Bostonian, won the 1913 U.S. Open. Ouimet's accomplishment gave America its first golf hero. This study examines how the media celebrated Ouimet's feat by portraying the former caddy as a national icon which, in turn, boosted the popularity of golf in the United States.