Lady Bonallack, nee Angela Ward, died on Friday 1 July at the age of 85. This renowned amateur coped valiantly with a variety of health problems across the last few years but, as her sister-members at the St Rule Club, St Andrews, said yesterday, “COVID proved one hurdle too many.”
Born in Birchington in Kent, Angela moved to Scotland with her husband, Sir Michael Bonallack, when the latter was appointed chief executive of the R&A in 1983. And when, in 1999, Michael retired, the couple stayed put a few miles outside St Andrews in a home dotted with reminders of their glorious golfing past.
The Bonallacks had four children and, as if that were not enough, they took a couple of their 10 grandchildren (there are seven great grandchildren besides) under their wing when the latter attended the local St Leonard’s school as day pupils. Though Angela reveled in this second round of motherhood, she played golf on a daily basis, either on one of the St Andrews’ courses or at the nearby Duke’s. Shortly after the R&A had voted overwhelmingly in favor of women members in 2014, she won the first of the R&A’s mixed medals with a net 71 on the New Course.
That there was nothing in the way of a professional women’s tour in the UK in Lady Bonallack’s heyday was not a minus as far as she was concerned. She loved the amateur scene and the way in which competitive golf was always happily interwoven with the game’s social side. Even when she was at her best — she won two English championships along with a handful of continental amateur titles — she loved playing in the Worplesdon Mixed Foursomes and, indeed, won that much-coveted event with Sir Michael in 1958. All their lives, the two could not have been more deeply committed to each other.
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