A member of the Great Triumvirate (along with Harry Vardon and James Braid), John Henry (J. H.) Taylor graced the earth in Devon, England in 1871. He won close to 20 professional tournaments, served as a Ryder Cup captain, and designed numerous golf courses in England.
Taylor became an orphan as a boy and started work as a caddie and laborer at Royal North Devon Golf Club in 1882. He worked his way into a greenskeeper position and learned about course layout and maintenance.
At the age of 19, Taylor became a professional golfer and a year later won his first professional tournament, the Challenge Match Play in England. Taylor won the first of his five British Open Championships in 1894 and followed that with Open victories in 1895, 1900, 1909, and 1913. His early Open triumphs enticed the Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Club to name Taylor its golf professional, a job he held until his retirement in 1946.
Taylor finished second in the British Open six times and in the 1900 United States Open, an event he participated in twice. Among his professional victories, Taylor won two British PGA Match Play Championships, a French Open, and a German Open.
In 1901, Taylor co-founded and became the first chairman of the British Professional Golfers’ Association. This was the first professional golf association in the world. The United States Professional Golfers’ Association did not form until 1916.
Another of Taylor’s claims to fame happened in 1933 as he captained the British team to a victory over the United States in the Ryder Cup. He remains the only captain from either side never to have played in the Ryder Cup.
Throughout his golf career and retirement in the twentieth century, Taylor designed golf courses in England. Some of them include Frilford Heath’s Red Course, Hainault Golf Club’s Upper Course and Lower Course, Axe Cliff Golf Club in Devon, Batchwood Hall Golf Club in St. Alban’s, and Royal Birkdale Golf Club in Southport. Taylor became president of Royal Birkdale in 1957, a course still in the British Open Championship rotation for the men and the women.
Noting Taylor’s keen accuracy and ability to play in adverse weather conditions, the World Golf Hall of Fame inducted him into its facility in 1975. Taylor passed away in Devon in 1963. Cheers to another of the Great Triumvirate!
