The first Brit to win a pro golf tournament in Japan

Wentworth’s West Course is often referred to as the “Burma Road.”

This name goes back to World War II when German PoWs were used to clear the overgrown fairways which had been allowed to overgrow to prevent enemy planes from landing on them.

The British officer in charge of the clearance work remarked once that the task was like clearing the “Burma Road” — a task that around 200,000 Chinese labourers set about doing whilst trying to cut a 700-mile (1,127km) inland road from Kunming in China to Lashio in Burma, now Myanmar.

As we now witness players pick up millions, let’s remember that back in 1966 when England won the World Cup and I was a small boy with aspirations of becoming a golfer, I travelled to Wentworth to take in “The Daks” which was a golf tournament in England, part of the circuit that preceded the European Tour (now the DP World Tour].

I watched…