Sport: Golf
Born: February 26, 1909
Died: October 29, 1965
Town: Englewood, New Jersey
Eugene Vanderpool Homans was born February 26, 1909 in Englewood, NJ. His father, Shep Homans, was a wealthy insurance executive who had made headlines at Princeton as a football All-American. His mother, Loraine, was also from a wealthy family. Loraine’s brother, Wyant, was president of the USGA. And Shep’s sister, Helen Homans, was a US tennis champion.
The Homans family had a membership at the Englewood Country Club, where Gene took up golf at the age of 12 and became an unbeatable golfer under the tutelage of club pro Cyril Walker—who won the US Open in 1924. Walker noted that there was a little too much baseball in his 14-year-old pupil’s golf swing and convinced Gene to give up his diamond aspirations.
Gene proceeded to win the New Jersey State Junior Championship five years in a row between 1923 and 1927—a feat unmatched nearly a century later. His only nail-biter was the 1925 final, when he edged Chick Berger on the 18th hole. His 1927 championship came at Englewood, his home course, following his 18th birthday. Gene also took home the winner’s trophy at the 1925 and 1926 Metropolitan Junior Championships. Gene and his father also won the 1924 New Jersey State Golf Association’s father-son tournament at the Morris County Golf Club. During his run of Junior titles, Gene also captained the golf team at Choate, an elite boarding school in Connecticut.
Tall, slender and supple, Gene didn’t look the part of a championship athlete—nor did he look like Shep, a burly fullback in his college days—but Gene was a superb tennis. By the end of the 1920s, he was regarded as one of the top amateur golfers in the world. In 1928, he won the Metropolitan Amateur title and, in 1929, Gene and Bobby Jones tied for the Metropolitan crown.
As a Princeton student in 1930, Gene won the North & South Amateur title at Pinehurst and then entered the US Amateur Championship at the Merion Golf Club. He tore through the field and advanced to the final match against the Jones. A win for Jones that day would give him the “grand slam” of golf—he had already won the US Open, British Open and British Amateur tournaments. Gene was not used to playing in front of large crowds and Jones won the 36-hole championship round, 8 and 7. It was noted that, if Gene had somehow pulled out a victory, he would have been the most unpopular athlete in America.
Gene continued to perform well in amateur and open tournaments into the mid-1930s. He and his wife, Marian, spent their summers in East Hampton, where he won several club competitions. In 1943, Gene made the news when he donated three silver golf trophies to be melted down for the war effort. By then, he had turned his attention more to his insurance business, Prosser & Homans in New York City, but he remained a top golfer until the day he died at age 56.