Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

C E Kyte
Tunbridge Wells/Brussels
Sometime between 1906 and 1913 C E Kyte went to the Royal Belgian course at Ravenstein in Brussels to be assistant to George Pannell . At the start of the First World War, Pannell enlisted. According to a press report of the time, originating in Golfing magazine, Kyte ‘was removed suddenly a month after the Germans had invaded the Belgian capital. He had been carrying on “business as usual” during the enemy’s occupation of the city’. Following his arrest he was interned at Ruhleben in Berlin and features in the professional golf tournament there described in the camp magazine of the time.

Brand Whitlock, the United States Minister to Belgium, in Volume I of his recollections, described the Royal Belgium course in 1915, ‘A few friends and I even ventured out to Ravenstein for a round of golf; true, the course had not been kept up; the two English professionals were gone " Pannell in the British army and Kyte a prisoner at Ruhleben; the members were scattered, the grass was long, and few had the heart to play any more. But the old chateau was a peaceful place of an afternoon; the larks were soaring and singing again’. By the second volume he had become something of a protector for the course, complaining to the political department of the German army after its soldiers had used the bunkers as practice trenches and driven mules over the putting greens. Only after his third attempt, when he compared their actions to that of the suffragettes on British courses did he embarrass them into desisting.

If Jackson has just muddled George and C E Kyte, then it appears C E Kyte returned to the Royal Belgian club after the war remaining as a professional with Pannell, or as his assistant. until 1927.

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