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Another amusing story
tells of a critical female caddie who carried Harry Vardon’s bag in
the French Open about twenty-five years earlier. His second shot at one hole put the ball close to the
pin and Vardon turned to his caddie and said: “A good one”. He was
not amused when she replied, “Damn fluke”, but saw the joke when he realised that these were the only English words she knew. She had
obviously been well tutored by some of his fellow competitors,
probably his brother Tom, who spoke French and the great old time
Scottish pro and inveterate practical joker - ‘Andra’ Kirkaldy.
In the first round I played with a very excitable little Frenchman.
He couldn’t speak any English but that did not stop him jabbering
away in French for most of the round. He was a dreadful player and
got worse as the round progressed. Periodically he would wander away
to the other side of the fairway and rummage in his bag and after a
while I became curious and followed to see what he was doing.
Believe it or not he was taking swigs from a bottle of wine and, as
the bottle got lower, his temperature got higher and so did his
scores. Then the clubs started to fly. He eventually finished the
round with half his clubs littered around the course, the bottle
empty and “No return” against his name on the scoreboard. Was I glad
to see the back of him! I was happy with my 70 in the circumstances,
which was good enough for the joint lead.
 [Bert’s tee shot at the short 3rd buried in the soft putting surface
and he had to take a niblick to extract the ball from its plugged
lie on the green]. A fresh draw was made for the second round and I
had a better playing partner. I posted a 69 to stay joint leader
with the holder, Arthur Lacey, and Auguste Boyer of Nice. I shot 71
and was clear in the lead on 210, with the two best players in
France, Boyer and Marcel Dallemagne (St Germain), joint second on
213. My last round contained some anxious moments. A Visit to the
woods on one hole could have run up a 7 or 8, but I extricated
myself and found the green with my fourth shot, then holed a ‘tram
ride’ putt to escape with a five. Later in the round I took five at
a short hole, after finding two bunkers. My playing partner and
nearest challenger, Boyer, holed from about ten yards for a two and
picked up three shots.
When I came to the last hole I had restored a three-shot cushion and
victory was mine – barring complete disaster, but the 18th invited
disaster. It was nearly 500 yards in length, with a ravine across
the fairway about 40-50 yards short of the green, which in those
days was filled with gorse, bracken and all kinds of trouble. I took
the brassie (2-wood) and found the middle of the green for a
comfortable birdie four. I walked off the green virtually certain to
be French Open champion, but instead of congratulations I received a
severe telling off from the old hand - George Duncan, winner of the
first French Open to be played on the Chantilly course in 1913, [in
which George Gadd had played]. He told me that I had taken a stupid
risk by going for the green and could have thrown the championship
away if I had “nobbed” my brassie into the ravine. He was right of
course, but I was so keyed up I never even thought of playing safe
and like a certain Frenchman in our Open at Carnoustie 66 years
later, I went for it! Fortunately, unlike Van de Velde, I pulled it
off. My 73 for a total of 283 gave me a three-shot victory over the
French pair and, at the age of twenty-four, I was French Open
Champion. I received the trophy without understanding a word of the
presentation speech. It was a magnificent work of art standing two
feet high, but when I was told that it would cost me £30 in import
duty to bring it back to England, I decided to leave it where it
was. The prize money was Ff. 9000 (app £92); seventy years later
when another Englishman, Philip Golding, won the 2003 championship,
he received his prize in Euros - worth over £290,000.
C’ést la vie!
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