Hong Kong Open History
1959 and All That
Elsewhere in the world, Charles de Gaulle was inaugurated as President of France’s Fifth Republic, Alaska was admitted as the 49th U.S state and Barbie Dolls hit toy shop shelves for the very first time. But here in Hong Kong, on a fine February afternoon at The Hong Kong Golf Club, significant sporting history was made. Lu Liang-huan, a young professional golfer from Taiwan, won the first edition of the Hong Kong Open, defeating a strong Australian contingent over four rounds. To learn more about that inaugural event HK Golfer caught up with four gentlemen who have made a bit of golfing history themselves. Jock Mackie and Alan Sutcliffe not only played in the 1959 Hong Kong Open, they helped organize and run the event too, while former Hong Kong Golf Association President Willie Woo and Bertie To were among the first local Chinese golfers to represent the Hong Kong Golf Club and the Hong Kong international amateur team respectively. PHOTOGRAPHY BY PATRICK LEUNG
On how the Hong Kong Open came into existence… AS: Eric Cremin [noted Australian pro] was the main instigator. Kim Hall, a member of the club and a very fine player, used to travel down to the Philippine Open where a lot of the Australian pros would play. Back then, the Philippines was the most prominent golfing nation in Asia—and the Philippine Open was a big event. Anyway, in 1958, Cremin said to Hall, ‘why not get some money together and I’ll get the boys to come up [to Hong Kong]. It doesn’t have to be great money but I’ll make sure we turn up.’ So Kim came back and told us about it. ‘We’ve got to do it,’ he said. Kim approached the Secretary of the South China Morning Post, a chap called Peter Plumley who he knew well, and he ended up talking the managing director into sponsoring the event.
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No one hit wonder: Lu Liang-huan would capture the 1959 and 1974 HKO Open titles 26
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JM: We started organizing the event about six months before it was due to start. We all sat down together—the golf community back then was so small and we all knew each other so well. It was very much a case of, “I’ll phone someone, you phone someone else,”…we did all these various things and eventually put together a bloody good tournament. One that’s lasted fifty years.
On arrangements during the week… AS: There were only twenty-four players in the Open and it was rather hastily put together. We were very much beginners in the organizational field and it started off very low key. I remember
On what it was like playing with the pros in the early years… JM: Quite honestly, in those days professional gol f had n’t reached t he power a nd professionalism it has now. The fact that pros and amateurs were playing together was really no big deal. We were treated virtually equally. We were all golfers. That was it. We were all there to try and get round in the least number of shots. I had a 70 in the first round and was only one off the pace. Then I had a 77 in the second round. They moved the holes—that was the difference.
for an exhibition match. I think that really set the pace. That sparked the interest in seeing more professional golf in Hong Kong.
On where the tournament will be decided…
On the golf course…
AS: The class of the field today means it’s always going to be tight at the end. It’s a hard finish—the sixteenth isn’t a pushover, seventeen…and of course the eighteenth, which has decided the outcome many times. The eighteenth is very demanding, especially that front right pin position they have on the final day. If you have a couple of strokes to spare you can just aim for the fat of the green and get away with a three putt. But if you need a par to win it’s a huge challenge.
AS: Conditions were pretty rudimentary back then. The courses were pretty basic. We played the Old Course and the New Course in the early days, two rounds over each. They were quite a bit shorter in those days, but remember that 250-260 yard drives were considered very long—only the top pros could do that. The fairways and the greens were made of cabbage grass, which weren’t good surfaces…nothing like today. WW: In the early years it was difficult because the tournament was always played around Ching Ming or Chinese New Year when the weather was unpredictable. But the schedule was determined by the Philippine event and others in Japan. We were always arguing with them to switch the dates. We had to get better weather. BT: The tournament was moved to the end of the year much later when the Asia Pacific Golf Confederation came in to run the Far East circuit. I was Secretary General of the APGC at the time and the move in dates really helped Hong Kong.
the press tent was not a tent but the quiet room in what is now the spike bar at the club. The press asked us for the hole-by-hole scores of each of the players. It hadn’t even occurred to me that they’d need that kind of information. We were very much on a learning curve. JM: I can’t remember what we did for marshals but they were almost certainly from the military, although none of them had experience of crowd control. The crowds were not big—maybe 1,000. AS: Many of the professionals stayed at the members put people up. There weren’t any hotels around at that time. WW: When the American pros came out later, many of them had to borrow money so they could travel and pay for hotels. They would repay their loans with the prize money they made from the tournament.
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History makers (clockwise from bottom): Alan Sutcliffe and Jock Mackie finished that first HKO in fourteenth and seventeenth place respectively; Bertie To and Willie Woo recalling the early years.
W W: The eighteenth last year—K.J. Choi chipping into the bunker, Jimenez three-putting. Even the best players make mistakes there. BT: The pros find it very hard to play on Fanling grass. The rough is a mixture of cow grass and Bermuda, which is why you see so many fluffed chips around the eighteenth green. They’re not used to it. It’s the same with the greens. They’re much different than what they’re used to. They under-read them, over-read them… AS: I’d go along with that. Many read too much into which way the nap is going. In actual fact, at the time of the Open when the grass is cut low there isn’t much grain on them at all. That’s where the Open will be decided.
AS: You didn’t feel inferior [to the pros]. They were playing everyday and we only played on the weekends, but I didn’t stand on the tee and feel really intimidated. We knew they were great players—Kel Nagle, who would go on to win the Centenary Open Championship in 1960 at St Andrews, and of course there was [Peter] Thomson the next year. Bruce Crampton, Brian Huggett, who was the club pro at Fanling at the time, Frank Phillips and the winner Lu Lianghuan—all tremendous players. But we were all just golfers.
On the atmosphere… AS: It was very well supported. At that time there weren’t more than six or seven hundred members of the Club, so people weren’t used to coming out and following golf. But the year before, after playing in the 1958 Canada Cup [now World Cup] in Japan, Christy ‘O Connor and Dai Rees and a couple of others came over WWW.HKGA.COM
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