WITH a wide smile, a rate of speech faster than a Gatling gun and a profound dedication to golf, first as a player and later an administrator, Joe Carr was one of the great figures in amateur golf in the second half of this century. In the years before Michael Bonallack’s supremacy over the amateur game, Carr provided a shining example of golf at its best and most exciting. He had a sparkling personality that illuminated the somewhat barren scene of British golf as it struggled to catch up on the lost war years. The winner of three British Amateur championships, in 1953, 1958 and 1960, he was temperamentally suited to matchplay and was a permanent fixture in Great Britain and Ireland’s team for the Walker Cup match against the US from 1947 to 1963.
But he also achieved prodigious results in strokeplay that set him among the greatest of his kind. At different times he held the amateur course record at 18 different courses in the British Isles.
He was the first Irishman to compete in the Masters and he outscored both his playing partners, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, on his first two visits. When his days as a player were over, Carr became the first non-American to be presented with the Bob Jones award for sportsmanship, and the first Irish captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.
Joseph Benedict Carr was born Joseph Benedict Waters in Dublin in 1922 and adopted when he was ten days old by his mother’s sister and brother-in-law, Kathleen and James Carr, who were the steward and stewardess at Portmarnock Golf Club outside Dublin. He first came to light in Britain when he reached the semi-finals of the Boys championship in 1939. By the time of the first Walker Cup match against the United States after the war he had already begun to win everything in his native Ireland. His appearance in the 1947 match was the first of a record 11 appearances in the match, the last two as non-playing captain.
Carr went in for long runs. He won the East of Ireland and the West of Ireland events at least ten times each. When he ceased to play for Ireland in the home internationals, he had made 23 consecutive appearances for the team; his son, Roddy, also a Walker Cup player, played for Ireland the following year.
Advertisement
Of Carr’s three British Amateur titles, his first was the finest. Against an American, Harvie Ward, in the 36-hole final he sustained a lead over 27 holes, and having been brought back to all square, he prevailed against the best amateur in the world at that time.
In the best amateur tradition he showed himself inflexible when ahead, just as he was impossible to demoralise when behind. In four matches on the way to the final he came to the last hole one down, each time saving himself with a birdie. He had another valuable asset too: an opponent might hope that when Carr drove straight, which was not often, he might lapse and miss the green with his next, but if the Irishman was in the rough, his recovery was most likely to be shattering to the opponent’s morale.
Though Carr’s swing was not the eccentric thing that his countryman Jimmy Bruen’s was, purists would not call it classical. He spread his feet more than shoulder width apart, had a strong grip and a three-quarter swing. Norman von Nida, the Australian professional, described Carr’s swing thus: “He set up for a draw, hits a fade and smashes the f * * * * * * thing a country mile.”
By the mid-1950s Carr was the best- known figure in the game. With a partnership in a then flourishing clothing business, he was able to travel widely. He attracted a following, not only by his debonair, high-spirited personality, characterised by the familiar white cap with its green pom-pom, but by the exciting flavour of his matches — the risks taken, obstacles spectacularly overcome, and by palpable lapses in his putting.
His matchplay record was strong, for he was also in a losing final and in three other semi-finals: he reached the semis of the 1959 US Amateur. This has tended to overshadow his performance with card and pencil. Yet in the qualifying rounds for the 1959 Open championship, in which he finished joint second, ahead of almost the entire professional field, he knocked three strokes off the professional record for the Gullane No 1 course. His popularity that year reached its peak when Dunlops took their important Masters tournament to Ireland for the first time. Carr broke 70 in the first three rounds and led a distinguished field by four strokes going into the last round.
Advertisement
Four years later at Royal Birkdale, the English Professional Golfers Association championship was in danger of being won by an Irish amateur. On both occasions Carr was denied, taking seven at the 17th when he needed two fours to win, but the standard of scoring he achieved was sensational.
Carr’s success came from working harder at golf than almost anyone had before. He would go for a two-mile run and hit 200 balls before breakfast. Lunch was taken at Royal Dublin golf club, after which he would spend a further hour-and-a-half practising. And after returning from work in the clothing business at the gentlemanly time of mid-afternoon, he would practise his putting on a carpet before moving outside to hit some chips and bunker shots. On dark nights he turned on two 1,000-watt lights fixed to the roof of Suncroft to help him see what he was doing. Before he left to compete in the Amateur at St Andrews in 1958, Carr wore out the blades of his eight and nine irons. He had hit, he estimated, nearly 50,000 tee shots in preparation.
With the early death of his wife, Dor, he was left with four sons and a daughter in a house that had become famous for its hospitality.
Suncroft had a daily delivery of 26 milk bottles. Legend has it that John O’Leary, the Irish professional who was a Ryder Cup player in 1975, went there for a weekend and stayed for two years.
One of Carr’s last triumphs was to captain the victorious Britain and Ireland team in the 1964 World Amateur Team championship for the Eisenhower Trophy in Rome. He was ill for a time after his wife’s death, but returned to captain the Irish team and to encourage a new generation of young Irish players.
Advertisement
He survived a heart attack in 1974 and suffered from emphysema in later years, so he briefly considered declining the invitation to become captain of the R & A in 1991. His family cajoled and counselled him to accept, however, and he did, first taking the precaution of having advice from a communications expert, who concluded that he spoke far too fast and gave him a metronome to help him speak more slowly.
His first official engagement was at the annual dinner of the Lancashire Union of Golf Clubs on October 18, 1991, and towards the end of a speech that was delivered at an unusually slow pace, Carr said: “Golf changed my life, introducing me to a world that I might otherwise not have entered. It is a bit like having a second passport: the official one gets you into different countries but for me, the golf passport gets you through a door marked friendship, camaraderie and enjoyment. Through all the success I’ve been fortunate to have in the game, I don’t think I’ve received anything to compare with the telegrams and letters of congratulations I’ve received since becoming captain of the R & A.”
Joe Carr, golfer, was born on February 18, 1922. He died on June 3, 2004, aged 82.