Enid Wilson

Enid Wilson

The lady golfer of the 1930s was Enid Wilson. Of considerable strength, she hit the ball a long way, but she also possessed a deft short game (‘Drive for show, putt for dough’, as Sam Snead memorably said). Wilson continued at the top echelons of the Ladies’ Golf Union until the 1960s and constantly encouraged youngsters through her teaching and writing. She published articles from the age of eighteen and she too suffered from the professional / amateur dilemma.

Although she had won the Ladies’ Championship three times running, she was refused entry to the next championship at Royal Porthcawl. In 1933 she had written captions of an instructional nature for a series of photographs. The Ladies’ Golf Union asked if she had been paid, and Wilson replied that she was no longer interested in international matches but to test the situation she sent her entry for Royal Porthcawl. The R and A advised the LGU that Miss Barton seemed to be exploiting her skill at the game and that her entry should be refused. She retired from competitive amateur golf at the age of 24 and took a job at the sports store at Piccadilly Circus, Lillywhite’s. She also designed a complete range of golf equipment, wrote for Golf Illustrated and other magazines, and only retired as the golf correspondent for the Daily Telegraph in the 1970s. Wilson was always her own woman. She even deliberately engineered her expulsion from school
by using four-letter words to a mistress, so she could concentrate on golf.