I WAS IN the UK covering the 1977 Ashes tour for The Age newspaper and BBC Television when I received a phone call. ‘Ian, would you like to participate in the BBC Pro-Celebrity Golf show?’ a voice asked.
‘Yes, I’d be delighted,’ was the immediate response.
The programme was being shot at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland and the host was the BBC’s genial golf commentator Peter Alliss. The caller from the BBC explained that Richie Benaud wasn’t available and he’d recommended me for the show, as they wanted an Australian who played golf.
I was asked to play in a mixed foursomes match, the first time they’d had such an event on the show. I was told I’d be playing against Sean Connery of James Bond fame and his wife, Micheline. My partner was Winnie Wooldridge (nee Shaw), who was a two-handicap golfer, in addition to being a Wimbledon quarter-finalist.
Our segment would be shot on the Wednesday, but I was told I was welcome to check in at the hotel any time on Monday. I was there early Monday morning and after checking in and unpacking I headed straight for the pro shop. I was informed I could play a practice round that afternoon. ‘In fact, why doesn’t Sir join Mr Connery and Mr Hunt? They’ll be finishing their morning round shortly and then they’re going out again after lunch.’
After hitting a few practice putts, I saw Sean and Mr Hunt – James Hunt, the Formula One world champion – coming down the eighteenth fairway. It was hard not to notice them – Connery was famous as James Bond and Hunt was wearing the unusual golfing attire of jeans and T-shirt. This was generally verboten on most golf courses, but especially a championship layout. And never on any course had I seen a T-shirt like the one James was wearing. It had numerous rips in it and each one was held together by safety pins. He looked more like a punk rocker than a much-loved British Formula One racing driver.
Following introductions, the pair kindly agreed to let me join them for the afternoon round, so I wandered off to the practice paddock while they ate lunch. Just before our tee time I headed towards the first, where I was greeted by a petite woman. She introduced herself as Winnie Wooldridge and asked if there was any chance of her playing a practice round. After checking with my playing partners, a match was agreed: James and Sean against Winnie and myself.
Hunt laid all the bets. Whilst I understood the bit about front and back nine and the match, there were other parts of the negotiations, concerning presses, double presses and the like, which I’d never heard before. Not wanting to sound like an ignorant Australian I just kept nodding.
The three males all played off similar handicaps in the seven-to-ten range but it was my partner who stole the show. Winnie played better than her handicap, which was just as well because when the match was over Hunt handed me somewhere in the vicinity of 150 pounds in winnings.
I had no idea we were playing for that much and wasn’t in possession of anything like that amount. That was my first lucky break. My second came later in the evening.
The BBC had arranged for a green room to be set aside for the players and their guests. It was near the dining room and was separated from the eating area by a flimsy partition wall.
I was dressed for golf – slacks and polo shirt, with a newly purchased Pringle diamond-shaped sweater. It was neat and casual and my guess is the Pringle sweater alone cost more than James Hunt’s complete outfit.
We settled in for a few drinks and after a while I suddenly remembered I hadn’t had any lunch. I excused myself and wandered off to the dining room.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I was told, ‘but you need a jacket and tie for the dining room.’
Grumpy but gracious, I returned to the green room to have another beer and decide whether I was that hungry I was prepared to traipse back to my room to don a jacket and tie.
The decision was quickly made for me. I was halfway through my decision-making beer when into the room wandered Alliss, accompanied by the legendary English golf writer and commentator Henry Longhurst.
Longhurst was widely recognised in the USA as ‘the voice up the sixteenth tower at the Masters’. I knew him as the man who articulated the most succinct prophecy in golf commentary.
When the gaudily dressed Doug Sanders momentarily stepped back from a three-foot putt to win the 1970 Open Championship on St Andrews’ eighteenth green, Henry summed up the situation with a simple ‘Oh dear’.
Sanders went on to miss the putt and lose the Open by a shot in a play-off with Jack Nicklaus, and Longhurst’s commentary is still the gold standard in getting your message across with an economy of words.
Henry was recovering from a serious cancer operation when he attended Gleneagles but the setback hadn’t affected his memory or his taste for Scotch. Peter was the ideal foil as he knew all Longhurst’s stories and did a wonderful job of extracting many of them that night.
One of my favourites concerned a Longhurst trip to Augusta for the Masters. Longhurst was one of five British writers staying in a house near Augusta National golf course and Mark Wilson of the Daily Express was the designated driver.
In trying to navigate the exceptionally large American sedan through the front gate, Wilson failed in his duty. This didn’t do much for the car or his jet-lagged passengers, all of whom alighted quickly, with plenty of unhelpful advice.
