The Daily Telegraph

Tommy Horton

Golfer who found lucrative success in his fifties, winning 23 European senior titles over eight years

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TOMMY HORTON, who has died aged 76, had a fine career as a golfer in his prime during the 1970s, and twice played in the Ryder Cup for Britain & Ireland; yet he made his biggest mark in late middle age, when he became a dominant figure on the European Seniors Tour (as it was then called), earning more than £1million in the supposed twilight of his career.

Horton won eight big European competitio­ns in his earlier days. He also appeared in the 1975 and 1977 Ryder Cups, and four times finished in the top 10 in the Open championsh­ip. But once he turned 50 and was able to join the newly created Seniors Tour, he collected more prize money than in all the years that had gone before.

Mostly that was due to his excellent golf, but it was also down to the fact that he had looked after himself more carefully than some of his peers. “In those early days the players weren’t quite as ready for senior golf as they are now,” he said with characteri­stic diplomacy. “I was still fit and therefore enjoyed a lot of success.”

Horton won 23 European senior titles between 1992 and 2000, putting him second on the all-time list behind his long-time rival Carl Mason. He topped the seniors’ money list a record five times, and had 107 top 10 finishes in 245 tournament­s.

Born on June 16 1941 at St Helens, Lancashire, Thomas Alfred Horton was brought up from the age of five in Jersey, where his parents, Thomas, an agricultur­al worker, and Germane, a shop worker, had lived until they were forced to flee the German invasion of the island during the Second World War. Once they returned, Tommy went to Hautlieu school and the family lived close to Royal Jersey golf club, where Harry Vardon had plied his trade. But Tommy could not afford to join the club, so constructe­d his own four-hole course on adjoining wasteland with sunken tin cans for holes and canes for flagsticks.

By the time he was 16, in 1957, he was good enough to become assistant profession­al at Ham Manor in Sussex, and in the early 1960s was chosen as one of eight promising youngsters to be given special training at Sundridge Park golf club in Kent, where the businessma­n Ernest Butten had set up a residentia­l school under the former Open champion Max Faulkner.

His first tournament win was at Littlehamp­ton, for which he received £100 in cash. Soon there were bigger purses on offer, and by 1968 he had won the £1,000 RTV Internatio­nal Trophy in Cork. In 1970 he became the first overseas player to take the South African Open (at Royal Durban), and with the advent of a formalised European Tour in 1972 he won one of its main events, the Piccadilly Medal, at Hillside in April that year.

He finished eighth in the Open at Hoylake in 1967, and his three other top 10 positions in that competitio­n came in 1970 (8th at St Andrews), 1976 (5th at Hoylake) and 1977 (9th at Turnberry). “I could, and maybe should, have won the Open at least once, but I lacked the patience you need on any links course,” he confessed.

There were consolator­y victories in other events, including his most important, in 1978, in the Dunlop Masters at St Pierre, where he justified his nickname of “last green Horton” by sinking a 10ft putt on the final hole to win. And though both Ryder Cup appearance­s were on losing sides, in 1975 at Laurel Valley in Pennsylvan­ia he made a mark on the final day of his debut as he restricted Hale Irwin to a half and then beat the reigning US Open champion, Lou Graham, in the afternoon.

Horton’s move on to the senior circuit in 1992 began an even more successful chapter in his career and the standard he set helped it to be taken seriously and then to expand. He played on the tour until 2011, serving on its committee from 1992 and becoming chairman in 1996. He remained in that role, and on the European Tour board, until 2006 and was instrument­al in setting up the tour’s annual training school for aspiring players.

Known universall­y for his willingnes­s to help others, Horton was a fan of James Bond films and books by Hammond Innes, but golf was his first love. Throughout his period on the European Tour and for some time afterwards he remained a club pro, having been made head profession­al at Ham Manor before moving in 1974 to Royal Jersey, where he stayed for 25 years. He had played nine holes on the course a week before his death, but was taken ill at the club’s AGM, and died later that evening.

Horton was appointed MBE in 2000.

He is survived by his wife, Helen, whom he married in 1967, and by a son and a daughter.

Tommy Horton, born June 16 1941, died December 7 2017

 ??  ?? His nickname was ‘last green Horton’
His nickname was ‘last green Horton’

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