The two British amateurs in the field for the 150th Open at St Andrews are from the Sheffield. Britain’s last two Major champions were also born in the Steel city. What is it about this small area of England that has become such a productive breeding ground for top-level golfers? Golfnews24 managing editor Mark Flanagan went in search of answers.
“There must be something in the air,” quips the Sheffield Golf Union’s genial secretary Graham Needham. The Welshman, who has been living in Yorkshire for the last 50 years, has been in the post for the entirety of area’s golden run of producing players to make the region proud.
He has seen Danny Willett go from the best amateur in the world to Masters champion and was there as a 14-year-old Matt Fitzpatrick won the Sheffield Union Junior Championship. More recently he was on hand in 2015 as Barclay Brown stunned everyone by winning the Sheffield Plate by five shots when he was just 14. The event is the area’s blue riband competition and open to the best amateurs in the country. Alex Fitzpatrick won it a year later and Sam Bairstow, while he was also still a junior, took the inaugural Sheffield Champion of Champions trophy in 2016. And he was certainly beaming with pride when Ben Schmidt became only the fourth golfer in history to win the England U-18s (Carris) and the Brabazon Trophy (English Open Strokeplay) in the same year (2019). The Rotherham GC golfer was just 16 at the time.
Needham added: “They are all great lads too. I recently bumped into Matt and didn’t expect him to remember me but he came up to me and said: ‘Hi Graham How are you doing?’
“It certainly means a lot to the Sheffield Union to see them all do so well.”
Schmidt, Fitzpatrick and Brown all played in last year’s Walker Cup at Seminole. When Scotland’s Sandy Scott had to pull out through injury the obvious replacement looked to be Bairstow but maybe the R&A selectors thought having 40% of the team from one small area of England was a bit much. Those selection meetings can get a bit political.
While Schmidt and Fitzpatrick have left the amateur ranks, Brown and Bairstow have yet to make what must be the inevitable leap but they both looked every bit the professional when qualifying for the Open at Final Qualifying at the end of last month. Brown finished three clear of the rest at Hollinwell while Bairstow matched the eight under of recent DP Tour winner Marcus Armitage at St Annes Old Links.
Of the 16 players qualifying via that route, the Sheffield duo were the only non pros to make it and the Yorkshiremen will join four other amateurs in the field this week – Latin American Amateur champion Casey Jarvis, European Amateur champion Filippo Celli, Amataur champion Aldrich Potgieter and world No 1 amateur Keita Nakajima. US Amateur champion James Piot has turned professional so was not eligible to play.
It means the Sheffield Union has a pretty good chance of being able to celebrate another significant milestone… another local winner of the Silver Medal. It was something a teenage Matt Fitzpatrick managed in 2013 at Muirfield.
The achievements of Sheffield Union golfers in recent years are quite considerable but quite why it become such a beacon of success is not entirely obvious.
Union secretary Needham believes the highly competitive nature of the golf in South Yorkshire is an important aspect.
He said: “The Sheffield Union alone has 25 events and the leagues we play on Wednesday night are very competitive. We are the biggest inter-district in the Yorkshire Union (41 clubs) but more importantly I think we are a fun union. We enjoy ourselves.”
The boundary of the Sheffield Union stretches into Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. A quirk of the old dividing lines means the likes of Chesterfield and Worksop are part of it.
And such has been Sheffield’s dominance in Yorkshire inter-district competitions, calls have been made to split it in two.
One of the powerhouse clubs in the union has been Rotherham and for many it was that club’s ambition, in the early noughties, that was the start of the considerable raising of standards and expectations.
The club attracted many of the best young players in the area and the club won the Yorkshire Team Championship three years in a row, starting in 2004. Danny Willett was the undoubted star but he also had a excellent supporting cast with the likes of Sam Haywood (Willett’s caddie), James Mason, Sam Young and Matt Evans playing their part.
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Other clubs, like Hallamshire and Hallowes, worked hard to keep up but possibly the other major contributing factor is coaching and the decision of Sheffield-born Pete Cowen to base himself near Rotherham after leaving his job as the head professional at Lindrick to concentrate on teaching.
That was in 1997 and the ‘Cowen effect’ can not be understated. His protege Mike Walker looks after Matt Fitzpatrick and many other leading pros. Cowen himself is widely regarded as one of the best coaches in the world and has, in recent years, had to slim down his roster of superstars. There were times, at the end of the last decade, when he could look across a practice ground, before a major event, and only see his players!
Cowen’s methods and philosophies have filtered through to others in the region and it means other coaches are coming to South Yorkshire looking for answers. Leading players too.
The achievements of Willett, Fitzpatrick and the rest also prove inspirational for those juniors in South Yorkshire with big ambitions.
Undoubtedly one of those is Doncaster’s Josh Berry, who last year became the youngest winner of the Yorkshire County Championship, aged just 16. He has been a regular for England Boys and played in the European Championship earlier this month.
Berry, and whoever else follows, certainly will be following a well-trodden path and all those who watched or were involved in the development of Brown and Bairstow will be glued to their screens this week hoping ‘their man’ can make the cut.
Both clearly have the game and the temperament to thrive at the Home of Golf, which will be bristling with anticipation and atmosphere like never before. What a time to play your best stuff for either player… What a time to be involved with golf in the Sheffield Union.