C H A P T E R T W E L V E

The stars are coming now, 1958–93

The new Club, 1958

Peter Alliss

Seve Ballesteros

Tony Jacklin and Nick Faldo

Tournaments return

ATS Pro-Ams

Wogan’s Pro-Am Golf ClassicThe Orangery in 1958. Note that the glass roof created by Wilberforce Bryant at the turn of the 20th century for his new Winter Garden was still in place. It was later covered over in the1960s. It is planned to restore the glass in the future.

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economies, the expense of maintaining adequate staff to provide catering

and bar facilities in a Mansion Club House designed without regard to

economical running, was found to absorb a disproportionate amount of

the budget.

In an attempt to reduce these overheads, the Committee

replaced the existing kitchen in the basement with one at

ground-floor level.

Every possibility of saving money was considered, even the

pulling down of the Coke monument, which presumably was

costing money to maintain. However, a Dr W.O. Hassall of

the Bodleian Library, Oxford, wrote to Coke’s descendant,

Lord Leicester, saying:

Coke Monument at Stoke

I have visited the Stoke Poges Golf Course and seen the monument. It is

in a beautiful setting and I feel very handsome and I agree most heartily

about it being a great pity if it is destroyed …

Sir Edward Coke’s importance in the county of Buckinghamshire is far

more important than that of being the greatest Sheriff that county ever

has had, and the Monument is most important for its meaning and sig-

nificance. I believe that it is the only monument of our greatest Lawyer in

the home counties. I feel therefore that it is far more than a local, let

alone a family, matter for it is a strange chance that the monument of the

greatest champion of constitutional processes and freedom from dicta-

torship should stand so near Runnymede. Coke’s monument marks the

hope in which when he lay dying the enemies of the common law searched

his papers for seditious matters.

On the golf course itself, the Committee found that heavy

expenditure was also necessary, and told members:

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The new Club, 1958

When the Mobbs family sold Stoke Park to Eton Rural

District Council in 1958, the golfers formed a new Club and

the directors soon realised the cost involved. They reported

to members at the end of their first year to 30 June 1959:

There was a deficit of £495 [c. £12,000 in today’s money] on the first

year’s working of the new Club. In the opinion of your Directors, when it

is remembered how much has been spent on the Course in labour, mate-

rials and machinery, as well as on essential catering, bar and office equip-

ment, the size of the deficit is by no means discreditable; indeed it might

easily have been much greater if a rigorous control had not been imposed

involving the preparation of monthly statements of income and expendi-

ture. Careful consideration was given at the monthly meetings of the

Committee to these statements, and appropriate action was taken to curb

expenditure which showed any sign of extravagance. In particular, the

expenditure on indoor staff was a constant anxiety; despite many

One of the fireplaces at the beginning of the local council ownership era.

The bar at the beginning of the local council ownership era. This was originally John Penn’sBanqueting Room and was converted into the Dining Room in 2008.

T H E F I R S T 1 , 0 0 0 Y E A R S 2 2 1

is a road on the right but generally if you keep your head you should be

all right, but like all good golf holes this one is not quite as simple as it

seems. A very good one in my view.

The eleventh is another truly magnificent short hole – very picturesque

and very tricky. If you are not on the green off the tee then you can expect

to be in (a) trees, (b) bunkers or (c) water.

Another hole at Stoke Poges for which I have the most profound

respect is the seventeenth. I remember on my last golfing visit playing a

poor second shot and the result was that I was in trouble and I think, if I

remember correctly, I finished in the ditch. I advise all of you to pay some

respect to this second shot for if you do not, a ruined card can result.

That, then, is just a brief description of some of the holes at Stoke

Poges, a course which is liked, even loved, by everyone who ever plays on

it. If you have not yet had that privilege then I can say to you, put that

right as soon as you can. You will be made welcome and I know you will

enjoy yourself.

The dedication of the Committee and the staff brought the

Club and the golf course back up to the standard where ATS

(Associated Tyre Services) were happy to sponsor a series of

Pro-Am tournaments from the mid-1970s onwards.

