Mark Frost has had a long and successful career as a novelist and screenwriter. Among his best-known creations are Twin Peaks (which he co-created with David Lynch) and Fantastic Four. But he's also a golfer and his love of the game has led him to write about the sport.
Hearing the story of Francis Ouimet during coverage of the 1999 Ryder Cup at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts (the same course where Ouimet beat the odds and won the Open) led Mr. Frost to write The Greatest Game Ever Played which he would later adapt for the screen. The success of that book led to The Grand Slam: Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf, which documents the career of perhaps the greatest amateur to ever play the game. In his latest book, The Match: The Day The Game of Golf Changed Forever, he has managed to document yet another pivotal moment in the history of the game.
"The game had always proceeded along two parallel tracks: the amateurs who were the gentleman players who played for the love of the game and not to make a living, and the pros who for the most part worked at golf clubs, who made golf clubs, gave lessons, and who kind of scratched out a living from the game," said Mr. Frost in a recent interview.
Click here to listen to the interview with Mark Frost.
The match started out as nothing more than a simple wager. Eddie Lowery, the self-made millionaire who got his start in golf as the 10 year old caddie for Francis Ouimet during the 1913 U. S. Open, had been on the lookout for the next great amateur. He would routinely hire golfers to work in his car dealerships as salesmen and help them pursue a career in golf. In 1956, when the match takes place, he has working for him two of the best amateurs of the day: Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward. While at Pebble Beach for the 1956 Crosby Pro-Am, he makes a boast that Venturi and Ward can beat any other pair of golfers in a best-ball match. When fellow millionaire George Coleman asks if Lowery's golfers are wiling to play professionals, Lowery says yes. Coleman then goes and gets two of the greatest pros of the day to play: Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson. Thus the stage is set for a golf match like no other that had ever been played up to that point or since.
"As you zero in on this day in 1956 when they play (two young amateurs against two seasoned professionals) the 'who is going to become the dominant force in the game' is still up for grabs," said Mr. Frost. "The fact that in the immediate aftermath that both Venturi and Ward nearly win The Masters in separate years, I think, gives some weight to that argument that, yes, even as late as this game occured in 1956, there were still amateurs around who could play with the greatest pros in the world, play them toe-to-toe, and beat them if necessary."
In 1956, the PGA Tour was not nearly as lucrative as it is for today's professionals, as Mr. Frost was quick to point out.
"The PGA Tour struggled through those years as a way to make a bare-bones living for club pros. I found that it was through the hard work and persistence of people like Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan that the Tour became anything at all. It really wouldn't have had they not been such extraordinary personalities in their own right."
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