That is, all of the passengers bar Henry. He sat there quietly for a few moments before he gathered up his papers and clambered out of the car. ‘Wilson, my dear fellow,’ he said, ‘I’ve been in a number of motor accidents in my time, but this is the first ever to be caused by a teetotaller. I find this disgraceful.’
Having become engrossed in Henry’s stories, I never made it to the dining room. James, on the other hand, did. At some point in the evening I heard a voice on the other side of the partition and thought to myself, ‘That sounds like James Hunt’s dulcet tones. I wonder if he’s wearing a jacket and tie in the dining room?’
I poked my head around the entrance to the restaurant. There was James, sipping on a glass of white wine, about to tuck into a steak and dressed in exactly the same clothes he wore on the course, with the sole addition of a cravat.
I decided I didn’t have the charm of James Hunt.
In the end I was grateful that the maître d’ hadn’t allowed me into the restaurant because I had a great night listening to Peter and Henry discuss golf and life.
A couple of days later our mixed foursomes match was played over nine holes on the scenic Queen’s course. I don’t recall the result of the match but I remember Winnie, who sadly passed away in 1992, was by far the best player. There are, however, a couple of incidents that stick in my mind.
Micheline Connery stood no higher than a standard one wood. She was competitive but at nowhere near the same level as her husband. Sean kept advising her on every shot until finally Micheline had had enough. I don’t speak French but her response sounded awfully like the equivalent of ‘Get stuffed and concentrate on your own game.’
On the eighth hole I failed to distinguish myself on two counts. The hole is a short par four and my second with a wedge was only about a fifty-yard shot. Eager to see the result of my handiwork, I looked up too quickly and bladed the shot through the green. ‘Jesus Christ, Ian,’ I wailed, forgetting the match was being taped for television.
‘Thank you, Reverend Chappell,’ said Alliss, attempting to defuse my potentially explosive comment with his typically dry wit.
His quick-witted response may also have been influenced by one of Longhurst’s stories from the night in the green room. Henry had been playing a foursomes match with a pairing of a vicar and a gentleman he described as ‘having a complexion that indicated either good living or shortness of temper, or both’.
By the seventeenth hole the pair had put themselves into a position to win the event and the vicar’s partner only had to loft a wedge over a bunker and onto the green and it was all wrapped up.
Like myself, the man with the florid complexion was rather keen to see the result of his shot. Henry recounted the upshot of this mistake. ‘Up came his head, out came a lump of turf and the ball dropped feebly into the bunker. The man lifted his Niblick to heaven,’ Henry explained, ‘and then cried, “$%#@ and $%#@ and $%#@.” Then pulling himself up with a jerk, he began to make embarrassed apologies.’
Henry paused for a moment and added, ‘The vicar’s reply remains etched in my mind. “Brother,” he said slowly and gently to his partner, “the provocation was ample.”’
After our round of golf I had the pleasure of spending some time with Sean Connery. He had his son Jason, from his marriage with Australian actress Diane Cilento, staying with him at Gleneagles.
Despite trying to convince Sean that I had a column to write that night, he persuaded me to join him for a game of snooker. We played doubles and I partnered Jason, while Sean played with one of his son’s school friends.
Both the boys had recently come from a finishing school in Switzerland. On hearing Jason’s cultured voice I was tempted to think that most, if not all, Australian in his DNA had been eradicated. That was until his attempt at a winning shot on the pink ball hit the jaw and stayed out. ‘Shit,’ exclaimed Jason.
‘Aha,’ I said, ‘now you’re sounding more like an Australian.’
Having witnessed Sean’s intensity at sport but particularly on the golf course, it was a reminder of what a great love the Scots have for the game. They’re also an extremely practical race when it comes to golf, as I discovered in 1972. I was playing a round at the Sunningdale course just outside London – although it would be more factual to say I was an interested bystander, as former England cricket captain Ted Dexter shredded the front nine of this difficult championship course.
Ted shot thirty-two, four under par, for the front nine and while we waited on the tenth tee, he proceeded to explain how he needed to make a slight alteration to his grip. I told Ted I wouldn’t be changing anything if I could play like that, but he insisted a slight adjustment would improve his game.
If he thought his game needed improvement I’m not sure what Ted made of my attempts to navigate Sunningdale, but I did get a hint from the Scottish caddy carrying my clubs. When I scuttled my drive along the ground at the tenth hole the caddy, far from being disgruntled, simply said, ‘Aye, that’s the way, laddie. If you’re goin’ to fook ’em up, fook ’em up straight.’