The Globe had written the following tribute to the 7th:

Mr Harry Colt has provided the golfers of the world with many thrills, but

surely the seventh hole at Stoke Poges is more productive of thrills of

pleasure and thrills of pain than any other hole in golf. Set at a diaboli-

cally difficult angle and bristling with trouble, the green can only be held

by a ball perfectly played. No wonder the golfer’s heart rises in his mouth

as he sees his ball flying towards that narrow strip of greensward. In this

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4. IMPROVEMENTS TO COURSE

i. Greens. Of paramount importance to any golf course is the quality of

its greens. At the time of the Members’ Club take-over, the state of the

greens left much to be desired. No time was lost, therefore, in obtaining

expert advice on turf management from the Sports Turf Research

Institute, Bingley, and an improvement programme drawn up by that

well-known body has since been faithfully followed. In addition, your

Directors considered that the Secretary should attend a five-day instruc-

tional course in Turf Management at Bingley. He did so in April last, and

the application of the knowledge acquired there has been one of the fac-

tors in the improvement in the course.

ii. Bunkers. A Programme was carried out eliminating certain bunkers,

reducing the size of others and removing mounds which prevented the

economical use of gang-mowers in the vicinity of the greens. The main

object of these alterations has been to simplify the maintenance work in

order that the mechanised equipment can be used to full advantage. A

start has been made on the provision of suitable sand for bunkers, and

this work will be continued 1959/60.

iii. De-worming treatment. During the autumn and winter of 1958/59, a

de-worming programme was carried out covering approximately 6 acres

of fairway. Mowrah meal was the medium employed and 6 tons, costing

some £162 in all, were used. The results were most satisfactory.

iv. Course Staff. At the commencement of the year under review, the staff

employed on the course comprised two full-time and one part-time

adults and two youths; the weekly wage bill was less than £20 per week.

Towards the end of the year, it had been found necessary to increase the

staff to four full-time and three part-time adults, and to recognise the

need for improving their conditions of service by raising their wages

(including overtime) to over £50 per week.

That venerable writer on golf, Tom Scott, recorded:

The Sports Turf Research Institute at Bingley was consulted and, as a

result, a big programme of work on the greens has been carried out. In

my view the greens are as good as to be found anywhere in England. More

work was carried out on making new teeing grounds and as a result there

has been a great improvement.

As we have seen, every golfer waxed lyrical about the 7th. This

was Tom Scott’s experience:

There are many wonderful holes and it is not surprising that one or two

of them have found their way into the ‘best eighteen’ of some renowned

writer or other. One such hole is the short seventh. I myself have most

unpleasant memories of it because it was there during a society competi-

tion that I came to grief. But even though it defeated me I had to bow to

its majesty.

He also wrote about some of the other holes which intrigued

him:

Cunning bunkering before you reach the green makes the first hole a dif-

ficult one with which to start and I fear that there will be more fives than

anything else, with the more modest having to be content with a six. The

siting of the green adds to the problems caused by the clever bunkering.

I like the fourth by reason of the fact that it fights you from start to fin-

ish. There is out-of-bounds on the right and although the big green in a

corner of the course should not provide all that much trouble, the fact

remains that even the best golfers find fours hard to get, mainly, I sup-

pose, because of the sand traps on the left.

The seventh has been commented on and so I pass to the ninth which

provides some considerable difficulty to the player whose driving is what

you might say ‘a bit off’. The tee-shot is over a hollow and the slope

beyond is positively festooned with bunkers. For the faint-hearted this

hole will be a nightmare.

Leaving the Club House again the tenth is a most attractive hole. ThereBernard Hunt won 30 times on the European PGA Tour, played no fewer than ten times inthe Ryder Cup, twice as Captain, and won the Tour’s Order of Merit in 1961 and 1963. Herehe is playing at the Club in the 1960s in an Agfa-Gevaert Tournament.

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ing, protected because of its architectural significance. It features in

occasional TV films and is always recognised by those of us who know it so

well. I believe it has the potential to be one of the best inland courses

north of the Thames and the middle section of the second nine is testing

indeed.

Peter Alliss would later write to the Club Secretary, Ralph

Pickering, in response to a letter from Ralph:

Dear Ralph (if I may make so bold)

I haven’t seen you for many, many years but I remember you very well

indeed, way back to the days of your father and Calor Gas.

With regard to Stoke Park Club and Golf World’s The Best of Peter Alliss, those

remarks were written at least THIRTY years ago!

I’ve heard many reports of the vast improvements at Stoke Poges, not

least of which from the Wogans.

There are very few GREAT courses north of the river within close

proximity of London but Stoke Poges always had a lovely ‘feel’ about it

and of course it had romantic connections for me because my father won

the News of the World Matchplay Championship there and I won the Agfa.

My very best wishes to you. I hope we can meet one day and have a chin-

wag.

Kind regards

Sincerely,

Peter Alliss

Peter and Ralph went on to have many chinwags, as they both

became members of the Committee of the Colt Association.

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one short hole are amalgamated all the qualities that make for perfection.

