When 'lob wedge' meant you'd thrown away your club

GOLF/The Good Old Days: Legendary broadcaster Peter Alliss looks back on what manyconsider to have been the golden era of golf and compares the challengesplayers faced then to the pampered life of the modern professional

It is not often that an ice show is responsible for someone suffering sunburn - especially a professional golfer on the eve of the British Open championship.

But it happened in 1952, and the golfer in question was Peter Alliss, now the doyen of commentators for BBC television.

"I was courting a skater who was appearing in the Bournemouth summer ice show and the weekend before the Open I laid out on the beach down there," Alliss remembers.

"My legs had never seen so much sun and I ended up in a terrible state. I had to have them bandaged up from thigh to heel, and at Lytham I could hardly walk."

An up-and-coming 21-year-old at the time - and a high-profile one with his father, Percy, having played in the Ryder Cup - Alliss opened decently with two rounds of 72 and was in the hunt for the title when he went to the turn in "32 or 33, I can't quite remember" in the third round.

"I was very uncomfortable, though, and probably through a combination of nerves and the sunburn I fell right away."

Closing rounds of 80 and 81 meant he finished 18 strokes behind South African Bobby Locke, winner for the third time in four years. Locke's winning cheque was for £300 - David Duval collected £600,000 at Lytham last July - but the other big difference between then and now was the time it took to play.

"Some other players thought it was impossible to play with Locke because he was so slow," remembers Alliss. "There were complaints about him taking over three-and-a-half hours for a round, yet nowadays it's five hours or more.

"I played with Gene Sarazen (17th at the age of 50 that year) and we took about two-and- a-quarter hours. Nothing was thought of playing 36 holes in a day then."

On finishing his three years' British national service in 1951, Alliss, who turned professional in 1946, could not wait to get back into the sport full-time.

"There was no European tour as such (that was not formed until 1971), and we all had club jobs, but there were lots of tournaments to play in and it was all a wonderful adventure.

"From the south coast where I lived, for instance, if there was an event in York I used to ring the AA and they would send a little map of the best route to take.

"The map would show you the 24-hour petrol stations and you'd pack your sandwiches and thermos flask and off you'd go. No windscreen wipers, so you'd lean out and do it yourself as you were going along.

"Rationing was in for another year and we stayed at modest hotels serving modest meals. I can remember the excitement when fruit and vegetables returned."

Being a professional was very different too. "I really was a bit of a prodigy, yet the best deal I was offered on clubs from the John Letters company was cost price less 15 per cent. They cost my father about £25 if I remember right."

These days, of course, Tiger Woods is given millions and sponsors spend fortunes supplying thousands of tour players.

"My first major contract with Slazenger was for about £250 a year, plus another £250 to use their ball. In the 1950s ball manufacturers did not think it was right that anybody should be paid more than anybody else.

"You were given three balls for the first two rounds of a tournament, and if you made the cut you got three more. If you were a really big star you might be handed a further three, but nowadays literally dozens are shoved in every player's locker.

"You used your own balls to practise with, and on the driving ranges you might have 50 players hitting balls towards their caddies hundreds of yards away.

"There was no thought of any litigation if they got hit, and sometimes you would see fisticuffs going on as they scrambled about picking up balls.

"The equipment we used then would be looked on as a joke now. I get shot down in flames when I dare to suggest that players used to be more skilful, but they had to be to be as good as they were.

"It's only a relatively modern idea to rake bunkers, and some of the fairways now are as good as greens were 50 years ago.

"Some of the balls you saw were not even properly round, and we didn't have such things as lob wedges. It all had to be made up, and Christy O'Connor was one of the great artists of all time.

"Now you hear them like robots: 'It is 90 yards to the flag, it must be a lob wedge. Oh dear, it is 94 yards to the flag, I am between clubs. Oh dear, I have made a mess of it. Oh dear, I have lost the tournament because of that'.

"I had an exchange with Curtis Strange recently. I was talking about the amount of money on offer and saying that if parents saw any aptitude in their children they really should encourage them because what a life it now was.

"Curtis piped in and said it was okay if you liked living out of a suitcase 25 to 30 weeks a year or whatever. I said it hardly compared to being a miner or working on a car assembly line - I mean, players get a million dollars now for being quite ordinary.

"It's a totally different world now and the game is in fantastic shape really, but when you hear about Tiger Woods getting death threats and things like that it's awful and I don't envy them.

"It was a more gentle scene growing up when I did. I played with Open champions and thought nothing of it, nobody was a millionaire and the only person who seemed different to me was Henry Cotton because of the servants he had.

"Going to South America to play took the best part of three days, and when I travelled first-class on a train for the first time it was a great experience.

"Maybe we were like point-to-point horses compared to the Derby runners of today - we'd be accused of not practising as much and smoking and drinking too much - but I don't remember too many of us getting injured."

Apart from sunburn, of course. Because of an ice show.

BBC commentator Peter Alliss, seen here at the 1986 British Open, says players in his day on the tour were like point-to-point horses compared to today's thoroughbreds.