I am not a Golf Historian and quite rightly leave that specialism to experts such as the Society of Golf Historians, Stephen Proctor, Alistair Noakes, Bill Williams and the British Golf Museum.
However, from a very young age, I have always been interested in the ‘History and Legends of Golf’, primarily fuelling this interest by reading umpteen golfing books and magazines. Thinking out loud, I suppose it was then inevitable that ‘History and Legends’ would morph into one of the cornerstone series when Golfing Herald was launched.
I recently published an article for this series on John Ball Jr whose achievements included winning a record 8 Amateur Championships and becoming the first amateur to win the Open Championship. I actively encourage feedback (good, bad & ugly), so I was absolutely ‘made up’ when Rob Oubridge, a country member at Royal North Devon Golf Club, said how much he had enjoyed the article followed up with:
‘Horace Hutchinson’s story is equally as fabulous should you need a wormhole!!’
I had uncovered a (real) connection between John Ball Jr and Horace Hutchinson from when they met in the semi-finals of the inaugural Amateur Championship in 1885. Thus, me being me, I readily accepted Rob’s ‘challenge’ and started my research…it didn’t take long to realise that Rob’s remark that Horace’s story is equally as fabulous was a slight understatement!!
Rob…thanks so much for sowing the seed for this article which has been such an absolute pleasure to research…I just hope that you and all of the Golfing Herald readers enjoy my attempt in capturing the life and times of this extraordinary gentleman.
Early Life
Horatio Gordon ‘ Horace’ Hutchinson was born on 16th May 1859 in London, England. His parents were General William Nelson Hutchinson and Mary Hutchinson (née Russell). His father was a British Army officer who from 1859 to 1865 was the commanding officer of the (British Army) Western District, based at Government House in Devonport, England.
The family home ‘Wellesbourne’ was located between Northam and Bideford in North Devon, England, but Horace spent much time away from home at boarding school. However, due to constant bouts of ill health, which became a recurring theme throughout his life, he was eventually enrolled (aged about 15) at United Services College, Westward Ho!, which was a boys’ public school for sons of military officers. This college was only a couple of miles from his home.
(Westward Ho! was actually named after the historical novel of the same name written by Charles Kingsley in 1855. It is also the only place name in the British Isles with an exclamation mark!..and is home to the oldest golf course in England)
Royal North Devon Golf Club
Founded in 1864, the club was originally known as North Devon and West of England Golf Club. Three years later the club attained the Royal prefix as granted by the then Prince of Wales (who in 1901 became King Edward VII). In 1910 the club name was changed again, this time to the Royal North Devon Golf Club.
Some of the pantheons of British golf have been associated with this championship links, most notably John Henry Taylor, Harold Hilton, Herbert Fowler and…Horace Hutchinson.
However, back in 1864 when the original course layout was being designed by ‘Old Tom Morris’, Horace had just been given his first golf club which he used to hit balls in the fields near his home. Over the next few years, Horace participated in some junior medals during school holidays and his game gradually improved.
In 1875 he finally became a member of the club with a playing handicap of 12. By the end of the year, he was playing off scratch and won the clubs Scratch Medal…one of the prizes for winning this prestigious competition was being appointed captain of the club for the following season!! Interestingly, Royal North Devon is now one of only a handful of clubs that today has a President but no Club Captain.
Oxford University
In 1878, Horace Hutchinson went up to Corpus Christi College, Oxford University where he read Classics. Upon arrival in Oxford, he found that golf was very much in its infancy, although there was a University Golf Club which he immediately joined.
Not long afterwards the inaugural Varsity Golf Match between Oxford and Cambridge was contested at Wimbledon Common, courtesy of the London Scottish Golf Club. Horace played in the top match and despite losing his singles encounter by 2 holes, Oxford defeated Cambridge by an accumulated margin of 24 holes!! The annual Varsity Match continues to be played to this day with Oxford and Cambridge selecting the venue on an alternate basis.
In 1881 Horace graduated from Oxford with a 3rd class honours degree with the intention of reading for the Bar. Unfortunately, his studies to qualify as a Barrister ended almost before they began due to the state of his health.
Golf Championship(s)
Founded in 1860, the Open was the one and only golf championship, contested annually by Professional and Amateur Golfers. This continued to be the case for a quarter of a century until a committee was set up in 1884 to discuss and establish a championship for amateur golfers only. Horace Hutchinson served on this initial committee and in a matter of months, the Amateur Championship was born.
The original ‘terms and conditions’ for this Championship are a poignant reminder of this bygone era:
‘According to the conditions laid down, the competition is played in heats and decided by holes. The unsuccessful men retiring at the close of each round until the list of competitors is reduced to two players, who shall then play off the final heat. The successful competitor will be regarded as the champion amateur golfer’
1885 Amateur Championship
The inaugural Amateur Championship was played at Royal Liverpool Golf Club. At the time it was actually an unofficial/trial event and it was not until 1922 that it was formally recognised by the R&A as the first-ever Amateur Championship.
