The years fairly hurtle by. “Looking back, it’s another event that makes you realise that you age very quickly,” said Gordon Cosh with a sighing chuckle as he reflected on his Walker Cup appearance for Great Britain & Ireland a misty half a century ago. Here in 2015, it will be his grandson, Jack McDonald, continuing the family ties in the biennial battle with the USA at Royal Lytham this weekend.
Back in 1965, Beatle-mania was at its hysterical, shrieking peak on the other side of the Atlantic. The ‘Fab Four’ may have been dominating the US hit parade but in the tranquil world of amateur golf it was a ‘Tenacious Ten' from these shores who were trying to make a breakthrough with a different kind of hit as they travelled to Baltimore for another crack at the Americans.
Since its inception in 1922, GB&I had won the Walker Cup just once – at St Andrews in 1938 – and the record books were littered with 11-1 and 10-2 drubbings. Cosh, now a sprightly 76, joined a side that was skippered by the great Irishman, Joe Carr, and featured prodigiously talented Englishmen like Michael Bonallack, Clive Clark and Michael Lunt as well as the redoubtable Scots, Ronnie Shade and Sandy Saddler. Cosh, himself, was a dab hand with the sticks. “I had a reputation of being a good player but a bit wild off the tee,” he said with a smile. “The course suited me, though.”
It seemed to suit everybody else too. By the end of the first day, GB&I held a commanding 8-3 lead. They were still five points in front heading into the final singles session and were just a couple of points away from an historic first win on American soil.
“Typically, the US woke up and came back very strong,” said Cosh, who picked up three points from a possible four and won both his singles encounters as he added considerable weight to the war effort.
The American onslaught was relentless, though, and it was the aforementioned Clark who had to salvage the situation in spectacular style on the very last green when he trundled in a raking putt of 35-feet to pinch a half-point and earn GB&I a 12-12 draw.
“You moved your head, you moved your body, but how the hell did you move the hole to get in the way of the ball?”, gasped a relieved team skipper Carr at the time, after this hands-over-the-eyes finale.
“That was probably the best putt I’ve ever seen,” recalled Cosh, who was among the posse surrounding the 18th green for that hold-your-breath moment. “We had a fantastic opportunity to win that match but that putt on the 18th was the outstanding moment of the whole event just when it looked like it had all slipped away from us."
A formidable competitor during the times of the true career amateur – “in the peak season we’d be playing golf 35 hours a week and working 25 to 30 hours a week” – Cosh will make the trip down to Lytham this weekend to watch his grandson compete among a new generation while catching up for a blether about the good old days with some well kent faces from the past.
“I’m sure it will bring back a lot of memories,” added Cosh, who won the Scottish Amateur Championship at Muirfield in 1968 during his purposeful pomp. “I’m very proud of Jack. The sheer depth of players there is now in the amateur game makes it very difficult to get in so he has done very well. I’ll try and watch as much of it as I can and I’m sure it will be a lot easier watching from the sidelines. We are all experts from there, aren’t we?”
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