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Obituary by John Vinicombe |
Henry Longhurst and Pyecombe
2005 marks the thirtieth anniversary of Henry Longhurst’s
appointment as President of Pyecombe Golf club. The famous golf
commentator, journalist and author joined Pyecombe in March 1954
at the age of 45. He remained a member for the rest of his life
and became President of the club for three years until he died
in 1978.
The Longhurst Putter
His most tangible legacy to the Club is his putter, housed on
an oak bracket above the bar and played for every year in a cross-country
golf event. The event, devised by Longhurst with John Slater, captain
in 1978, & Ron Saunders, then vice-captain, is played in teams
of four over nine holes, but playing from the first tee to the
second green, and so on. John Slater remembers,“Henry left
a note to say that the captain of the year could change the format
if it proved unpopular, but it’s stayed pretty much the same
ever since”.
Background
Born in Bedfordshire into a middle class family in 1909, Longhurst
went to prep school in Eastbourne and then to Charterhouse and
Cambridge. Most of his friends followed a similar path, at a time
between the wars when men of this class addressed caddies, greenkeepers
and even golf pro’s by their surname only.
In his thirties, Longhurst was briefly Conservative MP for Acton
until swept away by the Labour landslide of 1945. He viewed the
House of Commons as very similar to life at school. “To a
gregarious person like myself life in the House of Commons in those
days was heaven”.
And yet, John Slater says, “there was no side on him”,
and Chris White, the Pro, remembers “a delightful man: I
greatly enjoyed Henry’s company and especially loved his ‘old
school’ humour.”
Early career
By the time he moved with his family to Sussex, Longhurst was
well established in his career, writing a weekly column for the
Sunday Times and commentating on golf since the very birth of televised
golf in the late 1930s. He acknowledged his enormous luck at happening
upon a career in journalism, “a job that not only combined
work with pleasure but also paid as though I were a grown-up” (My
Life and Soft Times, 1971). “I never went to a regular place
of work,” he wrote. “Furthermore I have never in my
life, never, worked during the afternoon”.
Clayton Windmills
He and his wife, Claudine, bought the Clayton windmills, Jack
and Jill, and moved there in July 1953. At the time the cottage
and windmills had no running water or electricity : “The
place was unplayable”, wrote Longhurst in his autobiography.
Ten years later they demolished the cottage and built a modern
house between the mills. The bedrooms were downstairs and the living
area upstairs, to take full advantage of the views over the trees.
Henry got tired of people asking why there were only sails on
one of the two windmills (as was the case before Jill was restored).
He would reply that there wasn’t enough wind up there for
the two. Others would ask, “Isn’t it windy, living
up there?” and he would retort, “That’s why they
put the b….. things up there!”
Jack Windmill later featured on the BBC as the site of its Christmas
golf broadcasts by Henry Longhurst and Peter Alliss.
After Henry’s death Jill Windmill was given to the Council
and the rest of the property was sold in 1980 to Dr Bob Deering,
now only a non-playing Pyecombe member. He still lives there and
loves it.
The journalist
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 shot, and
partly because, when one 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 Niklaus won the play-off.
The Mustang
Members still remember the portly Longhurst driving down from
Jack & Jill in his convertible, pale-blue Ford Mustang to enjoy
a drink on a Friday evening or Sunday lunchtime in the clubhouse
Ken Barnard, now President of Pyecombe and twice Captain in the
past, knew Longhurst well, not least because of that Ford Mustang.
Ken ran four car repair shops in mid-Sussex, and Henry frequently
used to need dents repaired in his car. “When it was ready,
he used to insist that I deliver it personally to Jack Windmill,
always at 11 o’clock in the morning. There he’d be,
in his octagonal office in Jack, with its enormous desk. On either
side of the desk were boxes of champagne. He’d open a bottle
from the nearby fridge, and for an hour or more would entertain
me with funny stories. They weren’t always primarily about
golf - more about his life, really. It wasn’t until a few
months had gone by that I realised he was trying out the stories
on me to see if they were entertaining: shortly afterwards they
would appear in his column in the Sunday Times.”
Henry in the Clubhouse
Lydia Selsby, 72, who has been working at Pyecombe clubhouse for
47 years, many of those years behind the bar, recalls that Henry’s
tipple was gin at lunchtime and whisky in the evenings. "He
was in here every night, and often on Sunday lunchtimes too. He
was very witty, very entertaining. He used to alternate on Sundays
between here and the New Inn at Hurst[pierpoint]. He always sat
in the seat nearest the bar, often with Ernie Dunne and John Slater.
When he was ill, towards the end, Claudine used to drop him here
and fetch him when he was ready. He loved societies: you wouldn't
think, but he could tell from up there [at the windmills] when
there was a society here, and he'd come down and present the prizes.
The societies loved it because it was the great Henry Longhurst,
and he didn't mind because they kept plying him with drinks!"
Terry Reilly, 67, remembers “an affable fellow”, who
would often be in the clubhouse when Terry popped in after work,
and who would entrust his Sunday Times typescript to him to post
in Hassocks main post office on the way home, to meet the paper’s
deadline.
John Secrett (Captain 1988-9): “He used to pop down and
have a gin & tonic, and someone would drive him home. He was
also President of the Sussex Royal British Legion Golfers’ Society,
and his wife took that over when he died. His wife and daughter,
Sue, were also members at Pyecombe, and Sue was a good golfer.”