The remainder of this section is caveated with a ‘high tariff of difficulty attempting to articulate how the 1885 Amateur Championship unfolded, but I have honestly done my best!!’.
A total of 44 competitors entered and thus the 1st Round comprised of 22 matches (or heats as they were known in 1885). Unlike today, there was no sudden death if a match finished all square and thus both competitors progressed to the next round if their match was halved!! Horace Hutchinson won his match but 2 other matches ended all square and thus 24 competitors progressed to the 2nd Round!!
Thankfully the 2nd Round witnessed no halved matches and so 12 competitors progressed to the 3rd round, including Horace. The highlight of the 3rd Round was a match between father and son, namely John Ball Sr and John Ball Jr, with the latter winning by 3&2. Horace comfortably won his match 4&3 and with no halved matches (phew), 6 competitors reached the 4th Round…but in this Round, the rules changed for halved matches!!
Horace Hutchinson and John Ball Jr easily won their 4th Round matches to reach the semi-finals. However, the other 4th Round Match between Alan Macfie and Walter de Zoete ended all square. To decide the winner they played another 18 holes and guess what…yes, this match also finished all square!! A 3rd match was required which Alan Macfie eventually won by 1 hole!!
Thus 3 competitors reached the semi-finals…whether it was due to his marathon contest in the previous round I just don’t know, but Alan Macfie received a bye to the final where he met Horace Hutchinson, who defeated John Ball Jr in what commentators called the ‘match of the week’.
Unfortunately for Horace, the final was played in the afternoon with no rest from his semi-final match that was played in the morning and he lost the 18-hole final 7&6 to Alan Macfie.
1886 Amateur Championship
The second Amateur Championship was played on the old course at St Andrews Links.
You will be pleased to learn that after the 1885 Championship the rules were changed in relation to byes and halved matches!!
As it happens, Horace Hutchinson received a bye in the 1st Round and in the 2nd Round was awarded a Walk Over as his opponent G.M.Cox of Dalhousie Golf Club was ‘absent’. Thus he reached the last 16 without actually hitting a single shot but unlike the 1885 event, sources of information for subsequent Rounds are not as readily available.
On his route to a second consecutive final, Horace comfortably defeated Dr Duncan McCuaig, a surgeon from Edinburgh who is better known as the founding father of the historic golf links at Seaton Carew. Dr McCuaig moved from Edinburgh to Middlesborough to further his medical career and was dismayed to find there was nowhere for him to play golf but he found a piece of farming land on which a golf course was eventually established. Horace also beat Samuel Mure Fergusson, one of the best Scottish amateur golfers of his generation, 1up.
In the 18-hole final, Horace played Henry Lamb of Royal Wimbledon Golf Club, who had (surprisingly) defeated John Ball Jr in the semi-finals by 7&6. After a slow start, Horace Hutchinson took command of the final and won by 7&6 to become the Champion Amateur Golfer.
(Historic golf artefacts indicate that the defeated finalist Henry Lamb was the inventor of the ‘bulger’ golf club. This was a wooden club with a convex face…today’s equipment incorporates his invention!!)
Royal Eastbourne Golf Club
In the same year (1886) that Horace won the Amateur Championship, his parents moved to Eastbourne, Sussex which meant Horace also gravitated to the south coast of England (at this time his primary residence was still his parents home…though he was a single gentleman of independent means).
Horace Hutchinson became involved with the design, planning and the laying out of the original 9-hole course at Eastbourne, with the club opening in 1887. This was Horace’s first venture into golf course architecture. In 1892 he was elected as Captain of Royal Eastbourne Golf Club and retained his membership at the club until 1903. Whilst a member at Eastbourne his club handicap ‘peaked’ at plus 6 in 1888.
Other famous members of this historic club include Arthur James Balfour (UK Prime Minister, 1902-1905 and a very keen golfer) and Major Cyril Tolley (who won the Miltary Cross in WW1 and was Amateur Champion in 1920 and 1929).
Today, Royal Eastbourne Golf Club is composed of the challenging and attractive 18-hole Devonshire Course and the testing 9-hole Hartington Course.
1887 Amateur Championship
The following year (1887) the Amateur Championship returned to Royal Liverpool Golf Club, Hoylake. Although Horace Hutchinson, representing Royal North Devon, was the defending champion, the favourite was John Ball Jr, a member of Hoylake.
As per 1886, sources of information are not readily available, so picking up the action at the quarter-final stage where Horace came up against Scottish golfer Gregor Macgregor where he managed to win at the 19th.
