Commonwealth Players At Top In Post-War Years

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28936, 2 July 1959, Page 9

Commonwealth Players At Top In Post-War Years

Golf And Golfers

The successes of Peter Thomson and Bobby Locke in British open championships are recalled in thts article by HENRY LONGHURST, noted British golf writer. It is the seventh article in a series of eight.

fOR 15 years after the first war, the Open championship was dominated by American golfers. In the years following the second, it has been dominated largely by two from the Commonwealth, Bobby Locke and Peter Thomson, each of whom has won four times.

That formidable American pair, Hogan and Snead, have each won once, leaving only three years for Britain—in the persons of Daly, Cotton and Faulkner.

Cotton’s championship at Muirfield, which I did not see through being for some reason in America, was marked by the visit on the second day of King George VI, whereupon the winner-to-be, suitably inspired, laid on a 66 for His Majesty’s benefit—by two strokes the lowest individual round in the championship.

Of the other two, I remember, as so often, a single incident rather than the event as a whole. Daly, having out-putted the field at Hoylake, appeared to be home and dry, and late in the evening only the American amateur, Frank Stranahan, could conceivably catch him—and he needed a

couple of threes to do it, which you simply do not get at Hoylake. He duly took four at the seventeenth, but the huge crowd and the fact that it was almost the last shot of the day lent an added drama to the scene as he played to the last green with two to tie. His ball, perfectly struck, soared up over the big cross-bunker, pitched on the green, rolled up towards the flag and, to the biggest roar heard on a golf course for 10 years, finished inches from the hole.

Gallery Pleaser - Faulkner won at Portrush and. as an inveterate toucher of wood and non-temper of Fate, I can still hardly believe that the gods of golf allowed him to do so. At the end of the second day he was two or three shots ahead of the field and I can see him now surrounded by a bevy of schoolboys and young ladies in search of his autograph.

“Open Champion, 1951,” he wrote —with two rounds to go. Someone asked him about his “pencil-gripped” putter which had received a good deal of notice. “Oh,” he said, stretching his hands four feet apart like a fisherman describing the one that got away, “I shall never miss another of those!”

I moved silently away lest fate

mistake me for an accomplice and in some way give me the hammer, too. He went on cheerfully to win by two strokes. Ben Hogan is a memorable man and, particularly since the motor accident from which he made so truly remarkable a recovery, a very fine one. He tackled the 1953 Open at Carnoustie as a personal challenge. After a none-too-happy experience as non-playing captain of the U.S. Ryder Cup team at Ganton four years previously, when he did not know whether he would ever play again, he had not wanted to come. He was persuaded, spent 10 days getting the measure of this strange form

of golf, and did four rounds, 73, 71, 70, 68, each of which was lower than the one before—a feat to which the records show no parallel. Hogan’s performance in the Canada Cup at Wentworth was equally remarkable but, to me. more human Colossal crowds turned up and he sensed—l believe it made a great impression on him—that these good people not only wanted to see him play golf: they wanted him to win. He gave them the full treatment. He holed a chip at the first for a three, and a putt for a two at the second, was out in 31, holed a 15-yarder for a two at the tenth—and so had done his first 10 holes in England in 33!

Monopolists Our two Commonwealth “monopolists” of the last few years. Thomson trom Australia and Locke from South Africa, are as unalike as can be. Thomson's golf does not tend to produce dramatic moments. He always seems to drive down the middle; his seconds always seem to go on the green, and his putts always seem to go in the hole—and at the time it is very difficult to see any reason why they should not.

He is equable by nature and generally smiling. When he took seven at the fourteenth in his last round at St. Andrews, he played the rest of the ground, to win, as though it had never happened. How much more dramatic—though no more praiseworthy on that account, of course—was Locke’s win at St. Andrews! A portly forty-one against Thomson’s athletic-looking twentynine, he came up the last hole, attired in the familiar plus fours, white cap and white shoes, looking. as someone remarked, rather like the Archbishop’s butler, and needing five to win. Aiming, as

it appeared from behind the green, into the hotel dining room on the right, he curved the ball up in a high parabola and dropped it with a plop a yard from the flag. I suppose the biggest patriotic excitement in England since the war was the winning of the Ryder Cup two years ago at Lindrick, for which the utmost personal credit must go to David Rees for the spirit which he instilled into his team, whereby the Goliath of American golf was well and truly slain. A strange quality of golf is the way in which a sense either of victory of defeat can convey itself

to eight people playing singles in different parts of the course 10 minutes apart. At Lindrick one could almost see it happening. The humble British turned like lions whose tails had been twisted long enough: the Americans disintegrated. .

Bad Elements Nothing shall take away the glory but, since these are personal reminiscences. I may be forgiven for saying that there were sundry unsatisfactory elements on both sides, and that the Ryder Cup match I really enjoyed was the previous one at Thunderbird in the Californian desert. Here the air is like champagne, you can see a man riding a horse 10 miles away, and the brilliant desert sunshine makes no costume and no combination of colours seen too bizaare. Grass grows lush and green, at incredible speed, and people cast aside all care. Celebrities like Bing Crosby and Perry Como ride their electric buggies unmolested, and a player on foot has no standing on the course. They gave me a car, of course, the moment we got out of the aeroplane. Leaving the club one evening, I searched the gigantic parking lot and could not find it All American cars look alike anyway and with the wheel on the wrong side you cannot tell which way they are facing. I complained to a man in a white coat. He looked around. “Aw,” he said, “better take this one.” Car Banner “This one” turned out to be a lovely blue-and-white creation, on exhibition at the club, and bore a banner saying “You. too, can drive the new Chevrolet Bel-Air. Coming November 7.”

It had 58 miles on the clock. I put this up to 580, left the car

where I found it, and went on my way.

It was at Thunderbird, incidentally, that I met the man who has put all long hitters, past and present, into the background. The reason is simple, as my picture shows. George Bayer is a perfectly normal first-class golfer. He

hits it farther because be operates on a physical scale hitherto unparalleled. He is an enormous man. His hands in particular are enormous, and make a 2 iron look like a matchstick. I first met him and his wife sitting in a bar, where I remained standing and thus almost on a level. Later I watched him play. You find yourself standing with your mouth open. The first hole was 378 yards long; his drive pitched clean over it.

Max Faulkner, the open champion in 1951, in difficulties among daffodils during a tournament at Moor Park.