The Boer War hero who was England’s first Open champion

When Johnny Ball returned from the Boer War with a scar on his cheek after being shot while rescuing a friend trapped under a fallen horse in the middle of battle, his hometown of Hoylake surrendered in large numbers to salute their hero.

“Tell your publisher I can’t find anything that will interest readers,” he told a reporter after breaking the Scottish monopoly. It was absurd, but it was Johnny Ball. A humble champion who avoided the cheers. Search the archives for quotes and you’ll fall painfully short. He played golf, he won tournaments, he farmed. What he did very little of was talk.

The great golf writer Bernard Darwin wrote of him: “I have derived greater aesthetic and emotional pleasure from watching Mr Ball than from any other spectacle in any game.”

You may hear a lot about Ball in the coming week when The Open returns to a place that he, more than anyone, helped put on the golf map. No player in history has won as many major amateur tournaments as Ball, and no one except Bobby Jones has ever won a British Amateur and an Open in the same year. His legacy is everywhere.

At first, his father’s hotel also served as the Royal Liverpool clubhouse. Perched on a pitch which is now part of the course itself, young Johnny had a perfect vision of the club’s evolution. He was there when old Tom Morris and young Tom Morris visited him for an exhibition. He learned from Jack Morris, Old Tom’s nephew and Hoylake’s first professional. He was addicted to gaming as a child.

With a graceful swing and a calm mind, he went from a handicap of 36 to zero in two years. He participated in his first Open at the age of 16. In 1888 he won his first amateur championship title at Prestwick. In 1890 he took his second home to Hoylake.

It was a time full of history – 1890. He went to Prestwick to play in the Open against the great Scottish hitters – Willie Fernie, the 1882 champion, David Brown who won in 1886, Willie Park Jr who won in 1887 and 1889. In the three-decade history of the Open, only 14 players had won and all of them were Scottish. The closest he came to breaking that run was when Ball himself finished fifth as a teenager. Since then? Horace Hutchison of London finished 10th in 1887. Other than that it was a sea of ​​saltires.

There was a formidable field in 1890 and Ball beat them all. He was a sensation, an amateur history-maker who routed the pros, but he was deeply uncomfortable with his new reputation as a Scots-killer. He was the pioneer, the precursor of his compatriots Harry Vardon and JH Taylor who illuminated golf in his wake.

For English golf, it all started with Ball. He won his third British amateur match at Royal St George’s in 1892 and won two more in 1894 and 1899, two close matches, two tests of his mettle, the sort of thing he loved more than anything. People said such success was impossible, but he did it.

He loved proving people wrong. On a dense, foggy day at the Wirral, someone at the club said it was impossible to play golf in such conditions. Ball begged to differ. He said that not only would he complete the championship course without losing a ball (which was painted black), but he would do so in less than 90 shots in less than two and a quarter hours. And he did it comfortably.

It wasn’t bravado, it was just meeting a test. The mental aspect of the game has always been what fascinated him. When he opened his mouth to talk about golf, it was most often to criticize the introduction of the new equipment of the time, the era of the niblick, the equivalent of today’s 8 or 9 iron.

Ball always thought he didn’t need one and never wore one. He felt that any player worth his salt should be able to adjust his grip on the weapons he had to play any shot he needed. He was a traditionalist with imagination and talent.

And unpredictability too. He lived a good life in Hoylake at the turn of the century. Revered in the golf world, working honestly on the farm, away from the golf course – everything he ever wanted. To the surprise of all those close to him, he volunteered for the Boer War in 1889. He was 38 when he became a soldier in the Denbighshire Yeomanry, tending his golf course for three years.

His bravery should have been rewarded, but he was not interested in receiving honors when so many men around him were dead. Instead, when the time came, he returned home, took up golf again and won a sixth British Amateur at St Andrews and a seventh at Hoylake. He was then 45 years old. He was 50 when he scored his eighth victory at Westwood Ho! in Devon

It was 1912. While returning from Devon by train, Ball suspected that a crowd was forming at Hoylake station to welcome him home. So he stopped early, walked down the beach and slipped into the family hotel without a word. soul noticing it.

When people asked him where his quiet personality and aversion to attention came from, a story was told about his father, John Snr.

He was playing at Hoylake with three friends when he announced halfway through that he needed a short break to show off at a wedding. Her playing partners asked whose wedding it was, “mine,” was the response. After service was over, Ball returned to the 10th tee to finish his round, then joined his wife at the Royal Hotel.

Hoylake has seen many stories. In 1897, Harold Hilton won as an amateur and remains the only Englishman to win the Open on his home course. In 1907, Arnaud Massy won while his wife had a little girl who was given the middle name of Hoylake. In 1913, JH Taylor won his fifth and final Open.

The place will forever be linked to Bobby Jones and his 1930 Grand Slam and to Peter Thomson for winning three Opens in a row in 1956. Tiger Woods won there in a heatwave, Rory McIlory won there the last time.

Epic leads, but Ball tops them. Boer War veteran, reluctant talker, golf champion, one of the greatest amateur players of them all. Immortal.