The Flyer

In 1900, Harry Vardon, 30 years old and already twice crowned champion golfer of the year, sailed across the Atlantic for a nine-month tour of the U.S. and Canada. Golf was in its nascent stage in that part of the world, but it was rapidly gaining momentum.

Sponsored by Spalding, the tour was an effort to sell the public on the new Vardon Flyer gutta-percha ball. The tour consisted of Vardon, one of the game’s first touring professionals, barnstorming from club to club, playing best-ball matches against a local pro and an amateur partner. It cemented Vardon as one of the first true golf celebrities, especially after he paused the tour to enter the U.S. Open at Chicago Golf Club and win it over J.H. Taylor, one of his great rivals. It’s said that over the course of 90 matches, Vardon lost fewer than 10. By August, a tour that began in Virginia and had already made stops in Colorado and Cleveland reached New York’s Adirondack Mountains. There, Vardon played two matches against 25-year-old Oscar Smith Bunn (seen above in 1899), a clubmaker and teaching pro at a club in Lake Placid, New York. 

A protégé of Willie and Seymour Dunn, Bunn was a Shinnecock Montauk Native American who helped Willie build Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. He represented the club in the 1896 U.S. Open, generating headlines as the first Native American to play in the tournament. Despite that, Seymour may have been the only person alive who believed Bunn was ready to do the impossible and defeat the great Vardon.

This story is adapted from the book Native Links: The Surprising History of Our First People in Golf. 

August 1900. Lake Placid, New York. Seymour Dunn, a transplanted Scot and apostle of golf, jumped up onto a lakeside porch step of the grand Stevens House. Slight of frame, knickers to his knees, he could have been taken for a racehorse jockey. He raised his arm, opened a palm and announced, “Lassies and good fellas, we’ve goot a special guest: champion golfer Harry Vardon!”

Vardon took a weary bow. In the second half of a nine-month tour, the Erie Railroad had pulled them from Cleveland to Old Forge, and then the Raquette Line had taken them to Lake Placid, where Mr. Colgate met them with his new gas buggy. At every stop, Vardon would play a local pro and an amateur for $250 and a bottle of scotch. Vardon’s handlers from Spalding would corral the growing crowds around tables where they’d have golf balls for sale. Vardon Flyers. Even got his name on it, look! And in those hubbubs and handshakes—the men in Jim Dandies, and some of the women looking swell in gym suits—all gathered round the spectacle of Harry Vardon. Paid to play golf? Like a fire-eater or the tattooed lady! Call the coppers!

Vardon would play twice at Lake Placid, and this match came with an interesting twist. Among all these comers, among the barkers and the curious, there stood a tall Native American, the first American-born golf pro, a clubmaker who could carve persimmon like potatoes: Oscar Bunn, a Shinnecock native with a swing like a summer breeze. He’d been working with Seymour’s uncle Willie Dunn for nearly a decade and had built Shinnecock Hills with his tribesmen. At the end of each summer, Oscar followed Seymour to the Adirondacks to be a teacher, a fine clubmaker and an even better player. 

“They call ’im ‘The Indian,’” Seymour would tell Harry. “Can truly skelp that bawl. Truly.”

In his Scottish heart, Dunn would want nothing more than for his friend and clubmaker to knock the Brit off the throne. Seymour and his family had been preaching golf in America for nearly 10 years. Now Vardon had shown up like he owned the place? Let ’im miss short putts.

Vardon’s tour caught the true beginning of the American public’s love affair with golf, the years also called the Age of Hope. From 1900 to the onset of World War I in 1914, Americans would bring forth books like The Wizard of Oz, The Call of the Wild and The Souls of Black Folk, pragmatism and the Titanic, along with the births of Walt Disney, Louis Armstrong and Rachel Carson. Between 1900 and 1914, more than 13 million people left Europe searching for the American promise. Is it any wonder that these years launched a golf boom? Between March and November, Vardon toured New England, Chicago, Florida and Colorado, playing matches for a curious public and to sell a few Flyers, sure, and he had an eye on the U.S. Open in Chicago in October. What better practice? Two rounds a day, with lunch included. They’d laughed at him in the beginning; now here he was getting rich doing the thing he loved. 

