THE WANDERING GOLFER: BRENDAN MOLONEY
THE World Cup just completed in Melbourne brought Metropolitan Golf Club to the attention of a new generation of young golfers around the world but even with the huge prizemoney, it was not the biggest or best event ever played there.
Seven million American dollars* isn’t what it used to be and failed to attract the best field. It did not even attract the World Nos. 14 and 35, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, who played a private match in Las Vegas at the same time for $9 million in Yankee dollars.
For the best event at Metro, we have to go back to 1934 when they played the Victorian Centenary Open. The government of the day wanted to mark the anniversary of white settlement and staged a series of sporting events for this purpose and to lift the public spirit as the Great Depression started to ease. Tennis great Sir Norman Brookes was put in charge of arranging it all. John Batman’s first party actually arrived in 1835 but the sporting events went early because they thought the weather would be better**.
The purse was 2,000 pounds which attracted the leading American players and the British amateur team led by the Hon. Michael Scott, winner of the inaugural Australian Open in 1904. For anyone who had done it hard during the Depression years, this was a fabulous sum of money which would set you up for life many times over.
The Americans sent an official team of six – Paul Runyan, Craig Wood, Densmore Shute, Harry Cooper, Leo Diegel and Gene Sarazen – and several others came under their own steam. Never before had such an abundance of golfing talent assembled in Australia and it was not until the Bicentennial Classic at Royal Melbourne in 1988 that we saw a field of similar quality. In 1934 there were winners of 14 major championships while the 2018 World Cup could only manage three – Charl Schwartzel with one and Martin Kaymer with two.
Both Sidney Myer and the Nicholas (of Aspro fame) family contributed to the Metro purse while General Harold Grimwade reached into his own pocket for the 300 pound prize for a title at his club, Peninsula in Frankston, which piggy-backed on the Open. Grimwade and Brooks were the movers and shakers of their time, as the ditty shows: Frankston is a pretty place, full of shady nooks, Where God knows the Grimwades, And the Grimwades know the Brookes. After rounds of 72, 70 and 69 American Jimmy Thomson (pictured) started the final round at Metro four shots clear of Diegel and six ahead of Sarazen, although he was given little hope of winning by his compatriots. He was better known for his long driving and for marrying the beautiful actress Viola Dana who accompanied him on the trip. On the ship coming out, the Americans decided to split all money won in Australia but did not include Thomson in the deal. Even during the final round one team member said to a reporter: “What, Thomson win? You must be crazy. He’ll crash any minute now.”
Thomson had other ideas. He shot a closing 72 and in front of 7,000 people he lined up a 15-footer at the last knowing he had six putts for the win. Before sinking it at the first attempt he kissed his wife and afterwards did two somersaults on the green before accepting the winner’s 1,000 pounds that he did not have to share with anyone.
The great amateur and five-time Australian Open champion Ivo Whitton summed it up well. “I think that, as far as golf in Australia is concerned, nothing greater or more significant has ever happened than the visit of the great team of American professionals and the tour of the British amateur team,” he told the Sporting Globe newspaper. “Because occasionally some of our golfers have played with great brilliance and done rather sensational things on the links, we were beginning to think that we were getting right up to world class in golf. The American professionals and Jack McLean (the British amateur) have given us the most convincing evidence that they’re very much ahead of us. We have still to advance greatly in the game before we attain the standard consistently shown here by our talented visitors.”
Another who had to pull his socks up was Sarazen. He did when he returned to Metro in 1936 to win the Australian Open. He beat the tragic left-handed amateur Harry Williams by two shots then offered him $100,000 to turn pro and tour America with him. According to Jack Dillon, the doyen of the golf writers, Sarazen’s win surpassed that of Thomson two years earlier. “His winning feat was the greatest epic of the links in the game’s history here,” he wrote. * That’s what they paid for Alaska in 1867. ** They were wrong. The day after the Centenary Open it bucketed down, causing the worst flooding in the state’s history. The tennis tournament at Kooyong, where Harry Hopman, Fred Perry and Adrian Quist were to play, was postponed because the centre court was under 30 feet of water. Grimwade only got his event played at Peninsula by reducing the number of holes and calling out the army to lay duckboards over the worst affected parts of the course.