John Ball Jr was born on the 24th of December 1861 in Hoylake where his father was the prosperous owner of the Royal Hotel, located near the Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake. John grew up playing golf as a youth on the Royal Liverpool Course, which was established in his early boyhood, competing against Harold Hilton on the links. In 1878, at the age of 16, he finished fifth in The Open at Prestwick and received ten shillings. Then in 1888 he won The Amateur Championship before becoming the first English-born player to win The Open Championship in 1890. The same year saw him win his second Amateur, being the first to win both titles in the same year, only Bobby Jones in 1930 has repeated the feat of winning the Amateur and The Open in the same year.. He subsequently won the 1892, 1894, 1899, 1907, 1910 and 1912 Amateurs, a record eight titles in all, in addition to two runner-up finishes as he dominated amateur golf in Great Britain. He won all the important golf championships as well as the hearts and respect of his country. In the words of British golf historian Donald Steele, "No golfer ever came to be more of a legend in his own lifetime."
Although he gripped the club tightly in the palms of both hands, John possessed a remarkably beautiful swing and was able to regulate the height he hit the ball depending on the conditions. He was such a good striker, and so accurate, that he regularly aimed directly at the target, rather than being happy to find the green. Hilton said of Ball that he was "looked upon as a phenomenon whose play could only be admired, not imitated." Bernard Darwin wrote, "I have derived greater aesthetic and emotional pleasure from watching John Ball than from any other spectacle in the game." Famous for refusing to carry a niblick, which had the loft of a modern-day 8 or 9 iron, he scorned the use of that club, describing it as "another bloody spade," and admonished the Rules of Golf Committee of the Royal and Ancient for permitting such horrid-looking contraptions to be allowed in competition. In a bunker, he would simply lay open the blade of a mid-iron and float the ball toward the hole with a smooth swing. He disliked the introduction of the increasing number of shallow cross bunkers to many courses, often parkland courses, calling them in derisory terms, 'geranium beds'. It was this stubbornness and dogged determination that made him such a lion in match play. Darwin once noted that John had "a strong vein of hostility and if he wanted a particular player's blood, he would fight his way through a tournament with the sole object of getting at him." Darwin added, "That was not a personal hostility, but rather a desire to measure himself against a foe really worthy of him."
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| John Ball Competing In The 1912 Amateur Championship (Photo: Royal North Devon G.C.) |
John also won four Irish Amateur titles and was runner-up in the 1892 Open Championship, when he finished three strokes behind Harold Hilton. He retired with a 99–22 record (81.8%) at The Amateur Championship. He was a quiet, retiring, introverted character who said very little to anyone and it is next to impossible to find any written words or quotes from the great man. As a very modest man, he preferred to let his golf do the talking for him. He served for the Cheshire Yeomanry in the Second Boer War (October 1899 – May 1902) in South Africa and during this period played next to no golf and missed three Amateur Championships. Indeed one of his fiercest competitors, Scotland’s Freddie Tait, was killed in the same conflict. His later competitive years would also have been impacted by World War I (1915-19) when he served in the Home Forces and most competitions were cancelled. John retired a 'legend in his own lifetime' to his farm in Holywell, Flintshire in nearby North Wales where he eventually died on the 2nd of December 1940, just shy of his 79th birthday.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2026/06/merseyside-for-sport-william-marsden.html
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