In the semi-finals, John Ball Jr defeated John ‘Jack’ Guthrie Tait (elder brother of the ill-fated Freddy Tait) whilst Horace faced John Ball Sr. Horace was 1 down with 2 holes to play but he demonstrated his ‘never say die’ attitude by finishing Par-Birdie to win 1up and thus reach his 3rd consecutive final.
The final was very much a match play game of ‘nip and tuck’. Horace reached the 18th tee 1up and with a solid (halved) par up the last secured victory and thus retained the Amateur Championship.
The Open Championship
Despite his long and illustrious amateur record, Horace only played in the Open Championship on 6 occasions with a best finish of 6th…but oh what might have been!!
In his 1st Open at St Andrews in 1885, he finished a credible 11th, 7 shots behind the winner Bob Martin.
In the Opens of 1886 and 1887, he was never in contention finishing 16th and 10th respectively.
In 1890, John Ball Jr created history at Prestwick Golf Club by becoming the first Englishman and the first amateur to win the Open…Horace finished 6th, albeit 8 shots adrift.
The following year, Horace struggled and finished well down the field in 24th.
In 1892, as mentioned earlier, Horace was Captain of Royal Eastbourne Golf Club and his term of office coincided with his final appearance in the Open Championship which was played at Muirfield. Up to 1892, the Open had been played on a single day over 36 holes. However, after some disputes and heated discussions, the championship was contested over 72 holes and played over 2 consecutive days. At the end of Day 1, guess what…Horace Hutchinson was the halfway leader with scores of 74+78=152 and leading by 3 shots!! Sadly, he was unable to maintain his form on Day 2 and in the end finished in 10th position behind Harold Hilton, the second amateur to win the Open Championship.
Marriage
The following year (1893), Horace Hutchinson married Dorothy Margaret Chapman in London. Her father was Major Frederick Barclay Chapman of the 14th King’s Hussars. When married they lived in the hamlet of Coleman’s Hatch, East Sussex.
1903 Amateur Championship
Horace Hutchinson was fast approaching his mid-forties when the 1903 Amateur Championship was played at Muirfield. Whilst previewing the championship one well renowned golfing journalist wrote:
“Mr Horace Hutchinson, undoubtedly past his prime, possesses such a wonderful knowledge of the game that he is always a formidable opponent”
Once again information on this event is very sketchy but on his route to the final Horace defeated Frank Booth, A.M.Ross and Angus MacDonald inter alia. In the final, he met Robert Maxwell, who at the time was a ‘specialist’ around Muirfield and Maxwell ran out a comfortable winner by 7&5.
Golfing Quotes
Horace’s sense of humour was always to the fore, especially in some of his quotes relating to the great game of golf, such as:
“If profanity had an influence on the flight of the ball, the game of golf would be played far better than it is”
“If your adversary is badly bunkered, there is no rule against your standing over him counting his strokes aloud, with increasing gusto as their number mounts up: but it will be a wise precaution to arm yourself with the niblick before doing so, so as to meet him on equal terms”
1904 Amateur Championship
The 1904 Championship was played at Royal St. George’s and would be Horace’s competitive golf swan song. Horace had an incredibly difficult draw but as always, and despite ongoing periods of ill health and tiredness, he rose to the challenge one last time.
An indication of the toughness of the draw was that in the 1st Round he was up against (and defeated) Samuel Mure Fergusson, twice a runner-up in this Championship!! In a subsequent round, he defeated none other than John Ball Jr and in the quarter-finals, he knocked out the defending champion Robert Maxwell.
However, in the semi-final, his opponent was the incomparable American Walter Travis, one of the greatest amateur golfers of all time. Travis won their match 3&2 and went on to win the Championship, the first American to do so.
In a subsequent article in the Rock Island Argus, Walter Travis paid the following tribute:
“All things considered, the golfer whom I most admired as a player was Horace Hutchinson. Over here we have read so many of his books and spoken of him so long as a veteran that one is surprised to find he is only forty-seven years old. He plays every shot for what it is worth and in perfect style, as free as any supple youth, and, all told, I pronounce him, to my mind, the ideal golfer”
Prolific Author
The above quote from Walter Travis provides a neat link to the fact that Horace Hutchinson was not only a fine golfer but also a prolific author. His first book, Hints on the Game of Golf, was published in 1886. Other published works about golf include:
- The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes – Golf
- The Book of Golf and Golfers
- Fifty Years of Golf…which is an absolutely brilliant read and can be downloaded via Project Gutenberg
A lesser-known fact about Horace was that he was also a prolific author of ‘Detective Fiction’ novels!! In fact, his first novel ‘That Fiddler Fellow’ was published in 1891. Other published works in this classic crime genre include:
- The Mystery of the Summer-House
- Murder in Monk’s Wood
- The Foreign Secretary who Vanished
- The Twins Murder Case
Horace also found time to write books on subjects as diverse as ‘ Cricket’ and ‘Dreams’!!
