Notable Members

One of Wykagyl’s favorite sons and, arguably, its greatest club player was Thomas Valentine “Val” Bermingham. From 1905 to 1932, he won 20 Club championships that stood as a USGA national record. However, his golfing prowess went beyond Wykagyl.

Val was born on Valentine’s Day 1884 in New Rochelle, NY. He began caddying at Pelham Country Club in 1898 where he immediately fell in love with the game and made his own clubs. Val became Pelham’s caddie master and, in 1904, he was invited to become a member of Pelham and subsequently became a member of Wykagyl when the Club moved to New Rochelle.

In 1900, Harry Vardon played at Pelham. Val studied his swing and grip, yet he never adopted the Englishman’s overlapping grip. Instead, he stuck to the old-fashioned baseball grip because Val said that his grip was not really a baseball grip since he held the club in his fingers and not his palms.

There are a number of interesting facts about Val and his outstanding achievement of winning 20 Wykagyl club championships beginning in 1905 when he was runner up. He competed for the next 28 years, until 1933. Only once, in 1928, was he beaten in the finals.

Shortly after Val won his 20th club championship, John Kiernan of the New York Times wrote:

"He could play with the best of them. Jerry Travers, Francis Ouimet, Jess Sweetser, and Bob Jones recognized his prowess, but golf was just a pleasant diversion to him. He refused to make work out of a game that he played for fun. So, he has gone on year after year, playing a fine game and having a lot of fun out of it. Somehow, it seems like a very sensible plan."

In the September 1954 edition of USGA Journal and Turf Management there was an article, A Champion of Club Champions and noted:

"We have recorded a series of achievements by individuals who have won the same championships over particularly long spans of years – and 39 years seems to be the longest span.

Now we come to a sub-division of this type of thing and present the case of T. Val Bermingham, who, starting in 1907, played in 26 consecutive club championships at Wykagyl Country Club in New Rochelle, NY, getting to the final 21 times and winning the championship 20 times."

What is remarkable is that Val only played on weekends. He rarely practiced, never took lessons and would show up around Memorial Day. He would warm up with a few shots and then head out and shoot in the low 70s. After Labor Day, he put his bag away (he only carried seven clubs) and called it another year. Plus, he was the father of nine children and commuted to New York City during the week.

Val broke the course record many times. On the original course, he held the amateur record of 68 when Alex Smith’s professional record was also 68. On a slightly altered course, again, he held the record with a 68.

Val competed at the highest level beyond Wykagyl’s gates:

● 1905, Met Amateur at Fox Hills (Staten Island). Walter Travis, winner of three US Amateurs and a British Amateur, was the man to beat. The New York papers predicted an easy victory for Travis. In the first round, Val was one up on the 11th tee. Travis then fought back to win 2 and 1, but still Val had “arrived” as a top Met area player.

● 1911, U.S. Amateur at Apawamis. Considered a “major” at the time, he failed to qualify by a single stroke.

● In 1905, he passed up the Club championship and won the Brooklawn Cup in Bridgeport, considered a prestigious event at the time.

● He won other important invitationals at Apawamis, Siwanoy, and Sleepy Hollow where he faced the best of the Met area’s amateurs.

● In September 1916, Jerome Travers, the 1915 U.S Open Champion, teamed with Bermingham at Wykagyl to defeat Chick Evans, who had just won the 1916 US Open Championship, and John G. Anderson of Siwanoy two up, in a match described by the great Grantland Rice as the finest four-ball amateur match played in the metropolitan district. Crowds rushed to New Rochelle to see Evans, the new Open champion, and Rice reported that the gallery crushed in so closely on the players that they hardly had room for their shots.

● In 1910 and 1911, Val teamed with Alex Smith and won the pro-amateur event that was the precursor to the Metropolitan Open.

Bermingham was a true gentleman golfer who played for the love of the game. In 1909 a golf authority, who wrote under the pseudonym “Runner-Up,” wrote in Town Topics magazine:

"If T.V. Bermingham could give time to the sport, he would soon rank with the greatest halfdozen American match play golfers."

Jack Petroni, Apawamis’ highly respected former pro who served Wykagyl many years as caddie and assistant pro, said that Val was “the greatest ‘unknown’ golfer in the history of the game.”

Jack, who caddied regularly for Val in his heyday, recalled that his game had very few flaws.

"He had every shot in the bag and his temperament was perfect. He had the ideal build for the game -- tall, lean, and willowy -- and he could have gone to the top if he had elected to give all his time to golf. He was a great one."

In recognition of his outstanding contributions to Wykagyl, in 1960 the Board of Governors commissioned a portrait of him. The portrait bears the inscription, “Great Master of Championships” and was unveiled on Briggs (Closing) Day on October 8, 1960.

Val’s written response included these sentiments after thanking all the members for “making an old golfer a very happy man:”

"One part of his happiness is certainly the knowledge that for years to come his forbidding countenance will look down on young golfers and make them wonder how he was so lucky at the game. But the other, and deeper part comes from the knowledge that so many would take the time and trouble to be so kind.

Any man would be grateful for being so honored at any time of his life – and that for doing a little more than playing a game with some degree of proficiency over a number of years. But my gratitude is keener because it has been 27 years since I won my last club championship and 53 since I won my first. Almost all of the members who played with me are gone and many who were at the dinner do not know me.

There is nothing I can do to reciprocate these things beyond thanking you all. I do recognize that the members were doing more than honoring a single individual. By virtue of longevity, I have perhaps become a symbol at Wykagyl of a shared experience, an appreciation of the game of golf, of the delight that follows the cleanly hit iron, three feet from the pin, and the despair that follows the missed putt."

Val died the following September. The portrait hangs in the main hallway of the Grill Room and Wykagyl still honors his memory as Opening Day is known as Bermingham Day.