"The Greatest Game Ever Played"

Just watched the movie "The Greatest Game Ever Played" the other night. Thought it was pretty good. My question is for those who know a lot of history of golf. Was there a time when a golfer was not allowed to mark his ball on the green? The part where he tried to chip his ball over Harry Vardon's and into the hole got me thinking about that. Were there even greens around the time of the 1913 US Open? Also loved how they used to tee the ball, with a pile of dirt! Sweet!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stymie

Sweet! You learn something new everyday!!

yeah i wouldn't want to try chipping on greens these days. but thats some awesome stuff. I like that movie, it was pretty good.

Recommend reading the book. Lots of other things you will learn about the period as it related to golf .... like Woodrow Wilson discreetly walking nine holes every day for his health, prior to his stroke.

If I'm not mistaken, though, the stymie rule only applied to match play; therefore, its presence in the film (as the US Open has always been a stroke play tournament) is inaccurate.

Additional goofs in the Movie:
* Anachronisms: A shot near the end of the movie shows a door hinge secured with Philips head screws. They weren't invented until 1935.

* Miscellaneous: In the playoff round, they pan across the 3-player scoreboard very quickly and at the end we see Quimet and Vardon tied at Even. Below their score is Ted Ray at +6. If you go back frame by frame and look at the scores on each hole, we see that Ray is really only at +3 up until this point in the match.

* Miscellaneous: In the credits at the end of the movie, Sarah Wallis' name is misspelled "Sarah Wallace" in the "Young Sarah Wallace" credit.

* Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Sarah asks Francis his name, he pronounces his surname (Ouimet) wee-MAY, yet she pronounces it wee-MET. She wouldn't pronounce it as such from his pronunciation, she would have had to have seen it written down to pronounce it that way.

* Factual errors: The playoff wasn't close in score. Ouimet shot 72, Vardon 77 and Ray 78. But that doesn't make as good of a story as making a putt on the 18th hole to win, does it!

* Anachronisms: Eddie Lowery uses the phrase "easy peasy, lemon squeezy". This phrase is primarily a British phrase and didn't come into common use until the late 1970's.

* Continuity: Going into the fourth round of the 1913 U.S. Open, it was stated that Ouimet was trailing Vardon and Ray by one stroke. Yet, the final leader-board showed all three of them shooting 79 with a total of 304 strokes for the tournament. This would have meant that they were all tied entering the fourth round.

* Anachronisms: While practicing for the tournament, Francis is shown using a wooden golf tee. The wooden golf tee was not available commercially until 1921, being patented by a New Jersey dentist, William Lowell.

* Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Harry Vardon is credited with inventing the "Vardon" grip, which involves the fingers of the hands overlapping. During the golf scenes both Vardon and Ouimet were using the "interlocking" golf grip, which is contradictory to the "Vardon" grip. One would think that Vardon would use the Vardon grip.

* Factual errors: The seventeenth hole of The Country Club is shown as a dogleg right, and Harry hits his ball into an unseen trap on the right side of the corner of the dogleg. In reality, the seventeenth hole at The Country Club at the time of the 1913 US Open was a dogleg left, and Vardon hit his ball into a trap on the left side of the fairway.

* Continuity: Near the end of the round, Ouimet and Vardon are shown hitting several shots at a very quick pace. At one point Ouimet is shown swinging left-handed. When he played every other shot in his round from the right-handed position.

* Factual errors: The opening shot of the movie begins with a scene set in Jersey overlaid with the caption "Isle of Jersey, England". The island of Jersey is one of the Channel Islands and is the main island of the Bailiwick of Jersey. It is closer to France than to England and is neither geographically nor administratively part of England or even the United Kingdom, but a British Crown Dependency with its own administration and the British Queen as the head of state in her capacity as the Duke of Normandy.

* Factual errors: Francis is shown looking at a yardage book, or a series of hand drawn diagrams of every hole at The Country Club. In reality, yardage books did not come into use until the 1960's, first by Deane Beman and later popularized by Jack Nicklaus. Harry Vardon is shown laying Francis a "stymie" during the playoff. A stymie occurred when a player's ball blocked the path of his opponent's ball on the green (the balls not being within six inches of each other). This only applied to singles match play. The playoff for the 1913 US Open was medal (stroke) play and the stymie rule would not have been in effect. This rule was eliminated in 1952 by the USGA.

There are so many inaccuracies in the movie that you could fill the page up. One or two others, though - Ouimet had not quit golfing. He played in, and won the Massachusetts Amateur that year and did qualify for the US Amateur, losing in the quarter finals. the reason he initially turned down the offer to play in the US Open was that he had just been to the US Amateur and did not want to take more time off work. When his boss OKed it, he agreed to play. According to accounts, the playoff was played in rainy conditions, not sunny skies like the movie showed. Vardon also had a moustache. So who knows how many other liberties Disney took?

* Miscellaneous: In the playoff round, they pan across the 3-player scoreboard very quickly and at the end we see Quimet and Vardon tied at Even. Below their score is Ted Ray at +6. If you go back frame by frame and look at the scores on each hole, we see that Ray is really only at +3 up until this point in the match.

This is even more unusual because Frank Chirkinian of CBS started the convention of showing scoreboards relative to par (+3 or -3) about fifty years later. I believe it began at the Masters.