October 4, 1895: The 1st Golf U.S. Open

The Open Championship Cup trophy

October 4, 1895: The 1st U.S. Open golf tournament is held, at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island. Horace Rawlins, a 21-year-old Englishman, won it, with a score of 173 -- in 3 rounds.

NOTE: For a long time, with this project, I resisted putting in references to golf, because of the kind of people who tend to play it. I finally caved in, although I haven't included as many references as I would if it were a real sport, which it is not.

Rawlins, from the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England, never entered another major golf tournament, and died in 1935, at the age of 60.

The U.S. Open, held at different sites, was traditionally, chronologically, the 2nd of professional golf's 4 "majors," until 2019, when the PGA Championship, formerly the 4th, was moved to between the Masters and the U.S. Open. It is often considered the hardest to win, due to the difficulty of some of its courses. Famously, Sam Snead was unable to win it: From 1942 to 1954, he won 3 Masters, 3 PGA Championships, and 1 British Open, but could only finish 2nd at the U.S. Open, which he did 4 times.

As to those locations: It has been played 9 times at Oakmont Country Club in the Pittsburgh suburb of Oakmont, Pennsylvania; 7 times at Baltusrol Golf Club, outside New York City in Springfield, New Jersey; 6 times at Winged Foot Golf Course, outside New York City in Mamaroneck, New York; 6 times at Oakland Hills Country Club, in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; 5 times at Merion Golf Club, in the Philadelphia suburb of Ardmore, Pennsylvania; 5 times at the Olympic Club, in San Francisco; 5 times at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, in Shinnecock Hills, Long Island, New York; 4 times at the Myopia Hunt Club, in the Boston suburb of South Hamilton, Massachusetts; 4 times at The Country Club, in the Boston suburb of Brookline, Massachusetts; 4 times at the Inverness Club, in Toledo, Ohio; and 4 times at Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, outside Carmel, California.

(UPDATE: Pinehurst Resort, in the Charlotte suburb of Pinehurst, North Carolina, hosted for a 4th time in 2024. Oakmont hosted for a 10th time in 2025.)

Willie Anderson, Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus hold the record for the most U.S. Open victories, with 4 each. Hale Irwin is the oldest winner, at 45 in 1990. The youngest winner is John McDermott, in 1911: He would still be a teenager for a few more weeks.

As golf was so dominated by men from the British Isles early on, McDermott was also the 1st American-born winner. Gary Player of South Africa, in 1965, was the 1st winner from neither the U.S. nor the British Isles. Not until 2007 would the winner come from outside the U.S. or the British Commonwealth: Ángel Cabrera of Argentina.

The record low score is 268, set by Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland in 2011. His 16 under par was also a record, since tied by American Brooks Koepka in 2017.

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October 4, 1895 was a Friday. The great silent film comedian Buster Keaton was born. The only major professional sport in America at this point was baseball, and the season had already ended, with the Baltimore Orioles (not the current team with the name) having won the National League Pennant, and thus, unofficially, the World Championship. So there were no other scores on this historic day.

September 3, 1881: The 1st U.S. Open

Richard D. Sears

September 3, 1881: The Singles Final of the 1st U.S. National Championships -- tennis' 1st U.S. Open -- is held at the Newport Casino in Newport, Rhode Island. Richard Sears defeats William E. Glyn, 6-0, 6-3, 6-2. Both players were American: At the time, the tournament was only open to Americans.

Richard Dudley Sears was born on October 26, 1861 in Boston. He won the U.S. Open the 1st 7 times, 1881 to 1887. He also won its doubles tournament from 1882 to 1887, with James Dwight as his partner, except for 1885, when it was Joseph Clark. After that, he retired from tennis. He died in 1943.

In 1903, Laurence Doherty -- interestingly enough, a native of Wimbledon, in South London -- became the 1st non-American to win the U.S. Open. Sears' 7 wins have been matched by fellow Americans William Larned and Bill Tilden, but no player has managed to win an 8th. In fact, the next-most is 5, by Americans Jimmy Connors and Pete Sampras, and Switzerland's Roger Federer.

The 1st women's tournament was held in 1887. It was won by Ellen Hansell, born in Philadelphia in 1869. She reached the Final again in 1888, but lost, and never got that far again. She lived until 1937. Mabel Cahill, from Ireland but competing for Great Britain, was the 1st non-American woman to win, in 1891. In the Final, she defeated Ellen Roosevelt, a 1st cousin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Ellen Hansell

The woman with the most U.S. Open wins is Molla Bjurstedt Mallory, a Norwegian who came to America to live in 1915, and won 8 titles from that year until 1926. Helen Wills Moody won 7, Chris Evert won 6, and Serena Williams has also won 6.

