Golf ruled life of Lindsay Ross

Press, 3 August 1983, Page 22

Golf ruled life of Lindsay Ross

Lindsay Ross, one of New Zealand’s oldest golf professionals and one of five brothers who pursued the same profession, died in Nelson recently at the age of 89.

Golf totally dominated the lives of three generations of the Ross family, but it is unlikely to continue. Mr Ross’s only son, John, is in the electronics business. He was adamant from an early age, as he watched his parents struggling to make a living from the game, that the life of a golf pro — certainly as it was in the 1930 s and before — was not for him.

John’s great grandfather was a greenkeeper in Scotland. He was killed on the course and how this occurred is not known. His great grandfather was a Brown, who married into the Ross family. At the time of his death, his son, Lindsay Goldie Ross, was living with his family near Birmingham. They returned to Scotland where Lindsay sen. established a golf shop overlooking the seventeenth green at St Andrews. The shop could not have been too successful, for the family moved back to Edgbaston and there the father designed the Sutton Park course at Sutton Coldfield. It was in this area that the eight children of the family spent their childhood. The eldest of the five sons, Jim, was first an engineer but became attached to a professional in Wales; David, after assisting his father, went as a profes-

sional to Portmadoch, Wales; Lindsay remained in the Birmingham area and, before coming to New Zealand, was professional at Ladbrook Park, close to Stratford-on-Avon.

John, the second son, went to the United States as a professional attached to a country club on Long Island and later at Palm Beach, Florida. The fifth son, Alex, moved to Switzerland and was a professional at Geneva.

Lindsay Ross, along with another professional, came to New Zealand in 1925 at the age of 32, on contract as a coaching professional to the New Zealand Golf Association’s council. He travelled throughout New Zealand coaching, mostly at the smaller centres.

After completing his contract with the golf council, Lindsay was a professional for a period in the Hutt Valley before coming to Nelson as a club professional in November, 1927.

John Ross recalls that in the 1920 s and 1930 s life for a golf professional was “tough.” There was no professional playing circuit as there is today, summer golf was almost unknown, and the Depression did not help. “The struggles of my father through the Depression years convinced me that I would never take it on,” he said.

The easy relationship which exists today between pro and club members was not a part of the scene then. “He was practically a servant to club members

whom he addressed as ‘Mr’ and they addressed him as ‘Ross’,” said John Ross. John’s lasting memory is of the peculiar, compounded smell of glue, caustic soda and varnish in his father’s workshop. “He made a lot of clubs, from the raw, roughly-shaped hickory sticks and blocks of wood which he would shape, balance and weight. As a boy I spent a lot of time sanding down and filing the hickory shafts. After sanding, the sticks were painted with pitch which was then washed off with linseed oil and polished. This would leave little flecks of black in the shafts,” he said.

Since only the wealthy could afford new balls in those days, there was a thriving trade in “repaints.” “There were two families in the area recognised by the club as official ball finders. They would go barefoot into the swamp areas and feel for the balls with their feet,” said John. His father would buy the balls from the finders, wash off the old paint with caustic soda, and repaint them by rolling the balls in paint in the palms of his hands. Caddies were plentiful and his father acted as caddy master. For this, he would receive 3d from the caddy fee of 2s. Lindsay Ross resigned as professional in 1949, but in the 1950 s he undertook coaching in the schools for the New Zealand Golf Foundation.

BARRY SIMPSON