Groundsman Who Won The Open

As St Albans’ Centurion Club prepares to welcome many of the best golfers in the world for the European Tour GolfSixes tournament in May, a club down the road can proudly claim its own place in the sport’s long history

- Layth Yousif

What does a popular golf course in Hertfordshire have in common with the first winner of the world-renowned US Open? Quite a lot actually, as Horace Rawlins – who triumphed in the inaugural tournament in 1895 – was also groundsman and tutor at the newly-formed Mid Herts Golf Club.

The story of the talented but modest Rawlins is one well known on the classic heathland golf course in Wheathampstead but is far less well known elsewhere, even in wider golfing circles.

At 21 he wrote his name into golfing history books in the most unlikely of circumstances.

Taking up a post to teach the booming sport in America, Isle of Wight-born Rawlins joined Scotsman Willie Davis in the US at the Newport Golf Club on the blue-blooded Rhode Island in early 1895. Here he had been tartly instructed to ‘teach golf, tend greens and stay out of the way’.

While Rawlins was never one for creating a fuss – his son Robert and grandson Michael were not even aware he was a key figure in the annals of the sport – he certainly made waves at the time, by triumphing in the competition that would become one of the four Grand Slam golf tournaments alongside the Masters, the PGA Championship and the British Open.