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    The Peter Thomson Five: A golfing legend's greatest triumphs
    The Peter Thomson Five: A golfing legend's greatest triumphs
    The Peter Thomson Five: A golfing legend's greatest triumphs
    Ebook212 pages2 hours

    The Peter Thomson Five: A golfing legend's greatest triumphs

    By Tony Walker

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    About this ebook

    Peter Thomson won five golf Open Championships. He is only the third golfer to have won five or more, behind the great Harry Vardon, who won six. It is a feat unlikely to be repeated in the modern era and puts him in the legendary league of sports players like Don Bradman, Rod Laver, Margaret Court and Dawn Fraser.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMelbourne University Publishing Ltd
    Release dateAug 1, 2016
    ISBN9780522869200
    The Peter Thomson Five: A golfing legend's greatest triumphs

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      Book preview

      The Peter Thomson Five - Tony Walker

      This is number one hundred and sixty-eight

      in the second numbered series of the

      Miegunyah Volumes

      made possible by the

      Miegunyah Fund

      established by bequests

      under the wills of

      Sir Russell and Lady Grimwade.

      ‘Miegunyah’ was the home

      of Mab and Russell Grimwade

      from 1911 to 1955.

      The Peter Thomson Five

      A golfing legend’s greatest triumphs

      Tony Walker

      with Peter Thomson

      THE MIEGUNYAH PRESS

      An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

      11–15 Argyle Place South, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

      mup-info@unimelb.edu.au

      www.mup.com.au

      First published 2016

      Text © Tony Walker, 2016

      Photos © individual contributors

      Design and typography © Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2016

      Photos courtesy Alamy: pp. 14, 23, 35, 123; Graeme Baxter: pp. xii–1, 18–19, 30–31, 46–47, 62–63, 74–75, 92–93; Fairfax: cover, pp. ix, 7, 8, 11, 34, 40, 44, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58, 61, 67, 68–69, 71, 73, 78, 83, 85, 86, 89, 96, 98, 99, 100, 106, 107, 108, 117, 144–45; Peter Thomson Private Collection: pp. x–xi, 4, 33, 60, 82, 105, 112–13, 119, 127. Course layouts pp. 33, 49, 65, 77, 101 courtesy Royal and Ancient. Photos on pp. 21, 50 from Audrey Howell, Harry Vardon: The Revealing Story of a Champion Golfer, 1988, not attributed.

      The article by Peter Thomson ‘Golf is a simple game’ is reproduced with permission.

      This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

      Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.

      Design and typesetting by Philip Campbell Design

      Printed in China by 1010 Printing International Ltd

      National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

      Walker, Tony, author.

      The Peter Thomson five/Tony Walker with Peter Thomson.

      9780522869118 (paperback)

      Includes index.

      Thomson, Peter, 1929–

      Golfers—Australia—Biography.

      Golf—Australia—History.

      Thomson, Peter, 1929– author.

      796.352092

      This book is for Peter Thomson, whose memoir, had he written one, would have been titled ‘Putting it Gently’

      A word from Sandy Dawson

      Pat Ward-Thomas, one of the great golf writers, said of Peter Thomson:

      I never saw a golfer who seemed so assured of his destiny. There is about him an unmistakable air of success; in the assurance of his bearing, the lightness of his stride, the set of his head, the clear decisive mind, and the cool, often smilingly casual acceptance of fate.

      Tony Walker quotes not only Ward-Thomas but also those other golf-writing greats Bernard Darwin and Henry Longhurst. They also are unstinting in their praise of Peter Thomson, whose rhythmic simple golf swing and marvellous temperament meant that under pressure and when required, he nearly always hit the shot that the situation demanded. In the modern era only he and Tom Watson have won five Open Championships. Jack Nicklaus won three. Tiger Woods won three. Greg Norman won two.

      Tony Walker gives the reader some wonderful insights not only into Peter’s amazing record but into the man himself, whom I have known for some twenty-five years. In spite of that record he never appears arrogant, but there is no false modesty either. He describes things objectively, unemotionally and in an almost detached manner. I once asked him which was his favourite Open Championship. I thought he might choose his fifth Open in 1965, the year he beat Lema, Palmer, Player, Nicklaus, Charles and De Vicenzo. Unhesitatingly he replied, ‘1960.’ This was the year his great friend Kel Nagle won the Centenary Open at St Andrews.

      The only other Australian captain of the Royal and Ancient, Lord Bruce of Melbourne, had the great fortune of being captain in 1954, the year Peter won his first Open Championship. Rory McIlroy won it in my term, at Royal Liverpool in 2014, where Thomson won in 1956. I was president of Royal Sydney when Rory won the Australian Open there in November 2013. I enjoyed introducing the man who would win the forthcoming Open Championship to the man who had won five of them.

      As Tony Walker points out, Peter Thomson is probably one of Australia’s five most iconic sportspeople. He concludes by asking the man to whom simplicity is everything a wonderful question: ‘What does golf tell us, or should tell us, about life?’ Thomson replies: ‘Play the ball where it lies. That’s probably it.’

      Foreword by Ranald Macdonald

      It was a freezing day in Boston in January 1998.

      The familiar Australian accent of good friend Peter Thomson—with his ‘mid-Atlantic’ twang, gained through years of travel and mixing with all nationalities in the world of golf—was on the phone from his home in Melbourne.

      ‘Jack Nicklaus’s Memorial Tournament at Muirfield, Ohio, in May has decided, for some reason, to designate me as the honoree,’ he said. ‘I need someone to speak on my career—and make me appear better than I was.’

