“PROS KNOW THE SYSTEM. AFTER ONE BAD TIME... THEY ALL PLAY QUICKLY”
Iconic referee John Paramor on slow play penalties, cheats on tour, and Seve’s genius.
My dream as a young lad was to play the game,
but I found out early that I would never make enough money to do that. I had worked in a steel forge factory in the West Midlands to fund my amateur golf. I just wanted to play for a year on the amateur circuit. I was a one-handicapper back then, a decent county standard. And I did win the Middlesex Open and the Surrey Amateur. But I was deluding myself really with thoughts of playing at a higher level.
Peter Butler showed me how ordinary I was as a player.
I spent 1975 on tour as a caddie and realised how good the guys were. I worked for Peter, a Ryder Cup player. He was coming to the end of his career but he gave me a great education. He played every practice round with the same people: Neil Coles, Clive Clark and Bernard Hunt. I knew by the end of that season what an ordinary player I really was.
Despite having no qualifications,
Ken Schofield gave me my break. I’d played with Peter Butler in the Sunningdale Foursomes and he’d arranged for me to have an interview with Ken Schofield at the European Tour. So, I went along and Ken hired me despite my almost complete lack of qualifications. All I had to offer was that I had played a bit of golf and I was as keen as mustard, but that was enough.
I started with the tour when I was 21 years and one day old.
My first job was to interview Peter Cowen about his recent win in the Zambian Open. But my initial role was working under George O’grady and Tony Gray, who were the tournament directors. I was a sort of junior official and it all just went on from there. All these years later, I’m still learning.
The European Tour really started to explode at the end of the 1970s.
Much of that was down to Seve. The tour has so much to thank Seve for. I owe him my job really. The success he had brought so much more attention to the European Tour and we had to be more professional to cope.