An Historic Win
for Winchester
The Halford Hewitt is one
of Britain’s most competitive
golf tournaments, contested
between teams of 10 former
pupils from the schools which
make up the membership of the
Public Schools Golfing Society.
I
t is also one of the game’s most convivial
social gatherings, something which is entirely
appropriate, considering it was conceived
during a luncheon meeting at one of England’s
finest golf clubs.
There is a degree of debate surrounding
how the event came to be started but, according
to that great golf writer and TV commentator
Henry Longhurst, it was dreamt up during a
lunch which John Beck had with G.L. Mellin
at The Addington Club in Surrey some time
during the summer of 1923. Certainly, later
The 1948 OW winning team
Back row; P M Smythe (A, 1936-41), H G C Illingworth
(A, 1921-26), G R A Jamieson (E, 1925-30), W S J Whitelaw
(I, 1931-36), A J N Young (A, 1924-30). Front row; P G Foster
(A, 1930-35), G H Micklem (G, 1923-30), J Walker (D, 1909-
14), G A Loveday (H, 1923-28), C H V Elliott (Coll, 1919-24)
John Beck, Halford Hewitt (centre) and another Old Carthusian
that year, representatives from six schools,
namely Eton, Charterhouse, Highgate, The
Leys, Malvern and Winchester, met up to
finalise the first tournament and they were
joined in the inaugural draw by four others,
Mill Hill, Rugby, Beaumont and Radley.
Mellin, an old Malvernian, and Beck, an old
Carthusian, were both outstanding golfers. Beck
later went on to captain the Great Britain & Ireland
Walker Cup side in 1938, and Mellin reached the
semi-finals of the Amateur Championship in
1920. Both were determined to instigate a Public
Schools golf tournament along similar lines to an
existing football tournament, the Arthur Dunn
Cup. They were also traditionalists and members
of the old school in more ways than one, so it
came as no surprise that they selected foursomes