Joe Horgan was taking a walk in 1893 when he chanced upon a couple of men in a nearby field nearby going through the motions of hitting a ball with a stick. “I leaned over the fence to see what it was all about and was enjoying the spectacle when I was accosted by a player.” The man asked Horgan if he wanted to make some money. Sure he said, what do I have to do? “Nothing, but carry these clubs around and keep your eye on the little ball.” He had just met John Reid, who many regard as the father of American golf, the man who established the St. Andrews Golf Club in Yonkers, New York in in 1888. Horgan received 15 cents a round ($4.25 today) and an extra dime for cleaning clubs (worth $2.80.) “I was only 16 years old when Mr. Reid asked me to carry his golf clubs that day and I have been addicted to the game ever since.”
Horgan lived close to Van Cortlandt Park in New York City, the first public course built in this country in 1895. “It was a queer course,” Horgan recalled, “but good enough for the times. One remarkable thing about the course was the long hole, the ninth, which measured 720 yards and was a bogey 7.” The course was redesigned many times, but this hole was a freakish anomaly in an era. “This was the record. There has never been another hole constructed anywhere that was as long. There were no traps at all, but stone walls and ditches were used as hazards.”
Joe Horgan began his big-time work in the inaugural U.S. Open in 1895, when he caddied for the winner Horace Rawlins, beginning a career that had him carry the bag for the winners of six U.S. Opens, four U.S. Women’s Amateurs, two U.S. Amateurs, plus numerous other titles. In those days the bags were small, but large enough hold seven clubs. “When I won the championship with Rawlins that time in Newport, he counted me out 15 iron men [dollar coins] and added three of his clubs which I cashed in for two bucks a piece.” Horgan was not particular about the rank and sex, but said he was “more at home with the pros and I leaned more to professional golf. Moreover it pays better.”
He carried the bag for Harry Vardon in the 1920 U.S. Open, which Vardon almost won at the age of 50 until running into bad weather derailed him on the back nine of the final round. He still had a chance until he hit his second shot into a creek on the 17th. Vardon’s drive was straight but not long. It left him a dangerous shot that had to carry the water.“I asked him to take a mashie and play short but he decided to use a spoon and go for the green.” Harry overrode him, “Not now, I’d as well be in the ditch as short.” He landed in the tiny creek and took a six, which finished him, as he finished a shot behind winner Ted Ray. In the clubhouse after he said to Joe, “it was my own stubbornness that cost me this championship."
At the 1950 U.S. Open, a 72-year-old Joe Horgan told a sportswriter he was pulling for Ben Hogan. “After Ben’s wonderful comeback from that accident, I gotta root for him.” Horgan died in 1953, and with him an era ended.
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