Places

nspired by the display in the China Golf Museum in Shenzhen and the hospitality of my genial host, Dr Wayne Xing, I was keen to find out more about the Ferriers, a well-known name in Carnoustie, and their connection with golf in China.

Dr Wayne Xing and Emily, China Golf Museum

One of the oldest competitions in the Carnoustie clubs is for the Ferrier Medal. This was presented by Mrs Helen Ferrier (née Paton) in 1877.

Two of her sons, James and Tom were fine golfers. James was born on 7 August 1846, like his older siblings, in St Vigeans, on the outskirts of Arbroath. By the time of the 1851 census the family had moved to Carnoustie and his parents, Thomas, a stonemason, and Helen, ran the Ferrier Inn which served as the clubhouse for the Carnoustie Golf Club until the club built its own in 1898. A month after that census, in May 1851, Thomas died but his wife continued to run the inn. James was secretary of the club in 1868. He created a course record in winning the Kinloch Medal in 1870, triumphed in the Subscription Medal the same year and tied for first in the inaugural competition for the Stevenson Cup.

He served an engineering apprenticeship in Dundee and, sometime in the 1860s, joined the China Steam Navigation Company as a marine engineer. He rose to become Commodore Engineer of that company. More germane to this story is that he took his golf clubs with him.

Newspaper articles in the 1890s call him the ‘Tom Morris of Chinese golf’ and he is elsewhere described as ‘the father of Chinese golf’.

‘Mr Ferrier together with a few other canny Scots, had one or two holes made on an open piece of ground in Hankow, and here at various intervals they enjoyed as circumstances would permit, their favourite pastime. It was not until 1878 that the Hankow club was formed, Mr Ferrier being one of the founders.’

‘For some years past Mr Ferrier has been resident in Shanghai and five years ago [1894] he took a prominent part in establishing the golf club here.’

Ferrier ‘was the foremost golfer in all matches and tournaments’, ‘the “crack” of the Shanghai club’ and, in 1899, when the photograph below of the opening of the Shanghai clubhouse was taken, he was referred to as ‘the veteran’ but still held the course record of 79. He was still good enough to win ‘a handsome silver trophy’ for the mixed foursomes in December 1897 with Mrs Captain John Dewar, another Carnoustian, whose husband, by then part of the old guard of the club, James’s son was to beat in the 1922 Ferrier Cup final.

Opening of the Shanghai Golf Club clubhouse, 1899

Two of his sons were back in Angus at this time, serving apprenticeships with Shanks, the lawnmower manufacturers in Arbroath, and learning their golf on Carnoustie links.

James retired from the China Steam Navigation Company in 1901 and returned to Carnoustie. Having already lost his wife and a daughter to illness in Shanghai, his maritime career finished with his being shipwrecked when the P&O liner Sobraon struck Tung Ying island in thick fog on 24 April 1901. There were no casualties but James Ferrier lost all the goods he carried with him. He settled at Retreat Cottage, Links Parade, Carnoustie, with a daughter and his youngest son. A popular figure in the burgh he was awarded the gold medal of the Carnoustie club which accompanied life membership. He was not to enjoy it long, dying on 5 April 1903 having been weakened by a serious bout of influenza a few months previously.

Returning to Shanghai, John Bennett Ferrier, born in Shanghai ca 1888, carried on the family’s golfing traditions, first winning the Shanghai championship (surprise, surprise, the Ferrier Cup) in 1909. He won it again in 1911 and went on to win it another four times either side of his first sojourn to Australia.

J B Ferrier, winner of the Ferrier Cup in 1909

There were more trophies to compete for in Shanghai by then. In addition to the Ferrier Cup, there was the Captain’s Cup and, in 1916 (I don’t know if this was a one-off competition), the Shanghai Ladies’ Golf Club presented a silver cup for an eclectic competition with 440 entrants whose entrance fees raised money ($200) for a wartime bandage fund. In 1910, the Shanghai club presented a cup to be known as the Shanghai Golf Cup to be competed for annually between clubs in China, Hong Kong and Japan, the inaugural match to be held in Shanghai that April. In medal play over 36 holes, teams of no more than five men would play, the top three scores counting, the team recording the lowest aggregate score to be declared the winner with another 18 holes for a play-off if necessary. For the first couple of years it was Shanghai v Hong Kong then the Shanghai Junior Club also competed in 1912. Although J B Ferrier had been captain of the Junior Club in 1911, he played for the triumphant senior team in 1912, his brother Fred the lowest scorer for the Junior Club. The competition was to be joined by the Tientsin club in 1914.