… And Stoke Park has a grand finish, the last four holes all being excel-

lent in their own way and all very different from each other … I defy any-

one not to admire the view over part of Stoke Park’s glorious woodland

from the steps on the clubhouse. There is much beauty; there is also

much spaciousness, but then the Stoke Park Club course was designed by

the famous H.S. Colt in an age of spaciousness and elegance; nothing

cramped, nothing stinted.

Peter Alliss

These were Alliss’s views on the golf course at the Stoke Park

Club, expressed in The Shell Book of Golf:

But on, this time to another memory and the Stoke Poges course which, I

think, has the potential of being the best club north of the river. I’ve had

some good times there, and bad too. I won the Agfa-Gevaert tournament

there in 1966, going around in 64 once and it was there, on a slightly dif-

ferent course, that my father beat Mark Seymour in the final of the

British Match-Play championship in the mid-1930s. They had the 18th,

in those days, as a short hole across a lake but that has been altered now

into a testing par 4 with rough up the right-hand side.

Stoke Poges has a pleasant atmosphere and a monster clubhouse which

must be cripplingly expensive to look after but is a very interesting build-

Brian Huggett, a feisty Welshman, also captained the British Ryder Cup team.

Above: Peter Alliss, revered golf commentator and possibly the best British golfer never towin a Major, said this of Stoke Park: ‘I believe it has the potential to be one of the bestinland courses north of the Thames and the middle section of the second nine is testingindeed.’

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The golfing scenes in Goldfinger, the James Bond film, purportedly at Royal St Mark’s (a transparent pseudonym for Royal St George’s), were actually filmed at the Stoke Park Club in 1964.

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Seve Ballesteros

The young Seve Ballesteros, who became a leading figure in

golf on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1980s and 90s,

played in the PGA Championship at Stoke Park in 1977.

I cannot beat the description of Seve by Peter Alliss in his

autobiography, My Life:

Seve Ballesteros – a sophisticated Arnold Palmer. Oh, the glorious

period when Seve was the most charismatic player in the world – touch

and feel; what skills and the ability to annoy all in equal measure. Strange

how his career ended when Jack Nicklaus had his last hurrah at the

Masters in 1986. Seve should have won that tournament. He had it in the

palm of his hand and then dumped his second in the water at the 15th,

Nicklaus holed a monster putt at the 17th, Seve was shaken – that was that.

To me, he never seemed the same again.

From the mid-seventies of the twentieth century to the mid-nineties

Severiano Ballesteros was the most charismatic figure in world golf. He

was a great champion with three victories in the Open Championship and

two in the US Masters, not to mention an eventual career total of eighty-

eight wins worldwide. He captivated the world of golf with his successes

and a devil-may-care swashbuckling technique and with his presence and

personality on the course.

Tall, dark and Latin-handsome with a flashing dazzling smile, Seve

(pronounced ‘Sebby’ in Spanish!) loped along the fairways, prowled

around the greens as though he couldn’t wait to get to the next shot.

Ballesteros took a cavalier attitude to the playing of the game. It was as

though he accepted, and even rejoiced in, the philosophy of Walter Hagen

(great champion of the 1920s) who insisted, ‘Three bad shots and one

good one still counts four.’

S T O K E P A R K2 2 6

Left: The Club from the air in 1968.

Seve Ballesteros, perhaps the most brilliant and charismatic of the European golfers of the1970s, 80s and 90s, played in the PGA Championship at Stoke Park in 1977.

Tony Jacklin andNick Faldo

Two other great golfers who played at the Stoke Park Club

were Tony Jacklin and Nick Faldo.

For those of us who suffered the near-famine of British

golfing success in the 1950s and 60s, Jacklin’s winning of the

Open Championship at Royal Lytham in 1969 (the first

British winner since Max Faulkner at Royal Portrush in 1951)

was a victory to savour.

This is how Ted Barrett described the final round:

Setting out on the final round with Charles, Jacklin started with two pars

and two birdies, but dropped a shot on the fifth and another on the

eighth. However, he got out of trouble on the long sixth, where the wind

shift had made it impossible to fly the bunkers on the left of the fairway.

A tree did not make his stance easy to take up for his second shot, but he

got five, and birdies on the seventh and ninth put him four clear of

Charles at the turn.

Jacklin’s bogeys at the 13th and the trickiest par fours on the course,

holes 15 and 17, where he three-putted for the first time, were counter-

balanced by Charles’s errors.

