Chris Banwell
Maybe I was born with a collecting gene. At school I collected stamps, coins and, later, autographs. During my National Service in Germany I even started a collection of beer mats! My early involvement with golf was sporadic with the occasional game on Mitcham Common in London over fifty years ago. Rugby and cricket were my consuming passions. After a few years of marriage, when I became an ageing thirty year- old, I joined Royal Cromer Golf Club in Norfolk, then Sundridge Park in London, and finally Northumberland in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, before moving to the United States and Atlanta in 1984.
The ‘terminal disease’ of collecting showed no sign of taking over until a new neighbor, Robert Boyd, showed me his golf book collection in 1987. The following year, as a member of the Atlanta chapter of the Golf Collectors’ Society, he persuaded Wayne Aaron, a serious collector, to come and give a presentation on golf collecting at the club where we were members, Horseshoe Bend. I was hooked and the disease started to spread. I leapt at the chance to join The Golf Collectors’ Society and, to ensure that I was exposed to the disease on a continual basis, I then joined the British GCS. This way, I was permanently exposed to people with a similar affliction, whichever country I was in.
Initially, I concentrated on hall-marked silver spoons from the early nineteen hundreds, which were awarded as monthly medal prizes in England and many of the old colonies. Now, some 700 spoons later, it forms my major collection. The designs of the spoons are extremely varied, many including the club name or initials. Others include golf clubs and/or balls; and many made in the early twentieth century either include golfers in colored enamel or golfers in plus twos imprinted in the bowl of the spoon. More unusual designs include golfing angels, snakes, the devil and one in the collection has a miniature gutty ball included.
Quite a few spoons are in sets of six, not all won in a single event! The oldest spoon in the collection is one from St. Mungo G.C., Scotland, won in 1899. Very few were produced in the United States, but I do have a spoon from Holly Inn, Pinehurst and also a beautifully dressed lady golfer from the 1920’s. Perhaps the most unique American spoons are a modern set of 18 from Augusta, one for each hole with the name and a picture of the flower by which the hole is known, e.g. #1 Tea Olive.
While the vast majority of spoons are English or Scottish, there were very few from Ireland or Wales, the collection has spoons from sixteen countries with forty-five having an association with a ‘Royal’ Club.
Later in an attempt to contain the spread of this highly contagious germ I decided to collect golf memorabilia connected with ‘Royal’ Clubs throughout the UK and the early colonies. After all, as there are fewer than eighty clubs worldwide, there couldn’t be that much available …….could there? Wrong again! Once I had tracked down, in addition to spoons, logo balls, scorecards, ball markers, stroke savers, handbooks and selected items of artwork and silverware, it was only logical to obtain copies of their club histories. That, of course, ensured that the disease spread to other limbs, because how could any collector worth his salt not expand to other club histories and from there, into the early books on golf and all the great writers like Bernard Darwin, Horace Hutchinson, et al.
After retirement, ten years after starting the collection, we moved to Florida and downsized, which necessitated the construction of a large bookcase! To avoid the possibility of divorce, I decided to concentrate on smaller items, including postcards of golf courses from the early part of the twentieth century and medals. After all, a hundred medals take no room at all! However, in an attempt to prevent further outbreaks of this disease and to reduce the chance of a divorce, I steadfastly resisted collecting clubs (OK, I do have just a few!) and old balls requiring a controlled air-conditioned environment.
I was allowed to keep a few hundred new logo balls, together with bag tags, in the garage. Under the guise of ‘art’ I have kept glassware with club logos, cigarette cards and hatpins. ‘Risque’ items, including early Playboy artwork and calendars featuring well known LPGA professionals, scantily dressed, have been placed in dark closets! Golf event tickets and programs are stuffed in out-of-the-way drawers and I am optimistic that the disease is under partial control.
I have to admit, however, that other side effects relating to golf collections have recently had a serious impact on my health. For example, while touring Australia with my wife last year, I manfully restricted play to one round, but managed to drive my wife crazy with detours to 17 clubs searching for memorabilia. Is it the ‘hunting’ that is addictive for collectors?
On another occasion in Vinas del Mar in Chile, my day was made when I bought the last copy of a local Club’s Centenary edition. The fact that I cannot understand a word of its Spanish content is totally immaterial! In Hong Kong, I insisted on scouring the caddy shop for one of the last scorecards printed with the name ‘Royal Hong Kong’ before the Chinese took over the city. Clearly there is no cure!
More importantly, I have been lucky enough to meet and form lifelong friendships with some of the most wonderful people imaginable. I am unable to think of another sport that creates such memories, such history and such lasting friendships. As I play down the eighteenth hole, I am happy to record that only a few of my golfing friends suffer from this ‘terminal disease’ of collecting and most are happy enough just to play this wonderful game - having no desire to acquire permanent mementoes related to this weird and wonderful method of spoiling ‘a good walk’. But, for the rest of us who do suffer, take comfort from Bernard Darwin’s comment on his beloved course, Aberdovey, in Wales, “I am a hopeless and shameful sentimentalist and I glory in my shame”. So do I glory in my ‘shameful’ addiction to collecting golf memorabilia.
Chris Banwell
