Turnberry before it was trumped

Posting this in November 2016 shortly after the USA Presidential Election.

My father loved his golf. He wasn't a fanatic but he simply enjoyed a few hours of friendly walking, talking and a bit of good sportman's banter.

I don't know when or where he started the sport. He was born in 1913 in Norfolk in to a farming family. While they were reasonably well off and had a tennis court in the garden, I don't ever remember seeing or hearing of any such activity. Immediately after his WWII service he went to Trinidad and perhaps that's where the colonial past time flowered. In the 50's he actually designed and built a golf course for his company - the Trinidad Petroleum Development Ltd , a few years later taken over by BP. I will post some photos of that one day.

In the late 60's he had to bulldoze the course and build and run  a model cooperative dairy farm on it, a measure to lessen the impact of BP selling up and the unemployment problems for the local workers.

He was the last BP employee to leave the island in 1969/70, but he came under severe "pressure" to join a consortium to build and run a golf, yacht and hotel complex on the adjoining island of Tobago. Being a very conservative type, he opted for the security of his BP pension and returned to the UK to continue to complete his working days. Ex-pat employees retired at 60, so he only had to do a few more - a bit of pen pushing in Britannic House in London, a year in Greece and two years in Turkey.

My mother didn't share his hobby and being the gentleman he was, he didn't take up the sport in the UK. However my mother was to contract cancer and die within a few years of his retirement. He suffered very badly from this and I suspected his days were numbered.

However a whole series of unlikely events lead him to remarrying and thank goodness to someone who also loved golf and his other past time - bridge. He bloomed again.

One of the things he liked to do was try out courses on his travels, particularly with good farming friends from Norfolk who were of Scottish descent and for many years the four of them would go up there for a week.

Almost all golfers will know the above scene showing my father teeing off from the Turnberry Golf Course's Ailsa courses 9th tee. A par 3 hole requiring good nerves to get over the inlet.

I have otherwise never seen my father in such golfing wear. While not a crazy traditionalist, he had certain standards. I wonder what he would think of the renaming of the golf resort in 2014?