Carnoustie's kingmaker

PIONEER No.4 - THE MAN WHO MADE BOBBY JONES:

Hard-drinking 'Kiltie' Maiden was flawed player but peerless coach

WHEN the end came, the medics could not bring themselves to tell Bobby Jones that his friend was dead. They couldn't go into his room at the Emory University hospital in his native Atlanta where he lay recuperating from an operation and tell him that just down the hall, barely the width of a green away, the idol of his youth had passed, from a stroke that had rendered him paralysed and unconscious at the age of 62. Oh sure, Jones knew that Stewart "Kiltie" Maiden was in poor health. For 30 years and more he had seen the Scot drink himself into bad situations, had witnessed how Kiltie's dour personality would grow darker still when hard liquor was involved. So when time finally caught up with him on November 4, 1948, it would have surprised nobody, least of all Bobby. But breaking the news to the King was not something those at the Emory had wanted to do.

Bobby called Kiltie "the first doctor of golf" but actually he was more than that, for Kiltie not only inspired Bobby and gave him his swing, he also gave him the clubs to swing with, fashioned them with his own hand. His skill was unique. He would, according to a contemporary of his, a man called Arch Martin, "take a rough hickory shaft and shape it, reduce the size of it and give it a little whip. He would use varnish and cottonseed oil and some ink black to bark the grain in the wood. Then he would polish it down, put on a leather grip and strips, twisting it around and around to end the thing."

IT IS FAIR TO SAY THAT NOBODY IN ATLANTA HAD SEEN ANYONE quite like Kiltie before. Certainly, as a player he was the finest who had ever passed through town even if his personality was prone to tournament-wrecking eruptions. That weakness meant that, as a championship contender, he was never going to rival his transplanted townsmen. The famous Smith brothers, Willie, Alex and Macdonald, had left Carnoustie as young men and had taken America by storm. Willie won the US Open at Baltimore Country Club in 1899 and had finished second in 1906 and 1908. Alex had beaten Willie in 1906 and won a second Open in 1910 and was runner-up on three other occasions. Their younger brother, Macdonald, never won a major but his heroic struggle and near-misses became the stuff of legend. If the title of the greatest golfer who never won a major weighed heavily on Phil Mickelson's shoulders for years, then the tag was first applied to the gallant Mac Smith.

Even Kiltie's brother Jimmy, though probably lacking Kiltie's innate brilliance, was a more composed individual whose track record in tournament play was immeasurably better. But Kiltie would travel another road to fame. Himself and Bobby had met first almost 40 years before, when Bobby was a six-year-old in the very early stages of his golf obsession and when the Scot was not long off the boat from Carnoustie, the third Maiden son to leave home in search of a more exciting life abroad.

If America owes Scotland a huge debt for bringing the game across the ocean then the greatest part of that debt is due to the men and women of Carnoustie. Throughout the story of American, golf you will find names from North Berwick, St Andrews, Musselburgh and so many other towns and cities across the motherland saw an exodus of their finest talent in the late 1800s and early 1900s. But nowhere was the drain more evident than at Carnoustie. It wasn't just the Maidens and the Smiths who left. More than 300 players, club-makers, course designers and teachers emigrated in that time.

Of the Maiden three, Jimmy was the eldest and he became a figure of stature in America, his swing once being crowned the best in the States in a high-profile competition on the roof of the Astor hotel in New York City. Later, Jimmy became a founding member of the USPGA while his youngest brother, Allan, was a founding member of the Australian PGA and tutor to Peter Thomson, winner of five Opens and one of the greatest champions Britain has ever seen.

Kiltie was the middle son with the short fuse and his legacy would be greater than that of his siblings. Throughout his time in America he was a sought-after teacher, a man of few words but infinite wisdom, just as long as you were prepared for that sharp tongue of his. "Dammit," he once screamed at an unfortunate student, "do you have to play golf?" Still, they queued round the block for tuition and parted with the outrageous sum of $20 for an hour of Kiltie's precious time.

For that kind of cash, he gave lessons to anyone, from the great Jones (who was so talented he never had to pay) right down to the worst hackers the East Lake Country Club had ever seen, who paid plenty. For ten years, until drink apparently hastened his departure, East Lake, outside Atlanta, was his home from home and the place where his fearsome reputation was made.

HE MIGHT NOT HAVE BEEN AN EASY MAN TO GET ON WITH, HE might have been abrupt and often times rude and could be a desperate messer with a drink inside him, but Bobby loved him all the same. So when the bombshell of Kiltie's death was finally dropped, three days after the event, the King was about as emotional as anybody had ever seen him, for throughout his life he had seen a side of the Scot that few others ever had. He looked back on his achievements in the game - four victories in eight attempts in the US Open, five out of eight in the US Amateur, three out of three in The Open, one out of two in the British Amateur - and wondered how much, if any, of it would have been possible without the Scot. The first doctor? As far as Bobby was concerned, he was the only doctor.

