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Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland
Clubmakers
Laurie Ayton
St Andrews/Rye/Chicago
Laurie Ayton Lawrence Buddo Ayton was the brother of George, David and Alec, and, part of a golfing family going back to William Ayton, one of the founder members of the St Andrews Golf Club in 1843. He was born in the town on 1 May 1884. He began his career as a house painter and is recorded as such, living with his parents, David (another golf professional) and Helen née Henderson, at 141 Market Street in the 1901 census.

He had already triumphed in the St Andrews championship with the gold medal of the R&A when he won the Telegraph and Post Cup, effectively the Scottish amateur championship, in 1906. He played in the (British) Amateur Championship in 1907 and the Telegraph and Post again in 1908 but by 1909 had turned professional. He had three top ten finishes in the Open Championship before the First World War, the best being his first in 1910 when he finished 4th behind James Braid at St Andrews and was rewarded with a place in the Scottish team playing against England that year. That representation was repeated in 1912 and 1913, and later in his career in 1933 and 1934.

That year he was appointed professional to the new Bishop’s Stortford club which opened in June and the club wasted little time in funding a match for him against James Sherlock which he won comfortably. He, and his assistant Nathan Cornfoot, another St Andrean, boarded with May Ann Brace in Bishop’s Stortford. She was a widow with five daughters and in 1913 Laurie married one of them, May Maud. In December of that year a move to Rye was announced, to start the following February.

Ayton had served as a volunteer with the Royal Garrison Artillery in Fife before the war so was called up, attesting on 1 December 1915, and assigned to the Territorials. However, he was soon found unfit, with a chronic inflammation of the lung and severe varicose veins and, consequently, discharged in September 1916. He was able to return to Rye and by May 1919 Harold Hilton was writing in Golf Illustrated that ‘it is not improbable that the best golfer in the kingdom at the present moment is Lawrence Ayton’.

But the kingdom was not to see him for a while. He and his youngest brother Alec sailed on the Mauretania from Southampton in 1920, arriving in New York on 13 March. They were headed for Chicago where Laurie was to be head professional at the Evanston club with Alec as his assistant. On 1 May 1920, the Chicago club organised a welcoming dinner for him with around 550 guests, including some of the leading golfers in the United States with the Evanston club’s newsletter saying ‘we expect it to be the greatest event of its kind ever held in any Chicago golf club’. Clearly, great things were expected of him and, back home, the St Andrews Citizen concluded, ‘if he does not become the leading power in professional golf in America, the critics will be utterly confounded’. From the mid-1920s he spent his winters as professional at Tarpon Springs, FL, where the former Evanston president, Chicago lawyer Edgar J Phillips, had set up a club, ‘clearing the jungle’. Laurie was twice runner-up in the Western Open during his time at Evanston. He stayed in Evanston until November 1932 when he returned with wife, daughter, and son Laurie Jr (a future Ryder Cup player) after the death of his father.

He had a brief spell as professional at the Cleadon club in South Shields between 1933 and 1935 with his son as assistant, They played an exhibition match against Gene Sarazen and the Australian trick-shot maestro there in July 1934. Laurie snr returned to St Andrews in September 1935 leaving Laurie jnr as professional at Cleadon. Most of his time in St Andrews was spent teaching but he did play in the 1935 Open at Muirfield and finished 10th (his son also qualified and played).

Laurie died in St Andrews in October 1962 and is buried in the Western Cemetery.

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