Belle Robertson, née McCorkindale, was heading down to London during Masters week for the centenary of the Roehampton Club Ladies’ Gold Cup Challenge and what just happened to be her own 90th birthday. Living as she does close to Machrihanish Golf Club on the Mull of Kintyre, her journey involved a 140-mile drive to Glasgow Airport and a flight to London.
Such was her eager anticipation that you would have thought she was off to win the event for a fifth time.
Instead, though no-one knew that this was about to happen, she was going to hand back the rare wine jug which had been among her many awards. Whatever the airline staff said, this winner of the 1981 Women’s Amateur Championship and honorary member of the R&A had no intention of letting them put her carefully boxed prize in the hold.
The parting of ways between herself and what she would cheerfully call “my Claret Jug” was to happen at the event’s special luncheon, and her plan was to present it to Caroline Scallon, the tournament’s longtime organiser.
The jug was altogether different from any other prize to have come Robertson’s way. It was never meant to be one of those trophies which only emerge from their carefully locked cabinets for a prize giving. Rather was it a rare piece of workmanship, crafted in pewter and worth a tidy sum. Robertson had been given it for keeps.
COURTESY Belle Robertson
She remembers the worried look on the face of the elderly lady who had approached her after the prize giving and asked, “Do you like your prize?”
“I love it,” returned Robertson.
“It’s just that I happened to be the lady who donated it,” said the other, who was probably aware that some of the amateurs of the day were starting to become more interested in grabbing a voucher than a gift.
So much did the jug mean to Robertson and her late husband, Ian, that it would sit on the dinner table when they had guests at their Glasgow home. And every time, it would spark a series of conversations.
Will she miss it? Of course she will but to be giving it back to Roehampton for its museum has been something she could not resist.
Having collected her seventh and last Scottish Women’s Amateur Championship in 1986 at age 50 and played in her seventh and final Curtis Cup that same summer, Robertson still plays a few holes now and then, and was well into her 80s when she played with tour pro Bob MacIntyre at Machrihanish.
“I was amazed,” said MacIntyre. “She came hurrying round the corner carrying a pencil bag and proceeded to play some truly incredible golf. She even holed a full wedge.”
For now, she has another “giving back” idea up her sleeve, one pertaining to the Women’s Amateur Championship she won at Conwy in Wales in ’81.
Not too long after that result, she had turned up at Troon Ladies, the club where she played most of her golf in the days when she and Ian were living in Glasgow. Pat Cairns Smith, the club chairman, told her that the membership wanted to mark her achievement. Was there anything she would like?
Robertson thought about it for a couple of seconds before admitting that she had been pretty upset to have been given a voucher for her efforts at Conwy. Players who had won the championship before her had all been awarded a medal.
Mrs. Cairns Smith had no problem in understanding why she would feel peeved. “We’re going to die cast a medal for you,” she announced.
The words “British Open Amateur Champion” read round the side of what was a solid gold medallion, and the line “Presented by Troon Ladies’ Golf Club, 1981” was etched on the back. Robertson wears it whenever she returns to Troon and, as you would expect, she takes pride in showing it to all those who want to take a closer look, just as she will take pride in giving it back to the club at some appropriate moment.
“What struck me,” said Robertson of the Ladies’ Golf Union’s decision to give up on the medals, “was that they didn’t seem to understand that not all winners are going to be thinking back to some voucher they won on such and such a day. You want something that stirs memories.”
She can understand that today’s youngsters are only interested in vouchers. But, like GGP, she wonders what a dull game golf could become if the more talented girls find themselves stepping from junior squads to college golf, and from college golf to the professional game, with vouchers and cash turning into cheques along the way.
In other words, it’s all about taking steps up the professional ladder and finding yourself a manager from the word go. (No wonder professionals like Lydia Ko and Lexi Thompson have never wanted to play too much beyond the age of 30 when, as Justin Rose has amply demonstrated, people can be playing their best golf in their 30s and 40s.)
Belle Robertson (front, second from right) is pictured with her 1966 Great Britain & Ireland Curtis Cup teammates.
Courtesy USGA Museum
Said Robertson, “I began to notice the extent to which things were changing when the younger ones no longer wanted to play in county matches for fear of missing out on one more voucher and the points that can go with it.”
Scallon feels that she and her team at Roehampton have hit on the right mix of past and present. They welcomed professionals when the few professionals that there were in the ’70s and ’80s were short of competitive play. The pros, in turn, have always seen the Gold Cup as a friendly affair, a perfect start to the year. “It’s a warm-up opportunity,” said Felicity Johnson, who is today a fully qualified referee as well as a professional.
Robertson, for her part, will never forget the time she was about to take aim on a wrong green when the girl who would have been her strongest rival yelled across from a neighbouring fairway. “Stop, stop,” she cried. “If you hole out over there you’ll be disqualified.”
“Hers was a wonderful example of good sportsmanship,” said the Scot.
The only area where things have not changed for the better, says Scallon, is when it comes to the modern pace of play. “From two-and-a-half-hour rounds played with a small bag of clubs slung over your shoulder and using good, old-fashioned, pre-graphite clubs, the modern round now takes well up to four-and-a-half hours,” she said.
“The three-balls of today consist of three players, three trolley pullers (or caddies for the professionals), six measuring devices and goodness knows what else. It can add up to nearly five hours on the course, with the scores no lower now than they were 70 years ago!
“And there’s another thing. The days of the slap-up lunch in the clubhouse between rounds are a distant memory. Many of today’s players are so slow that they have to put their lunch in a box and hurry back to the course.”
Roehampton has been fortunate to have had 20 years of generous sponsorship from Russell-Cooke Solicitors who, having been established in 1880, had no trouble in connecting with the ways of an old-time club where there’s a good-natured membership who can play any one or all of croquet, squash, tennis, and golf.
By Saturday afternoon, Robertson’s pewter jug would have been back to where she felt it should be, while Welsh professional Luca Thompson won this year’s Gold Cup Challenge.
Top: Belle Robertson (left) on the first tee at Machrihanish Golf Club with 13-year-old Fiona McKay-Smith.
Courtesy Belle Robertson
