PART TWO OF THE SCOT WHO WON BRITISH TITLE IN 1966-1967

ELIZABETH CHADWICK:
DEDICATION, DETERMINATION HER TRUMP CARDS

FROM THE Century of the Cheshire County
Ladies Golf Association

Miss Elizabeth Chadwick (Pook), British champion 1966 and 1967

Elizabeth, or Liz as she is generally known, was Cheshire's star player of the 1960s and played at Bramall Park where she remains an Honorary Life Member. Her family has had a long association with the club. Her grandparents were captains, and her father and aunts Marjorie Hartley and Doris Southworth were low handicap golfers.
Through dedication and determination she had a short but distinguished career, culminating in winning the British in 1966 and 1967. In the early 1960s she financed her golf by working at a local garage. Indeed one Christmas Liz, pictured above in 1967, worked an unbelievable 98 hours at 2/9 per hour, such was her keenness to pay her own way.
She intended to be a sports reporter but the amateur status rules were so rigid that by putting her name to a series of articles in The Stockport Advertiser and accepting the three guineas fee she would be deemed a professional.
So the problem was solved by having the pseudonym 'Longflight'! Her first major achievement was playing for England against Scotland (1961) (the country of her birth, in Inverness) in the girls' annual match before playing in various English and British teams including the Curtis Cup and Vagliano Trophy.
She led the British Isles to victory in the Commonwealth Tournament in Canada, and England in the European team event in Portugal. Liz was runner-up in the English and Northern Championships in 1963. She then accumulated a hat-trick of Northern (England) titles and was in our (Cheshire) County Championship finals seven years on the run, winning five consecutive years from 1963.
Lewine Mair, in 'One Hundred Years of Women's Golf' (1992), describes Liz as 'one of the game's great fighters.' By retaining her British Ladies Open Amateur match play title in 1967, Liz joined the elite band of Lady Margaret Scott, Cecil Leitch, Joyce Wethered, Enid Wilson, Marley Spearman and later Mickey Walker. Others since 1893 have lifted the coveted trophy twice or more times, but only the above players have actually retained their title.
The 1968 Curtis Cup loomed large but at the trials Liz, having lost weight in an endeavour to get ultra fit, was sadly out of form. Her enthusiasm had waned and she announced her retirement at the county championship. Offers came in from Mrs Sangster of Vernon Pools of help. Wilsons wanted her to turn pro and go on a world tour with her own named clubs and a French shipping company wished Liz to be their resident pro, touring the Med!
But her mind was made up to now, save for the future, by continuing to work for local estate agent Ken Longdon. At the time she held 10 course records. Liz married, moved away from Cheshire in 1973 and concentrated on family life with her husband Tony and two children.
In the late 1980s she had the great misfortune to suffer a back operation which went wrong and left her paralysed from the waist down. As Liz Robinson, Ladies' Secretary at Bramall Park, writes 'The grit and determination that brought her success on the golf course helped her to cope with her disability and much to the delight of her many friends she is still seen on the golf course, albeit on a specially adapted buggy.'
The yellow wheelchair which CCLGA members and clubs gave her is a prized possession. Liz's close friend for well over 40 years the former Lancashire and England player, Gill Morrison (nee Cheetham), sends this tribute:
"I met Liz in 1961 on the platform of Manchester's Victoria railway station. We were both 18 and part of a small group of northern girls selected by he LGU for junior coaching at Ganton.
"Her enthusiasm for life and the game was quite overpowering and I was exhausted by the time we arrived. But it was her sheer enthusiasm combined with an exceptional talent that took her to the pinnacle of ladies golf and one we feared!
"Although we were rivals we always remained friends over the intervening years. Indeed laughter was always in the air and there was many a time when we would have to stop the car as we were so helpless!
"Indeed Liz's enormous sense of humour has carried her through the serious cbal1enges she has bad to face over the years, and I know her contribution to your Centenary book will be of great benefit."

Elizabeth Chadwick, flanked by her parents, with the British women's open amateur championship trophy in 1966.

Liz's reminiscences on being a back-to-back British champion

"You know I was so incredibly fortunate to even qualify in the British Championship of 1966 over the marvellous but testing Ganton course. I had recently returned from the Curtis Cup match in West Virginia, having had the most wonderful time making life long friendships, and where I learnt so much. "Well, in round one of the qualifying rounds I got in a deep fairway bunker on the long fifth, couldn't get out, then hit myself and eventually ran up a horrid 10!

