Stylish ruminations of a man of his Times

A Slice of Golfing Literature/Part 13: Henry Longhurst was more than just a pretty voice, notes Gary Moran.

Golfers on this side of the Irish Sea most readily think of Henry Longhurst as the first voice of television golf, the mellifluous master to whom Peter Alliss was apprenticed in many BBC commentary boxes. However, before television was even invented, Longhurst was carving out a career as one of the premier golf writers of the 20th century.

No doubt it helped that he played to a decent standard himself, having captained Cambridge in the late 1920s when university golf was still a big deal in Britain. He also won the German Amateur title in 1936 and was runner-up in the French in 1937 and the Swiss in 1938. So it was that he managed to play with, befriend or report on every leading player from JH Taylor to JW Nicklaus.

Longhurst was appointed the first golf correspondent of the English Sunday Times in 1932, a fortuitous association for both parties that lasted over 45 years. He was particularly proud of turning out a lengthy column every week for over 20 years and his work was required reading for lovers of the game and of good writing.

An entertaining sample is included in Only On Sundays, one of several collections of his work well worth acquiring. Some pieces were topical, some straight reportage, while many reflected his travels and the characters he met in clubhouses worldwide.

In describing the political background to Britain and Ireland contesting the Ryder Cup he refers to Éire "being under entirely new management in other directions but still for golfing purposes incorporated with the old firm".

He delighted in seeing Harry Bradshaw win anything because he, Bradshaw, was the "complete nonconformist". He describes The Brad at the 1955 Ryder Cup "ambling genially around, hitting each shot before the average American professional would have time to test the direction of a non-existent wind".

Longhurst rated Henry Cotton the greatest shotmaker. In a chapter entitled "The Maestro" he describes challenging Cotton to hit a driver from a bad lie "simply for the aesthetic pleasure of seeing the ball fly away as though fired from a rifle".

He had "two golfing bees in my personal bonnet - the length of the golf ball and the slowness of play". He advocated a single ball "which the local scratch player can hit about 220 yards from the tee on a fine spring day". Given today's average distance, he must be turning in the grave in which, as he might have put it himself, he has been pushing up the fescue since 1978.