Considering my form at Sunningdale, it’s just as well the opportunity never arose for James Hunt to recoup his losses on the golf course. However, I did meet up with him a few more times thanks to Channel Nine’s association with Formula One racing.
During one Australian Grand Prix, James, in his single-minded style, managed to infuriate Channel Nine’s legendary sports producer David Hill. Hunt and Murray Walker were doing the call of the Adelaide Grand Prix. They were a slightly eccentric, if highly successful pairing. Murray used to call the whole Grand Prix standing up, while James would remain seated, wearing an outfit vaguely similar to the one he wore on the golf course at Gleneagles. The pair shared one microphone the whole time.
During the Adelaide race, it started to spit with rain and Hill wanted James to be a bit more specific about the dangers of driving at speed when the track was wet. At the end of a spirited piece of commentary, Murray handed the microphone to James. ‘I have nothing further to add,’ was Hunt’s belligerent response and he then handed the microphone back to Walker.
Hilly was fuming and told James in no uncertain terms he thought his behaviour was unprofessional. James was totally unconcerned with Hill’s criticism, which I suppose is understandable when you’ve stared down death a few hundred times on the racetrack.
Mind you, I’m not sure even the threat of death would’ve bothered James on the track. He amazed me during an Adelaide Grand Prix when I asked him about the concentration required to drive in a Formula One race. I explained how, as a batsman, you had the opportunity to ‘switch off’ a little after facing a ball and then at the end of each over. ‘Surely,’ I asked, ‘there are no opportunities to switch off during a race at those speeds?’
‘Oh yes, there are,’ countered James. ‘After a couple of laps of a Grand Prix I’d start to relax and look for a pretty girl in the crowd. Each time we came around to that part of the track I’d look to see if she was still there.’
I was never quite sure if he was winding me up or serious, but whatever methods he employed they were successful, because he didn’t die on the racetrack, but sadly of a heart attack in 1993.
Inadvertently, I met up with James prior to the inaugural Australian Grand Prix. It was at the Dutch Grand Prix in 1985. Channel Nine had just obtained the rights to the Australian Grand Prix and, with a break in the UK cricket schedule, the director Brian Morelli suggested we go to watch the Formula One race in Zandvoort. ‘If we’re going to cover the Adelaide race,’ said Morelli, ‘I’d like to at least witness one first.’
So, we booked our trip to Amsterdam with accommodation in the city. This was also a wonderful opportunity for my wife, Barbara-Ann, to revisit the country of her birth, as she entered the world just down the road in Naarden.
I also took the opportunity to call a sports-mad mate of mine, Geoff ‘Goomfer’ Forsaith, who happened to be in Europe. I called him in Frankfurt. ‘Goomfer, we’re going to be at Zandvoort for the Dutch Grand Prix,’ I told him excitedly. ‘If you can get there we have the entrance tickets for practice and the race.’
So Goomfer, always eager to witness a big sporting event, jumped on the first flight out of Frankfurt and turned up in Amsterdam. It was a wonderful excursion. Each day we took a train from Amsterdam to Zandvoort, an extremely civilised trip of around an hour. During the journey the railway staff would come around with a drinks and food trolley and we judged it to be a two-Heineken trip.
The Zandvoort train station was a bit of a hike from the racetrack but this wasn’t a problem. It was only a short walk from the station to a nearby hotel where the media bus would pick us up and drop us, appropriately, at the Heineken hospitality tent. A few cold beers and some snacks and then we’d take a short walk through the underpass that takes you beneath the racetrack and into the pit area.
On race day we left the Heineken hospitality area at around 2 pm, with plenty of time for the 2.30 pm start. As we were about to enter the underpass Goomfer said to me, ‘I’d love to meet that James Hunt bloke. He seems like a good character.’
It was now about twenty minutes from the commencement of the race. ‘You probably will,’ I told a startled Goomfer, ‘he’ll probably walk past here any minute, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt with holes in it, and a pair of casual loafers.’
‘Don’t talk bullshit,’ said Goomfer, ‘he would’ve arrived in the commentary box hours ago.’
I was just about to say, ‘No he wouldn’t,’ when this very refined voice said, ‘Hello, Ian. What are you doing here?’
Turning to my right I saw Hunt. ‘Oh, hi, James,’ I said, ‘I was just telling my mate here you’d probably be arriving for the race about now. James Hunt, meet Geoff Forsaith.’
It was a long way from Gleneagles golf course to the Zandvoort Formula One racetrack but James Hunt’s wardrobe hadn’t changed in eight years.