Harry Vardon – The Early Life of the British Championship Golfer

The childhood and early life as a youth on the Jersey Channel Island of Harry Vardon, the championship golfer of yore, is covered in a recently released Windows Media Format video called Harry Vardon; Jersey’s favorite golfing son.

Harry Vardon is revered on his home island as a witness to a visit to the Jersey Museum in St. Helier. It is here that you can see a permanent exhibition donated by his widow, of the famous golfer’s medals from the approximate period of 1890-1914.

Vardon grew up on the east coast of the island, near the port of Gorey and the imposing medieval castle of Mont Orgueil, keeping a close eye on the nearby coast of France. Together with the royal bay of Grouville, which was granted royal status by Queen Victoria, this area forms the neighborhood of Grouville common, where Harry Vardon and his parents lived when he was a baby and child at Amité Lodge. This was one of several small cottages long ago raised to the ground, but today, on the 12th tee of the golf course, a block of Jersey stone has been set into the ground. Its carved letters are losing their paint to the winter weather, but still tell the story of where the great golfer was born nearby. Watching the video, it is possible to distinguish the dates of Vardon’s greatest triumphs. He wins the Open Championship in 1896, 1898, 1899, 1903, 1911 and 1914. Also the US Open in 1900.

Harry’s father had been employed at one of the shipyards that, in the old days of wooden-built ships, could be found around the island’s coast. But by the 1860s, the modern steamboat was not built of wood, and the industry went into terminal decline. Harry’s father was forced to earn a living as a gardener and odd-job man. However, the Vardon family still lived on the ordinary. So in 1877, when a golf course was authorized to be created on the land that runs down to the water’s edge, they probably, like most of their neighbors, were not happy to have their peaceful surroundings disturbed.

Harry was around eight years old when the “strange men”, as he called them in his book “My Life as a Golfer”, arrived to survey the land on which to play the game that was to have such a profound influence on his life. He would go on to win six Open Championships and, more importantly, be the first British winner of the US Open in 1900.

At the entrance to the Royal Jersey Golf Club, today, stands a statue of Jersey’s most famous golfing son.

A Windows Media Format video bringing the story of Harry Vardon’s early life to life with old and new footage of Harry Vardon’s birthplace is available from The Printed Word Jersey.