Adam Whiston
Well known and much loved golf professional at noted clubs, writes Dermot Gilleece
AS a grim consequence of coronavirus, Adam Whiston’s wife of 52 years, Mona, was stranded in the Canary Islands when he died in a Navan hospital on May 9. Unable to get a flight home, she was then forced to watch last Tuesday’s funeral at Mount Jerome, online.
It became a desperately sad farewell to a much loved professional golfer who learned his craft from his father, Adam senior, at the old Dun Laoghaire GC on Tivoli Road. More recently, he was a long-time employee of Royal Tara GC.
Along the way, Whiston also made a very significant contribution to Oliver Barry’s ambitious venture into public golf at Hollystown in 1991.
“We had no members at the outset, only green-fee beginners,” Barry recalled. “Through individual and group lessons over more than four years, Adam was absolutely brilliant. Much loved of his pupils, especially women.”
Barry went on: “I knew nothing about golf at that stage and I have no hesitation of saying that he made a huge contribution to the eventual success of Hollystown. I owe him a deep debt of gratitude.”
Whiston had a way with people. Which probably explains how he managed to sell the great footballer, Johnny Giles, a pair of highly suspect golf shoes for twice their list price. It happened during his years at Dun Laoghaire, where he was an assistant to his father.
“Johnny was already famous as a player with Leeds United at the time,” Whiston recalled. “When he came to Dun Laoghaire for a game, he had no shoes. As it happened he took a six, the same size as myself, so I loaned him my own shoes.
“Later, on returning them, he described them as the most comfortable shoes he’d ever worn. ‘I’ll buy them,’ he said. That’s when I explained to him that they were leaking and I was about to return them to the manufacturers to get my £25 back.”
Undeterred, Giles insisted on having them, to the extent that he gave Whiston £50 for the shoes, leaks and all.
He talked fondly of his years at Dun Laoghaire, where he was born in Wellington Street, and of the personalities he met at the club. Among them were Terry Wogan and Joe Carr and a Captain Richardson who, when he went away on holidays, would leave his Rolls-Royce with Adam Whiston Snr, to drive around the area.
Another member named McDonald was known as the Biro King, being the first importer of Biros into this country. He drove a Bentley which would also be left in the care of Whiston Snr whenever he left the country.
“Our family car at the time was a little Fiat, but depending on the time of year, my father was liable to be seen driving around Dun Laoghaire in it, or a Bentley and maybe a RollsRoyce,” he said. “You could fit the Fiat into the boot of the other two.”
He was helped into golf in his early years by the local artisan society. Then came five years as an assistant to his father before he qualified as a fully-fledged professional.
A fiery temperament in his younger days led to a memorable parental reprimand. “I was playing with my father at Dun Laoghaire and when we got to the 14 th, which was a dog-log left, I hooked my shot into the trees on the left,” he recalled.
“This prompted me to throw my club in disgust. That’s when my father, who had a really terrible temper himself, turned to me and said ‘If I see you throwing another club, you’ll never play golf again’. Though I was tempted to think of the kettle calling the pot black, that was the end of my club-throwing.”
After completing a total of nine years working at Dun Laoghaire, he was appointed club professional at Foxrock GC in 1969. Then came the move in 1977 to Royal Tara as that club’s first professional. Popular with the members and admired for his teaching skills, he made a home at Silverlawns, Navan, and gave the club 30 years’ service before retiring in February 2007.
In retirement, he and Mona enjoyed trips to an apartment he acquired in the Canaries, where she happened to be when he fell ill and died unexpectedly. He is survived by their children Shane, Debbie and Anita; grandchildren Liam, Kate, Elif, Adam and Sadiye; sons-in-law Paul and Tarkan; daughter-in-law Sharon; sisters, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nephews and nieces.
Ar dheis De go raibh a anam.