But this match, with the Native American? Oscar Bunn would not be totally unknown to Harry Vardon. Bunn had paired with James Park in the 1896 U.S. Open at Shinnecock and represented Lake Placid in 1899 at Baltimore CC. And Harry would have heard the ruckus about the dark-skinned players in 1896 at Shinnecock, when John Shippen had put a scare in the whole United Kingdom by nearly capturing the trophy. But Harry hadn’t expected Bunn to be so young and a player, too.

Oscar waited in the wings. He wore a fedora pulled low, his shirt barely concealing his brawny shoulders and big hands. Vardon would take a liking to him. He could appreciate a Native American teaching golf to city slickers. Color of the skin mattered nothing to Harry; he was looking only to get under it.

And as evening settled in, over sips on the porch, Seymour Dunn would only add to the intrigue: “You should see th’ faces!” 

Dunn reached up and grabbed Vardon by the shoulder. “Vanderbilts and Roosevelts? The Meads and Whites? They’d think bein’ rich’s e’nuff. Oscar learned th’ game as if he was born in a feckin’ kilt. Him and his friend Shippen. Ay, help me, naturals both. Very good motions.” 

“And he followed ya into these woods?” Vardon asked with the hint of a snicker. Even in Colorado, he’d never seen woods as thick as those in the Adirondacks.

“The woods? Ay.” 

Seymour leaned in and looked both ways. 

“Keep to the open. They’ve caught a panther in thar, just last week.”

A panther? Blimey. But that much was true. The Argus first reported it. The last of the forest beasts! A giant of a black cat, caught in a bear trap. Vardon had never seen a panther and didn’t want to. The island of Jersey, where he hailed from, had cows and not much else. Not even snakes and trees. Native Americans? Panthers? Vardon thought he had seen it all, but the next morning, as the golfers rode a wagon up the road to Eagle’s Nest, all his nerves had softened. He would take all comers. And if he’d seen worse players, he’d seen no one as bad as this hillbilly George Stevens, a flatlander who couldn’t hit a straight ball. The Native American? He was the mark, to be sure. 

When Seymour and Vardon arrived, Oscar was already at the first tee. Mr. Colgate had given him a ride, along with a photographer from a Brooklyn newspaper, who had set up his apparatus in the field. “This way. Look this way.” Flash! Pwoof. Harry posed on the tee like some ambassador from the future. “For the folks who couldn’t make the trip, yes, and for history.” To “oohs” and “ahhs” and “Would you look at that?”s. Flash! Pwoof. Vardon drove a few of his Flyers into the clear mountain air. 

As Seymour tracked them down and ran them back to the tee, Oscar waited in the wings. He wore a fedora pulled low, his shirt barely concealing his brawny shoulders and big hands. Vardon would take a liking to him. He could appreciate a Native American teaching golf to city slickers. Color of the skin mattered nothing to Harry; he was looking only to get under it. And that August morning, Harry felt cool as the other side of the pillow. He’d seen crowds this size at morning tea. Only two from the press? 

As the photographer broke down his little tower, Seymour jumped up onto that raised square of mud and grass to set the rules: He would forecaddie, then meet the teams at each tee to record the score—Harry’s and the best of the other two—until there was a clear winner.

And then they were off. The diminutive Dunn ran about the pastures marking balls, while Oscar, his hands shaking straight away, had a few good drives. The muddy earth was no bother if you could lift that little sphere into the sky. He drove one or two onto the green early. Only problem? Three putts. And Stevens was no help. He was busy chatting with the Spalding men and the ladies on the sidelines. While Seymour met them at each tee, after each big number from Oscar, his smile turned down another cubit.

Vardon was happy winning and happy to see a few of the female kind lining the fairways. He would later write about this trip to America, “Golf is a game of freedom. I like to see a lady go out on the links, and they can wear whatever costume she thinks fit to wear.” He’d heard a local preacher say the ladies on the links “swore like troopers.” All to the good. 

On the fifth tee, Seymour whispered to Oscar: “’Tis nerves. He’s goot in yer ’ed.” He had seen Oscar Bunn play better golf in his sleep, and his high Scottish hopes skittered like a muffed chip. 

“I think the panther’s got his mate,” Vardon smiled and laughed. “Aye. Yea. Keep to the open,” Seymour replied dully. The panther? Oscar thought the trapped beast might have been an old black dog, but didn’t venture a guess. 

