She combined feminine elegance with the kind of precision that no golfer of her era was capable of achieving. She amazed Henry Cotton with her stroke, and Glenna Collett Vare with her tenacity. Joyce Wethered, who later became Lady Heathcoat-Armory, was revered as the queen of British amateur golf. Bobby Jones considered her the greatest golfer – man or woman – he had ever seen.
Born on 17 November 1901 in Surrey, Wethered won the British Women’s Amateur Championship four times, the English Ladies’ Championship five times in a row, and was central to the founding of the Curtis Cup. Bobby Jones had the opportunity to play with Wethered from the back tees prior to the British Amateur in 1930. With a breeze blowing in from the sea, Wethered didn’t miss a shot, and already, carefree and with the match won, he three-putted the 17th and recorded a total of 75 on the Old Course. It was a round the likes of which Jones had never seen.
“I haven’t played golf with anyone, male or female, amateur or professional, who has made me feel so completely overwhelmed,” Jones said. “It wasn’t so much the score she made,” he added, “as the way she made it. It was impossible to expect Miss Wethered not to miss any shots, and she did.”
Henry Cotton played an exhibition match with Wethered after Joyce married Sir John Heathcoat-Armory in 1937. She sent the ball 216 yards off the tee and exhibited great brilliance on every shot. Some thought Wethered might play on the British Walker Cup team, and Cotton thought so. “In my time, no golfer had so far excelled ahead of her contemporaries as Lady Heathcoat-Armory. I do not think a golf ball has ever been hit, except perhaps by Harry Vardon, with so straight a flight by any other person.”
Wethered established his reputation in this country by twice thwarting Collett’s efforts in the British Ladies’ Amateur. Their first match took place at Troon in 1925, just after Vare had won her second U.S. Women’s Amateur and French Open Championship. “The expected match between her and me was so famous beforehand that when the day came we were either up to it or one of us would fall under the pressure,” Joyce said.
It was Wethered who holed four birdies in 15 holes and Collett who lost, by a score of 4 and 3. Wethered then defeated Cecil Leitch in the final to claim her third British Women’s Amateur victory. Four years later, Wethered and Collett met again in the final at St. Andrews. Wethered had been three years retired from competition, while Collett had recently won the fourth of her five U.S. Women’s Amateur titles. With the front nine hoos in 34 strokes, Collett was 5 over. On the 12th, she had a three-foot putt to go 6 up but missed. Gradually things got tougher for her, and by lunchtime Collett was only 2 up. Bernard Darwin wrote that the general impression of the British was, “It’s all right now. You’ll see. Joyce is going to win comfortably.”
Collett’s 3-1 defeat indicates that Wethered, in effect, won comfortably. They met again at the inaugural Curtis Cup, with the police clearing the way home for the two heroines, and Wethered returned to England, where the only competition she played was the Worplesdon mixed foursomes, a tournament she won eight times with seven different partners. Joyce died in 1997 in London one day short of her 96th birthday.
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