Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

Registration
Edit profile

catalogue
auction
shopping cart
shipping

history
makers

search
faq
news
links
about
contact

Clubmakers

Martin J Lewis
Gloucester/Birmingham
Martin James Lewis was one of seven Worcestershire brothers who all became professional golfers. They were sons of Price Lewis, a Welsh tailor, and his wife, Frances (Fanny) Ellen, a dressmaker. Martin was born in Malvern in 1880.

Price died in 1898 and so Martin was at home with his widowed mother, an elder sister and two younger brothers at the time of the 1901 census. He was described as a hairdresser’s apprentice and another hairdresser was boarding with the family.

It is not clear when he forsook the comb for the cleek. There were older brothers who may have taken him on as assistant but he became professional in his own right at the Churchdown GC in Gloucester (defunct since WW1) in 1907 and remained until 1910.

He moved to the Little Aston club in 1910 and shortly after arriving was practicing on the Castle Bromwich course for the Midlands PGA tournament and set a course record. ‘The play of Lewis suggests he will be a valuable addition to the ranks of Midland professionals’, opined the Sports Argus. Indeed he was, though not as a tournament player. He organised the Mercury Cup each year from 1920, a competition for artisan golfers across the city, extended the Cocksmoors Woods municipal course between 1934 and 1936 and proudly prepared the Little Ashton course so that it was chosen for the Ł2000 tournament in 1937.

Moreover he served the Little Aston club, where he was made an honorary member, for forty years, retiring in 1950. He died on 14 October 1965, a widower, survived by hus daughter.

Search the catalogue for clubs by this maker