Tom Armour. Defeating Harry Cooper to win the U.S. golf title. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-108418).

Armour, Tommy (24 Sept. 1895-11 Sept. 1968), professional golfer, was born Thomas Dickson Armour in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of George Armour, a confectioner. His mother's name is unknown. His father died when Armour was four. Armour's older brother, Sandy, took the young child to a golf course adjacent to their house and introduced him to the game of golf. As an adolescent, Armour caddied for Sandy as he won the Scottish Amateur championship. After entering Stewart's College in Edinburgh, Armour graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1914.

Although Armour was considered a promising young amateur golfer in Scotland during his years at the university, he enlisted in the Black Watch Regiment in the latter part of 1914, thus thrusting him into World War I. During the war Armour established a reputation as being one of the fastest and deadliest machine gunners in his entire regiment. In 1918 Armour transferred to the newly established Tank Corps; in June of that year his tank was shelled by enemy fire, and he was one of only two survivors. Before the end of the war Armour fell victim to a mustard gas attack, resulting in a heavily wounded left arm and temporary blindness in both eyes. Although the arm would eventually heal (yet remain in a weakened condition), he permanently lost sight in his left eye.

In 1920, the year after his marriage to Consuelo Carrera (the couple would have two children), Armour came to the United States and found work as a traveling salesman. Still an amateur golfer, he won three amateur events that year, including the French Amateur championship. In 1921 Armour competed in an international amateur golf competition between Great Britain and the United States. This event, which Armour helped win for Great Britain, would be recognized as the precursor to the inauguration of the biannual Walker Cup matches one year later. In 1922 Armour became a citizen of the United States, and in 1925 he renounced his amateur status and joined the American professional golf tour. Armour also accepted a position as club professional at the prestigious Congressional Country Club in Washington, D.C., in 1926 after briefly serving as secretary at the Westchester-Biltmore Country Club.

Although the "Silver Scot," so nicknamed for the color of his hair, had one victory on the professional tour in 1925, few expected the incredible success Armour enjoyed in 1927. He broke the single season record for tour victories, including one in the highly competitive Canadian Open. However, Armour's greatest victory that year occurred at the Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania, as he captured the U.S. Open. Armour, who throughout his career had a penchant for making seemingly impossible comebacks, birdied the final hole of regulation play to tie Harry Cooper with a score of 301, after holing a one-iron shot from the fairway; the following day Armour defeated Cooper by three strokes on the way to his first major championship. Later that year Armour participated in the first official Ryder Cup match, held at Worcester Country Club in Massachusetts and won convincingly by the American team.

Armour's life could best be described as a roller-coaster ride during the next few years. In 1928 he dominated the professional tour by winning four more tournaments. Yet in 1930 Armour underwent a highly publicized divorce from his wife, which was settled in April. Armour, who had fallen in love with Estelle Andrews, suffered substantial financial damages in the proceedings. (Armour and Andrews later married, and they would have one son.) However, later that year Armour defeated Gene Sarazen 1-up at Fresh Meadow in Flushing, New York, to win the PGA (Professional Golfers' Association) championship. In 1931 Armour composed another improbable comeback, making up a five-stroke deficit in the final round and defeating Argentine Jose Jurado by one stroke to win the last of his major championships, the British Open at Carnoustie, Scotland.

Although Armour remained highly competitive on the professional tour for another five years, at this point in his life he established himself as one of the most respected (and highly priced) golf instructors in the world. Armour held the position of golf instructor at the Boca Raton Club in Florida for almost twenty-five years, teaching and correcting the swings of noted golfers such as Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Lawson Little. In 1940 he was elected to the PGA Hall of Fame. In the 1950s Armour frequented Winged Foot Country Club in Mamaroneck, New York, while authoring instruction manuals and arguing for the importance of a dominant right hand throughout the swing. He also designed golf clubs for the Crawford, McGregor and Canby Company. Armour died in Larchmont, New York.

Although his professional career was relatively short, the legacy Armour left on the game of golf will never be forgotten. Although he was not considered to be the most congenial person on the tour, he was deeply admired for his unyielding determination to win (or in the case of battle, to survive and recover). Few were his equal as a golf instructor, and his books have remained influential. And there is no doubt that Armour will always be remembered for his uncanny ability to come back. In the process Armour changed the game of golf and molded generations of successful players.

Armour wrote three books: How to Play Your Best Golf All the Time (1953), A Round of Golf with Tommy Armour (1959), and Tommy Armour's ABC's of Golf (1967). For more information on Armour, consult Charles Price, The World of Golf: A Panorama of Six Centuries of the Game's History (1962), and Herbert Warren Wind, The Story of American Golf: Its Champions and Its Championships (1956). An obituary is in the New York Times, 14 Sept. 1968.