The Big Three Through Its Long Tradition

The very first Big Three golf match between Harvard, Yale and Princeton took place in 1897 and immediately began a keen rivalry that has been passed down to the present. Those early matches attracted a good deal of national attention. The pro ranks had not nearly attained their present stature. Many of the nation's leading amateurs were matriculated in the training school of Big Three golf.

On Wednesday of this week, Princeton came away the winner, but the Tigers were not always such a dominant force. Either Harvard or Yale won the first 17 times the schools met.

The stakes for collegiate players were much higher at the turn of the century, when golf was an infant sport in America played by well-bred, easy-going elite at a handful of schools. Whichever of the three Ivy powerhouses prevailed became the United States Intercollegiate Champion. The Big Three medalist was enthroned as that year's individual Intercollegiate Champion.

Between them, Harvard, Yale and Princeton won every intercollegiate title until Dartmouth broke through the golfing triumverte in 1921. A player from the Ivy League troika was the national individual champion until 1919, when Columbia's A.L.Walker Jr. turned the trick.

Yale was the first college in the country to have a golf team. It was organized by John Reid Jr. His father had founded the first golf club in the United States in Ardsley, N.Y., borrowing the illustrious name of the St. Andrews Golf Club. A dinner at the Reid home in 1888 marked the inception of the St. Andrews Golf Club and broke up the strains of Scots W Hae.

John Reid and his clan of golfers at St. Andrews in Yonkers are known to posterity as the Apple Tree Gang. Reid had emigrted from Dumfermline, Scotland, the birthplace of Andrew Carnegie, who later became member of St.Andrews. Reid was on hand at the historic moment when the first golf ball was struck on American soil. After his friend Bob Lockhart had brought over a set of clubs from Scotland, he tried them out in New York City on 72nd Street near the Hundson River, which is now Riverside Drive.

Yale won that first team championship in 1897 under a martinent coach by the name of Robert D. Pryde. Both in 1897 and 1898, the three colleges played at St.Andrews in Ardsley. Pryde was born in Tayport, Fifeshire, Scotland, only seven miles from the original St. Andrews. In 1895, he laid out the New Haven Golf Club, which became Yale's home course and soon had its name changed to the Yale Golf Club. Pryde served as the club professional for 41 years until it was superceded by Charles Blair McDonald's breathtaking Yale Golf Course.

At the same time, Harvard golfers were eagerly getting in their rounds at a small course in Cambridge while Princetonians were picking up the game t n eighteen near the Lawrenceville School before playing at a links in Morris County.

Although Yale won the first team title, Louis P. Bayer Jr. from Princeton emerged as the nation's first individual intercollegiate champion. The next year, Harvard dethroned the Elis while the Crimson's J.F. Curtis was medalist. The third year the three schools met Reid finished first, as each college had then had a national champion. Percy Pyne Jr. won for Princeton in 1900, H. Lindsley took the title for Harvard in 1901, and Yale's Charles Hitchcock Jr. won in 1902.

Princeton lagged behind in the early years, as up until 1905 Harvard took six out of nine national championships. Yale took the rest. After that, Yale became well-nigh invincible, winning nine consecutive intercollegiate championships. The great Eli golfers of there were John and Archie Reid. Ellis Knowles, Dudley Mudge, DeWitt Balch, Dexter Cummings, Rossiter Betts, Laddy McMohan and Jess Sweetser, who also played quarterback for the Blue.

The greatest team Harvard ever fielded was captained by H. Chandler Egan in 1902, 1903 and 1904, which won the national championship two of those years.

Egan first played golf in 1896 at Lake Genev, Wisconsin, and by the time he arrived at Harvard was well on his way to becoming the country's foremost mateur golfer. Egan was the first collegiate player to win the U.S. Amateur before graduating, winning back to back in 1904 and 1905. He mysteriously retired from competition in 1911 when he became a fruit grower in Oregon, 300 miles away from the nearest course.

The most interesting personality in the history of Harvard golf is probably James A.Tyng. Tyng was something of a sporting pioneer, who took up golf in 1895 well after graduating Harvard in the 1870's. The first man to break 80 at the Morris County club, Tyng was an extremely temperamental player.

During a tournament at Morris County his opponent, Foxhall Keene, purposely kept him waiting at the tee for over an hour for the express purpose of throwing his game out of sync. The strategy had the desired effect, which prompted a new ruling that any player who arrives late to a match is disqualified.

Although he was one of the earliest amateur golfers, Tyng's most memorable accomplishment came on the baseball diamond. While playing baseball for the Crimson in 1876, Tyng became the first player in the history of the grand old game to wear a catcher's mask.

The most flamboyant figure in collegiate golf at the turn of the century was Percy Pyne II, who won the National Championship for Princeton in 1900. Pyne came from behind to beat Harvard's J.G. Averill in extra holes.

Pyne became enraptured with the game while at St. Paul's School after his uncle sent him a set of clubs from France. Foresaking prep school competition, Percy brashly entered the U.S. Amateur at Morris County. During the first day's play, he scored a hole-in-one on the 17th. The next day he needed 17 strokes on the same hole, after trying to hack his ball out from under a fence.

Pyne would throw outlandish golfing parties for the players from Princeton, Harvard and Yale. After one of these shindings, J. Borden Harriman groped into his car and casually said, "Home,James" to his chauffeur. When he woke up, he found himself before the front door of the family estate in Mount Kisco.

Pyne once played in a tournament at Morris County and was agog to find his opponent wearing red suspenders on the course. The fellow turned out to be a prominent haberdsher who tried to sell Percy the clothes off his back during the entire round.

John Reid, the patriarch of American golf, was immensely satisfied when his son, John Jr., won the intercollegiate title while plying for Yale in 1899. Another year his younger son Archie lost a match in the U.S.Amateur. After seeing the news in the paper, Reid turned to his wife t breakfast and cooly said: "I see where your son has lost a golf match."