It’s perfect timing for Carter to clean up

Aug 21 2007 Liverpool Daily Post

IF YOU find golf a difficult game imagine playing with just one arm, like George Carter. He lost his left arm as a boy more than 70 years ago.

Yet following his love of sports he played golf, reduced his handicap to eight and collected a long list of honours including world titles.

This season he won the one-armed section of the British Amputees Spring Meeting and also the World Disabled Golfer Championship again. Next week he goes in pursuit of the World Amputee Championships at Patshull Park, Staffordshire.

The title there would be added to five others. He has also won 10 British titles.

This is indeed inspirational and extraordinary as indeed is the thought of him cleaning windows.

But he started his own window-cleaning business and while well-known in the golf community in Southport and far beyond he was a familiar sight cleaning windows in the resort’s town centre.

He could collect three 16-foot sections of ladders off the roof of his car, assemble them against the front of a shop and scale the ladders even up to the third-storey level.

Then with wash-leather in his hand and obviously no other hold he would start work. Health and Safety people would indeed be alarmed and he says, would probably not allow him to work like that now.

“It is about balance,” he says to those who might look at him wide-eyed.

Bit like golf then?

“Yes, but the golf is about rhythm and timing,” he explained. “It is not about brute force, not about now hard you hit the ball. It is about perfect timing.”

Among the able-bodied many, of course, are surprised at his talent.

Golfers fiddle with their hold on the club, getting the two hands in the right position. George says he just has the one to be concerned about.

He hits the ball, not far, but very straight. He is a good short-game player.

He was about five years of age when he was run over by a double-decker bus.

He is not certain what happened but he was playing with other lads when perhaps he stepped off the pavement.

He was lucky that he was not killed. But his arm was crushed, gangrene developed and the arm was amputated.

But it did not interfere with his love of sport. “I do not like having things done for me,” he says. “Everything was a challenge.”

He played table tennis for Southport, football for the YMCA and Southport’s Fleetwood Hesketh and he was a member of the Albatross Swimming Club joining others in the traditional Christmas Day swim in the outdoor pool, the run along the beach followed by a hot-toddy at the Scarisbrick Hotel on Lord Street.

His passion for golf began at Hesketh when he was about 12. He became a caddy, carrying the bag for the secretary, a ‘Pop’ Roberts and a lady member, a Mrs Annabel.

When caddies were needed for a forthcoming competition the club alerted local boys by flying a blue flag.

Carter was among those who answered the call.

He was paid about six pence or, with a tip, one shilling, the start of a skill he was also to use in later life, as he carried the bag for top players including Sam Snead and Peter Allis.

He seems to be the last survivor of a group of about eight top-class caddies from Southport.

At 14 he went to work at the local municipal and two years later he joined the Park Golf Club. And there is where he has remained a member now for more than 60 years.

He has been club captain and with Ted Moule he has organised the highly-successful Sefton Juniors which in 10 years has produced about 10 professionals including Lee Slattery.

During his early years at the municipal, he played golf every day or he hit golf balls on the nearby marshes. He became a skilled player.

He is a member of the British Amputees Golf Association, the British Disabled Golf Society and he is a past captains and president of the British One-Armed Golf Society. He has also had 11 holes-in-one.

He would like to see golfers with disabilities competing in the Para-Olympics but says able-bodied golfers, perhaps Nick Faldo or Colin Montgomerie would have to get golf established as an Olympic Sport.

“I think it is still on the cards. But I will probably be too old to play. But perhaps I could be a non-playing captain,” he says.

“When I start to play rubbish I will put my clubs in the locker.”

But he seems likely to continue to swing for a long time. He still goes round his beloved Southport course in the 80s or low 90s. He still surprises those who think he is “an easy touch.”

As the 77-year-old says: “I still win the odd pot.”