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Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland
Clubmakers
John Haskins
Hoylake
John Haskins Joseph John Haskins, who always went by the name John, was the second son of Arthur Haskins and wife Mary, née Heley. He was born in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, in 1880 but the family moved north to Hoylake within a couple of years.

As a result of a tree-climbing accident when he was 11, John lost an arm. This did not reduce his interest in golf. The Royal Liverpool Golf Club organised a competition for the villagers of Hoylake, played over a month in 1899, with more than a hundred entrants. John was the champion, winning the final 6 & 5. He was good enough to play in the Trafford Park tournament of 1902, essentially the Manchester Open, which attracted all the top professionals and amateurs.

In 1903 he married Annie Lyons and sometime around then must have taken over the running of the clubmaking business from his father, leaving Arthur to concentrate on his barber’s shop operated from the same building in Market Street. From Haskins, the name of the business became J Haskins and Sons and expanded to sell all manner of sports goods and toys. In addition to clubs and balls made, John would resell balls brought in by caddies and others which they had found around the Hoylake course. He was fined £5 (or the option of a month in jail) in October 1910 for selling an initialled ball which someone had brought in as lost when it had, in fact, been in play at the time, a rather harsh penalty (and it wasn’t the judge’s ball).

He accepted a challenge from John Scott of Silloth in 1909 who offered a wager of £20 a side to any other one-armed golfer to play against him over 36 holes home and away. He lost that one but issued his own challenge and won the next contest against N Bycock of Buxton. A William Dickinson of Illinois challenged him to a game for the ‘one-armed golf championship of the world’ but this does not seem to have materialised. He and Scott were both beaten by the one-armed French professional Yves Botcazou at La Boulie in 1908 and Haskell travelled to Aberdeen in 1919 to play another one-armed golfer, Mr Smart of the Bon Accord club, over the Balgownie course. Sadly, as a result of the First World War, the number of one-armed golfers increased to a number where a society was formed and an annual tournament arranged, the first being at Barnton in 1933.

The shop ran for more than 80 years. It continued after the then proprietor, John’s son Syd, who had been an assistant professional in the USA before coming home to enlist in WWII, tragically committed suicide in it in 1961 and after John’s own death later that year.

The business finally closed its doors in 1974.

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