The Newport Casino hosted the U.S. Open until 1914, and is the home of the International Tennis Hall of Fame. From 1915 to 1920, it was held at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Queens. From 1921 to 1923, it was played at the Germantown Cricket Club in Philadelphia.

Newport Casino

In 1923, the West Side Tennis Club built a stadium that still stands, and hosted 2 concerts by The Beatles in 1964. That stadium hosted the U.S. Open from 1924 until 1977. In 1978, the Open moved 3 miles to Flushing Meadow-Corona Park, to the Singer Bowl, which was renamed Louis Armstrong Stadium: The jazz master lived nearby, in Corona, and was a big sports fan, including, unusually for a black man at the time, tennis. The complex was named the National Tennis Center by the United States Tennis Association (USTA).

Forest Hills Stadium

In 1997, a new main venue opened at Flushing Meadow, Arthur Ashe Stadium. Louis Armstrong Stadium was kept as a backup, before being torn down and replaced by a new stadium on the same site, with the same name, in 2018. In 2006, the entire complex was renamed the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.

Arthur Ashe Stadium

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September 3, 1881 was a Saturday. The only professional sports league in North America at that point was baseball's National League, and these games were played that day:

* The Boston Red Stockings beat the Worcester Ruby Legs, 3-2 at the 1st version of the South End Grounds in Boston. The Red Stockings eventually became the Braves. In 1883, the Ruby Legs moved, becoming the Philadelphia Phillies.

* The Providence Grays beat the Troy Trojans, 11-1 at the Haymakers' Grounds in Troy, New York, across the Hudson River from the State capital in Albany. In 1883, the Trojans moved, becoming the New York Giants. The Grays had won the NL Pennant in 1879, and would do so again in 1884, but went out of business just 1 year later.

* The Buffalo Bisons beat the Detroit Wolverines, 5-3 at Riverside Park in Buffalo. The Bisons went out of business after the 1885 season. The Wolverines won the Pennant in 1887, but went out of business just 1 year later.

* The Chicago White Stockings beat the Cleveland Blues, 4-2 at Kennard Street Park in Cleveland. The Blues went out of business after the 1884 season, while the White Stockings eventually became the Cubs.

July 25, 1965: Bob Dylan Goes Electric

July 25, 1965: Bob Dylan crosses a rock and roll Rubicon. He performs with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island. They use electric instruments, something the festival had never allowed before, as folk music has traditionally been all-acoustic. 

Dylan had been born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota. He grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota, but found life there dissatisfying on multiple levels. Early early rock and roll stars of the mid-1950s appealed to him, and so anyone who had studied his entire life from 1941 to 1965 should have seen this coming. But most people didn't know about that when they became fans of his in the early 1960s. 

In 1961, having dropped out of the University of Minnesota, he came to New York, renamed himself for Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, and started singing folk music in the clubs of Manhattan's Greenwich Village, where Thomas had lived and performed for the last few years of his life, dying there in 1953. (I have an entry for his death.)

Bob had adopted a persona like that of earlier folk singer Woody Guthrie, with scraggly clothes and a nasal twang. He combined traditional folk songs with his own new compositions, and it didn't seem to matter that he couldn't sing in the traditional sense, or that he wasn't an especially good-looking guy. People were mesmerized by his performances. Soon, men wanted to be him, and women just wanted him.

On April 16, 1962, at Gerde's Folk City at 11 West 4th Street, he first performed "Blowin' in the Wind," and it was a sensation, with its 3 short verses citing the civil rights and antiwar movements. This was less than a year after the Freedom Rides, but a year before American TV viewers saw the firehoses and police dogs of Birmingham, and most hadn't yet heard of Vietnam, let alone realized that we already had troops fighting, killing and dying there. To them, "war" still meant World War II, a "just war," or maybe the Korean War, which didn't seem worth it.

Bob's self-titled debut album had been released on Columbia Records the preceding March 19. Shortly after the Gerde's premiere, he began recording The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Released on May 27, 1963, it included "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" -- the latter the first in a long line of great breakup songs he would write. 

