Golf Central

It’s a day when a surprisingly high number of irrefutably great golfers were born or achieved something of significance. So we regard with awe the careers of Walter Hagen, Mickey Wright, Winston Churchill, Amy Alcott, Jarmo Sandelin, Jimmy Demaret and Homer Simpson. Yes, that’s Homer Simpson, famous lavatory linksman (series 7), but we only sneaked him in because we’re in love with Marge and fantasise about her blue hair and – sorry, did we say that last bit out loud?

In 1929 Walter Hagen, one of the absolute best half dozen golfers ever to pull on a  pair of spikes, won his fourth Open, on this occasion at Muirfield. He beat the previous year’s US Open champ Johnny Farrell at a stroll, having virtually secured the championship with a second round 67. The Haig is not only the third most prolific winners of Majors in the history of the game (his 11 wins means that only Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus have more) but he was the most stylish. When he died, golf writer Charles Price turned down the chance to raise a drink in his memory with the words: ‘Like Hamlet, golf's sweet prince, I thought, deserved a grander exit than that. He was splendid. They should have carried him out on a shield.’

Amen to that.

In 1940 on this day the frightening German military machine stormed into Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg by air and land. Blitzkreig was such an effective tactic that all three countries were over-run and occupied within weeks. Back home it was announced that prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who had faced a vote of no confidence in parliament, was stepping aside and that Winston Churchill would become the leader of a coalition government.

Amy Alcott won the LPGA Lady Michelob Tournament in 1981. And although we remember her for that (are you sure? Ed), and her five Major wins, and 29 other Tour victories, it is a moment of non-golf for which we are most grateful. When she won the Nabisco Dinah Shore (now known as the Kraft Nabisco Championship) in 1988, she took a running leap into the greenside water hazard, an action, we are happy to say that has been repeated by subsequent champions. As a consequence we get to see a dripping lovely emerge from the water once a year – it’s the highlight of our golf watching calendar.

How’s this for logic? In 1889 a British actor called William Charles Macready was performing at the Astor Place Opera House in New York. An angry crowd gathered outside because Macready had spoken in public about the vulgarity and unruliness of Americans. Presumably attempting to demonstrate how wrong he was, the mob stormed the theatre, smashing its windows. Troops were called and they opened fire, killing 22 and wounding 26.

Unruly? Us?

Mickey Wright is the second most successful woman golfer of all time, with 82 career wins (only Kathy Whitworth leads her, with 88) and 13 Majors (this time it’s Patty Berg who’s narrowly ahead, having taken 15 of the big ones). And if she hadn’t been forced to retire at the age of 34 with foot problems, Wright would almost certainly have surpassed both those records. On this date in 1964 she notched yet another Tour win but, like the sniggering schoolboys we are, we only mention it because it was called the LPGA Squirt Ladies’ Golf Open Invitational.


If you lived in Hanoi, and were Vietnamese, you would say ‘Chuc Mung Sinh Nhat!’ but we aren’t, so we’ll content ourselves with ‘Happy Birthday’ to:
Homer Simpson (53) And yes, he really was born on that day.
Jarmo Sandelin (41) Flaky Swede who brightens many a golf event.
Bonio (48) Named after a dog biscuit, world-saving Irish singer with U2.
Jimmy Demaret (98) Small, brightly dressed, wise-cracking golf maestro.
Fred Astaire (109) Twinkle-toed genius who was incapable of an ungracious movement.