On the 18th tee, not the least difficult driving hole here, Jacklin was

two ahead. Charles drove into the left rough, but was not badly placed. At

this extremely testing moment in his career Jacklin showed precisely the

same mastery with the drive that he had shown at Thornsdon Park when

S T O K E P A R K2 2 8

Seve was proud and stubborn, chippy with the game’s establishment

and often other players. He missed some Ryder Cup matches for one rea-

son or another, then came back to inspire the European team and show

its members that they were just as good as the Americans. He captained

the winning team in 1997 at Valderrama in southern Spain, the first time

it had been played outside the UK. Desperate for victory in his homeland,

and nervous, he rushed from match to match. Eventually the players had

to tell him to calm down – politely to shut up!

Ballesteros, mercurial character though he may have been,

was nevertheless the seminal figure in world golf in the final

quarter of the 20th century. He won the Championship three

times – in 1979, 1984 and 1988 – and the US Masters twice,

in 1980 and 1983. He also won more than 50 events on the

PGA European Tour and about another twenty in other parts

of the world. He was an inspirational figure in the European

Ryder Cup team. Like many of the greatest golfers – includ-

ing, for example, Tiger Woods – Seve, or ‘Sebby’ as his ador-

ing Spanish fans called him, was capable of memorable shots

at vital moments. In 1979 in the Open at Royal Lytham, at

the 16th hole he drove into a car park (deemed not-out-of-

bounds) and from there hit his second close enough to hole

for a birdie. He went on to win his first Open, becoming the

youngest champion since Young Tom Morris in 1872.

Right: Max Faulkner, the last British golfer to win the Open until Jacklin in 1969, Eric Sykes, the great comedian, Tony Jacklin, winner of the Open and the US Open andsuccessful Captain of the European Ryder Cup team, and Henry, now Sir Henry, Cooper,the famous British boxer (from right to left), sign autographs at the ATS Pro-AmTournament at the Club.

Richard O’Sullivan, star of Man About the House, Robin’s Nest and Me and My Girl, with RosieArnell, great organiser of golf events, and Bernard Cribbins, star of Carry On films andJackanory, and narrator of The Wombles, at the ATS Pro-Am at the Club in the 1980s.

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Tournaments return

As we have seen, Stoke Park Club had a strong record of host-

ing big tournaments. The Girls’ British Open Championship

was played there every year from 1924 to 1938. Winners such

as Enid Wilson, Diana Fishwick and the French girls, Thion

de la Chaume and Lally Vagliane, all went on to win the

Ladies’ British amateur title. In the PGA Match-Play

Championship, played at the Club several times, Charlie

Whitcombe beat Henry Cotton in 1928 and Peter Alliss’s

father Percy beat Jimmy Adams in 1937. Immediately after

the Second World War, Dai Rees, Reg Whitcombe and

Norman von Nida of Australia shared in a three-way tie in

the Penfold Tournament when it was also played at the Club.

Between 1963 and 1971 the Club hosted the Agfa-Gevaert

Tournament, which brought many of the top golfers of the

day and was won twice by Bernard Hunt and Spain’s Angel

Miguel. Other winners included Peter Oosterhuis, Brian

Barnes, Peter Alliss and Clive Clark.

In 1964 Australia’s Peter Thomson, five-times winner of

the Open Championship, won £1,000 (c. £20,000 in

today’s money) for holing his tee-shot at the lakeside 16th.

£1,000 was more than that year’s winner, Angel Miguel,

received.

On another occasion, a young Peter Alliss lost his cool and

the press were delighted to report:

FOUR-PUTT ALLISS SLAMS ‘STUPID’ HOLES

Ryder Cup golfer Peter Alliss protested yesterday to the PGA about the

‘childish, stupid and ridiculous placing of some of the holes’ at Stoke

Poges.

He had just finished ten shots behind shock leader Denis Scanlan in

the first round of the £3,250 Gevacolour film tournament. Alliss said:

‘As chairman of the tournament committee I feel I must say something

about the unfair placing of the holes on at least three greens.

‘The standard of British golf will never improve while pins are placed

in ridiculous positions.

‘You have to putt up precipices from the backs of bunkers and nearly

up trees.

‘This is a great golf course. It is stupid to trick it up.’

Club captain Mr Tommy Butler said: ‘I think Mr Alliss’s attitude is

slightly coloured by the fact that he four-putted the 15th green.

‘I will bet him that I will get down in two three times out of the four

from the position he was in. No pro golfer should take four shots.’

More than 20 players in the field of 130 had birdie threes at the 15th.

ATS Pro-Ams

ATS (Associated Tyre Services) began organising a Pro-Am

golf tournament in 1974. The first was at the very good

Hollinwell course in Nottingham and was won by Christy

O’Connor, the Irish professional who would go on to

S T O K E P A R K2 3 0

the author first saw him. No longer or straighter drive was seen all week.

