J. H. Taylor

J. H. Taylor, in full John Henry Taylor, was a professional golfer and a golf course architect, born on March 19, 1871 at Northam in Devon, England. From about the age of eleven he worked as a caddie and a labourer at Royal North Devon Golf Club, near his home at Westward Ho!, and learned the game there. He turned professional in 1890 at the age of nineteen, and after spells at Burnham & Berrow Golf Club, Winchester Golf Club (later Royal Winchester) and Royal Wimbledon Golf Club he was professional at Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Club from 1899 until he retired in 1946.

He won The Open Championship for the first time in 1894, and with further wins in 1895, 1900, 1909 and 1913 he took it five times in all. At the U.S. Open of 1900 he finished second. With Harry Vardon and James Braid he was one of the three men known as the Great Triumvirate. In 1901 he helped to found the Professional Golfers’ Association in Britain, the first body of its kind anywhere for professional golfers, and served as its first chairman. At the Ryder Cup of 1933 he captained the British side as a non-playing captain and beat the United States. He wrote Taylor on Golf (1902) and an autobiography, Golf: My Life’s Work (1953).

Alongside his playing and his work for the association, he had a hand in building courses across England. York Golf Club presents its course as a Taylor design. Hindhead Golf Club, founded in 1904 by the writer Arthur Conan Doyle and others, also had an original course laid out by Taylor. At Frilford Heath Golf Club the founders asked him to design the first eighteen holes in 1908. Royal Birkdale Golf Club, familiar as an Open Championship venue, handed its remodelling in 1922 to Hawtree and J H Taylor Ltd, the firm of Fred Hawtree and Taylor, and the holes were routed through the valleys between the dunes rather than over the top of them. At Royal Mid-Surrey, where he spent so much of his life, the club records that Taylor rebuilt the course.

In 1949 he was made an honorary member of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews (the R&A). He died on February 10, 1963 at Northam, the village where he was born, at the age of 91, and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1975. GoGolf does not at present list any course designed by J. H. Taylor.

See the other golf course architects here.