DONALD STEEL ACCEPTS EGU PRESIDENCY FOR 2006
Donald Steel, writer and golf course architect, has accepted
the nomination to become President Elect of the English Golf
Union for the year 2005 with a view to becoming its President
in 2006.
A former Fleet Street golf journalist with the Sunday Telegraph
for 30 years, Steel admits to being bowled over by his nomination.
"It came as a total surprise, like a bolt from the blue,"
he says.
"I am surprised because I have never done any administrative
work with the EGU or with my county, BB&O. But I presume
this recognition stems from writing and golf course architecture
which has precluded my attempting any administrative duties.
I regard that as a great compliment to my two ‘trades’".
The EGU Presidency should present no problems to Steel as
he has, at various times in recent years, held similar posts
with the Association of Golf Writers, the British Institute
of Golf Course Architects, and the Public Schools Golfing
Society.
Born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, 67 years ago, Steel was educated
at Fettes College in Edinburgh and at Christ’s College,
Cambridge, where he was a member of its golf team for three
years.
He began playing around the age of eight and after Cambridge
was capped by England for the Home Internationals in 1970.
He has been a member at Denham Golf Club for 50 years, of
the R&A since 1962, and is also a member of West Sussex
and Royal Worlington.
In 1961, at the age of 23, he joined the newly-established
Sunday Telegraph as its golf correspondent, becoming the youngest
specialist writer in Fleet Street. He stayed until 1990 by
which time his golf course design work was becoming more demanding.
Steel had set up his own course design company three years
earlier and he continues to be much sought after from his
base in Chichester. He has designed around 70 courses in 20
countries since 1987 and is currently involved in six projects
from the Bahamas and the United States to Portugal.
He has a strong affinity with the EGU’s headquarters
at Woodhall Spa as he designed the new Bracken Course there
while he also handled the changes to the course at Hoylake,
where the 2006 Open Championship will be staged, ironically
in his Presidential year.
On the course, Steel played for BB&O from 1958 to 1972,
mostly off a scratch handicap, and had the distinction of
winning the deciding match at the 20th in the final of the
county championship for BB&O against Yorkshire at Woodhall
Spa, defeating Howard Clark, later PGA champion, Ryder Cup
player and now TV commentator.
In the 1965 English Amateur Championship at The Berkshire,
Steel made headlines when he put out Peter Townsend, then
a boy wonder and one of the favourites.
In the Halford Hewitt Cup, he and another golf architect,
the late Charles Lawrie, are the most successful combination
in its 80-year history, having won 36 of 38 matches together,
the first 30 off the reel.
He is also a three-time winner of the Oxford and Cambridge
Golfing Society’s President Putter in three different
decades, 1964, 1970 and 1982.
Cricket has also played a key role in his life and he represented
Buckinghamshire in the Minor Counties Championship as an opening
batsman. He is one of only two people to have represented
Bucks at cricket and golf.
Steel is the author of several books and has just completed
the third volume of the history of the R&A. He has been
married to Rachel for 16 years.
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