{{ubiquityData.prevArticle.description}}
{{ubiquityData.nextArticle.description}}
One night late last year the telephone rang at a house in Scotland. “Aberlady 305,” said the lady answering in the manner of someone who used telephones in the days when three-figure numbers were preceded by the name of the local exchange. The vowels were firm and crisp and English.
“Barbara?” I enquired diffidently. “Is that Barbara Dixon?” At that there was a very hesitant “yes.” She sounded puzzled, bemused even, that someone whose voice she did not recognise could call her by her first name and her maiden name.
Fifty years ago, quite a few people in golf knew her name. Barbara Dixon was the English Ladies’ golf champion, at 23 one of the youngest ever, and she was in trouble with the Ladies’ Golf Union. Her sin was that, having reached the last stages of a contest searching for Miss Golf 1970 she had just been told she would lose her amateur status if she accepted a prize. In phraseology redolent of those days, the six contestants who were judged on one photograph of them fully clothed and on their answers to a number of questions were referred to as “curvy birdies.”
Sensing a story in the tranquil world of golf, I sped to her house in Bournemouth to interview her for The Sunday Times. It would be my first piece in the sports pages of that paper, one that appeared on 4 January 1970 beneath the striking headline “Crumbs, it’s only a giggle.” My opening sentence of just four words was authoritative and accurate if not exactly attention grabbing: “Barbara Dixon is 23,” I wrote.
Dixon, not wanting to jeopardise her amateur status, withdrew from the competition and later in 1970 moved to Scotland, was a triallist for the Curtis Cup that autumn but did not make the team, married and brought up three children. In mid-summer last year she became one of 12 women elected members of Muirfield. For my part, I spent the intervening years writing about rugby, playing golf and, since the autumn of 1980, writing about it as the golf correspondent of first The Sunday Times and then The Times, and later for Global Golf Post and GGP+.
“I’ve had a wonderful life,” Dixon, now McIntosh, said on the telephone that night last year. “Golf has changed but on the whole I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.”
And so have I. Undoubtedly the game has changed since 1970 but for better or worse? Many might have me down as a curmudgeon. In fact, I feel the opposite. I find many more good things than bad to say about the old game.
Want the complete story?Subscribe today at Global Golf Post+