History is a Wonderful Thing - Golf in the 1930s

It's strange how conversations go and how things just pop out of people's mouths. I have known for some time that my mother-in-law's parents were gifted sports players. Her father played cricket for Ireland and, when he retired, became a scratch golfer within a year. If you have to read that sentence again I don't blame you - I had to ask if it was true on more than one occasion.

Her grandmother was also a scratch golfer but had been playing for a lot longer, so when it slipped out of my mother-in-law's mouth that there was a newspaper cutting of her mother standing on the final green of some Irish golf course, having just lost the Ladies' Irish Open (pre-1935), I was hooked - obviously.

"Yes," my mother-in-law said, "it's in a scrapbook somewhere. I think it's in the desk out the back, behind all the old boxes and in the draw that no one can ever open. If it's not there, maybe it's in the desk upstairs in the spare room on top of the beds... and so the list of potential locations went on, usually pre-empted by a description of the obstacle course I would have to overcome if I was to reach the required destination. So, I've been digging around in draws and through School Reports for my wife and her siblings (turns out they were a lot brighter than their teachers gave them credit for - well, that's what they like to think anyway), photograph albums from the 1950s and various scrapbooks that have no rhyme or reason that I can tell. I have practically developed asthma from all the dust that accompanies every moved box and opened drawer, but I have yet to find anything pre-1950s.

If I ever find the cutting - I am now in my third day - I’ll let you know… but there are some among my wife’s siblings who think that their mother just needs a couple of rooms cleared!  At least I'm doing a good job.