Twice a Cambridge golf Blue. Recruited by famed golf writer and architect Donald Steel to work in his booming design business. A long-time R&A member. It is easy to look at Martin Ebert’s CV and conclude he must be some sort of scion of the British ruling classes. But his background is in fact significantly more normal: he discovered golf by watching tournaments on television. “Maybe it was the sight of Augusta that really sparked my interest,” he says. His parents, neither of whom played golf, bought him a second-hand mixed bag of clubs for £10. “Mum would drop me at the Colnbrook driving range near Heathrow – an airport that is now my second home – where I hit balls for hours on end. “My first forays onto a course were at Sandown Park on the par-three course in the middle of the racecourse. As my family did not play, I caddied for a lovely man called Maurice Curtis at Ashford Manor Golf Club for around a year after which he was happy to vouch for me and I was allowed to join the club as a junior where days of 54 holes in the summer holidays were the norm.” Ebert attended Cambridge University – he is rather modest about this, but we should note that less than one per cent of Britons attend the two ancient universities, and the selection process is, to say the least, rigorous. “I was tempted into taking a shot in the golf trial after seeing the golf club’s incredible fixture list,” he explains. “A disastrous score at Gog Magog – where I now advise – meant that golf went nowhere until the following year when I managed an outward 35 in dense fog at Royal Worlington and a total score of 76 (a poor back nine after the fog lifted!). The trial score got me into the Stymies second team. That year of golf was great fun, culminating in a victory over the Oxford Divots at Southport & Ainsdale. The next year, I was promoted to the Blues team and played in two Varsity matches, at Royal Porthcawl and Rye, the latter of which was the hundredth match. We won both. To celebrate, we thought we should relive Henry Longhurst’s famous 1930 tour to the United States. I was the captain of the tour, and the engineering took a back seat as it was a full year of organisation. We played at Pine Valley, Merion, Shinnecock, The National Golf Links, Garden City, Maidstone, The Country Club, Sleepy Hollow, Yale, Winged Foot, The Creek, Photo: Taku Miyamoto 43
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