Enid Wilson, who played in the first Curtis Cup match at Wentworth in 1932, was never less than trenchant in her views.   She described the organisation as a shambles and she had a point.  The home side arrived at teatime the day before the match, discovered the foursomes pairings on the way to the 1st tee and, not surprisingly, lost all three matches.   The Americans, much more on the ball, had been practising hard for days, paying particular attention to the alien alternate shot format.

Enid endured what she described as “the worst day I have ever spent on a golf course” and her mood didn’t improve when she came in and found that there was no food left – the spectators had scoffed the lot.  It didn’t bother the visitors because they had made arrangements to eat at their hotel.

There were hordes of spectators, most expecting a home win, not least because their side was led by the incomparable Joyce Wethered, unarguably the best woman golfer in the world.  She was a player so sublime that the legendary Bob Jones said of her:  “She has the best swing, man or woman, that I have ever seen.  I have never played with anyone, man or woman, amateur or professional, who made me feel so utterly outclassed.”

Joyce was captain by default really, by virtue of her status as the best player and she later confessed that it was not a job that suited her, not that anyone had given the position much thought.  She did lead from the front in the singles, defeating Glenna Collett Vare, who was a bit of a superstar herself and won a record six US Women’s Amateur titles but never got the better of Joyce in head to head combat.

The Americans held on to win the match, however, and the Curtis Cup was up and running.  Margaret and Harriot Curtis, who had envisioned such an international match since 1905, when they played in the British championship at Cromer in Norfolk, could at last present their silver Paul Revere bowl, designed “to stimulate friendly rivalry among the women golfers of many lands”.

It was gratefully and graciously received by Marion Hollins, the US captain, non-playing, who is worth a book on her own.  She was a flamboyant character who made – and lost – millions and built the Pasatiempo resort in California.  No shrinking violet she.  Her line-up proved as formidable on grass as on paper, comprising Vare, Opal Hill, Virginia Van Wie, Helen Hicks, Maureen Orcutt, Leona Cheney and Dorothy Higbie.  Their opponents were also of championship-winning calibre:  Wethered, Wanda Morgan, Molly Gourlay, Doris Park, Diana Fishwick, Elsie Corlett, Mrs J B Watson (aka Charlotte Beddows) and Wilson.

Subsequent matches were littered with nerve-wracking contests featuring great names like Pam Barton, Jessie Valentine, Patty Berg, Polly Riley, Bunty Smith (nee Stephens), Jean Donald, Louise Suggs, Philomena Garvey, Angela Bonallack (nee Ward), JoAnne Carner (nee Gunderson), Barbara Mcintyre, Judy Bell, Marley Spearman, Diane Bailey, Nancy Lopez,  Mary McKenna, Carol Semple Thompson, the list goes on and on.  It’s worth looking through the teams of the past, it’s a who’s who of golf.

Wilson watched many a match in her role as the Daily Telegraph’s women’s golf correspondent (where is such an animal these days?)  and the US won most of them.  The GB&I team did well in the 1950s but by the time they went to Prairie Dunes in Kansas in 1986 they were on a 13-match losing streak.  When Enid heard that the team included Belle Robertson, who was competing in her seventh Curtis Cup at the age of 50, McKenna, who was a youngster of 37 but setting a GB&I record of nine consecutive appearances, Jill Thornhill, aged 43 and Vicki Thomas, aged 31, she was scathing:  “It’s a case of bring out your dead.  I think it’s wicked that these people keep on turning out instead of saying, ‘I made such a balls of it the last time, get somebody else in and give them a chance’.  We’ve lost before we even set foot on the plane.”

Enid was not in Kansas to see these cadavers sizzle in the searing heat and win by the unlikely margin of 13-5 but they sent her a souvenir programme, signing themselves “The Living Dead”.

“The Living Dead” – all smiles

Not surprisingly, I’m making no predictions about the outcome at Dun Laoghaire next week (June 10-12).

Vice Captain Elsie Brown and Captain Diane Bailley

The trophy, looking peachy, in its cabinet at     Hesketh, photo by Alex Ridley

The Hitler Trophy:  Golf and the Olympic Games by Alan Fraser, published by Floodlit Dreams.

This is stirring stuff, a book that rattles along covering all sorts of ground as it examines the history of golf in and (mostly) out of the Olympic Games and traces the sometimes tortuous journey of a unique trophy, which is now proudly displayed in the Bentley Room at Hesketh Golf Club in Southport, Lancashire.  The detective work involved is  impressive and the characters involved, both ancient and modern, are compelling.

Alan Fraser, the author, is a Scot who has written about sport, golf in particular, for many years, covering every Open Championship from 1978 – 2014 and the Olympics in Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing and London.  He sets the stage for golf’s return to the Olympics in Rio this summer and perhaps the only new thing under the sun is the stringent drug testing that the golfers will have to undergo.  Rows, withdrawals, worries about half-completed venues, they’re an Olympic staple.

