IRIS EDITION
Shown here with entire set

Sometimes it is nice to have a thing that no one else has or even knows about. It gives it a distinction it might otherwise not have, and when a thing is worthy of attention, it is a double pleasure– the rarity is combined with intrinsic value. Here then is the thing that no one else has – The Perfect Golfer, by H. N. Wethered, who also wrote with Tom Simpson "The Architectural Side of Golf" and who was the father of two of the most famous British Amateur golfers of all time: Roger and, of course, Joyce Wethered. He was, moreover, a decent painter and author of many books on a wide range of subject matter. Yet he has been almost totally forgotten. "I had no idea that H. N. Wethered was that Wethered, the father of Roger and Joyce..." – this was the common reaction of all the golf experts I consulted. What happened to cause this blanket of anonymity is the subject of the Foreword. In searching for information about H. N. (Herbert Newton), I was kindly sent to two club histories of the two golf clubs, other than Royal Dornoch, that figured most prominently in the life of the Wethered family.

H. N. and his wife Marion joined the Puttenham Golf Club, which was close to their house in Brook, Surrey, in the early 1900s at the time that Roger and Joyce were born. Ron McGill sent me his well-done centennial history of the club. The Wethereds were listed as members, and H. N. was recorded as a 9-handicap golfer, but, again, astonishingly, no one knew, even at the club they belonged to, that they were the parents of Roger and Joyce or that H. N. had produced two fine books on golf. A letter was written to Joyce in 1993, when she was 92, for information. The club received this reply: "It is very easy for me to identify the unknown Wethereds – they were my mother and father! They lived at Tigbourne until the early thirties and then moved to another house at Brook. I was with them until I married. Actually, they were Mr. and Mrs. Newton Wethered and both died in the 1950s. My father had a handicap in single figures – but alas my mother who struggled hard never got under 18."

Despite his near-complete anonymity, H. N. Wethered's legacy–his children, and being the author of two classics books on golf–is not an inconsiderable one. The Perfect Golfer examines all aspects of the game from the perspective of perfection: The Perfect Architecture, The Perfect Shot, The Perfect Duffer, etc., and in so doing offers refreshing new insights into a game that has steadfastly refused to yield up its secrets to those who play it and those who think about it.

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