After graduating from Cambridge, he labored as a sportswriter for the Sunday Categorical, the place he stayed till the outbreak of warfare, when he volunteered for the RAF as a pilot.
And it was Lucas’s intimate data of Prince’s Golf Membership’s delicate undulations that most likely saved his life in August 1944, when his Spitfire was hit by enemy hearth whereas coming residence from a raid.
Reluctant to bail out, he noticed Sandwich Bay on the similar second as his engine died. Gliding in, and preserving the clubhouse as a marker, he managed to overlook the second, fourth, twelfth, eighth and ninth fairways earlier than touchdown belly-up out of bounds simply wanting the shore.
Typical of the person, he recalled being very sad on the state of the greens and joked about his persevering with incapacity to hit the ninth fairway.
After the warfare, Lucas captained the Nice Britain & Eire Walker Cup crew in 1947 and 1949, earlier than turning his hand to politics, serving because the Conservative MP for Brentford and Chiswick from 1950-59.
Changing into disillusioned with authorities, he moved into sports activities administration, working firstly for the Greyhound Affiliation at White Metropolis, after which with the Sports activities Council.
He took early retirement in 1975, and started writing once more, finishing a compelling autobiography, 5-Up, and The Sport of Princes (Reflections of a Golfer).
On the time of his loss of life in 1998, aged 73, hewas vice-president of the Golf Basis and the Affiliation of Golf Writers.
The fairly weird image exhibits Lucas, then aged 39, taking part in the course at Sandy Lodge Golf Membership carrying a blindfold.
Regardless of this self-imposed handicap, he managed to shoot 87 with assistance from a information – a rating that the majority of us can be pleased with with 20-20 imaginative and prescient.
Prince’s Golf Membership, the place Lucas’s love affair with golf started, continues to honour the good man every year by internet hosting the Laddie Lucas Spoon, a contest open to juniors aged between eight and 13, which takes place in April.
It has proved the place to begin for a lot of a promising {golfing} profession; a legacy that’s becoming for somebody who gave a lot to the sport.