President, 1975-78
It was Ken Barnard who was entrusted with the task of inviting
Henry to be President of Pyecombe Golf Club in 1975. To his surprise,
Henry’s reaction was very emotional: “He said to me, ‘In
all my years of golf, I’ve never been invited to be President
of a golf club before’. He took his duties very seriously.
He would deliver a speech at the dinner-dance, and was always there
to present prizes.”
Chris White recalls, “Henry loved to recount that on the
day he was made President, the 65-year-old flagpole snapped in
half! Henry always maintained this was in protest at his illustrious
appointment”.
Out on the course
Henry Longhurst was an excellent golfer, playing off scratch or
better for twenty years, captaining the Cambridge University golf
team as an undergraduate and winning the German Amateur Championship
in 1936.
Dick Smithard, now 80, remembers him practising: “Henry
used to bring a bucket of balls to the women’s tee of what
is now the 13th hole. He used to take something like a 4-wood and
hit them, and they’d all end up on the green – I think
he’d walk over from his house. But he gave up when he got
the twitch on the putting green”. Dick Attwood remembers
seeing Longhurst play at Brighton & Hove Golf Club, where Dick
caddied at the age of 8.
Longhurst was furious when the R&A outlawed the type of ‘croquet’ putter
he used, which involved placing your feet either side of the intended
line of the putt. Soon after that he gave up the game entirely,
on D-Day 1968, because he could not overcome the ‘yips’ and
had ceased to enjoy playing. He stashed his clubs in the loft,
informing Chris White: “No golfer finds true peace until
he places his clubs in the attic for the very last time!”
And yet he was persuaded to bring his clubs out of the loft for
one last time, for a mixed event in 1976: the Queen Elizabeth Trophy. “The
format was a lady and two men,” recalls Ken Barnard. “It
was Henry, myself as Club Captain, and Audrey Gibbons, the Lady
Captain of that year. Henry brought a caddie, a young lad, and
played well. He really enjoyed it. Easy to play with, very good
company. I think that was his last game of golf.”
Other sports
In his time, Longhurst tried out many other sports, even gliding
off the South Downs – but he couldn’t stand looking
down, so gave that up after two attempts.
Pro Chris White remembers Henry telling him about the time he
did the Cresta Run in a bobsleigh. “He described the loud
rumbling noise as they shot down the run at high speed. This noise
got louder and louder, and then suddenly there was complete silence….and
then they hit the tree!”
Ken Barnard remembers that Henry was very enthusiastic about football,
and used to watch it on television with the sound down because
he found the commentary irritating: “If it’s a goal,
I can see it’s a goal!” Ken once played golf with an
old friend of Henry’s from Cambridge days, Franklyn Buckley,
who had since become a director of Crystal Palace FC. Ken and Franklin
arranged a day out for Henry, watching the match at Selhurst Park
in the Directors’ Box. Ken Barnard and Ken Wenham, another
Pyecombe member, picked Henry up at the mills, but he asked them
to do so at about 10am, even though the match didn’t start
until 3:00: “Henry wanted to stop off at various pubs along
the way and check if the landlords he had known were still there”.
So they made a day of it, he enjoyed the game, had a good meal
and was dropped off again at his house at about 11 at night.
His last year
John Slater was Captain in the year Longhurst died: “He
knew he was dying – cancer, I think it was. He used to sit
in the corner of the clubhouse swigging whisky or pink gin.”
Brian Dury, now captain of the veterans at Pyecombe, recalls Longhurst
telling the following story in the bar: “A few years ago
I was diagnosed as having cancer of the colon. It seemed to me
that I should not put my family and friends through the unedifying
experience of my final illness so I determined to end it quickly
myself.
“
I took with me [to the study at the top of Jack, the black windmill]
a bottle of aspirin, a carafe of water and a bottle of Glenfiddich.
I intended to gaze at my favourite view in all the world, in one
direction the rolling downs of Sussex and in the other, the High
Weald; then a drink of my favourite Scotch Malt whisky. And then
. . . !
I settled down in my old armchair and soaked up the view. It was
a beautiful summer’s evening and everything looked magnificent.
Then a glass (generous) of Glenfiddich, and if anything the view
improved -I couldn’t tear my eyes away, other than to pour
myself just one more glass of Malt. And do you know, the future
started to look a little more promising. Another glass of whisky
and the aspirin disappeared down the loo, and life went on.”
The day after Henry’s death, John Slater was asked to come
up to the windmills by Claudine, his widow. “She produced
a letter for me, saying that Henry had asked that I read it to
members on the first Sunday after his demise.”
Brian Dury takes up the story: “ On that day and as the
last of the regular four-balls arrived from the course, John rang
his ‘Captain’s Bell’ and in the ensuing silence
read the letter to us all. It expressed Henry’s delight and
pride in being our President. He was lavish in his praise of the
course, the clubhouse and, most of all, the welcoming and friendly
atmosphere he had always enjoyed in the clubhouse bar. He ended
his letter with three requests as follows:
1) If we had to fly a flag for him would we ensure that it was
flown at the TOP of the mast for seven days.
2) On no account was any golfing or social event at the Club to
be cancelled solely because of his death.
3) Finally would all members present please join him in a farewell
drink, a suitable sum of money having being left behind the bar
for this purpose?
And so it had, many years before and dutifully increased every
year to take account of inflation! When every one had been served,
a solemn toast was drunk to our own Henry and there were few dry
eyes in the house”. |
