Bobby Locke’s four major titles all came at the Open Championship
Warning: This article includes reference to alcoholism, domestic violence and suicide.
When Bobby Locke coined his immortal phrase ‘drive for show, putt for dough’, it was just another flag the great South African planted in the story of golf.
For 20 years, Locke was never beaten over 72 holes in his native land. How good was he? When he went to the United States and competed against the Ben Hogans and the Sam Sneads he won six times in 1947 and another four times in 1948 and 1949.
He finished in the top four in 34 of 59 tournaments until a trumped-up charge was brought against him by the Tour and he was banned.
Claude Harmon, father of Tiger Woods’ former coach Butch and Masters champion in 1948, put it succinctly: “Locke was simply too good. They had to ban him.”
They reinstated him in 1951, but his unique look – baggy plus-fours, white silk shirts and a necktie – wasn’t seen so much in the US after that. There was really no need. He won in South Africa, England, Scotland, France, Mexico, Egypt. Germany, Switzerland and Australia. He wasn’t in thrall to the States. He was a world player.
When he came to his spiritual home of the British links, he won four Open Championships in nine years, the first at Sandwich – the name he later picked for the apartment complex he owned in Johannesburg – then at Troon in 1950 in what was then a record low score in the four-round format.
That same year, 1950, was when hapless Herman Tissies, the German amateur, got licked by the Postage Stamp, taking 15 shots to complete the devilish par-three.
‘He wore out his hats tipping them’
Bobby Locke waves to the crowd while holding the Open trophy
Bobby Locke with the Open trophy in 1952, after winning it for the third time in four years at Lytham St Annes
Locke was the first man to go back-to-back in The Open since Walter Hagen won his third and fourth titles in the late 1920s. Hogan was asked about Locke’s ability with the short stick. “Everyone examines greens, but only he knows what he’s looking for,” said the champion golfer of 1953.
“He was the greatest putter I have ever seen,” said seven-time major winner Snead. “He’d hit a 20-footer, and before the ball got halfway, he’d be tipping his hat to the crowd. He wore out his hats tipping them.”
“One six-foot putt for my life?” pondered fellow South African great Gary Player. “I’ll take Bobby Locke. I’ve seen them all and there has never been a putter like him.”
Old Mutton Face, they called him. Or Droopy Chops. Or Vinegar Puss. The monikers were a touch unkind. Locke had a lighter side, a smiling and charismatic presence when the stars were aligned, but there was a grumpy side, too. He didn’t like fans who took pictures of him and he knew his own worth. If a journalist wanted an interview that included any golf tips he’d charge $100. Pay up or shut up.
He was lethal but not exactly quick. He went at his own pace in tournaments and some of his peers didn’t like him for it and liked him less when he ambled away with the winners’ loot. He sparked resentment, mostly because of his excellence.
When writing about Bobby Locke, you soon figure out there were different versions of the same man. He was a fighter pilot in the South African Air Force during World War Two, apparently flying 100 combat missions in the Mediterranean and Western Desert.
Champion golfer, war hero and miracle man. In 1960, seven years after he won his third Claret Jug at Lytham and three years after he won his fourth at St Andrews, Locke’s wife, Mary, gave birth to a baby girl, Carolyn.
On his way to see the new arrival, the car Locke was travelling in stopped at a level crossing to let a train go by, then pulled out, not knowing that there was another coming in the opposite direction.
The vehicle flew 30 yards through the air and down a bank. Locke went through the back window. For two days he lay unconscious in the same hospital as his wife and daughter. It took a month before he could open his left eye. He had double vision, migraines, memory loss and severe pain in both legs.
Medication and mood swings became part of his daily existence. So did alcohol. He didn’t lose his life on that railway track, but Locke the golfer certainly died that day and an altogether different person replaced him. He was 43 years old.
‘He wasn’t rational any more’
Bobby Locke being interviewed by Max Robertson on BBC Sporstsview in 1957
Darkness enveloped him. In 1969 he was arrested for drink-driving. Then there was the incident with painter Big Boy Ndlovu, whose work on Locke’s apartment block was deemed below par. Big Boy asked for 220 rand for his services, but Locke refused to pay. Words were exchanged, Locke pulled a gun and shot Big Boy in the shoulder.
He was done for attempted murder, paid a fine of 120 rand and had his gun licence suspended for six months.
In a Sports Illustrated piece from 2001 a friend of the family spoke about Locke’s new-found casual cruelty towards his wife, Mary, and, worse again, the physical abuse he visited upon her. “He couldn’t think straight,” said the source. “He wasn’t rational any more.”
In early March 1987, Locke, 69, was admitted to a nursing home in Johannesburg. He was diagnosed with meningitis, fell into a coma and died the following day. The tributes were effusive. Most focused on the storied first half of his life rather than his tragic second act.
Mary and daughter, Carolyn, remained loving to the end, which came in 2000 in the home that was once Sandwich but which they’d renamed Bobby Locke Place.
In a final twist to a horrific story, Mary, 80, and Carolyn, 40, planned a grisly end – a suicide pact. Having grown fearful for their own safety in a once salubrious area that was now rife with crime, they became reclusive, amended their wills, arranged for their dog to be put down and for his ashes to spread on their grave.
They were discovered dead in bed, holding hands after drinking champagne to wash down tablets they’d been gathering for months. “I just want to be with Bobby again,” Mary had said to her neighbours for some time. None of them could have known that it would end this way.
Locke is remembered not for the husk of a man he became after his near fatal accident or for the horrible fate of his nearest and dearest, but for his greatness on the golf course. His victory in 1950 will get a mention or two this week. The other stuff? Not so much.