The author, right, launching his book at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth

This year, viruses permitting, there will be 60 men and 60 women competing, separately, in a 72-hole individual event. The likes of Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy and Danny Willett will be trying to emulate Charles Sands, of Yonkers, New York, who won the gold medal in Paris (the course was at Compiegne) in 1900 over 36 holes and George Lyon, of Canada, who won in 1904 in St Louis.  He turned up to defend his title in London in 1908 but no other golfers pitched up and Lyon declined to accept the gold medal by default.

In 1900, Peggy Abbott, an American socialite who played at the Chicago Golf Club and had spent time in Paris studying art with Degas and Rodin, won the 9-hole women’s event.  The medals, however, were awarded retrospectively and she died in 1955 not even knowing that she was an Olympian let alone the first American woman to win a gold medal!

In 1904, the women were banned altogether and Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Games, was vehemently against any female participation, calling it “incorrect, unpractical, uninteresting and unaesthetic”.  Wonderful stuff.

The Hitler Trophy, more correctly the Golfpreis der Nationen, Gegeben Vom Fuhrer und Reichskanzler (donated by the Fuhrer and Chancellor of the Reich, Adolf Hitler), was contested in Baden-Baden in 1936, just after the Olympics in Berlin.  Seven two-man teams played 72 holes of strokeplay over two days, lowest combined total to win.

England, represented by Tom Thirsk, a Yorkshireman who played at Bridlington and Ganton and Arnold Bentley, a Lancastrian from Hesketh, were the winners.  France were second and Germany were third.  The hosts had been doing well enough for Hitler, allegedly, to set off for Baden-Baden to present the trophy but he was headed off and, allegedly, huffed his way home!

Read the book to learn more about Thirsk and Bentley, both fascinating characters, the Hitler Tree and how Derek Holden, pictured below, photo by Alex Ridley, helped secure the trophy for Hesketh.

Our condolences go to the O’Connor family who have lost the two Christys, Senior and Junior, in the space of a few months this year.  Let’s hope the big holes in their lives will be made less gaping by the love and the laughter and the mountain of memories.

Christy O’Connor,  the original and the best, the king of Knocknacarra, Himself to all and sundry, was one of those natural golfers whose swing was all his own but had been honed by hour upon day upon week upon year of practice.  It was not an accident of birth, he did not saunter up off the beach in Galway and onto the fairways of the world fully formed.  He worked and worked and worked and the hands bled as he unravelled the intricacies of shotmaking and scoring.

The result was a swing and game admired far and wide by the great and the good of the game, from John Jacobs, the renowned teacher to Peter Alliss, a devoted friend and admirer, to Jack Nicklaus.  There were few golfing sages who were not in awe of the O’Connor rhythm and his shot-making skills were the stuff of legend, all the better for being mostly true:  drivers off muddy fairways, 4-woods from the boondocks, beautiful wedges from iffy lies, he had done it all long before Seve, another man with magic in his hands, was a twinkle in any eye.

And Christy kept doing it, well into his 60s and even beyond.  On the practice ground at Royal Dublin, before a seniors’ tournament, Tommy Horton, who won more than his fair share, watched enthralled as O’Connor warmed up.  “He is still a magician,” Horton said.  “Every young pro should go out and watch him.”

One young pro who learned more than most, sometimes the hard way, was Christy’s nephew, Christy Junior.  The celebrated uncle was a hard taskmaster, very hot on discipline but with his help and encouragement Junior and his brothers Sean and Frank learned to make their own way and have their own successes in the game.

Senior played in ten Ryder Cup matches and Junior had his moment of glory at The Belfry in 1989 when he hit that 2-iron at the last.  Senior, whose praise was hard won, told Junior before the match:  “You’re playing fantastic.  You’re hitting the ball magnificently.  Swing the golf club.”  Suitably inspired, Junior did just that and afterwards Senior, impressed and proud, said:  “My God, I can’t believe you made such a full follow through on that shot!”

At a more prosaic, personal level, Himself had time for the most lowly players.  In 2013, when I was ladies’ captain at Whittington Heath in Staffordshire, a group of us had a stayaway in Ireland, playing at The Heath and Royal Dublin, fiefdom of Himself.  On a suitably bright, breezy links day, we battled to the turn, where we were taken aback to see a lone man on the 10th tee.  It was the legend himself, still hitting balls but also keen to chat and check that all was well and we were enjoying ourselves.  He posed for photos, acknowledged that he should have won an Open or two and gave us advice on how to play the back nine.  We did our feeble best but for me at least the day was made.

Whittington’s women take Royal Dublin by storm

[Books used:  Himself, compiled by Seamus Smith; Christy O’Connor his autobiography as told to John Redmond; John Jacobs’ Impact On Golf, by Laddie Lucas.]

Maureen and I decided to start this blog – not another golf blog, what madness – for entirely selfish reasons, for our own amusement, to voice our opinions, to keep in touch with our friends and to make sure that we kept seeing each other regularly (they’re now called editorial meetings) after Dad died.