David Marsh
Celebrated amateur golf champion, chairman of Everton in the 1990s and busy family doctor
DAVID MARSH, who has died aged 88, was one of the leading figures in British amateur golf during the second half of the 20th century, both as a player and administrator.
Winner of the English Amateur Championship in 1964 and 1970, he represented England on 75 occasions, led the Walker Cup team against the USA in 1973 and 1975, and went on to become captain of golf ’s most famous body, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.
Latterly he was perhaps better known as chairman of Everton Football Club during the early years of the Premier League.
For most of his sporting life Marsh was also a busy GP in Kirkby in Merseyside, combining his two loves of golf and medicine as best he could. He always maintained that he was a doctor first and a golfer second, but in golfing terminology the contest might have been declared a “halved match”.
David Max Marsh was born on April 29 1934 at Southport, Lancashire, to Max, a motor dealer, and his wife Dorothy, née Pemberton. After attending King George V School in Southport, his golfing interest and development owed much to the influence of several good local players, his father among them, as well as to the proximity of a host of fine courses – three or four of which were of championship status, including his home club, Southport and Ainsdale.
Marsh’s early promise was recognised with selection for England against Scotland in the 1951 Boys International, and at Cambridge University, in between his medical studies, he was captain of the golf team in 1956, winning all three of his 36-hole singles matches against Oxford, the smallest margin of victory being 8 & 7.
Three years later he was selected for his debut in the Walker Cup in which Jack Nicklaus made his first appearance, but he was left out of both foursomes and singles. Thereafter, he was virtually lost to competitive golf during the lengthy process prior to his swearing the Hippocratic oath.
Confirmation of a great golfing talent came in the 1964 English Amateur Championship at Hollinwell in Nottinghamshire, where he won the final on the 36th green, having been behind against Rodney Foster for most of the way.
Marsh’s second triumph in the championship came six years later at Royal Birkdale, where, since he was only a mile or so from his front door in Southport, he was able to use the time between rounds to catch up on visits to local patients.
Marsh’s 6 & 4 victory over Geoff Birtwell in the 1970 final made him one of the rare golfers to have taken the English Amateur title more than once, and it also rendered him a virtual certainty for national selection over the next few years, a period in which he played most of his 75 matches for England. In 1971 there was a second Walker Cup for Marsh, in what turned out to be a historic encounter.
Great Britain and Ireland had not beaten the United States in the Cup since 1938, and after a topsy-turvy two days at St Andrews, all rested on Marsh’s singles encounter with Bill Hyndham, the last match left out on the course. All square on the 17th, perhaps the world’s most celebrated hole, Marsh hit a sublime stroke from the fairway on to the treacherous Road Hole green.
Reporting in the New Yorker magazine, the great golf writer Herbert Warren Wind enthused: “Dr David Marsh, a general practitioner of great personal charm, earned himself a small chunk of immortality last May when he hit the shot that won the Walker Cup for Britain – a picture-postcard 3-iron to the 17th green that covered the flag every yard of the way.”
Two putts gave Marsh a par four that won that hole, after which he closed out the match on the 18th green, delivering Great Britain and Ireland an unforgettable 13-11 victory. It was only their second win in the Walker Cup, and Marsh was the undoubted hero, his shot on the 17th testimony to a wonderfully dependable swing and stout nerve.
Marsh was subsequently a nonplaying captain of the Walker Cup team in 1973 and 1975, although both times he was on the end of defeats.
On the course he was a tough competitor with great self-belief, but away from the fray he was companionable, cheerful, loyal, considerate and ever approachable – qualities that served him well in his post-playing days, which were every bit as hectic as those that went before.
He served on several R&A committees over a period of 35 years, taking on the R&A captain’s red jacket in 1990. In all there were four red jackets in his wardrobe: as well as the Royal and Ancient he became in 1967, at 34, the youngest ever captain of Southport and Ainsdale; and he was president of the Lancashire Union (1985) and the English Golf Union (1998).
In 1998 he was captain of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society (becoming its president in 2003).
Further afield, Marsh was chairman of the European Golf Association’s technical committee, principally concerned with the smooth running of championships and the expansion of the game.
He became an Everton director in 1988, succeeding Sir Philip Carter as chairman in 1991 and holding the post until 1994, when he handed over to Peter Johnson. He continued to serve on the club’s board until 1997 and was held in great esteem by Toffees fans, who put together a moving televised tribute before kick-off on the day after his death.
In 2011 he was appointed MBE for services to amateur golf, in particular for his encouragement of young golfers everywhere. There was no more highly respected figure in the game.
Marsh lived happily his whole life in Southport, and had played rugby union for the town club in the 1950s. Away from sport he was a long-serving and active supporter of the Claire House Children’s Hospice on the Wirral.
Marsh’s first wife, Jennifer Heaton, died in 2001. He married, secondly, Katy Pattinson, who survives him with two sons and a daughter from his previous marriage.