It was in 1908 that Kiltie had left Scotland behind, sent on his way by the members at Carnoustie who presented him with a "handsome steamer trunk" while expressing "regret at losing so excellent a player". He fetched up at East Lake later in the year, one of the first groups of people he encountered being a fine Southern gentleman by the name of Robert Perdemus Jones (affectionately known as The Colonel) and his six-year-old son, Robert Jnr (who would later earn the title of King).

Little Bob's impressions of the oddball in their midst hardly hinted at the close bond that would soon develop between them. "There was nothing sensational about Stewart," he confessed. "He said very little and I couldn't understand a single word of what he did say. At first, I wondered if he could talk at all."

Bobby had been a sickly child, unable to eat solid food until he was past five but there was a little of Kiltie inside him and the Scot could see it readily enough. The famous writer, Grantland Rice, encapsulated it best when he said that young Jones was "a short, rotund kid, with the face of an angel and the temper of a timber wolf. At a missed shot, his sunny smile could turn more suddenly into a black storm cloud than the Nazis can grab a country. Even at the age of 14, Bobby could not understand how anyone ever could miss any kind of golf shot."

Maybe Kiltie didn't see the irony but when he said of Bobby that he "was never lonesome with a golf club in his hands", he could have been talking about himself. "He [Bobby] must have been born with a deep love for the game," Kiltie added. "He was certainly born with the soul of a perfectionist."

If that was the case then they were both made that way. But in the beginning barely a word was exchanged. As Sidney Matthew, the definitive source on all things Bobby, writes in his book Kiltie The Kingmaker, the boy would shadow Kiltie around the golf course, observing every nuance of his swing. "After Bobby had gotten an eyeful after four or five holes," says Matthew, "he ran back to the little mulehouse by the 13th green and practised a capful of balls with a sawed-off cleek." Before long, even the experts could not tell Maiden and Jones apart. One of Maiden's old friends watched Jones driving off during a Southern Amateur tournament in Birmingham (Ohio). He insisted that the young lad was Stewart Maiden. "Sorry," he was told, "Stewart's not here." The man was adamant: "Oh yes he is! Do you think I don't recognise that old Carnoustie swing? Nobody else in the world hits a golf ball like that!"

In fact, they did. More and more of the talented young players emerging from East Lake swung it exactly like Kiltie. Alexa Stirling was the daughter of an eye surgeon from Peebles, the family settling in a cottage across the road from East Lake's tenth tee. Alexa was a classmate of Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With The Wind, but writing was never her strongest suit. Golf was. As soon she came under Kiltie's wing she became one of the most remarkable women amateurs of all time, winning three American titles in a row. Louise Suggs, an Atlanta native, won 11 majors and 50 LPGA titles with Kiltie as inspiration. Charmin' Charlie Yates, brought up in a house overlooking the fourth green, won the British Amateur and was low amateur five times at the Masters while Watts Gunn, the Southern Hurricane, was another champion amateur and team-mate of Bobby's in two Walker Cups.

Kiltie was present at all the major moments in Bobby's career. In 1927, when Jones defended his Open title at St Andrews, Kiltie watched him for a few holes of his final round, then nudged The Colonel in the ribs and said: "Let's go, it's all over". "What's all over?" Bobby's father replied. "The show. He's in," said Kiltie, for he had long possessed an instinctive understanding of his star pupil's game. If he was hitting the ball sweetly then there was not a man alive who could beat him.

Bobby won the Grand Slam in 1930 with some of Kiltie's clubs in his bag and with his famous Calamity Jane putter, a deadly weapon with a goose-necked blade given to him by Kiltie's brother, Jimmy. Nothing was ever the same after the Impregnable Quadrilateral as the papers called it. "It's great that the boy now has won all the major titles there are," said Kiltie, "but it's sad in a way too, for there's nothing left for him to win."

As Bobby faded off the scene, Kiltie went to New York where he set up an exclusive indoor golf school on Park Avenue, across the street from Grand Central Station. He did a deal with the Hillerich & Bradsby Company of Louisville, Kentucky, to produce his own brand of clubs - the Grand Slam set - and they sold in healthy numbers and he continued teaching at Sands Point in the city.

The success of his professional life masked all sorts of trouble at home. Kiltie had married Annie Rogers and they had two daughters but the relationship broke down in the late 1930s and he seemed to fall headlong into depression. In 1947, Bobby tried to help him. He bought an old plantation field in Atlanta, put a golf course on it and employed the increasingly troubled Kiltie as the resident pro. Almost 20 years after leaving Atlanta, he was back and his return was big news. He set up house, gave his lessons and won the respect of a new generation.

But within a year, Kiltie was taken into the Emory in the most grave condition. Bobby had given him a shot at rebuilding his life but the stroke had taken it from him. At 62, with the genius he helped create lying in a bed down the hall, Kiltie Maiden, the Kingmaker of Carnoustie, was gone.