In 1937 the players’ wage was
£8/week, transfer fees had reached the dizzy heights of around £15,
000 and very few players came from overseas. Manchester City, won
their first league championship; Arsenal, winners of five titles in
the thirties (including a hat-trick), were third. Manchester United,
had not won the league since 1911 and would not add to their two
titles until the fifties. They, like some other big names, were in a
period of ‘ups and downs’; promoted the previous year, they were
relegated to the Second Division again, to join Newcastle, West Ham,
Southampton, and Tottenham Hotspur, but bounced back the following
year to be promoted with Aston Villa - as Manchester City were
relegated a year after winning the First Division title - which they
have won only once since. They are now expending enormous sums in an
attempt to add to their total and join the ‘Big 3’. (JMC 2010)
The week after the Cup Final the Dunlop Southport Tournament, one of
the richest events of its kind in the world at that time, began at
Hesketh Golf Club. Joe Ezar’s name was included on the entry list,
but he ‘missed the boat’. The newspapers reported that he “had not
reached the country in time to play”.
After the first qualifying round at Hesketh, played in a cold breeze
and heavy sea mist, A.G. Matthews, the Roehampton pro (who had
succeeded my brother George when he left for Malden), was leading
with a 69. I had a 71 but, in the second round at Hillside GC, in
the words of the Liverpool Daily Post, I “visited a number of
hitherto undiscovered parts of the course” in my round of 76.
The tournament proper began in a gale and Abe Mitchell, aged 50 and
still using his hickory-shafted clubs was the first round leader
with a 71. “Steel does not act so well in the wind”, he told
reporters. I played uninspired golf for the first 13 holes and, as
the Times put it: “fireworks were wanted” to keep me out of the
ruck, “and fireworks there were”, said the report, “for he finished
in 4,3,3,3,4 to his manifest joy”. My 73 put me in third place
behind Mitchell and Dick Burton, but in the improved conditions of
round two I had a 76, which left me well adrift.
My partner in round three, Birkenhead born Norman Sutton had been an
artisan member of my club West Cheshire, but was then attached to
the Leigh Golf Club. He was a pro of some standing but, typical of
those days, his job did not run to the extent of him affording a car
and he had to be up at 6.30 am to make the journey from his home at
Birkenhead in time to tee off at 8.50. Despite this he jumped into
the lead with a 66 largely due to a hot putter. He had been an
assistant to George Duncan at Wentworth and, like George, was a good
footballer and played for his local team-Tranmere Rovers. He was
watched by his brother Bill, who had won the English Amateur in
1929, when a member of the West Cheshire Artisan club, and was
runner-up to L.G.Crawley in 1931 and would be again in 1939 to Arnold
Bentley, from the Hesketh club. Bill was now a member of Mere Golf
Club where George Duncan was by then the professional. (At Southport
George was using the putter he had used in winning the French and
Irish Opens, which had been lost for ten years!) The previous year
Bill had partnered George in an exhibition match at Mere against
Gene Sarazen and another amateur from the club, Bert Shaw. Two
decades later his brother Norman, then pro at Exeter, beat Gene to
win the 1958 World Senior Professional Championship at Wallasey.
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