‘A corker’ said Henry Longhurst on television (in colour for the

first time).

Charles put his second on the green. Jacklin put his second inside it as

if to rubber-stamp his victory. Jacklin appeared on the green with one

shoe on and the other in his hand. It had been torn off in the scrum that

formed after he played his approach shot. He two-putted for a two-stroke

win, four under par, with never a six all week, and agreed with Nicklaus

that it was marvellous to be able to play so well when he was so excited.

Nicklaus knows about such things.

There have been few golf champions as single-minded as Nick

Faldo. Although a good all-round games player, he decided

early on that team sports were not for him because others

could let him down. Golf suited him perfectly. Success or

failure was up to him and him alone, and he was determined

that success was what he wanted. He achieved a great deal early

in his career and by the early 1980s, when he was still only in

his mid-twenties, he had already won three PGA champion-

ships. However, Faldo wanted more. He wanted to win the

Open and the Masters and be the best golfer in the world. At

the end of 1984 he decided that his swing was not good

enough and went to the then not-very-well-known David

Leadbetter for him to change and improve it. For three years

he won nothing, but then in 1987, with eighteen successive

pars in the final round, he won the Open at Muirfield. This

was followed by another Open win in 1990 and successive

wins in the US Masters in 1989 and 1990. He won another

Open, again at Muirfield, in 1992 to put him up with Henry

Cotton, the only other British three-times Open Champion.

The Sun Alliance PGA Match-Play Championship was played at the Club in 1977, when theSouth African Hugh Baiocchi beat the up-and-coming Seve Ballesteros on his way to thefinal, where he beat Brian Huggett six and five.

T H E F I R S T 1 , 0 0 0 Y E A R S 2 3 3

Barnes, Hugh Baiocchi, Seve Ballesteros, Bernard Gallacher,

Manuel Pinero and Sam Torrance. There were also well-

known stars from other sports and the world of entertain-

ment, such as Brian Close, the England cricketer, the

England footballers Kevin Keegan and Bobby Charlton, and

Jimmy Tarbuck, the golf-loving comedian.

George Simms wrote an entertaining article in the tourna-

ment programme under the title ‘Far From the Madding

Crowd’, explaining how fond he was of the Stoke Park Club:

Memory is a quixotic mistress, and I never come back to Stoke Poges –

how nice in fact it is to revisit the scene of happy tournament memories –

without seeing a passing parade of professionals who made their landmark

here.

A decade or more ago Stoke Poges was the permanent home for a num-

ber of years of a tournament which, presumably for consumer identifica-

tion purposes, appeared to many to change its name more often than a

woman changes her mind.

It started life as the Gevacolour Tournament, switched after a couple of

years to the Agfacolour Tournament, and ended its life as the Agfa-

Gevaert Tournament.

Looking back in the album of recollection one recalls Bernard Hunt

winning the first of those tournaments here in 1963. In the Official

Programme the following year he told spectators how to play every hole in

an article headed ‘Play Stoke Poges Without Me’.

That was the year when Angel Miguel, perhaps the best of all post-war

Spaniards, won his first victory in England after ten years of trying, and

as the racing fraternity would have it, confirmed the form by winning

again two years later – as, indeed, did Hunt again in 1970.

Peter Thomson, who is here today, will remember Miguel’s first win in

1964. The Australian ace holed his tee shot at the 16th hole and won

£1,000 – to finish with more money than the Spaniard did for winning.

There’s an Alpine GLS car to be had for the effort today, should

Thomson succeed in repeating history.

One recalls that Jimmy Hitchcock cemented a Ryder Cup performance

with a victory in the Agfa series in 1965.

It was here, too, that a young amateur by the name of Clive Clark won

press notice while testing his game with the professionals, and a few years

later, in 1968, the experience paid off with his first major tournament

win in the Agfa-Gevaert.

The young giants, Brian Barnes and Peter Oosterhuis, also have cause

to remember Stoke Poges for, like Clark, they too scored major first-time

victories here in those now defunct tournaments.

Indeed Oosterhuis was the last name to go on the winner’s roll. His

early-season victory in 1971 was the start of a four-years’ run which saw

him top the PGA Order of Merit on each occasion and compelled him to

the view that he should try his hand in the United States.

Yet, despite the tournament recollections, one must not forget that

Stoke Poges has been the venue for other important occasions. It was, for

instance, the home of the Girls’ Championship for the entire period

between the two Great Wars, and has also seen a couple of PGA Match-

Play Championships.

Five years passed before the tournament was held again at the

Stoke Park Club in June 1981. The joint winner was another

Ryder Cup player, Tommy Horton. He went round in 66.