Any 1 of those 4 songs would have been a great triumph for any writer. Dylan had all 4 on 1 album. He was 3 days past his 22nd birthday, and he was already a musical legend.

That July, he appeared at Newport for the first time, along with the biggest active legend of folksinging, Pete Seeger. Guthrie, to whom Seeger had introduced Dylan, was still alive, but sidelined by the condition that would kill him 4 years later.

Also there were Peter, Paul and Mary (Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers), the folksinging trio who recorded what remain the biggest hit versions of "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Don't Think Twice." So was Joan Baez, the leading female soloist of "the folk revolution," who helped make Bob famous, then became his girlfriend. Together, these and others closed the show by joining hands and singing a song Seeger, though he didn't write it, made the anthem of civil rights: "We Shall Overcome."

Dylan then began recording his next album, finishing it before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, but not released until afterward, on January 13, 1964: The Times They Are A-Changin'. It included the title track, "Ballad of Hollis Brown," "With God On Our Side," "Only a Pawn In Their Game," "When the Ship Comes In," and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." His previous burst of creativity was thus proven to be no fluke.

Just 25 days after that album's release, The Beatles arrived in America. They and Dylan each influenced the other tremendously, and it may have been The Beatles who influenced Dylan to switch to electric instruments.

Before he did though, he recorded Another Side of Bob Dylan. Released on August 8, 1964, he told Nat Hentoff, the music critic of The Village Voice, New York's underground weekly newspaper, "There ain't no finger-pointing songs." There was "All I Really Want to Do," "Chimes of Freedom," "It Ain't Me, Babe," and "My Back Pages," on which the 23-year old Dylan closed each of 6 verses by singing, "Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now." 

The Byrds, who would record several of Bob's songs, recorded "My Back Pages," but, to cut it to single length, dropped the 3rd and 4th verses. Both they and Cher would have a hit with "All I Really Want to Do"; while "It Ain't Me, Babe" would be a hit on the pop chart for The Turtles (their first hit), and on the country chart for Johnny Cash.

Fame and the expectation of his peers were getting to Dylan. Until now, except for a couple of songs on the latest album where he had played piano, it had been just him, his guitar, and the harmonica he wore in a neck harness; with no other musicians. (The harmonica in the neck harness would be copied by many performers, most notably Neil Young and Billy Joel.) For his next album, he went electric, and it was titled Bringing It All Back Home.

Released on March 22, 1965, this was a revelation. It was a reminder of his rock and roll roots, about which his "folkie" fans seemed to know nothing. It began with "Subterranean Homesick Blues," with its angry declaration that, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." (This would inspire a radical offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society to call themselves the Weathermen, and later the Weather Underground.)

It included "Maggie's Farm," whose lyrics certainly suggested folk roots, but the electricity behind it give it a bigger punch. It included "Mr. Tambourine Man," which he recorded in 3/4 time, but The Byrds would later switch it to 4/4 time, and give him his 1st Number 1 hit as a writer. (The song has 4 verses, but Byrds lead singer Roger McGuinn sang only the 2nd between the choruses.)

It included "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," with its declaration, "He not busy being born is busy dying." If that wasn't a message to the people who wanted him to remain the 22-year-old golden boy of the Greenwich Village clubs forever -- just as there were others who got upset when The Beatles moved beyond being "The Lovable Mop Tops" -- then the last song on the album certainly was: "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." 

And on July 20, he released a standalone single, a 6-minute reminder of how their delusions of him, not himself, had let them down: "Like a Rolling Stone." (Rolling Stone magazine was named for this song, not the new British band of the same name.)

So when Dylan, backed by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, took the stage at Newport on July 25, nobody knew what to expect. Here's what he gave them: "Maggie's Farm," "Like a Rolling Stone," and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry," each electric.

There was booing, but there's dispute over why. Some have said it wasn't because the electric instruments were blasphemy to the folkies, it was because the sound system was bad, and Bob and the band couldn't be heard properly. The surviving film suggests that this is true, because the songs don't sound much like they did on the records. 

Another legend, that Pete Seeger yelled at show producer George Wein to turn the amps off, and that, having been refused, the "purist" Seeger tried to chop the cord with an ax, were denied by Seeger himself. He admitted that the problem was the sound system, not Dylan's audacity. If any folkies felt betrayed that night, Seeger was not one of them.

