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George returned to take up his job at Roehampton and in 1919 he and a group of fellow professionals set up the Croydon and District Alliance, possibly the earliest of the professional/amateur alliances that now flourish throughout the country. [In 1921 George shot a course record 63 at Roehampton]. He qualified for the Open several times in the twenties and thirties and was in a share of 16th place on his first appearance in 1922 at Sandwich, where Walter Hagen was champion for the first time. George became a noted match-player and that year he won the PGA News of the World £750 tournament, then considered second in importance only to the Open, but worth 2 ½ times the £75 cheque won by Open Champion Hagen, who famously handed it straight to his caddy. George received £200, plus a large gold medal for beating Fred Leach 5 & 4 at Sunningdale. Before reaching the final he had been taken to the 19th in all but one of the five rounds [The Times reported a mystified spectator’s question: “But where is the 19th hole?”] The hickory-shafted putter he used was afterwards named the “By-Gad 19th hole”. In their centenary year of 2001 I presented one of 1923 vintage to the PGA for their museum at the Belfry, in which the News of the World trophy is exhibited.
In 1924 he reached the final again, losing to Ernest Whitcombe, eldest of the famous golfing brothers. En-route to that final he met a wily match player - little Tommy Barber, but was too experienced to fall for his tricks. (Tommy was to give the younger Gadd brother a valuable lesson when I embarked on my tournament career eight years later). That year George was in the top ten at the Hoylake Open, again won by Hagen. He made it to the final of the News of the World for the third time the following year, loosing to Archie Compston.

He won the Northern Professional Championship twice, in 1924 at Wilmslow (totalling one under fours and breaking the course record with a 69) and in1926 at Formby, the year of my arrival at Roehampton and a very eventful one for George. There were just eight events in the professional calendar in those days and the season opened in April with the annual Roehampton tournament, which had begun in 1920 at the instigation of George and was a very popular event that attracted the best players. On his ‘home green’ George equalled the new course record of 66 in the first round, an indication of his form that year. The Roehampton course crossed two of the club’s Polo fields and, when matches were being played, you had to walk around the first and third. The course was no pushover, but the fairways were quite generous and a visiting Irishman aptly expressed its merit – “Sure a Scotsman could play here all day and not lose his ball”. One Scot who played all the last day was the winner of the first Roehampton Tournament in 1920 (and the Open Champion of that year), George Duncan, who reached the final, losing by 3&2 to Abe Mitchell, one of the greatest British golfers never to win the Open. Another event won by Mitchell that year was the Evening Standard Moor Park Target Tournament, held at the famous Hertfordshire club, in which points were awarded for hitting the fairway and landing in concentric circles marked on the greens: “Perhaps a misguided search for novelty”, said the Times. It did not catch on.

The Times announced in April that: “Mr S. Ryder, of St Albans, has presented a trophy for annual competition between teams of British and American professionals. The first match for the trophy is to take place at Wentworth on June 4 and 5. The matches will be controlled by the Professional Golfers’ Association, but the details are not yet decided”. George was a member of the British team, which defeated the Americans by 13 ½ to 1 ½ on Wentworth’s two-years-old West course, but his only outing in the match was not to be included in the records. The match was reported by the Times under the heading ‘RYDER CUP’, but the PGAs on both sides of the Atlantic later decided that it should not count in the series.