Mass. golf history preserved at Norton museum; special room for Ouimet

Francis Ouimet was America’s first golf hero.
As an unknown 20-year-old amateur and former golf caddie, who taught himself how to play, he won the U.S. Open in 1913, tying two top-seeded Englishmen and then defeating them in the playoffs at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass. His victory created a sensation in American golf circles and, a Brookline native, he is well-remembered today at the Massachusetts Golf Museum, where a special room is dedicated to him.
Operated by the Massachusetts Golf Association, the museum, which is free and open to the public, is located on the grounds of the Tournament Players Club of Boston golf course in Norton, about a half-mile from the Comcast Center (formerly Great Woods) in Mansfield.
Massachusetts has “a very rich and deep” golf history, said Becky Blaeser, director of communications for the museum, which opened in 2002.
“We do not get a huge amount of traffic, but we do get a variety of people,” Blaeser said. “Some are just in the area and they don’t know anything about golf.”
Other well-known players and golf advocates with Massachusetts ties whose careers are profiled at the Norton museum include:
• Donald Ross (1872-1948), a native of Scotland best known for designing courses, considered the “Michelangelo” of golf.
• Pat Bradley, born 59 years ago in Westford, the first woman to surpass the $2 million, $3 million and $4 million marks in career earnings.
• Fred Corcoran (1905-1977), born in Cambridge and considered the “P.T. Barnum of golf,” who worked to raise purses and helped establish several national golf organizations. The museum started in one room in Boston until around 2000, when the Tournament Players Club began building its golf course. “[The Tournament Players Club] reached out to the [Massachusetts Golf Association] because they wanted to reserve part of the site for a golf house,” Blaeser said. “They offered us a parcel of land along the ninth fairway.”
The Tournament Players Club donated the four-acre site to Massachusetts Golf Association because it wanted to increase public appreciation of the game of golf through the museum, she explained, and cluster the commonwealth’s amateur associations at one location.
Today, Arnold Palmer Drive is home to, not only the museum, but also a state women’s golf association, the Ouimet scholarship fund, a regional chapter of the Golf Course Owners Association and other groups for golf course superintendents, club managers and senior citizens.
Due to its somewhat limited size, the museum makes ample use of videos, Blaeser said, so each room of the one-level facility has a video screen where viewers can learn about particular time periods of Massachusetts golf history, from the early 1800s to the present.
The Francis Ouimet Library includes artifacts from the golfer donated by his family and friends, she noted.
Admission to the museum always has been free, Blaeser said, because “we want it to be open to the public and we want to bring golf to as many people as possible.”
Open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., the museum is self-guided, but formal tours can be arranged for groups, and is handicapped accessible. •