History man Barry Coyne tells how the West was won

Mar 25 2008 by Harold Brough, Liverpool Daily Post

AFTER four years in preparation and now neatly-timed as a contribution to Capital of Culture Year, the untold story has been revealed of one of the country’s greatest golf courses.

From the days of hickory-shafted golf clubs to its place as one of the top arenas for world golf, West Lancashire Golf Club is the oldest club in Lancashire, and indeed among the very best in a county with an abundance of such golfing treasures.

As Donald Steel, the famous golf course architect and writer, puts it: “The principal factor in judging the august position of West Lancashire is that it is the oldest club in a county richer in championship and major tournaments venues than any other in Britain.”

It is also among the top 10 in the list of oldest courses in England.

So telling its long history has been a challenge for Barry Coyne, past captain in 1990, club archivist and a member of the Heritage Committee, which in 2004 produced the idea of a club history.

Coyne has been working on the book as a hobby for the past four years, but at the launch he also paid tribute to those who have helped him with the detailed research and production in what he describes as a “labour of love.”

When he is asked about the surprises he discovered during his work he mentions the inspiration of the founders.

The story begins with a group of seven golfers from Royal Liverpool who, in 1869, decided to bring golf across to the east side of the Mersey.

Their search ended when, at a meeting at the Royal Hotel, Liverpool on May 11 1874, they were told that suitable land had been found at Blundellsands.

Walking the fairways and the immaculate greens now, it is difficult to imagine the terrain of that time.

In an age when greenkeeping was unknown, rabbits and sheep kept the grass down, a green was selected from a bit of land free from rabbit scrapes, a hole was cut with a penknife and the first players off the tee would leave a gull’s feather to mark the holes on the greens for the players following.

But improvements soon arrived. Within a few years, in 1878, the Field magazine reported the links in fine order, the greens “never were in better condition.”

The club members had had the inconvenience of meeting and renting lockers at the Royal in Liverpool but, also in 1878, an estimate of £361 was accepted to build a clubhouse.

The efforts of rabbits and sheep became redundant as horses, their hooves in great leather shoes to protect the ground, pulled great mowers.

The West Lancashire golfers even got their own railway station through the efforts of a Joseph Gardner, a wealthy timber merchant.

Like others using the railway to get to the course, Gardner had to walk from the nearest station at Crosby. The railway company insisted a new station would need at least 10 houses in the area but Blundellsands then had five. Gardner had an extra five houses built – and Hall Road station opened in 1874.

The use of gull’s feathers passed into golfing history too when a committee meeting in October 1877 was told the club had been presented with a set of flags for the greens.

The course then developed from nine holes to 18.

Golf continued through the years of the World Wars when entrance fees went to the Red Cross and a local charity, when the military used the land and part of the course was mined as protection against possible invasion.

Like the West Lancashire club itself, ladies golf here has a special place in golf history.

The ladies had their own club, formed in 1891, the first of its kind in South West Lancashire. The ladies also had their own clubhouses although that, like the men’s, was commandeered by the military during World War II.

But the ladies’ premises were damaged by the military occupation, then by a fire. The fairways suffered from erosion and parts were destroyed when the minefield was detonated to make the land safe at the end of the war. Faced with such problems the ladies merged with the men in 1947.

Great names have played here including, before World War II, the famous triumvirate of Harry Vardon, James Braid and JH Taylor. The club professionals included Sandy Herd and Arthur Havers, who won the Open, and Tom Ball, twice runner-up

Bob Kenyon won the Irish Open twice and Ted Jarman, one of five professional golfing brothers, played in the Ryder Cup.

But at the top of Coyne’s list is Harold Hilton, club member and the club’s first paid secretary, winner of the Open twice, the Amateur four times and the US Amateur in 1911.

In 1889 Hilton won the club’s Spring Meeting’s gold medal with 77+5=83, one of the greatest rounds played at the club. Three years later he collected all the major competitions, just part of an astonishing career which included reducing his handicap to plus 10.

Coyne says: “We also have to remember the times. Hilton played in a serge suit, with hickory-shafted clubs, using a gutta ball and he was never seen without a cigarette in his mouth.”

He has no doubts about the club’s greatest lady golfer, Penny Thompson (nee Burrows) British Girls champion, Northern Women’s champion, Lancashire champion, winner of the Lancashire County Veterans championship, 31 years after her mother.

In 1968 she was a Curtis Cup trialist but withdrew when Liverpool University insisted she sat her final examination, which coincided with the match against America.

Where the horses, with their boots on, pulled the mowers and birds’ feathers marked the flags on the greens there is now one of Britain’s greatest courses, its status highlighted again this year as host club for final qualifying for the Open at Royal Birkdale.

Next year West Lancashire will be the stage for the Amateur and also the British Girls, the championship Penny Thompson won 40 years ago.

The famous old links has changed greatly, like its position, once all on the west side of the railway, then on both sides and now again on the west side. The club’s future now includes a huge clubhouse revamp.

But, like the famous testing winds of West Lancashire, some things are constant – the sunsets and the shadows, the ships slipping quietly by on the Mersey, as Donald Steel wrote.

He believes that only in Britain can you get a true flavour of seaside golf of which West Lancashire is the perfect example.

He talked of the humps and hollows, greens on plateaux and some in dells, the comparative shelter of the inland holes “and everywhere a sea of rough and sandy wilderness to punish the wrongdoer.”

Like Vardon, Braid, Taylor, West Lancashire’s own hero Harold Hilton and the others of times long ago, the Open challengers of 2008 will find it a true test of golf at its best this summer.