Plot
Set mainly in 1913, the film is about Francis Ouimet, the first amateur to win a U.S. Open. Amateur Golf in that era was then a sport only for the wealthy, and Francis came from an immigrant family that was part of the working class. Francis watches an exhibition by legendary British golf pro Harry Vardon (Stephen Dillane) as a 7-year-old boy, and becomes very interested in golf. He begins as a caddy at The Country Club, a posh enclave located across the street from his home in suburban Brookline, Massachusetts, while making friends with the other caddies. He works on his own golf game at every chance, and gradually accumulates his own set of clubs. Francis is so interested that we see him practicing putting at night in his room. He wins the Massachusetts Schoolboy Championship.
One day, a gentleman asks Francis to play with him over The Country Club course, where caddies have almost no access of their own, and he shoots a fine round of 81 despite a triple bogey. His talent, composure, and good manners earn admirers and interest; with the help of the gentleman, Francis gets a chance to play in an upcoming tournament, the U.S. Amateur, the local qualifying for which is to be held at the very same Country Club course. However, his father Arthur (Elias Koteas) tells his son to quit golf and get a "real job". Francis needs $50 for the entry fee, and so agrees to get a real job and never play golf again if he could not qualify; his father lends him the money. On the 18th, Francis faces a three-foot putt that would secure him a spot in the championship, but he looks over and his father is watching. Francis is distracted, misses and falls one stroke short of qualifying for the championship proper.
With much jeer from the rich folk, Francis, now 20, fulfills his promise to his dad and works at a sporting goods shop, while continuing to live at home. After some time with his golf forgotten, Francis is still at the bottom of the working class. But one day, the president of the United States Golf Association enters the store and personally invites him to play in the upcoming U.S. Open; after some maneuvering and consideration from his employer, Francis secures entry. His father informs Francis that he must find his own place to live after the tournament; Francis agrees. However, his mother has been supportive of his golf from the start.
Francis competes in the 1913 U.S. Open that takes place at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, the familiar course located across the street from his home. Against all odds, with ten-year-old Eddie Lowery (Josh Flitter) playing hookey from school to caddy for him, he manages to beat the British champions Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, considered the world's best golfers, in an 18-hole playoff, following their three-way tie after the regulation 72 holes, and becomes the first amateur to ever win the U.S. Open. His extraordinary feat even wins over his father.
Read more about this topic: The Greatest Game Ever Played
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)