Other leading professionals included the young German,

Bernhard Langer, Bernard Gallacher, Brian Barnes and

Howard Clark. From the worlds of sport and showbiz came

Liverpool and England goalkeeper, Ray Clemence, test crick-

eters Richie Benaud and Brian Close, Henry Cooper, Jimmy

Tarbuck, Eric Sykes, Kenny Lynch and Tim Brooke-Taylor.

The tournament returned to the Stoke Park Club in 1983

and every year from 1985 until 1994. In 1989, Brian Barnes

won in spite of having to play with the comedian Jasper

Carrott, who could not resist joking and larking about with

the crowds. It was twenty years since Barnes had picked up a

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perform so well for the successful European team in Ryder

Cup matches in the 1980s. The second was at the Stoke Park

Club in 1976, when the winner was the Spaniard, José-María

Canizares. The leading amateur was Sandy Lyle, who would

later win the Open and the Masters at Augusta as well as

representing the European team very creditably in Ryder Cup

matches in the 1980s and 90s.

Derek Peaker, the Managing Director of ATS, welcomed

the participants with these words:

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to Stoke Poges Golf Club for

the second major Pro-Am Golf Tournament sponsored by Associated

Tyre Services. Old friends will remember the first of our big events which

we sponsored at Notts. Golf Club, Hollinwell, in May 1974. An even

more impressive field has been gathered together for today’s event, and I

particularly want to thank the celebrities from Show Business and other

sports, the well-known amateur golfers, and others who have offered to

join with the Professionals in providing today’s entertainment.

The ATS Pro-Am Golf Tournament is an official event in the

Professional Golfers’ Association’s calendar and its prize money of

£7,000 makes it one of the bigger events of its type in 1976.

A lot of people have worked very hard to try to ensure that the day is a

success, and I take this opportunity of thanking them, many of them vol-

untary helpers, for their efforts in this respect. I am particularly grateful

for the hard work put in by the Committee and Members of the Stoke

Poges Golf Club and I hope that some of the year’s glorious sunshine will

be left to shine on everyone today as a return for their efforts.

The tournament attracted many of the top professionals of

the day, some of them well-known for many years, such as

Neil Coles and the five-times Open Champion, Peter

Thomson, and some up-and-coming players such as Brian

Ronnie Corbett, the comedian, playing in the ATS Pro-Am Tournament with ProfessionalRoss McFarlane.

T H E F I R S T 1 , 0 0 0 Y E A R S 2 3 5

Tournament at the Stoke Park Club gave the clues why:

There’s one question which I’m waiting to hear put to the contestants in

any of TV’s quiz games, whether it be Sale of the Century or Ask the Family. It’s

one which I’m sure would leave them stumped unless, of course, they were

golfers.

For any golfer would know the answer to this: ‘Where can you expect to

rub shoulders with goalkeeper Ray Clemence, cricketer Brian Close,

snooker’s Ray Reardon, boxer Henry Cooper, motor racing’s James

Hunt, tennis star David Lloyd, and TV personalities like Eric Sykes,

Jimmy Tarbuck, Ed Stewart, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Leslie Randall, Gerald

Harper and Lance Percival?’

For the golf course provides the answer – and more particularly

the Associated Tyre Services Pro-Am here at Stoke Poges today, where

all these stars are appearing, in company with world-class tournament

players.

You can mingle with them all, request and be supplied with their

autographs, listen to their jokes on and off the course, and admire – or

criticise if you wish – their skill at this wonderful game of golf.

Everyone accepts the popularity of Pro-Ams these days as a matter of

course – after all, they are now as much a part of the golf scene as are the

big professional and amateur events on the tournament calendar.

But it’s only in recent years that they have become established and have

begun to attract golfing fans. And that has come about as a result of the

support of companies like Associated Tyre Services, who launched their

first event back in 1974.

And a great name to lead off the roll of winners of the professional

event was Ireland’s most famous golfing son, Christy O’Connor. The

amateur winner on that occasion was former England Amateur Stroke-

Play Champion Roger Revell. And in 1976, when the ATS Pro-Am came

to Stoke Poges for the first time, it’s interesting to recall that the top

amateur that year – and also the following year – was Sandy Lyle, now one

of Europe’s top professional golfers.

Right from the start, the ATS Pro-Am has been a big attraction for the

professional stars – among them winners of the British Open like

Severiano Ballesteros and Bob Charles – or celebrities like Jimmy

Tarbuck, Bruce Forsyth, Ronnie Corbett and a host of others, many of

whom have taken part year after year.

