Oldtimers tell us that tournament golf these days has lost something of the glamour that attended it in the days of yore. There are many more golfers and many more tournaments, some say too many. Much f the fraternal spirit of the clan of the cleek in the earlier and chummier days, it is claimed, has been dissipated with the constant widening of the circle of those who now play or play at the game. Possibly that is true. But here and there the spirit of the good old days has been preserved. There is, for example, the Lynnewood Hall Cup tournament, at the Huntington Valley Country Club.

The Huntington Valley Country Club was organized in 1898. A nine-hole course was laid out in the lower end of the beautiful Huntington Valley at Noble, Pennsylvania, a dozen miles north of Philadelphia, along the Old York Road. This course, extended a few years later to eighteen holes, was played continuously for more than a quarter of a century and was beloved of golfers from far and near.

In 1901 the members of Huntington Valley agreed to hold a tournament to which they would invited their friends. Joseph E Widener who was one of the founders of the Club, presented the cup to be played for, named for the country seat of the Widener family, Lynnewood Hall. The fact that the cup is of solid gold and beautifully fashioned is interesting, but has little significance. It would be the same kind of tournament if played for a tin dipper.

It is the spirit of this tournament and the good sportsmen who have contested in its matches, that have made the Lynnewood Hall Cup one of the most distinguished trophies in American golf. For this is a tournament in which the social, friendly side of golf always has been uppermost.

Invitations go only to the friends of members and because these include some very fine golfers, there is always a remarkably fast field. But tournament records and newspaper reputations are not considered. It is just a jolly good party in which the playing of golf, of course, is a major interest but by no means the only one.

Five years ago, the Huntington Valley Club built a spacious new clubhouse and course with twenty-seven holes among the rolling hills two or three miles north of the old location. Some of the members thought that with this new magnificence the Lynnewood Hall Tournament would never be the same again, but they were mistaken. Its spirit is unquenchable.

To the players, this is a golfing holiday. Ham Garner comes down from Buffalo, Warren Corkran from Baltimore, Ken Smith from Montclair, and Colonel Dangerfield makes an annual excursion from his Princess Anne retreat at Virginia Beach. All the oldtimers around Philadelphia gather-some to play and some to sit around in the June sun and watch the youngsters perform.

Here is Wirt Thompson who won the Lynnewood Hall Cup way back when the century was very young, coming along to get his card and pencil from Bill Weaver, just as he has for more than a score of years. He’ll qualify, but not in the first sixteen.

There are Richard Mott and Howard Sheble who have helped make golfing history at Huntington Valley. Ned Fitler and Fletcher Stites, the story-telling lawyer from Merion. Alec Coles from the Country club. John Arthur Brown from the Philadelphia Cricket Club and Pine Valley. Here is Meredith Jack, the first Junior Champion of Philadelphia, veteran of several national championships, who is still good enough to break 160 for the thirty-six-hole qualifying round. And playing right behind him is youthful Sidney Allman who will go on from this tournament to win the 1931 junior Championship at Cedarbrook the same week.

Here is Jimmy Robbins, former Princeton Captain and Pennsylvania State Champion, with Frank Wattles, a former Yale golfer from Buffalo. Two by two they come up to the starting tee and get away, while the gallery gathers in the shade of the trees and on the slopes about the eighteenth green.

On the evening of the qualifying day, the Huntington Valley Club always gives a dinner to the players. Last year the dinner was presided over by George H Frazier, genial president of the Club, assisted by the members of the Tournament Committee, including Lester Bosler, Mort Fetteroff and Charles Jennings.

Speeches were neither long nor prosy. There were really good stories, and a couple of duets by that celebrated pair of harmonizing golfers, Hecker Doughton and Kenneth Kennedy. Just such a happy dinner as anyone would want to attend after a long June day replete with golf and sunshine.

This was on Monday, June 22^nd, and on Wednesday afternoon the gallery saw Max Marston, three times winner of the Lynnewood Hall cup and former National Champion, defeated handily by young Gerald McHugh of Whitemarsh, at the time a freshman in college who had just passed his twentieth birthday.

Thus a new name was added to the golden roster which includes two wins by Jerome Travers, three by Marston, two by W. Hamilton Garner and such other one-time celebrated names as George Rotan, Warren Corkran, Clarke Corkran, Fred Herreshoff, H. B. MacFarland and Dr. Simon Carr.


There were three other sixteens, and defeated eights, but who won them doesn’t matter-the important we played again this year. In large part , it will be the old gang again, with a few newcomers getting their initiation. One guess is as good as another as to who will be next to get his name inscribed on the historic cup. But again that will be an incidental to the main purpose, which is really a reunion, a foregathering of the brotherhood, a convention of congenial souls in an atmosphere which fosters reminiscences, the telling of stories, the singing of songs and-yes, maybe other things as well.