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Amongst the famous golfers featured in the book were
Harry Vardon, Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen, Henry Cotton, Alf Padgham,
Alf Perry and. Jimmy Adams. He chose to compare a picture of my
back-swing position with one of Archie Compston “---A position worth
practising in front of a mirror”, he wrote. There was another aspect
of the swing that Archie and I had in common, which appeared in
newspaper extracts from a short book written by Archie and Henry at
that time. Henry asked Archie to name the main fault that prevented
handicap golfers from progressing. He said that the most important
factor was control of the club by the left hand and arm, which form
the radius of your swing and the arm should remain straight at and
through the ball. It was this, more than anything else, that most of
his pupils did not do. This corresponded with my own view and it
formed the basis of my teaching.   Archibald Edward Wones Compston was a very tall striking man and one
of the outstanding personalities of our era. He is most famous for
his defeat of Walter Hagen by 18 & 17 in 1928, in a £500 72-hole
challenge match at Moor Park. Two weeks later Hagen won his third
Open at Sandwich by two shots from Sarazen and Archie was third a
further shot adrift. Like Hagen he was fond of a wager and, when pro
at Coombe Hill, was reckoned to make around a couple of thousand a
year from betting on his own matches. The typical stake was £50 for
which he would play anyone off handicap and giving them a two-hole
start. In the winter of 1931 Henry Longhurst, then Captain of
Cambridge University, took a team to play the Coombe Hill club.
After the match Archie told them in his typically blunt manner that
they were “just a bunch of lousy goffers”, “I could beat any three
of you”, he said. Henry and two of the undergraduates thought they
were on to a good thing and placed heavy bets on their better ball.
Archie accepted, but insisted on playing off the very back tees. In
winter conditions six holes were out of range in regulation for the
amateurs, but not for the big hitting pro, who shot 68 and won on
the last green. The result came under the heading of “Learning the
lessons of life the hard way”, wrote Longhurst, who had to sell his
car to settle his percentage of the wager. NEXT |