There had been some criticism that the relatively poor show-

ing of British professional golfers on the world golfing scene

was due to the easy pickings they made in the many Pro-Am

tournaments available to them. This was somehow supposed

to lessen their appetite for the hard work necessary to win

major tournaments. The success of Sandy Lyle, Nick Faldo,

Ian Woosnam and the Ryder Cup team showed that this crit-

icism was misplaced.

In the early 1980s the Stoke Park Club was delighted to

welcome top performers such as Bernhard Langer, Howard

Clark, Tommy Horton, Des Smyth, John Bland, Brian

Waites, Ken Brown, Antonio Garrido, Gordon Brand, John

O’Leary, Eamonn Darcy, José-María Canizares, Maurice

Bembridge, Rowan Rafferty, Anders Forsbrand, Tony

Johnstone and Peter Senior.

Nick Faldo became well-known, perhaps a little notorious,

for his single-minded dedication to his own success, but

showbiz personality Jerry Stevens found him a pleasure to

play with, saying in the 1983 programme of the ATS Pro-Am

at the Stoke Park Club:

I played some time ago with Nick Faldo, and he welcomed me by saying:

‘I’ve been waiting for three years to play with Jerry Stevens, the Pro-Am

star!’ [Stevens had twice been on the winning team in the ATS Pro-Am

and he was also the amateur prizewinner in the 1981 Bob Hope British

Classic.] You can imagine how I felt when I had four shanks. I really was

embarrassed.

But Nick put me right with a simple tip: ‘Keep your head completely

S T O K E P A R K2 3 4

cheque for £350 in his maiden professional event, also at the

Stoke Park Club. He said: ‘It just proves that the old has-

beens can still play a bit.’

On the European tour in the 1970s, Barnes was never out

of the top ten for ten years from 1971. He was fourth in the

Order of Merit three times and his ten Euro Tour victories

included the PGA Match-Play Championship and the Dutch,

French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian Opens. In six Ryder

Cup matches, perhaps his greatest achievement was beating

Jack Nicklaus twice in a day at Laurel Valley in 1975.

Also playing were other distinguished Ryder Cup players

such as Neil Coles, who played in seven teams between 1961

and 1977, and Eamonn Darcy, the Irishman, whose defeat of

Ben Crenshaw at Muirfield Village in 1987 helped retain the

trophy that Europe had won at the Belfry in 1985.

The Sun Alliance PGA Match-Play Championship at the

Stoke Park Club in 1977 was won by the South African, Hugh

Baiocchi, who beat the great Seve Ballesteros three and two

on his way to the final, where he overcame Brian Huggett six

and five. There was some trouble during Baiocchi’s match

with Ballesteros when some caddies, who had backed Baiocchi

to win, were jangling coins in their pockets and coughing in

attempts to disturb Ballesteros’ concentration. Club

Secretary Tony Acres said:

These caddies were shouting their heads off because there had been some

betting. They were trying to annoy the player they wanted to lose, and

caused a disturbance. The police came and stood behind them and that

solved the problem.

George Simms wrote an interesting piece explaining the

highlights of the course:

A brook runs through the course, and there are designated water hazards

at the 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 12th, 16th, 17th and 18th holes.

Club Professional Kim Thomas has been at Stoke Poges for fifteen

years, the last seven as full Professional, and his modern shop is a mecca

for all visitors. Kim nominates four holes that will test the abilities of the

medium to high handicapper.

First of them is the 6th (326 yards) which demands an accurate tee

shot, avoiding the out-of-bounds clubhouse grounds on the right. There

is a two-level green, a small first plateau sloping down to a larger surface.

It is a haven of three putts!

The second is the 421-yards 8th where a long and accurate drive is nec-

essary in order to carry the rough from the tee to the fairway. Trees on the

right are definitely to be avoided! The second shot is downhill and across

from the stream which runs some 50 yards short of the small green. One

should be aware of the bunker on the right which runs around and in

front of the green.

Of the Tournament’s homeward holes, the 14th (496 yards), a dog-leg

left, with two larger bunkers some 80 yards short of the green, and with

more bunkers guarding the green itself, makes for a difficult approach

shot. Hooked drives will find the large copse.

Not surprisingly, the short 16th (150 yards) is another of Kim’s ‘four

to beware’. This is the 7th as the members play it, and is one of the most

famous of golf’s short holes. The stream runs diagonally across the front

of the long and narrow green which is set into the side of a large bank.

Bunkers lie along the left of the green, and an accurate tee shot is essen-

tial.

Just four holes of a course that throughout provides a fine and fair test

for golfers of any category, and an enjoyable experience whether one plays

to handicap or not.