Dylan played 2 more songs, just him, his guitar, and his harmonica: "Mr. Tambourine Man" and, providing a definitive last word for them, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." He soon wrote one of the nastiest songs ever written in the English language: "Positively 4th Street," opening with, "You got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend," and going on to really let them have it.

By this point, he had further enraged the folk music community by breaking up with Joan Baez, and marrying someone else, Sara Lowndes, for whom he wrote some of his more interesting songs thereafter.

Dylan would go through many more changes to his career, and did not appear at the Newport Folk Festival again until 2002. As of July 25, 2022, he is 81 years old, and still performing. Few people now doubt that going electric was good for him, and good for music.

Also, not counting individuals implied as being part of a group, like the Beatles and the performers at Woodstock, Bob Dylan is 1 of 5 people mentioned in Billy Joel's 1989 song "We Didn't Start the Fire" who are still alive. The others are Queen Elizabeth II, Brigitte Bardot, Chubby Checker, and 1984 New York "subway vigilante" Bernhard Goetz. (UPDATE: With the death of Queen Elizabeth on September 8, 2022, Dylan is now 1 of 4 still alive.)

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July 25, 1965 was a Sunday. Baseball player Torey Lovullo and actress Illeana Douglas was born.

It was the off-season for the NFL, the NBA and the NHL. But, being a Sunday, there was a full slate of Major League Baseball games, including doubleheaders:

* The New York Yankees beat the Cleveland Indians, 3-0 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Mel Stottlemyre pitched a 4-hit shutout, and was backed by home runs from Tom Tresh and Joe Pepitone. Mickey Mantle went 1-for-4.

It was the 1st game of a doubleheader. Despite the opener giving Yankee Fans hope, the nightcap proved that, for the old Dynasty, it was all over now, baby blue. The Indians won it, 7-4. Al Downing got clobbered, allowing 6 runs in the 1st inning. Mantle hit a home run in the losing cause.

* The New York Mets split a doubleheader at Shea Stadium. They beat the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1st game, 8-1, but lost the 2nd game, 3-1. That 2nd game would be Casey Stengel's last official appearance in an major league uniform, having first appeared in one in 1912. An injury forced him to retire as Mets manager.

This was Old-Timers Day for the Mets, with former New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers standing in for the old-timers that the 4th-year Mets didn't yet have. At a party at Toots Shor's restaurant after the game, Met manager Casey Stengel, turning 75 a few days later, fell and broke his hip. He never managed again, retiring after 54 consecutive seasons in a major league uniform.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Baltimore Orioles, 8-5 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The Twins achieved this despite Harmon Killebrew going 0-for-5. The O's lost despite a home run from Brooks Robinson. It was 5-1 O's going into the 8th inning, but the Twins scored 4 in the 8th and 3 in the 9th to win it.

* A doubleheader was split at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. The Washington Senators won the 1st game, 4-3. The Kansas City Athletics won the 2nd game, 5-3. (In 1969, the stadium was renamed for Robert F. Kennedy.)

* The Boston Red Sox beat the California Angels, 5-4 at Fenway Park in Boston. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-3 with a walk, and Tony Conigliaro hit a home run.

* A doubleheader was split at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. The Chicago White Sox won the 1st game, 10-6. Don Demeter hit 2 home runs. The Detroit Tigers won the 2nd game, 13-2. Norm Cash hit 2 homers. Al Kaline went 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI in the 1st game, then got the 2nd game off.

* A doubleheader was split at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The Pittsburgh Pirates won the 1st game, 3-2. Del Crandall won it with a home run in the top of the 13th inning. Bill Mazeroski also homered. The Chicago Cubs won the 2nd game, 5-0. Bill Faul pitched a 3-hit shutout, beating former Cub pitcher Don Cardwell. Billy Williams and Ron Santo both homered. Over the 2 games, Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell both went 2-for-9, and Ernie Banks went 4-for-10.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Houston Astros, 3-1 at the Astrodome in Houston. Frank Robinson went 1-for-4, and Pete Rose went 2-for-4. Joe Morgan, later to star for the Reds, went 0-for-4 for the Astros.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the St Louis Cardinals, 5-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Bob Uecker, who had homered off Sandy Koufax the day before, got a hit (1-for-3). Eventual 3,000 Hit Club member Lou Brock did not (0-for-4).

* And the San Francisco Giants beat the Milwaukee Braves, 2-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays only appeared as a pinch-hitter, and did not reach base. Hank Aaron went 1-for-5. So did Joe Torre, who added an RBI.