Peter Alliss interview by Sean Harrison.

Being the son of a professional golfer, did you always want to follow in your Father’s footsteps? What age did you start to play golf?

My informative years were during World War II. We lived at Ferndown, just north of Bournemouth, and although it wasn’t a heavily bombed area life was full of restrictions. My father was one of the top professionals of the day and I was swinging a club from the age of two, at thirteen I had a handicap of scratch, so no other profession entered into the equation.

Did you embrace the challenge from playing golf to becoming a broadcaster or is there always a part of you down there on the course when you are commentating?

I have had the most wonderful life and in all honesty have never planned for anything. It was in 1960 I was approached by Ray Lakeland, BBC Producer from Manchester, enquiring if I would be interested in doing some commentary at the Open championship at Birkdale in 1961. I played professionally at the highest level for a further ten years and combined the two professions.

Looking back I obviously had a style that was perhaps quirky but it suited them, and that’s where I have been all these years.

Your projects have included The Belfry, Brocket Hall, the Marquess Course at Woburn, Cams Hall, the Links Course at Belle Mare Plage Hotel in Mauritius and the ‘Seve Club’ in Japan. Do you have any favourites or is the most recent project always your favourite?

My first design partner was David Thomas. Together we were involved in the creation of 40 or 50 golf courses, we then parted company, I was alone for a year or two and then partnered my BBC colleague, Clive Clark, with whom I also had a very productive partnership. The success of the Belfry over the years has been very rewarding, but you always live in the hope of finding an enthusiastic, sympathetic client who has found the most wonderful piece of golfing land with not too many restrictions, although I honestly think those days finished round about 1925!

From my standpoint the golf course design business is very much in a “holding” pattern but I’m working on one just south of Hungerford in the Savernake Forest which may come to fruition - it’s been a long, hard journey, and with the economic climate the way it is it’s not easy, but I live in hope.

Do you have a current design project and how much of your time does this claim? Does the change in golf equipment (driver and ball etc.) influence new designs?

Much is made of new equipment and the fact that the ball goes so far these days. The game of golf shouldn’t be altered for the sake of 2,000 or 3,000 people who play the game at the highest level, whether they be male or female, amateur or professional. At the end of the day I don’t think the term “par” serves much purpose, particularly at the highest level. You go and play and the person with the lowest score wins. Too much stress is placed now on so and so “winning at 20 under par”. “Oh, if that’s the case the course must be a pitch and putt!”. Not so. Given the opportunities for the top players, narrow courses with deep bunkers along the sides of the fairways and small greens are able to create enough problems. I don’t like golf courses now edging towards 8,000 yards in length.

With the Masters approaching, what are the biggest changes you have seen made to Augusta - for good or for bad?

Years ago, members of the Ryder Cup teams were always invited to play in the Masters, and it’s hard to make people understand now that I had several invitations and didn’t go! Well, it was a long journey and the rewards were very meagre. If you didn’t make the last day $400 was all you got and the rate then was about $3.40 to the £1. Not only that, Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Billy Caspar and a host of other super players were waiting for you and in those far off days they didn’t make visitors VERY welcome, as many American pros thought we might relieve them of their livelihood! They’re not afraid of change, and if it doesn’t work they put it back the way it was and you don’t even notice the ’seam’! I don’t think making Augusta longer has made it a greater test. Since they are innovative, although in some quarters they are considered “fuddy duddies”, one thing which has intrigued me over the years, (considering they’ve made so many changes), they’ve never narrowed the fairways and grown the rough, which would be a very simple thing for them to do, and if it didn’t work out cut the fairways back and revert to normal. Also I’d like to see the old players, who are so revered, allowed to play, but they should start from the 10th tee, play nine holes every day and receive the adulation of the multitude. There should be a prize (a piece of Waterford crystal) something for them, they wouldn’t get in anyone’s way, they wouldn’t be reducing the field and they would give the early spectators, sitting for hours on the back nine waiting for players to come round, something to look at and enjoyment in seeing their old favourites.

How much do you think modern jet travel and private aviation has changed life on the golf tour?

The use of private planes for the top athletes now has made a huge change in their lives. No queuing up at airports, getting through customs is the simplest of tasks, and with sports men and women at the top making so much money now it’s not such an outrageous idea to have the use of a jet, especially when you can write it off against expenses and tax.

How do you see the golf tours changing with the Fed Ex cup and the Race to Dubai?

There are so many new ideas being thrown up in the world of golf, sometimes I think they lose sight of the fact there are only 52 weeks in a year. I’m not sure the Fedex Cup has been a great success although it’s early days. The Race to Dubai is fascinating, it’s not easy for a European Tour to keep several hundred players in employment for nine or ten months a years and I think they do a fantastic job, although they do stretch the imagination if you’re a “geographical buff” with some of the locations they’ve found for the “European” Tour!

When you played in the Masters in the late 60’s there was a payout guarantee of $400. What is your opinion on golf prizes today?

Prize money is quite amazing. I’ve been waiting for the bubble to burst for several years but it hasn’t done yet. What I think a lot of players seem to forget, the world would go on without professional golf, without professional sport in fact, so perhaps a clamp down for a couple of years wouldn’t be a bad thing, so that prizes and wages could get back to sensible levels. But we live in a free society and that’s what the market stands, so no good blaming the players or the agents, it’s what is available and what people/companies are prepared to pay.

From a broadcasting point of view do you have a favourite event, course and/or country?