Pro-Am tournaments became more and more popular, and

Alan Booth’s article in the programme of the 1981 ATS

and his wife Mary, Bernie Winters, Roy Castle, Harry Worth,

Bernard Cribbins and Henry Cooper. Spurs goalkeeper Ray

Clemence, eight days after beating rival Pat Jennings’ record

for first-class appearances, began his round with an air-

shot which he claimed was a ‘joke’. His next shot almost

decapitated a spectator. In spite of this start, Clemence

helped professional Bob Wynn to win. In the meantime,

Hugh Boyle, the professional at Royal Wimbledon and

former Ryder Cup player, went round in 69.

John Rhodes, Captain of the Club in that year, welcomed

the participants with some words about the improvements

made to the course, and with a quote from perhaps the most

famous writer on golf of all time, Bernard Darwin:

On behalf of the Members, I wish to welcome to Stoke Poges both players

and visitors and hope that you all have an enjoyable day.

During the last few years, much work has been done to improve the

playing condition of the course.

Tons of good top soil and sand have been applied to the greens. The

automatic watering system has been up-dated. This year we are continu-

ing with the machinery replacement policy. Members and visitors will

enjoy playing on a course of championship standards.

Just recently one of our members found a book by the famous Bernard

Darwin, who wrote in The Golf Courses of the British Isles, printed in 1910, this

description of our 7th hole (your 16th today):

‘Never was there a better instance of the art of forcibly turning

forest into a golf course than is to be found at Stoke Poges. The beautiful

old park turf was always there, cropped from time immemorial by the

generations of deer, who little knew what service they were doing to

the green-keeper, but in every direction there stretched thick belts of

woodland, and yet a golf course was going to be made and opened in less

than no time.

S T O K E P A R K2 3 6

still, as you should do with a putt. Stay behind the ball and swing past your

eyes.’ And it worked.

That’s what is so great about the top Professionals – they really take an

interest in their amateur partners.

There were plenty of celebrities, professional at their own

game but amateurs of varying ability at golf, willing to risk the

ridicule of the large crowds who came to watch. Over the

years they included Cliff Michelmore, Ray Clemence,

Bernard Cribbins, Henry Kelly, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Russ

Abbott, Duggie Brown, Ronnie Corbett, Lance Percival,

Richie Benaud, Kenny Lynch, Jimmy Hill, Bruce Forsyth and

Terry Wogan.

Wogan’s Pro-AmGolf Classic

In late April 1987, BBC Radio 2 star Terry Wogan staged his

Pro-Am Golf Classic at Stoke Park Club and raised £30,000

for the Lords’ Taverners charities for handicapped and

underprivileged children. The sun shone and attracted large

crowds to watch the golf – good and not-so-good – played by

other well-known personalities such as Michael Parkinson

Above: Terry Wogan, long-time Radio 2 broadcaster, organised his own Pro-Am GolfClassic at the Club in April 1987 and raised £30,000 for the Lords’ Taverners charities forhandicapped and underprivileged children.

Right: John Betjeman, Poet Laureate, visited St Giles’ church and Gray’s Monument in the1980s. Here he is with the vicar of St Giles’, the Reverend Cyril Harris.

S T O K E P A R K2 3 8

‘One hole was particularly impressive. All that was then to be seen was

a pretty little brook running innocently between its banks which were

thickly covered with trees, while on one side the ground sloped gently

upwards to a path through the woods. It was a spot to conjure up visions

of dryads or fairies, “Green jacket, red cap and white owl feather,” of

anything in the world except a narrow, catchy, slanting green and a half

iron shot. Yet an inspired architect had fixed on it as the site of one of

the short holes; the trees were to be cut down, the sloping bank to be

turfed and the brook promoted to the fuller dignity of a burn. I went my

way full of admiration – and of doubt.

‘A few months after I returned to find that the romantic little wood had

vanished, and there was a short hole in its place – a hole that any course

might be proud to own, and a putting green that the deer might have

grazed for centuries. I never saw a more daring bit of architecture …’

During this period Stoke Park, which had been reduced in

size and facilities to an eighteen-hole club, while successful

in its own right, was unable to generate any surplus revenue

to maintain and conserve the historic landscape and

Mansion. Furthermore, between 1958 and 1988 the costs

required to restore the estate steadily increased.

The members, who had a lease only until 1993, conducted

several negotiations with the landlord, South Bucks District

Council, to extend the lease or buy the freehold. However,

these came to nothing and the Council decided to sell what

had become a serious future liability to their other tenant,

which had been renting half of the Mansion as offices,

International Hospitals Group.

Right: The Club from the air in 1982.