At another turn, Vardon asked Oscar about Uncle Willie and Shinnecock. The Vardon tour had begun with Willie’s assistance, but it would not make it to Shinnecock. Harry had his eyes on Chicago and inquired if Oscar was playing come October. No. Shinnecock would be shutting down. Oscar would be advertising for winter engagements, in Florida or beyond. He didn’t want Vardon to know he had to work, even though, truth be told, Vardon might have put up the dough. After all, Harry’d been called a grockle, a Jersey bean. Worse. He could appreciate this jimmy slipping the noose of fate with his sticks. “And Willie’s taught ya to carve and swing? You can’t get any closer to the bone of golf than that.” 

By the 10th, Vardon had the match in hand. He could see Oscar could hit a long ball—just couldn’t score. No shame in that. But Seymour had given up. They could find their own bloody balls. Besides, Vardon had plenty. In fact, when they got to the 10th, he reached into his pocket and produced the finest sphere Oscar had ever seen. A Vardon gutta. “I’m bringing this to Chicago,” Vardon smiled, handing one to Oscar, who tried to put it right to work, like a set of extra legs. Oscar assured Harry he’d win in Chicago. Anyway, it’s hard to golf when you’re trying to learn. Vardon had a hip turn deeper than the lake, and Oscar watched. Vardon had his right hand turned up on the club, and Oscar tried to do the same. Stevens went on a bivouac again as Vardon asked Oscar about his plans. Chicago? Not in the cards. Next year’s Open? “You’ll have ’a come for it,” Vardon told him. “The way you hit it long, you’d be fine. The balls roll a bit, unlike ’n this bloody mud.”

Oscar could see Vardon liked golf harder than home. At 30, he had already won the Open Championship twice, while Oscar, at 25, needed help getting from Shinnecock to the hills for a month in the summer. In August 1900? To cross the ocean? Some of the tribe—including his father—had gone out for whales, but to sail the ocean for a golf match? That hadn’t even entered his mind. And though Harry would never get to Shinnecock, Oscar assured him it was much, much finer than Eagle’s Nest. Barely golf, in Vardon’s view. 

“It’s why I’ve played so poorly,” Oscar said, and the two shared a laugh. The result? Reported in a number of places, including The Brooklyn Eagle, Oscar was quoted: “I was nervous, of course, meeting the player ranked best in the world, and I am sure only for that I would have won.” The newsmen had a story at every turn—free advertising for the Vardon Flyer, and a tease for the American public with a sudden interest. The Spalding folks knew what they were doing. Reporters and crowds at every summer stop. The mountain towns boomed when the stone streets of Boston and New York got hot. And Harry did what Harry does. In his 90-match tour that year, he’d be pipped only nine or 10 times, and that morning at Eagle’s Nest? Just another W.

But then, out of the blue, when the golfing parties gathered back at the lake house, Seymour announced that Mr. Colgate had put up another $250 if he and his friends—Dexter Hunter and Doctor Gorham—could play the champ. Vardon had an appointment at Saranac, but agreed to return. Why not? The following week. He’d play four nines. Good practice. Another stay at that magnificent house on the lake? Not a bother. And this time they’d play the “home course,” a short nine, wrapped around the lake house like a primitive shawl. Seven par 3s and two par 4s, what would later become the Pristine Nine at Lake Placid. 

So, on Aug. 18, 1900, Vardon returned from the Grand Hotel and Ampersand at Saranac. The morning broke a blue sky over the woods and lakes and streams, but with a wind high in the trees, coming from the south. And after the Spalding crew laid out boxes of the glorious new guttas, Harry made it no secret that he was happy to see “the Indian” again, wanting to know straight off if he’d dropped the hillbilly from his team. Oscar hadn’t, but was hungry to play Vardon again. The first round had been a mess, and he was hitting better now with a new ball, turning his hip deeper, like Vardon, and he hadn’t lost that thing. The Flyer? Sure to make everyone an expert golfer.

But Vardon was an anomaly, a golf freak, like a hunger artist or human pincushion. Speaking of which, Doctor Gorham, Dexter Hunter and Sutherland Colgate had all checked in. Vardon had committed to four nine-hole rounds, and the Stevens links were short. Harry imagined he’d make short work of it all. Doctor Gorham belonged to a club back in Yonkers, was reputed to be a good golfer and was making his way to the tee. 

