Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

A J Lewis
Burton/Birmingham
Alfred John Lewis was a member of one of England’s remarkable golfing families, seven brothers, all starting as caddies on the Malvern course in Worcestershire, and then going on to become professional golfers (don’t worry, I will cover each of them
eventually). What strikes me about their careers was the mobility; in the 1890s it was simple to turn down an extension, or easy to leave, because another club had a better offer.

Alfred was born in Malvern in September 1873 and, after his caddying and carrying milk for his uncle’s business, he went, aged 14, to Stinchcombe in Gloucestershire as assistant to his eldest brother, William. The next stop was Llandindrod Wells in 1893 and 1894. Whether this was as professional, or again assistant to William, is unclear but a newspaper report in 1895 credits him with improvements to the course so it may have been his first full professional engagement though another later newspaper report states his apprenticeship with William ran until his time at the Derbyshire club between 1894 and 1895. One newspaper account from 1910 has them both at Shrewsbury before Derby and Jackson’s Register places William there but overlapping several of his other appointments.

Thereafter we are on more solid ground. In April 1895 he was appointed professional at the Darwen club but he left ‘with a view to securing a better appointment’ and found it later that year at Burton-on-Trent. He remained here for six and a bit years before resigning to take up the post of professional at Moseley.

After three years at Moseley he became ‘the young, rugged and smiling professional at Handsworth’ in 1904. The local paper described him thus,

‘If he had spent less time in the shop and more on the greens he would have been a greater figure in the golfing world. In him we find all the qualities essential to a brilliant player. He has the brawn and the brain. Through the green there are few better players than Alfred Lewis; but his putting – ugh! it’s execrable. It’s execrable because he gets little of what one would term real practice. It is only in one or two annual tournaments that he is called upon to display his abilities. You cannot call that practice.’

His putting cannot have been that bad, he won the Midland Professional Foursomes with George Coburn, the Garvald-born pro at Sandwell Park, in its first two years of existence. His obituary also claimed he had been Midlands Professional Champion though I have not yet managed to confirm that.

He moved on to Sutton Coldfield for the years 1913-1914 and after the war was professional at Dudley where he finished his playing career in 1933. At this point he returned to Sutton Coldfield as head groundsman and continued until his death on 28 April 1944.

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