(Some of the above can be purchased via Amazon UK, in a variety of formats)
Honours
In 1908, Horace Hutchinson received the highest golfing honour, namely being elected as the first Englishman to be Captain of the Royal and Ancient. Talking of honours, in my opinion, it is an absolute mystery/disgrace that hitherto he has not been inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame…maybe one day.
Going Plural
About 20 years ago, the English businessman Allan Leighton would repeatedly answer “I am going plural” whenever asked what he was going to do next (a reference to the diversity of concurrent board positions he held). The phrase ‘Going Plural’ could well have been coined by Horace Hutchinson.
In addition to being an author and writer, he set up Commercial Cars Limited in partnership with fellow golfer Harry Charles Bailee Underdown. This company was better known as Commer and manufactured commercial vehicles such as vans, trucks and omnibuses from its incorporation in 1905 until its demise in 1979. He was also a Director of the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation from 1915 until his death.
Gentleman of Letters
‘Letters to the Editor’ is an integral segment of the historical daily British newspaper ‘The Times’. This outlet enabled Horace Hutchinson to freely express his opinions on an array of subjects, combining serious messages with his innate sense of humour. For example:
In 1911, he added his weight behind an ongoing complaint on the service provided by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, in particular, his view on their ineptitude of the arrangements for the travelling public. To quote “Mismanagement appears to be too positive a word by which to signify them. It is rather that there appears to be no management at all, the arrival of a train seeming to take the authorities who should be in command of a station by complete surprise”…roll the clock forward just over 100 years and the challenges of the UK rail service still persists!!
In 1917, towards the end of WW1, there was an appeal from the UK Government for the public to economise and invest in War Bonds. Horace wrote a short letter challenging the serious intensions of this appeal when the Government did nothing to restrict the idiotic expenditure on women’s dress!! To quote “In every fashionable resort in London we see an ostentatious waste of the country’s money by silly women whose sole idea is to out-dress other silly women and to attract yet sillier men!!”…I certainly don’t condone his views but understand that some of Horace’s views may have reflected the prevailing attitudes at that time.
In 1926, he posed the question “Why do our cricket authorities talk so much and do so little?”. At the time there was much discussion about increasing the dimensions of the stumps and reducing the size of the bat and the ball…in his words all talk but no visible actions. Horace contributed to the debate by suggesting the length of the pitch was reduced to 21 or 20 yards, as in his opinion there was nothing sacred about the number 22!! He could not understand the argument that reducing the length of the pitch would be horrible for the batsmen against fast bowling. To quote his response “That is just what we want, to make things more horrible for the batsmen”.
Obituary
For the last 15 to 20 years of his life Horace was effectively incapacitated by illness and on 27th July 1932, aged 73, he sadly took his own life.
This article was born through a connection between John Ball Jr and Horace Hutchinson, so what better way to finish than an obituary emanating from a lifetime connection between Horatio Gordon ‘Horace’ Hutchinson and John Henry ‘J.H.’ Taylor.
English Professional golfer J.H.Taylor is rightly recognised as one of the pioneers of golf and whose achievements included winning the Open Championship on 5 occasions, golf course architect including Royal Birkdale and the founding father of the British Professional Golfers Association.
J.H. Taylor, whose golfing journey began as a caddy at Royal North Devon Golf Club, wrote an incredibly personal letter about Horace Hutchinson to the Editor of the Times. Thankfully his letter was published from which the following passages are extracted:
‘Will you allow me, an old Westward Ho! caddy and representative of that fast diminishing band of elderly golfers whose memories of the game go back over 50 years…I carried his clubs and cleaned his shoes as bootboy in his father’s employ at a very tender age, so my recollection of Horace goes back to the time when he was an undergraduate of Oxford in 1878…and by his (golfing) skill and charm and advocacy in his writings of the game did much to bring its real merit to the notice of his dubious countrymen…but above all his achievements as a player, he leaves behind:
‘The fragrant memory of a courteous and kindly gentleman whose assistance when it was so sorely needed will remain a cherished record in golfing history’
Acknowledgements
And finally, a massive thanks to…
- Rob Oubridge ~ The inadvertent catalyst (his phrase not mine!!) who initiated my research into the life and times of Horace Hutchinson.
- Mark Evans ~ General Manager, Royal North Devon Golf Club, who kindly shared photographs of Horace Hutchinson (as displayed in the Clubhouse) and of the historic Championship Links at Westward Ho!.
- Toby Anderson ~ Club Manager, Royal Eastbourne Golf Club, who kindly shared a photograph of Horace Hutchinson from when he was Captain of this historic club in 1892 and an extract from the centenary book ‘A History of Royal Eastbourne Golf Club 1887 – 1987’ written by John T. Milton.
- Catherine Kelly ~ Digital Marketing Assistant, St Andrews Links Trust, who kindly granted me access to their ‘Press Area’.
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