"However I managed to play the remaining holes in level 4s and with a one under par 74 the following day I qualified, but what a scare! Fortunately I was always intensely competitive from an inherited sporting family background.
"I would practise in the school holidays till the cows came home, in the hope that one day seemingly impossible recovery shots would come off - and gosh did they just at Ganton!
"For instance in round one I was two down with three to play, with a sliced tee shot in the pine trees. However I managed to get it out down the beautifully manicured fairway and hit the green with a high eight iron which rolled across the slope and right into the cup - I can see it now in slow motion!
"My poor opponent was visibly shaken and somehow I got through.
"Against Belle Robertson who was a legend in Scotland and beyond, I fortunately won at the 19th. Then in the semi-finals I faced the greatly feared and fancied French challenger Catherine Lacoste - she was truly awesome! "Before a large gallery we experienced a ding dong match during which I achieved something I'd never done before, getting 2s at all the three short holes.
"Having played Catherine previously, I devised a plan in which I decided to let Catherine blast the ball off the tee whereas I would ease up to a certain extent, meaning that I would invariably have the first shot to say a par four green. Match play golf indeed!
"After a pressure packed encounter I somehow managed to win at the 2ff' with a monster of a tram liner. I was totally shattered and in fact felt sony for Catherine, but her time would rightly come.
"In the final [ faced Vivien Saunders from Surrey who was 19 and I was 23 - everyone was talking about this seemingly precocious youngster. However, from that final to this day, I have had the greatest respect for Vivien, even if officialdom (as with Enid Wilson), has not! She has most certainly come a long way by using her considerable skills to fashion out a glittering career within the game.
"The much respected Pat Ward-Thomas wrote as follows in Country Life: 'Nothing is more rewarding in the following of golf than to watch the unfolding of great talent. Now happily, it is the turn of Elizabeth Chadwick, and Vivien Saunders. her gallant opponent in the final. In a comparatively short career Miss Chadwick has borne her share of disappointment with cheerful fortitude and has worked as few have done to improve their game.
'This has involved more sacrifices than many other young players were prepared to make. Hers is a sterling character and her golf that steadily gained in strength without losing a lovely natural rhythm.
'In the first qualifying round she took 48 strokes to the turn, but such is her composure and courage that she recovered and three days later was champion. There is a moral in this for all young golfers.'

"Later that year at the European in Penina, Portugal, news came through to a group of us, including Enid Wilson, that Catherine had won the USA Open against the professionals, but Enid refused to believe this until she was officially informed by her Editor. Such was the colossal magnitude of her victory.
"In fact on her return we played each other in the Vagliano match at Lytham. Again I managed to win with a goodly putt on the last green, but she must have been exhausted after her amazing adventure. Our five hard fought matches were always played in the best possible spirit.
"The following year the British championship was held at Harlech with its majestic castle setting. With respect to a handful of internationals, in truth the field was not of the quality of previous years, far from it, although Lacoste was in the field and once more heading the qualifiers and favourite for the title.
"However Catherine was surprisingly beaten by a fellow compatriot, and my own game was not as sharp as I would have wished. In fact in round one against Linda Denison-Pender (Bayman), I was four down after six holes feeling unwell and thought 'Oh gosh, here we go again!'
"However I managed to get through at the 19th, helped with a swig of some medicine provided by the charming Liverpool Post Sports Editor Mr Leslie Edwards. In fact I've often wondered whether it was legal but apparently it was cleared by the LGU officials!
"My real test came against my close friend from Lytham, the pocket sized mighty atom Ann Irvin, whom many thought with my erratic long game would beat me, as she had done earlier in the season.
"£Let Enid Wilson paint the picture 'Miss Irvin played the better golf up to the greens, but there she was subjected to a blistering barrage of ten single putts from Miss Chadwick's old hickory-shafted Braid Mills putter and capitulated on the 17th.'
"Apparently I single putted the first six holes! I loved really long putts.. they were a challenge, as they weren't supposed to drop! Short three footers were my Achilles heel and in hindsight I over borrowed instead of hitting the ball hard at the back of the hole, as they do today.
"I had a series of letters from Miss Doris Chambers who encouraged me to be a better short putter, as indeed Joyce Wethered had helped her, before her 1923 win. She informed me that she had received word from Sam Snead, who had apparently watched much of my putting, and suggested I hadn't a clue! "Having holed a very nasty last green putt in the Curtis Cup to secure a point with dear Ita Burke (Butler) against the brilliant American Champions Ann Quast Welts and Barbara McIntire, this criticism hurt and I thought 'Yes, I'll show you what real putting is' - but I hated short putts.
"Donald Steel wrote in the Daily Telegraph: ' I have a feeling that Miss Chadwick's long game was not quite as convincing as at Ganton, but no championship could have had a more perfect climax than the match which she and Miss Mary Everard (Hallamshire) provided, or one in which the charm of match play was more richly emphasised.
"Their courage was beyond question and both deserve the highest praise for their positive approach under pressure. and not least the number of important putts which they both holed under pressure near the end. Miss Chadwick's putting all week has been inspired."
"Victory indeed came after a tremendous fight back by Mary. Ken Jones, a local player, caddied for me all week - I could never have won without his expertise on the greens and after all the tensions of the event I naturally gave him a hug on the green.
"Mind you I received a ticking off letter from the LGU suggesting that my actions were inappropriate!
"Retaining the much coveted trophy was thrilling but oh so stressful, for as Gladys Ravenscroft had indicated all those years before to Betty Lloyd that in winning, where once the game had been fun, it was now a struggle - and I now knew what she meant.
"Mind you the trips abroad were wonderful and hospitality always most lavish. However when sadly my now famous putter developed a hairline crack and could not be repaired, it was as if my bubble of enthusiasm had burst and in meeting my future husband, Tony Pook, from Alderley Edge Golf Club, I realised there were other aspects to life!
"Setting aside the two British titles, the thing I cherish above all others is the ten out of ten wins in the 1965 and 1966 County Match Weeks and in the 1966 week at Hoylake, in lashing rain and wind, my seven 3s on the way to a 5 and 4 win against the Lancashire Curtis Cup player Julia Greenhalgh.
"Playing for Cheshire and Bramall Park meant everything to me and winning the Doris Chambers Foursomes in 1964 for Bramall Park, with Angela Preston (Snodgrass), was a tremendous thrill. She was always so much fun to play with.