At an annual golf awards dinner across the Atlantic, it is the practice for guests to give a resounding rendition of "My Wild Irish Rose" as a tribute to an outstanding player from another era. Interestingly, he was Canadian, not Irish. In fact he was the last winner of an Olympic gold medal for golf.
George Seymour Lyon, who was born in 1858 in a farming community south of Ottawa, was a seasoned 46-year-old when he beat the reigning Amateur champion, Chandler Egan, by 3 and 2 in the 36-hole final of the St Louis games in 1904. Despite attempts to revive golf as an Olympic sport with a staging at Augusta National for the Atlanta games four years ago, his place in history remains secure.
The USGA inform us in their "Golf Journal" that Lyon was a latecomer to the game, preferring to display his remarkable sporting versatility at such diverse activities as the pole vault, cricket, hockey, curling, tennis and baseball. Eventually , much against his better judgement, he was persuaded as a 38-year-old to have his first round of golf - and was hooked instantly. Within three years he had captured the Canadian Amateur title, in 1898, recording drives of up to 280 yards which was remarkable hitting with the equipment of the time. Lyon won the Canadian title on no fewer than eight occasions, the last coming in his native Ottawa in 1914 when he was 56. And he might have won it again but for the First World War. Still, the Olympics was unquestionably the highlight of a wonderful sporting career.
Ironically, he had lost the final of the Canadian Amateur to J Percy Taylor when he boarded a train from Toronto to St Louis in September 1904, for the Olympic competition at the 6,000-yard Glen Echo GC. From an original entry of 86, he surprised the cognoscenti by progressing from the strokeplay qualifying to the final of the matchplay with what local newspapers described as "a coal-heaver's swing."
Stung by this, Lyon retorted: "Whether I play like a sailor or a coal-heaver, I never said I was proud of my form. I only do the best I can." As it happened, his best was good enough to beat the outstanding American of the time. He received what he described as "one of the finest if not the finest trophy ever given in a golf tournament", along, of course, with a gold medal. This was replaced recently by the IOC at the request of his grand-daughter, the original having been lost some time ago. And we are told that before the evening was out, he had the entire clubhouse singing his party piece, "My Wild Irish Rose."
Lyon died a few months before his 80th birthday but is remembered each year at the awards dinner of the Canadian Seniors' Championship when, as happened back in St Louis in 1904, the rafters are raised by the strains of his favourite song.