J B Ferrier married an Australian, Louisa Elliott, and left with her for her homeland in June 1913 where their son James Bennett Elliott Ferrier was born on 24 February 1915. John Bennett Ferrier continued his amateur golfing career in Australia, winning the championship of Manly, his home club in Sydney. Young John started his golf at Manly aged 4½ but the family returned to Shanghai.

Working as an employee of British American Tobacco, John again won the Shanghai championship in 1922 defeating Captain J Dewar, another former Carnoustie member in the final, with only one of the last eight holes being halved, the rest won by Ferrier in one stroke less than his opponent. ‘It is apparently considered that Ferrier is in a class by himself amongst amateurs in the Far East’, claimed an Australian newspaper. This was backed up by his performance in winning the Championship of the East in 1924, a 72-hole medal competition, held in China for the first time that December.

In 1926 he was offered the post of secretary at the Manly club in Sydney and the family returned to Australia, the golfing torch to be picked up by young Jim.

Jim did not have the ideal physical preparation for golf as a child. He broke an instep in a paperchase with the Boy Scouts and injured a knee playing football for Sydney Grammar School requiring the removal of a cartilage. These resulted in him having a noticeable limp for the rest of his life. Tennis, rowing and swimming, all sports he wanted to pursue, were ruled out for him at the competitive level because of his bad knee. Only golf was left but problems straightening his leg caused him to have a most ungainly swing.

Nevertheless, he was a scratch player in his teens and won the Manly championship aged 15. Walter Hagen visited Australia in 1930 and was greatly taken with the prodigy, spending hours helping him with his swing. The results were dramatic. Ferrier won the New South Wales Amateur Championship in 1931 (and then again in 1934, 1937 and 1938). He was runner up in the Australia Open in 1931 also, aged 16, and again in 1933 and 1935 then won it, still an amateur in 1938 and 1939. During the same period he won four Australian amateur titles.

Aged 21, and away from home for the first time, he came to St Andrews to play in the British Amateur Championship. The journey in those days was probably more arduous than the competition and he was terribly homesick, his father always previously having travelled with him to competitions. He got to the final, losing by two holes to Hector Thomson, the great Scottish amateur from Machrihanish. There was compensation in that he won the Silver Tassie at Gleneagles on the same trip and the Golf Illustrated Gold Vase at Ashridge.

He ventured abroad again in 1940, the British Amateur suspended due to war, he wanted to play in the US Amateur and, after marrying Norma Jennings, incorporated it into their honeymoon plans. A rather complicated situation arose. He had written a manual, How to Play Golf, for which he was entitled to earn royalties. This, said the USGA, infringed his amateur status and refused him entry to the national competition. Other authorities took a different view and he was able to enter, and win, the Chicago District Amateur Championship. He was also invited to play in the Masters which he did.

The knockback only made him more determined. He decided to stay on in the United States and turn professional. Statistically, he was the second most consistent tour professional ever, finishing in the top 25 of US tour events on 202 occasions. He finished in the top ten of the Masters six times, second in 1950 and tied third in 1952. A Major winner, he triumphed in the USPGA in 1947.

Jim Ferrier, ca. 1947

And what of Shanghai? A lowpoint was the destruction of the clubhouse (shown below) after the capture of the International Settlement by the Japanese in March 1932.

Remains of Shanghai clubhouse after Japanese attacks

A happier occasion was a few years later in 1935 with the staging of the first All-Chinese golf tournament in Shanghai for a trophy awarded by the Minister of Finance. It was won by J M Tan, a 49 year old player, who took up golf in England at the age of 15. According to Reuters, it was largely through his efforts that the Shanghai Chinese Golf Association, the first of its kind in China, came into existence.

The 1933 map shows the location of the Shanghai club, occupying a small part of the racecourse ground. After the communist takeover in 1949 the racecourse was no longer allowed to operate and first the properties and then the land was taken over by the government. The sports clubs were swept away and the area was formed into People’s Park and People’s Square.

A US Army map of Shanghai in 1933 with the location of the golf club arrowed

Carnoustie has not forgotten its links with Shanghai. One of the first competitions at the club each year is the Shanghai Cup, Scotch foursomes (i.e. 2 ball foursomes) first competed for in 1921. St Andrews also has its Shanghai Cup through the former pupil club of Madras College, the trophy first being awarded to David Rusack of the golfing hotel family ca 1912.