Harry Vardon is remembered for his horrible yips on the greens later in his career. He attributed this problem to the tuberculosis that sent him to the Mundesley sanatorium in 1903. The place had a small course, and in his fifth month there Harry borrowed a club and was allowed to putt on the greens. When he walked up and took his stance, he looked down at his right hand and noticed a steady tremor running through it that he couldn’t control. The tremor might subside for awhile but then “jump like a running salmon in his downswing.” When he described the problem to his doctor, he was asked if he had ever suffered an injury to the hand. Harry recalled that while playing football for the Ganton Club, which he recalled as some of the most enjoyable days of his life, he suffered a broken bone near the outside of the wrist. The doctor explained that tuberculosis has the capacity to infect every internal organ, from liver to brain, from the fingertips to the delicate structures of our eyes, and that the tubercle bacilli had sought vulnerable tissue in his wrist and arm. It didn’t affect his full swings, only his putting.
Vardon putting at Mundesley in an exhibition, 1924. J.H. Taylor to the right. Vardon and his Ganton Club football mates.