      Typical Thomson humour and modesty.

      Four months later, I found myself looking down from a podium at a raft of the world’s best professionals playing in the prestigious tournament, extolling the virtues of Australia’s greatest golfing figure. Thousands of fans had paid to join them on a sunny afternoon beside the eighteenth green.

      This is what I said at Muirfield on that summer’s day on 27 May 1998.

      A recent article on Peter Thomson was headed simply, ‘Peter the Great’. An appropriate heading, I believe, because the other Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia from 1682 to 1725, was also a remarkable organiser, innovative, a creator (think St Petersburg), had a grand plan and fought many successful major battles.

      I do not think, though, he had Peter’s whimsical sense of humour . . . certainly he did not play golf. Also, the Russian Peter was born to power and position, the Australian one had to earn his recognition and current exalted status.

      As a player, Peter Thomson’s record is there for all to see.

      As a leader, Peter has been a major influence on golf around the world.

      Perhaps he is the person most responsible for the Asian golfing upsurge in both popularity and in the increasing number of skilled amateurs and professionals emerging from that region.

      As a golf administrator, he has played a vital role.

      He was elected president of the Australian PGA in 1964 and stepped down in 1994, after successfully doing battle to gain respect for the professional golfer, consistently opposing the paying of vast sums in appearance fees for visiting golfers to tee up in Australia and fighting to retain all that is best in a game, which has become such big business—for Peter is a traditionalist with strong feelings about sportsmanship, fairness and good manners.

      As a course designer, Peter has left his mark with some 150 golf courses to his name throughout the world.

      He once said that he had failed in his design of a course if a scratch player and his or her grandmother could not both enjoy playing it.

      As a television commentator and writer on golf, Peter is of the highest level.

      Succinct, sardonic (with a wonderful touch of whimsy), wise, courageous, self-deprecating, generous and an excellent wordsmith, Peter proved a very, very good journalist. It is a fact that, immediately after he won his first British Open at Royal Birkdale, he tapped out his story of the tournament on his portable typewriter, drove 20 miles to the local telegraph office and transmitted it to a newspaper in Australia.

      As a person, the qualities he brought to his writing, interviews and broadcasting reveal part of the man. But there is so much more.

      Well read, a music and theatre lover, and a talented amateur painter, Peter is both a deep thinker and a doer. I have met people who sat beside Peter for the evening and never knew he played golf. The keen, the fanatically keen amateurs (like myself), are the ones who bring golf into every conversation and leave the impression they are better than they are—the ‘could have been’ champions.

      Peter is an internationalist, a forward thinker and a notable achiever in the world of golf and outside of it. Yet, he is a homebody, in that he loves Melbourne, relishes returning to his family there, and enjoys the Australian way of life, with its candor and sense of humour. He was known by his fellow competitors as ‘Placid Pete’, but he was a fierce competitor. Self-taught, he developed a swing which the late Ben Hogan (who Peter particularly admired) once described as the simplest and most repetitive he had seen. Peter methodically thought and manoeuvred his way around the golf course, making it all seem so easy and natural.

      So, the excitement for me is to relive in Tony Walker’s excellent book (and 60 years on) the five remarkable Open triumphs (some refer to them as the British Opens!) and to reflect on the diverse career of a remarkable Australian sportsman and citizen. He is one of our very best—perhaps our Numero Uno?

      ‘Putting it gently’: Peter Thomson lines up at St Andrews Old Course on his way to back-to-back Open Championships, 1955.

      Dead-eye: Peter Thomson holes a 10-metre (12-yard) putt on the eighteenth at St Andrews to be tied for the lead after a brilliant 68 second round in 1955. Caddie Walter Gillespie is in the background.

      Contents

      A word from Sandy Dawson

      Foreword by Ranald Macdonald

      1Beginnings

      2Locke again

      3Cometh the tournament; cometh the man

      4Holy of holies

      5Bidding for the hat trick

      6The one that got away—and the one that didn’t

      7Years that were lean and fat

      Afterword: No sixth

      The Peter Thomson Nine

      Postscript

      ‘Golf is a simple game’ by Peter Thomson

      Appendices

      Bibliography

      Acknowledgements

      Index

      Where it all came together. The gracious sandbelt Victoria Golf Club, Melbourne, from the eighteenth fairway. Illustration Graeme Baxter

      1 Beginnings

      Peter Thomson remembers his first golf stick well—a left-handed hickory-shafted cleek. One of the minor miracles of the Thomson story is that Australia’s greatest golfer began his career with a single left-handed club that is the equivalent today of a one-iron. This is the club of which many years later the great American professional Lee Trevino would say, ‘even God couldn’t hit a one-iron’.

      Back then, in 1942, the 13-year-old from Brunswick made the best of his antique club, which may have dated from early in the century when the Spalding Company in America began making matched sets of irons with forged heads. All these years later we might conclude that Peter Thomson’s proficiency with long irons, of which he was the master, might be attributable to learning to play that most challenging of clubs, and one that obliged him to hit down and through a golf ball to achieve loft.

      Asked what happened to an heirloom that might be worth a lot of money today, he shrugs and says that ‘pretty soon it broke’, obliging him to discard it and look for an alternative. That came by way of an eclectic mix of hand-me-down right-handed clubs.

      These were a mixture of cleeks, brassies, spoons and niblicks, as golf clubs of another era were known. The world cleek derives from the Old English to grasp, a reference to the club’s hook-like shape.

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