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RYE, ENGLAND | I am a creature of habit. Each January, the celebrations of new year have hardly died away before I point my car towards the south-east corner of England, there to cover the President’s Putter. This year is my 30th Putter, or thereabouts, and it is as fixed in my calendar as my birthday.
In April, I shall go to the Masters, as I have every April for 40 years. To think, I have spent one week for the past 40 years at that little town in Georgia. In June it is always the US Open, in July the Open. How many Wimbledons have I been unable to attend, how many Lord’s Test matches have I missed, because of the regularity of these big golf events? August used to be the PGA Championship, though that has now moved to May. In late September of alternate years comes the Ryder Cup. And so, almost before I know it, my year is half full.
The President’s Putter at Rye Golf Club in the first full week in January and the Masters at Augusta in the first full week in April share unusual characteristics: two events demonstrating that the interaction of golfers of hugely different ages can be done happily and enjoyably on an annual basis at the same venue.
This is true at the Masters, where a few years ago Guan Tianlang, a 14-year-old amateur from China, could and did rub shoulders with Jack Nicklaus, who will be 80 in a little more than a week. But Guan was invited only once whereas at the Putter once qualified, you can play as often or as little as you like.
At the Putter each year there is the interaction of golfers of hugely differing ages, all members of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society. No other event of similar or greater importance attracts players of such varying ages, not even the Masters. The youngest competitor this year was Ed Springett, 20; the oldest Michael Grint, 85. Fancy the Putter being better than the Masters.
“This event is for golfers from 19 to 90,” someone said looking around the comfortably distressed clubhouse at Rye. And a quick survey of the room that contains the chair that Bernard Darwin used to sit in, the balls that are hung on a putter for each winner and the putter used by Ernest Holderness when, starting in 1920, he won the first four Putters, revealed how true that statement was.
In a corner stood Clare Mann, a member of the society since 2005, cradling Nancy, her 6-month-old daughter. A few feet away sat Peter Gardiner-Hill, 93, the senior life member of the R&A whose father had been chairman of the Rules of Golf committee that in conjunction with the USGA established the modern rules in 1951. No longer a competitor, he would no more miss a Putter than he would his wife’s birthday. And certainly not the tournament’s centenary.
The lights of Rye twinkled in the distance and the putter was handed over in a short and simple ceremony as it had been in many years past.
Longevity is a long word and a good word. The Putter is known for longevity, laughter, the interaction that Darwin talked about, that which is present on a golf course and off it. The entertaining bubble of noise that arises when friends meet one another.
This year there was much talk of Hugh Upcott Gill’s ace on the short 16th. He and Tim Hanson, his partner, played the five short holes on the Jubilee course at Rye in the remarkable figures of 5, 4, 2, 3, 1. Upcott Gill’s 7-iron, whistling through the wind, pitched just short of the flagstick on the 16th, took one hop, came to a halt and then rolled back into the hole. “That was my third hole-in-one – but my best,” he said.
Earlier that afternoon, two old friends in their 70s bumped into one another in the clubhouse bar. “We both did engineering at Cambridge and were both in the same Cambridge golf team,” said one, putting a blazered arm around a blazered shoulder of another. “We’d sneak into lectures at 10 on a Monday morning and after 10 minutes he’d say to me: ‘Is there much more of this?’ After another 10 minutes he’d say, ‘Fancy a game of snooker?’ and we’d slope off. He was much better at snooker than I was.” They smiled at the memory, one of more than 50 years earlier, mischief dancing in their eyes if not much hair on their heads.
That night, over a noisy dinner, an urbane Oxfordian pointed out an interesting anomaly among members of the society. Of the golf writers who attended Oxbridge, he said, most went to Cambridge: Bernard Darwin, Henry Longhurst, Leonard Crawley, Donald Steel, Herbert Warren Wind, Patric Dickinson and David Normoyle. And moving into course design the pattern remains the same. It’s Cambridge not Oxford that has supplied significantly more of the game’s architects than its old rival: Harry Colt, Steel (again), Martin Ebert, Alister MacKenzie (studied there though did not play golf), Charles Alison, Arthur Croome.
It was a peculiar statistic for which there seems to be little explanation and it seemed to give Cambridge the edge in the perennial rivalry between the two famous old universities. Then our urbane Oxfordian paused, knowing that he was about to deliver a worthy rejoinder, and said: “Oxford have produced 28 prime ministers, Cambridge 14.” And he smiled.
And so came the final of the 100th Putter on a blustery afternoon. It was not between the brothers Fitzpatrick, who would have set a unique record had they done so, though one Fitzpatrick, Bruce, beat James Hayley, 4 and 3. The spectators were hardy souls, wrapped up against the cold. The dogs were well behaved. The lights of Rye twinkled in the distance and the putter was handed over in a short and simple ceremony as it had been in many years past. Not for the first time, clubs and competitions like the President’s Putter (and soon the Masters) provide a reassuring constant in a changing world. Long may they continue.
Top: Eventual winner Bruce Fitzpatrick tees off on the 15th hole during the final of the President's Putter.
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