Thunderstorms this afternoon, Doctor Gorham noted, so he would go first, followed by Hunter and Colgate. Oscar and Vardon, with Stevens in tow, would play the last nine. Seymour would again forecaddie and record scores. And as Oscar manned the shop that morning, he kept a keen eye for first Gorham, then Hunter and then Colgate. They all slaked back to deliver the news to loved ones and friends: Not by tight margins, Vardon prevailed. Not unexpected, and, even in defeat, August at the lake was a glimpse of heaven on earth. Golfing was a fine affair, but not a career. Their offices and banks and printing houses were back in Manhattan and Boston, waiting for school and work to begin again. 

Meanwhile, Seymour stewed. He thought Gorham might keep it close, and had the word of a telegram to his father, Tom, all laid out in his head: “Brits lose New World once again.” He’d longed for at least one to make a dent, and while they gathered at the tee for the final nine of the day, he told Oscar again, “Ya goot to git to his ’ed. Talk with’m…about anything. The panther! Thunderstorm!”

Vardon was unbothered. Money, golf and lunch on the porch. Just getting ready for Chicago. His mind was elsewhere. Vardon had taken an extra helping at lunch and was 27 holes into his day, while Oscar had carved out an hour before the match to settle his nerves and take a few putts. Chamomile tea does the trick for the stomach and shakes. Oh, yes, and only a slight bit of food. And this day there was no extra trip to Eagle’s Nest. The first tee was just behind the porch, and as they stepped to the level little field, Oscar knew what he could do. Vardon had played all day, played first and was in a groove. Bang. What do you want to talk about now, Mr. Bunn? Have you changed your grip? By now he knew Vardon played the game in his head, and Oscar would need three holes to get straight but had given up only one stroke. When Seymour caught up to them, he asked Harry about the Ampersand at Saranac. On Thursday last, Vardon had taken all comers there. 

“Did ya know Oscar’s got the record there?” Seymour offered. “At Ampersand?” Harry nodded as he made the tiny pilgrimage from the green—such as it was—to the fourth tee. He was not surprised. Oscar Bunn hit a long ball, and even longer now with his gifted Flyer.

And when Stevens didn’t report for the fourth, Seymour said, “Could be the panther goot ’im.” The amateur had been off on a goose chase all morning, clearly a flirt, chatting up the females of the species. “I’ll be up a’ed. I’ll be lookin’ for it!” Then Vardon griped about stroke play. In a proper match, he’d be dormie-4. Strokes gave Oscar a chance. And where was the crowd? Who was he playing for? The crowd had thinned out as the course looped up above the lake house by the tree line. 

And then Harry missed on a drive! Oscar laced a good one, 250 yards. He could feel this new ball and, when he was on, could outhit anyone, including the champ. In the week since Vardon had been at the lake, he’d turned his right hand up on the club and begun to kick his left heel up. With a good fourth hole, and Vardon short, Oscar was one up, 19-18. 

Seymour was shouting whenever Oscar did anything well. “Goot bawl, mate,” and “Weel played, weel played.” Meeting on the fifth tee, he gave Oscar a wink and pointed at his temple: Git in ’is ’ed. 

The wind swirled in the tall pines, and the lake had a chop. The only crowd now was the diminutive Seymour in his knickers, dancing up and down the fairway, and, on the sidelines, a newspaper man and one from the Spalding clan. And where Vardon was raised playing golf on an island, where sometimes the sun never set, in these hills, these trees along the back side of the hotel, an early dark brewed. The shadows had come up, cooled things down. Seymour could say something about the panther, but now a thunderstorm was a more likely foe. Vardon had never seen the likes of an Adirondack thunderstorm over the lake. With distant booms! The crowd scattered in fear! 

And Oscar had begun to play like he could. Thwack. Thwack. Boom. Seymour reached up to pat his shoulders at each tee. And Vardon had grown quieter each time Oscar made a putt. When Oscar went 2-up on No. 6, Seymour couldn’t contain himself. He danced around a bit, put on a mug and hummed a phrase of “Rule Britannia.” And then the seventh? A Redan set on a slope, with a pothole on the road to the right. If you could carry that or stay left and get on in two, you’d be lucky. Sure enough, Vardon found the hole in the road. Oscar stayed left, up the slope. His beautiful new ball ran down to the fringe. Seymour cried out, “Goot bawl!” Vardon thought he might have even bet against him. The fool. He’d show ’em, given the chance, but the sky had begun to spit, the pothole was wet and we were decades from having a proper spoon. Oscar took another hole.

