The adjective that best described John Paramor is good. He was genuinely a good man with no side to him, friendly and talkative. He was a good man with whom to play golf, to share a dinner table and choose the wine to accompany the meal (any colour, so long as it was a red Bordeaux; he had 550 bottles in his wine cellar).
It was good to listen to the Englishman talking of his father, Norrie Paramor, a jazz pianist and famous bandleader in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s who mixed with homegrown pop stars such as Cliff Richard, Helen Shapiro and Frank Ifield. One day in the ’60s, young John was with his father, who was recording at the famous EMI studios on Abbey Road in London and next door, also making a recording, was a little-known group called the Beatles. Whatever became of them?
Above all, though, J.P., who died recently at age 67 after a bout with cancer, was a good man to call in to resolve a disagreement about the rules of golf, in fact one of the best in the world. He had calmness, wisdom, patience and gravitas. Best of all, he knew what he was talking about. Others may worship at the feet of the authors J.K. Rowling or David Sedaris. Paramor’s paramours were the works by those sexy authors the R&A and the USGA, and their bodice-ripping tales, the Rules of Golf. J.P. was not just a golf geek; he was a rules geek, and golfers throughout the world knew as much.
When Mike Davis was chief executive of the USGA, he once told me that he regarded J.P. as a living legend: “I believe John Paramor will be remembered and that people will be talking about him for many years because he was such an important part of the game and gave back to it in such a classy way.
“Tour officials are some of the best officials,” Davis continued. “They know the rules really well but not as well as somebody who works for the USGA or the R&A and is involved with the Rules of Golf Committee, who write the rules and interpret them. Where the tour officials are outstanding is actually applying the rules and knowing how to deal with players in situations and having that experience. John had both.”
I was present at Valderrama in southern Spain in 1994 when Seve Ballesteros tried to finagle a favourable ruling from J.P. on the 72nd hole of the Volvo Masters. It was the most famous of many confrontations the two men had. Bear in mind it was the last tournament of the season and one that would decide that year’s Order of Merit.
It is not difficult for me to remember the scene clearly because I had 1,000 words to write about the tournament for the next morning’s Times of London and a plane to catch. A lengthy delay in the late afternoon sun on a Sunday was not what I wanted.
Ballesteros’ ball lay in a hole at the base of one of the thousands of cork trees that line that course, and he wanted relief on the grounds that the hole was made by a burrowing animal. The first rules official ducked out, unable to deal with the pressure on him. Help was summoned and out came J.P. I always felt at times like this that J.P. was like a sheriff in a Western for the way he rolled into a situation and restored order. He was the John Wayne of the fairways, the lawmaker, the enforcer. His rule book was his Colt .45.
Ballesteros outlined his case for relief in his usual articulate and passionate way, accompanied by many facial expressions and hand gestures. He was known to intimidate some referees. Paramor, not one to be intimidated even by such a player, listened carefully. For perhaps 10 minutes they went back and forth.
Finally, Paramor said that he saw no signs of a burrowing animal and therefore ruled that Ballesteros was unable to drop away from the tree without penalty. Said like that, it sounds straightforward. It wasn’t. Seve, the king of Spain, was in his kingdom and his pomp, going for his first victory for some years in front of a partisan crowd.
“The incident with Seve was a high-pressure moment,” Andy McFee, Paramor’s rules colleague, explained to me later. “John stood his ground. He said, ‘No, I don’t have any evidence that this is the hole of a burrowing animal. It’s a hole, but what has caused it I don’t know.’ Many referees would have given in (to Seve), but John was not able to get past the fact that he could see no evidence of a burrowing animal, so he thought: I can’t do this. To give in to Seve now means I can't look the other competitors in the eye, and he didn’t.
“The one characteristic of John’s that I would put above all others is that he was intensely fair,” McFee continued. “That works both ways. It works for the guy that is in front of him with a problem, and it works for the other 155 that player is competing against. John is very analytical. He is pretty stubborn. You have to be strong-willed because you’re dealing with strong-willed people.”
The Enforcer, who once said that the back of his jacket was full of dart holes thrown by players who disagreed with him, was not quite so fierce and stony-hearted as he had sometimes seemed.
There have been plenty of occasions when players didn’t want to see J.P. coming toward them because it might mean they were about to be timed. I loved being with him on a golf course, just sitting in his buggy listening to the activity on his walkie talkie and shooting the breeze with him. The times I played golf with J.P., he was a delight, one of the most pleasant golf partners I have ever had. He would have a pencil bag slung over his shoulder, walk side by side, chime into the conversations when necessary and always keep an eye on both his own golf ball and those of his playing partners.
He had wanted to be a professional but though he was good, he wasn’t good enough. Instead, on the day after his 21st birthday, he was hired by Ken Schofield, then secretary of the European Tournament Players Division, the forerunner of the DP World Tour, to become only the seventh employee of that fledgling organisation.
One January day a few years ago I visited J.P. in his house set in three acres of woods not far from Wentworth. Retirement was on his mind. He wanted to build a path from his front door through the woods for his grandchildren to play on. “The grandchildren will love it,” he said, smiling. “A pixie pathway.”
At that moment I saw a new side to a man I had known for 40 years. The Enforcer, who once said that the back of his jacket was full of dart holes thrown by players who disagreed with him, was not quite so fierce and stony-hearted as he had sometimes seemed.
He could resist an imploring Seve Ballesteros when thousands of Spanish eyes were on him and could penalise 14-year-old Tianlang Guan, competing in his first Masters in 2013, for repeated slow play. But seeing his eyes soften and his voice lower when talking about the pixie path for his grandchildren, it became clear that within his frame, one that gave him the strength to be an outstanding schoolboy swimmer, shot putter and hammer thrower, beat a heart as soft as a meringue.
E-MAIL JOHN
Top: John Paramor (with his wife, Katie, at 2022 drive-in ceremony in St. Andrews for new R&A captain Clive Brown) pulled off the difficult combination of being trusted, respected and liked as a rules official.
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