THE WANDERING GOLFER: BRENDAN MOLONEY
One of the last links to the golden era of Australian golf was lost with the death of Muriel Lawrence in Adelaide on February 17 at the age of 93.
Muriel was the wife of Don, the foundation president of the Australian Golf Writers Association in 1976 and golf and tennis writer for both the old Melbourne Herald and Age newspapers in Melbourne from 1964 to 1986. It was the best time to be involved in the game, when the papers took an interest at the world-beating exploits of Peter Thomson and later Greg Norman.
Lawrence was at the centre of it and covered the British Open, Davis Cup and Wimbledon 20 times. Behind every great man there is usually an even greater woman. They married two days before Christmas in 1950, a happy union that produced children Bill, Suzanne and Fiona and lasted until his death in 1994, two days shy of his 70th birthday.
Petite, pretty, always immaculately dressed and groomed, she was a confidante to her contemporaries, mother-figure to young players away from home for the first time and a constant reality check for her high-flying husband. She was also something of a contradiction, a staunch republican who loved the Queen. It is hard to think of her without smiling at the memory of Winnie Palmer who kept Arnold grounded by making him take out the garbage after a big win.
Muriel drove a horse-drawn milk cart for a while because of the manpower shortage in World War II then joined the army. There she rubbed shoulders with the likes of Prince Phillip and Lord Mountbatten in their Melbourne HQ. Don was in the navy and she was fond of reminding him that he was “below decks”, meaning not an officer and gentleman.
Both were members of Victoria Golf Club, along with close friends Peter and Mary Thomson. Their home was a stone’s throw from the course, something she saw as a mixed blessing. Part of the Lawrence legend was Norman being invited to stay. The 18-year-old Queenslander had nowhere to go so Lawrence took him in. Daughter Fiona remembers being kicked out of her bed and sent to stay with friends. She still tells any interested golfers that she’d had Norman in her bed, “although I was not there at the time.”
Many years later Muriel was asked of her impressions of the kid who went on to become the World No.1 with direct access to the Oval Office in the White House through his friendship with US President Bill Clinton. “There were three things,” she recalled. “I was amazed at the amount of steak he could eat. I was working at the time and I had to pick it up on the way home and cook it. I asked him if he thought he had a future in the game and he looked me in the eye and said, ‘Muriel, I am going to be the best in the world.’ The third thing was that I had never seen anyone, male or female, who carried so many hair care products.”
As well as playing a lot at Victoria, Lawrence frequented the club’s billiard room and would bring home complete strangers for dinner at short notice. On his death, Jack Nicklaus sent Muriel a silver plaque acknowledging the fact that with a flourish of his typewriter keys Lawrence had transformed his image for ever. Hitherto the beefy kid with the bad haircut from the US town of Columbus was known as ‘Ohio Fats’. Lawrence wrote that he looked more like a cuddly golden bear and the name stuck. Smart work by manager Mark McCormack, the boss of the International Management Group, saw a distinctive logo produced and estimates put on the number of golf shirts sold with it reach into the billions. Muriel gave the plaque to the club and rolled her eyes and bit her tongue when she learnt it was on the wall outside the billiard room.
She was at his side for all the big events and attended his induction to the Victorian Golf Hall of Fame in 2016. He was the first writer to be honoured in this way and he was joined the following year by Jack Dillon (also posthumously), who interviewed Alister MacKenzie when he stepped off the boat at Port Melbourne in 1926 on his way to Royal Melbourne to design the West Course. He was a life member of the Australian Golf Writers Association and his name is on the trophy for our annual championship. The Open Heart Open title in Melbourne, which he helped establish, also bears his name, as does the foursomes title of the Golf Society of Australia and Muriel would travel from Adelaide when she could for the presentations.
Don and their son, Bill, predeceased Muriel and she is survived by daughters Suzanne Timms and Fiona Lawrence, their spouses and five grandchildren.
Muriel Lawrence February 29, 1926 – February 17, 2020.