He was an excellent golfer, playing off scratch or better for
twenty years, captaining the Cambridge golf team as an undergraduate
and winning the German Amateur Championship in 1936. He was also
an MP briefly, for Acton in 1943-45.
Longhurst’s style as a writer was characterised by admirable
brevity, which he partly attributed to a shortage of paper after
the war. As a commentator he was renowned for his idiosyncratic
turn of phrase and his silences. When he first commentated for
CBS in America he caused quite a stir – partly because he
would always stay silent while a player was taking his stroke,
and partly because, when a Mexican player topped the ball, he exclaimed, “Oh,
that’s a terrible shot!” which had apparently never
been said before on American television.
Alastair Cooke, in a 2003 Letter from America, enthused, “Human
nature was his true topic, its fusses and follies. Whatever was
bold, charming, idiotic or eccentric about people”.
One of the episodes that will stick in the mind of many golf fans
is the 1970 Open Championship at St Andrews. Doug Sanders was on
the final green with a 3ft putt to win the Open. Sanders settled
over the putt, then noticed something on the line and stooped to
brush it away without moving his feet. Frank Keating, in his book
Sporting Century, describes what happened next: “With the
soles of his shoes still rooted to the exact same position, he
now resettled over the ball – and as he did so, the BBC TV’s
doyen commentator Henry Longhurst gave a gasp and a murmured ‘Oh,
no’ – and those in the know in the multi-million audience
watching live round the world realised what Henry meant. He had
not reset his stance. He should have stood up, walked away, relaxed
again, and then resettled.” Sanders missed the putt; Henry
murmured, “There but for the grace of God…” and
Jack Nicklaus won the play-off. |
