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The match was being played against the
background of the meeting of the four powers – Britain, Germany, France and Italy and the signing of the Munich agreement.
The P.M., Neville Chamberlain, returned with his promise of ‘Peace
in our time’ to join the King and Queen on the balcony of Buckingham
Palace. The crowds cheered, delighted and relieved that the crisis
was over, but there was no relaxation in the defence preparations
that had seen trenches being dug in London parks a year before
hostilities began. The Queen Elizabeth sailed to New York to join
her sister ship Queen Mary and begin her life as a troop ship and
would not see service as a luxury liner for another six years. World War 11 was to bring an end to the professional home internationals and the Llandudno Trophy remained in Percy Alliss’s house in Dorset, where it was blown off the sideboard during an air raid. The cup was slightly bent and has never been repaired. It was eventually returned to the custody of the PGA and, at the time of writing in 2003, it is in the custody of the American PGA. At his son Peter’s suggestion, since 1975 it has been the trophy played for in the biennial PGA Cup (or mini Ryder Cup) matches between the club professionals of Great Britain and Ireland and the USA. [The cup was to spend twenty-one years in America before the match was won again by GB&I at the ‘K’ Club in Ireland in 2005 and the Llandudno Trophy joined the Ryder Cup at The Belfry; that year the PGA had the cup straightened at last as part of a £20,000 refurbishment. - Since then it has returned to the USA after the 2007 and 2009 matches, for which the GB&I captain was Percy Alliss’s grandson, Peter’s son,Gary.] Whether or not the Leeds Cup had been found in time to present it to Norman Sutton, that year’s winner, I do not know, but that did turn up eventually. In September of 1938 cricket’s Gentlemen v Players match at Scarborough resulted in a victory for the Players. Just as in golf The ‘Gentlemen’ (amateurs) were given their full initials, e.g. R .E. S. Wyatt, the former England Captain, whereas the star of the professional ‘Players’, who hit a test record 364 against the Australians that year, was simply referred to as Hutton. (In that match, played at the Oval, England declared at 903 for 7 and won the match by an innings and 579 runs, a record that still stands). The snobbery in cricket persisted into the fifties, when many in the ‘establishment’ opposed the appointment of professional Len Hutton as England captain. There were separate changing rooms for the Gentlemen and the Players of course, but at least the pros changed in the pavilion!  We had our own Gentlemen v Players event in those days, although it
was never called that. The annual Amateur v Professional match was
played between the leading amateurs and professionals at golf clubs
throughout the country. One famous amateur who played in those
matches was the Walker Cup player and captain, P. B. ‘Laddie’ Lucas,
who had been born in the clubhouse at Prince’s, where his father was
secretary (and designer of the course). During the war Laddie’s
knowledge of the course was a lifesaver when he made an emergency
landing there in his Spitfire, although his friend Henry Longhurst
remarked that he had again missed the fairway. In his book The Sport
of Prince’s, Reflections of a Golfer, Lucas wrote of an amateur v
pro match at Withington, Manchester when he was a Freshman at
Cambridge. Laddie had to be back in college by midnight and
requested that he and his friend and travelling companion, N.C.
(Bob) Selway, be put out in front of the field in the afternoon
singles so that they could catch the 4.55 train. Bob Selway was
drawn to play me and Laddie’s opponent was Bill Davies from
Wallasey. A crowd of around 3-4000 watched us tee off and saw Lucas
loose the first 6 holes to Bill. There were no spectators left when
his match came to an end on the 14th and I beat Selway on the 13th
by 6&5. They arrived at Maine Road station in time to catch the 3.45
– “I don’t know who it was who said that golf can be a humbling
game”, wrote Laddie. [N.C. Selway was an ex Cambridge player who in 1957, as chairman of the R&A Championship Committee, wrote an enlightened letter to Open Champion Bobby Locke regarding the famous incident when Locke failed to replace his ball correctly before putting out. Bobby had gained no advantage and Selway confirmed that in “the spirit of the game”, no action would be taken, although the decision was a controversial one. (One magazine was to place the incident at number two in their list of all-time golfing boobs). Bobby Locke chose to record his appreciation by never wearing his trademark plus-fours again]. The 1937-38 football season had ended with England’s tour of Europe during which they played a friendly against Germany in Berlin. The England team reluctantly gave the Nazi salute before tearing Germany apart in a 6-3 victory. The 1938-39 season began with Everton beating Brentford to top the First Division. Without the services of Dixie Dean, who was now playing in Ireland for Sligo Rovers, they went on to be league champions NEXT |
