Henry Cotton, who won three British Opens in the years around World War II, was one of the greatest golfers England ever produced. But if it wasn’t for a particularly brutish headmaster at the London school he attended as a boy, he might never have taken up the game.
“Well, you see, cricket was really Henry’s first great love,” remember the late Peter Dobereiner, the talented and prolific writer who was the close friend of Cotton’s. “Even as a boy, Henry was unusually headstrong. One day he got into an argument with his headmaster, who threatened him with that old public school favourite-caning. Henry wouldn’t hear of it, cricket again for his school. Henry simply told him that was fine and that he’d take up golf, which he did with considerable passion.” And success, as well.
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