Treasure offers look at golf ’s past glory
Hidden box had medals, scorecards from 1904 Games
A few years before Eleanor Egan Everett’s death in 2012, her son, Morris Everett Jr., spent about $200 to buy a photo of the grandfather he had never known for his mother. She was excited to have it, Morris remembers, that photo of H. Chandler Egan, who had been one of the best amateur golfers and golf course designers in the USA in the early 20th century.
After Eleanor Everett died at 101, her family began cleaning out her home in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, about 25 miles southeast of Cleveland. Amid all she had collected, her children found far more than a photo of their accomplished grandfather.
Buried in a metal box on a bookshelf in the den, they found a piece of Olympic history — gold and silver medals Egan had won in 1904, the last time golf was contested in the Games.
As the sport makes its return to the Olympics this summer in Rio de Janeiro, the medals, photos, letters, scorecards and more are being shared as a glimpse back into Egan’s life and accomplishments in the sport.
“She had it all, and she didn’t even tell us or she forgot,” Everett says as he chuckles. “We were so surprised. It was in the back of a shelf with a door on it, and it was behind a whole bunch of books and all these things, a box of medals and the letters and the scrapbooks. It was all hidden.”
The medals were on display at the United States Golf Association Museum before being shown at Oakmont Country Club during the U.S. Open this week and the World Golf Hall of Fame & Museum in St. Augustine, Fla., starting June 23.
Aside from their historic value — Egan’s silver from the individual competition is the only one known to still exist — they represent the accomplishments of a man Everett thinks of just as much for being a gentleman golfer as a successful one.
Egan entered the 1904 Olympics, which ran over five months in St. Louis and were held in conjunction with the World’s Fair, as the U.S. Amateur champion. (He would claim that title again in 1905.)
The event featured several competitions, says Mike Trostel, the USGA museum director, including a putting championship, long-drive competition and money match, all of which were not part of the Olympic contest.
Three American teams of 10 players competed in the Olympic team event, and it was Egan’s lineup change after losing to the Trans-Mississippi Golf Association team on the first day that al- lowed his team, the Western Golf Association, to win gold on Day 2.
Trostel says the difficulty of traveling to the Games contributed to the all-American field.
“In 1904, golf wasn’t a game that was played all over the world as it is today,” he said.
In the individual competition, 77 players from the USA and Canada faced off, playing 36 holes that determined the 32 who advanced to match play. Canadian George Lyon bested Egan there, winning 3-and-2 in the championship match.
Besides his medal, Egan received a runner-up trophy that is on loan from the LA84 Foundation and will be part of the USGA display.
All this was somewhat unknown to Eleanor Egan Everett’s three children. She had spoken fondly of growing up with Egan, and Morris Everett sensed they were close, but she had never disclosed that she possessed so much from her father’s career.
“The shocker was that she had forgotten that she had all these things,” Everett says.
Once Eleanor Everett’s children found them, Don Holton, the historian at Exmoor Country Club, suggested sharing the collection.
For Trostel, who seeks memorabilia from tour winners after championships, it was a morethan-welcomed surprise.
“For us, it was simply amazing,” he says. “We didn’t know a ton about golf and Olympic medals or trophies other than the fact that they are very, very rare.
“When you’re looking at something this rare, these silver and gold medals from the Olympics — and golf was only part of the Olympics twice before — to hear that these still existed and to give people an opportunity to come see them, we thought that was something we had to do.”
After winning his Olympic medals, Egan attended Harvard and played golf there.
He was the runner-up in the 1909 U.S. Amateur and then moved to Oregon and bought land for an orchard. Egan won the Pacific Northwest Amateur Championship five times and went on to design several golf courses, including redesigning Pebble Beach with Alister MacKenzie.
In 1935, he would play in the second Augusta National Tournament, which went on to be renamed the Masters.
Egan died of pneumonia in 1936, just a few years before Everett was born.
“I wish I had known him,” Everett says.
Now, through the display, golf and Olympic fans will get to know Egan and a little bit of the sport’s history.
Trostel is optimistic about what golf ’s return to the Olympics can mean for the game, hoping that countries where it’s less established will be encouraged to invest in it at the grass-roots level.
The USGA staffers in Rio are under strict orders from Trostel to collect memorabilia — tickets, programs and anything else they can get — so it won’t take a surprising discovery and more than a century to capture golf ’s Olympic history.