The Greatest Game Ever Played

Every great journey begins with a dream. 

A 2005 biographical sports film, The Greatest Game Ever Played directed by Bill Paxton tells a true story of a young amateur golfer Francis DeSales Ouimet (May 8, 1893 - September 2, 1967) who has nothing but a seemingly impossible dream to challenge the world's greatest player, his idol Harry Vardon (9 May 1870 - 20 March 1937). The film was adapted from the novel - The Greatest Game Ever Played: Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet and The Birth of Modern Golf by Mark Frost.

Francis Ouimet (Shia LaBeouf) was born in 1893 to a working-class family in Brookline, Massachusetts. His family purchased a house on Clyde Street across from the 17th hole of The Country Club when he was four years old. He grew up fascinated by golf after watching an exhibition by legendary British golf pro Harry Vardon (Stephen Dillane) as a seven years old boy. However, at that time golf was considered a pastime only for the wealthy and privileged and British and Scottish players dominated the professional game.

At the age of nine, Francis started caddying at The Country Club while making friends with other caddies. Using clubs from his brother and balls that he found around the course, Francis teaches himself the game and wins the Massachusetts Schoolboy Championship.

HARRY VARDON, FRANCIS OUIMET & TED RAY

One day, a gentleman asks Francis to play with him over The Country Club course, where caddies have almost no access of their own and he shoots a fine round of eighty-one despite a triple bogey. His talent, composure and good manners earn admirers and interest; with the help of the gentleman, Francis gets a chance to play in an upcoming tournament, the U.S. Amateur, the local qualifying for which is to be held at the very same Country Club course. However, his father insisted Francis to drop out and do "something useful" with his life.

FRANCIS OUIMET & EDDIE LOWERY

Francis fulfills his promise to his father and works at a sporting goods shop. One day, the president of the United States Golf Association enters the store and personally invites him to play in the upcoming 1913 U.S. Open Championship. Against all odds, twenty years old Francis with a ten years old Eddie Lowery (Josh Flitter) playing hookey from school to caddy for him, he manages to beat the British champions Harry Vardon and Ted Ray (Edward R. G. "Ted" Ray)(28 March 1877 – 26 August 1943), considered the world's best golfers in an 18 holes playoff, following their three-way tie after the regulation 72 holes and becomes the first amateur to ever win the U.S. Open.

The film ends reveals that the following year Harry Vardon won his sixth British Open Championship, a record which stands to this day. Although he died in 1937, he is still considered the greatest English player of all time. While Francis Ouimet became a prominent businessman who went on to win two American Amateur Championships and became the game's most admired ambassador who changed the perception of the entire sport; sweeping away the notion that golf was a stuffy game for the old and rich. He was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974.

Eddie Lowery (Edward Edgar Lowery)(October 4, 1902 - May 4, 1984) became a multi-millionaire as an auto dealer in San Francisco. Francis and Eddie remained lifelong friends and when Francis died in 1967, Eddie was one of the pallbearers.

All men dream, but not equally.

Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds,

wake in the day to find that it was vanity:

but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men,

for they may act on their dreams with open eyes,

to make them possible. 

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The Blind Side

Too often we under estimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

The Blind Side, written and directed by John Lee Hancock released in 2009 is based on the 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis tells the remarkable true story of Baltimore Ravens of the NFL offensive lineman left tackle Michael Oher (born May 28, 1986).

Michael grew up in the inner city housing projects in Memphis, Tennessee and was one of twelve children born to Denise Oher. His mother was an alcoholic and crack cocaine addict. His father, Michael Jerome Williams was frequently in prison and was murdered in prison when Michael was a senior in high school. Due to his impoverished upbringing, he received little attention and discipline during his childhood. He attended eleven different schools during his first nine years as a student. He was placed in foster care at age seven and alternated between living in various foster homes and periods of homelessness.

The film begins with seventeen years old Michael, at the instigation of acquaintance Tony Hamilton (Omar J. Dorsey)(based on Tony Henderson who in real life runs an athletic program that mentors teens in his neighborhood), an auto mechanic with whom he was living temporarily requests Burt Cotton (Ray McKinnon)(Hugh Freeze in real-life), the coach of Wingate Christian school (a fictional representation of Briarcrest Christian School in Memphis, Tennessee) to help Michael enroll to the school. Impressed by Michael's size and athleticism and Coach Burt gets him admitted despite his abysmal academic record. At his new school, Michael is befriended by a boy named Sean Jr. "SJ" (Jae Head). SJ's mother Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) is a strong-minded interior designer and the wife of wealthy businessman Sean Tuohy (Tim McGraw).

SUE MITCHELL

One rainy night, Leigh Anne notices Michael wearing only cutoff blue jeans and a t-shirt, shivering in the cold is walking down the road. When she learns that he is walking to the school gym to escape the weather and find warmth place to sleep, she offers him a place to sleep at her house. The next morning, when she sees Michael leaving, she asks him to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with her family. Slowly, Michael becomes a member of the Tuohy family. When Leigh Anne seeks to become Michael's legal guardian, she is told that even though he scored low in almost every category in a career aptitude test, he is in the ninety-eight percentile in protective instincts.

Michael is allowed to join the school football team after his grades improve and he has a shaky start due to his polite and gentle nature. He wasn't able to get the hang of the game and its rules and he wasn't able to understand what his role in the field was until Leigh Anne tap into his protective instincts to explain him how to play in the field. From that moment, Michael starts to play well and be useful to his team. An opportunity arises for Michael to play at university level, however, he needs to improve his grades. Hence, Leigh Anne hires a private tuition teacher, outspoken and kind Miss Sue (Kathy Bates) who worked five nights a week for four hours at a time to teach him and raised his GPA from a 0.6 to a 2.05 by the time he graduated in 2005.

SEAN JR., SEAN SR., LEIGH ANNE, MICHAEL OHER & COLLINS

When coaches from three respective universities come to recruit Michael, SJ talks to the coaches and leads the negotiations on Michael's behalf. Michael chooses the university where Sean had played for and where Leigh Anne was a cheerleader. That causes Investigator Granger (Sharon Morris) to move onto the matter before Michael arrives and she questions him as though they were holding interrogatory preceding at a police station. She thinks that the Tuohys and Miss Sue are using Michael to benefit that particular university. After thinking and questioning Leigh Anne on the matter, Michael realizes that the Tuohys are now his family and he tells Granger that that's the reason for him to choose that university.

The film ends showing the 2009 NFL Draft with the real Michael Oher being drafted by the Baltimore Ravens in the first round. Eight years after the Tuohys brought Michael into their home, they are just as devoted to him as ever and Michael bought his own home, lives in suburban Baltimore and Leigh Anne, an interior decorator helped him to decorate his house.

Most of the scenes in the film are based on real-life; the “White Walls” essay that was read by his biology teacher, the car accident, the No.74 jersey, the real Michael Oher never had his own bed before seventeen years old, he inspired the Tuohy family to sit around the dinner table and the encounter on the side of the road except it was on a snowy November morning in 2002 during Thanksgiving break and Leigh Anne didn’t offer Michael a place to stay immediately instead on the next day where she couldn't ignore that he had been out in the cold in cutoff jeans and a t-shirt, the same outfit he was seen wearing every day in the school.

An inspiring and touching story that will have you laughing along and fall in love with the characters, especially the little boy in the film, he was cute and his lines were incredibly funny.

People don't care how much you know

until they know how much you care.
No acts of kindness, no matter how small is ever wasted.

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