The U.S. Open’s 10 greatest players: career rating
By Bill Felber
7. Macdonald Smith, -0.88 (1909-1935)
Smith is the youngest member of one of the most dominant, yet least-known families in golf history.
There were three Smiths, Willie, Alex and Macdonald, and cumulatively they won three Opens with 22 top fives. Like Snead years later, Macdonald Smith never won the event but he performed so consistently that he still ranks as one of the tournament’s greats.
Smith’s frustrated relationship with the Open began in 1910 when he finished in a three-way playoff that also included his brother, Alex. While Alex walked away with the trophy, Macdonald came home third.
He did not compete again until the famous 1913 Open in which Francis Ouimet defeated Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in a playoff. Smith finished three strokes out of that playoff and then, frustrated, largely put his clubs away for a decade.
The time-out served Smith well. Having twice narrowly missed as a youngster, a more mature Smith was runner-up to Bobby Jones in 1930, and as late as 1936 took solo fourth at age 46.
The entirety of Smith’s record gives him one distinction no player would want. Between 1912 and 1936, he won 25 events on the PGA Tour, among them four LA Opens, three Western Opens, one Canadian Open and a North and South, in those days a big-deal event. His 25 victories are the most ever by a player who has not been inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.