At Tucson in the 1960/61 winter tour, I was drawn to play with the actor Mickey Rooney in the Pro-Am. He had starred in more than 200 films, many with Judy Garland. I met him […]

My first meeting with the legless Battle of Britain fighter pilot Douglas Bader was thumbing a lift on the A3 road south of London in 1941. As an RAF Corporal and Physical Training Instructor, I […]

Bill Shankland, Tony Jacklin’s mentor, and Norman Von Nida from Australia were a couple of aggressive characters but I got on well with them and enjoyed their company. Bill was a big, tough bloke who […]

After the 1947 Ryder Cup match at Portland, Oregon, Dai Rees, Reg Horne and I flew to Hawaii to play in the Hawaiian Open. In the first round I was partnered by Vic Ghezzie and […]

Nowadays there are mobile toilets strategically placed on the course when tournaments are played, but pros used to be faced with a real problem if they were ever taken short in the old days. With […]

In 1952, Harry Weetman and I took advantage of an all-expenses-paid trip to Miami to partner each other in an International 4-Ball Championship. But after six holes of our first practice round, Harry’s back went […]

When I was in my prime I used drivers which were much heavier and longer in the shaft than the clubs used today. I used to swing more slowly and would get most of my […]

My first experience of Bob Charles, the New Zealand left-hander, was in 1962 at the United States Air Force base at Ramstein in West Germany (in the days when the country was still partitioned). It […]

Every time Lee Trevino saw me waiting to hit off for a match with him, he would roll his trousers up to his knees before walking on to the first tee – imitating my pluss-twos. […]

My first trip to Cairo in 1949 proved to be more lively than I wanted. John Jacobs was pro at the Gezira club at the time and there were five of us in our party: […]