Judge — January 1938 — page 26: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

In 1933 a man was driven out of his country. Hounded from his native land by criticism both unwarranted and un- justified. Four years later that same man returned, undaunted by his exile, to fight the critics. The story of this man’s rise to fame is not one of history being made in a day, a week or a year. It is one spread over a period of years during which time he toiled and slaved at the game of golf. At the age of seventeen—thir- teen years ago—he started on this long and steep climb as an assistant profes- sional at Fulwell. Then and there he made up his mind to do everything in his power to reach the highest rank in his profession—to win the most coveted prize in golf—the British Open Cham. pionship. From being a humble assistant he be- came a fully-fledged professional, and in 1926 he went to Langley Park, near London. His troubles were now begin- ning. The Americans were dominating golf throughout the world. Year after year they came over to win the British championship. They were the fellows who knew the game and could teach him things, and so he went over to America —he could barely afford to do it—to seek out the reason for their success. He came back with new ideas and he also returned with the knowledge that a golf professional in the United States is so- cially a very different type of man from his counterpart in Great Britain. In the United States a professional stays in the most expensive hotels, pa- tronizes exclusive restaurants, is received GOLF CHAMPION By Alec Duncan by society, and in general is treated as any other successful business man. In England, it is different. Immediately a man becomes a professional he is looked upon as an uneducated being, a sort of super-caddie. Socially he is despised and rejected, It was the divorce between the social status of the British and American pro- fessional that turned this man into a re- former. He set out to champion the cause of the British golf professional. For himself he has achieved success, and in so doing he has been subjected to bitter criticism. Right up to 1933 he endured attacks in the Press, shut his ears to the opinions of the golfing public. All through his period of adversity he con- tinued to work at his game, improving year by year, advancing step by step nearer to his goal. But there is a limit to the amount of unkindness a man can stand. On the first day of January, 1933, he took up his duties as professional to the Waterloo Golf Club in Brussels. This was a further proof of his unbounded courage, because the financial posi- tion of the club when he ar- rived was embarrassing, to say the least of it. It was a risk, but he was prepared to take it. Fortune favors the brave, and at once he became an unprecedented suc- cess. In the first year after his appoint. ment the membership had been increased by 150. He was left alone to be his own master, to act and to do as he pleased. * Out in Brussels there was no one to worry him or to tell him how he should run his job. The anxiety of the past was missing, and, as a result, his health began to im. prove. He went to a doctor in Paris, who put him on a diet which, among other things, consisted of tak- ing a glass of red wine at lunch and dinner. He had been a strict teeto- taler before. He increased his strength with a rigor- ous routine of physical exercises, and he was able to practise for hours in peace and quiet. His courage and his determination never fal- tered. And now, in less than a year after his return to England, he stands the greatest golfer of all time—the outstand. ing personality in the world of golf. His name is Henry Cotton. Alec Duncan will present a dozen golf balls, each month, for a description of the craziest golf shot by an amateur. The Judge comicbooks.com