On the eighth, another par 3, downhill and over a creek, Oscar had the honors and planted one off the back fringe. He was a long hitter, sure enough, and this new ball had seemingly been sent by his happy ancestors. Seymour planted a flag at it, waving back at the duo with a grin the size of Old Baldy. Vardon would have liked to knock one off his Scottish head, but he had to go for it. He took out a mashie and tried to sculpt one over the creek, and did—but, for some reason, the golf gods had put a rock where grass should be. Bloody ’ell, then. His Flyer flew all right, off the rock and well past the green. Oscar two-putted for par. Vardon stormed off to what passed for a tee and the short par-4 ninth. Seymour met them there, quietly gloating. They’d play the last, sure, fair was fair, but under the cloud of Harry Vardon’s furious mug. 

The tall, brawny Native American took a few long strides and picked Seymour up by the arms. In a fit of joy, a state of pure golfing happiness, Oscar swung Seymour around like a top as he cried, “Ya beat ’im, mate. Ya dun it. I seen it me self

The press would have the lasting say on the match. In an article titled “Vardon’s Waterloo,” from the Aug. 20, 1900, edition of New York’s The Argus, we find, “Harry Vardon was defeated by Oscar Bunn…in a fashion Vardon is not likely to forget: 33-38.”

The 1900 tour would have landed Harry on a very high hog: $6,750 was a conservative estimate of his enormous earnings. And there was no tanking. When the tour ended at Van Cortlandt Park that November, a month after he’d won the U.S. Open in Chicago, Vardon won both his matches before an estimated 2,500 in attendance. The New York Times reported, “The throng followed the players behind a long rope, but the mob of urchins who were allowed to roam at will along the links, yelling at every stroke, made the game the noisiest in which Vardon has ever been seen.”

Golf had officially begun in America. People would watch people play who got paid to play. This was human pincushions, fire-eaters and tattooed ladies rolled into one, and the golfing strongman, Harry Vardon, would return to England to his Alice, have six kids, win four more Open Championships and, ho hum, 40-plus more titles.

None of that could have been known that Saturday in August 1900, beside the glass-like lake. Harry played 36 holes and was in no mood for a party. Oscar walked with him back to the porch. “You’ll win in Chicago,” he offered. It was true. Mr. Vardon had some business in Chicago, and, after getting his schedule from the Spalding men, he retreated to his room, but not before a strong handshake with Oscar, who again invited him to Shinnecock. 

“Give my best to Willie and all.” 

“I will.”

Then, Oscar, once he’d doffed his fedora and wrapped his big, brown hand around Vardon’s, ran to the back of the house and up a short hill to find Seymour taking the flags in from the rain. His boss, his friend, the keeper of the till, Seymour looked up to see Oscar skipping off the porch. The tall, brawny Native American took a few long strides and picked Seymour up by the arms. In a fit of joy, a state of pure golfing happiness, Oscar swung Seymour around like a top as he cried, “Ya beat ’im, mate. Ya dun it. I seen it me self. I’ll telegraph me pops in the mooning.”

Oscar’s smile was as warm as the summer rain. Yes, 33-38. His wife, Della, and his brother, Charles, would hear about it as soon as he got back to Shinnecock. Oscar Smith Bunn had beaten the best in the world.

Oscar would continue to teach and play, eventually following Mungo Park Jr. to Argentina. On Jan. 6, 1917, from the port of New York, aboard the SS Vauban, Oscar set sail to help build a golf course and instruct. It was a time when influenza and pneumonia were rampant, and the lack of known treatments made them much deadlier. Upon returning from South America, The Southampton Press reported, Oscar “was apparently unprepared for the cold weather and caught pneumonia…from which he never recovered.” He fell ill in October 1917 and died at the age of 42 on Jan. 24, 1918. 

Seymour Dunn would teach at Shinnecock and summer at Lake Placid for many years, and in 1922 he published the influential Golf Fundamentals: Orthodoxy of Style, which is among the first books to seriously consider the mental game. In the chapter “The Psychology of Golf,” there is only this on a large, otherwise blank page: “Perseverance: Continue in a state of grace, until it is succeeded by a state of glory.”

In 2024, a portrait of Oscar Smith Bunn, painted by his great-grandnephew, David Bunn Martine, was made part of the collection at the USGA Museum and Library.