My favourite event is, without doubt, our Open championship, although over the years, from my point of view, getting around has been more and more difficult. In the halcyon days when I worked with Henry Longhurst, we used to indulge in a glass of champagne round about 10.30/11 o’clock in the morning, just to “lubricate” the tonsils, but now recording starts about 9 o’clock and we don’t get away until 8 o’clock at night. It’s a long day for everyone concerned. But the variety of the Open championship, the cosmopolitan look of it and the wonderful selection of players from around the world, make it very, very special, although it can be very tedious when the weather turns against us. When it does, I’m always reminds of the Japanese pro who was speaking to Michael Bonallack, when he was Secretary of the R&A, at a particularly miserable time (I think it was at Muirfield), and he asked Mr Bonallack, “Why you no play the championship in the summer time?”!

Looking back on the duels between Nicklaus and Watson to Faldo and Norman, which match stays in your memory the most?

Two matches, Nicklaus and Watson at Turnberry was quite amazing. They were, indeed, two “heavyweight boxers” slugging it out, toe to toe. They finished ten shots ahead of the player in third spot, Hubert Green, who remarked, “Well, I don’t know about them, I won the tournament I was competing in!”

Faldo and Norman - chalk and cheese. Faldo’s round when he won the Masters and Greg Norman saw his 6 or 7 shot lead disappear, was one of the finest rounds of golf under the circumstances I’ve ever seen anyone play. I’m one of the few people who didn’t think Greg Norman totally disintegrated. During the course of the round he played about three poor shots and had some bad luck, and at the end of the day he was well beaten, nay humiliated, but people tend to forget he was still “in it” playing the 15th hole, but that’s long forgotten. Norman was very good for the game.

Who do you see as the up and coming players at the moment?

There are so many up and coming players at the moment but many of them flatter to deceive. They win tournaments and the next week fail to qualify.

There must be at least eight or ten players from Europe who have the opportunity of moving forward but they must learn to be consistent. I don’t go for the idea that you win one week and then you need a rest to recover from your trials and tribulations. If you were carrying your own clubs or pulling a trolley, yes you might be a bit weary, but when I was winning I was on the ‘crest of a wave’ and couldn’t wait to get out the following week!

A career spanning over 60 years has seen so many changes. Do you sometimes wish you could turn back the clock on some aspects i.e. etiquette, golf equipment and fashion? On the other hand which changes have you welcomed?

There have been many changes over the last 60 years.

I suppose corporate golf has been one of the main ones; it has been the salvation of many clubs, courses, hotels, complexes, but I don’t particularly like to see people having ‘air shots’ on the first tee, taking eight hours to play 15 holes and then have to be “rescued” to get them back to the hotel for dinner and prize-giving.

Etiquette remains pretty good, although I do not like hats on back to front, particularly when in the club house. Fashion comes and goes, looking at the “fads” of the ’70s - the big check ‘Rupert Bear’ trousers and diamond patterned sweaters.

Caddies remain unique, there aren’t the rogues and vagabonds there were 40 years ago; there are, however, many characters of a different “hue”, a lot with university degrees, able to hold a conversation in most ‘camps’ and why not? If you team up with a good player it’s possible to earn thousands of pounds, dollars, yen a year. On the whole I think golf has held itself together pretty well, that’s due to the people who run it both at the professional and amateur level.

As to the future, what changes would you like to make, given the chance. Are there any rules which you would change? For instance, slow play seems to be predominantly discussed amongst players and viewers alike.

I just wish the players would learn to play faster! In a three-ball, if each one could save a minute a hole, which isn’t asking a lot, that’s knocked an hour off the time it takes to play a round, which should be simple. The only way it will change is if the players decide to ‘get on with it’ OR you have massive punishment, not just money - that’s like fining a footballer two weeks wages when you find he’s earning £80,000 a week - you’ve got to bann them from playing for a couple of tournaments, but then you’d probably be sued for restricting their livelihood so you can see it’s not an easy task, but the players should get together and just DO it.

Now for the difficult question - If you could be given three moments in your career to re-live, which would they be?

Three moments come to mind. One, I’d like to go back to the 1953 Ryder Cup and play the final few strokes to the 18th green again on the West Course, in other words I’d like to have won that match instead of losing it and being, along with Bernard Hunt, “the culprits”, those accused of costing us the Ryder Cup, which we hadn’t won in this country since 1933, 20 years before.

The second one, played with my partner, Christy O’Connor, in the Ryder Cup at Royal Birkdale in 1965 against Arnold Palmer and Dave Marr, was the second shot with a 4-wood into a slight right to left against wind at the 18th, hitting it to within 15 feet of the hole to win the match, when they were snapping at our heels.

And the third occasion, in the mid-60s, when I won the Esso Golden Tournament at the Moor Park club near Watford; it was a ’round robin’ and I’d actually amassed all the points needed to win the event before going out for the final round! You’ve no idea how joyous it was playing 18 holes in a carefree manner, knowing that you’d already done enough to win the £750 first prize. Ah, what bliss!

Finally, do you ever get the opportunity to playing golf yourself and which is your choice course?

Yes, I broke my ankle quite badly a couple of years ago, so walking 18 holes is not possible but I still enjoy playing very much but I must have a golf buggy. I am the President of Old Thorns Golf & Country Estate at Liphook in Hampshire where they have a host of buggies, where I go with my sons, Simon and Henry, and we play there occasionally with my good friend John Shrewsbury, who for so many years was one of the doyens of BBC sport production. I’m hoping in the year 2009 I will play more because I still enjoy it.

Favourite courses? Well, I was brought up on heather and pine and silver birch, so they always “do it” for me - The Berkshire, Swinley Forest, Sunningdale, Ferndown, Parkstone, Broadstone, Blairgowrie, Moortown, Moor Allerton, Alwoodley - courses that, when the sun is shining, look pretty well the same winter and summer; I love them.

Peter Alliss by Sean Harrison.

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