In 1912 he entered
Trinity College Dublin ("TCD") but before he could
complete his studies he joined the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers
in September 1914 and suffered severe injuries from machine
gun fire at 15 May 1915 in Richeboury and return home for medical
treatment and covalescence.'
In
the 1919 Irish Close Championship at Portmarnock Carter, playing
out of Royal Portrush, was in blistering form from the outset
opening with a 77 and clocking victories of 3 & 2, 8 &
6 and 6 & 5 in his first three rounds. It was less than a
year since his return from active duty in the fields of France
during WWI with the Inniskilling Fusiliers. In the fifth round
and semi-final the matches were closer winning both, as he did,
by a single hole which set him up for a final match with William
McConnell, the local amateur. Carter was by all accounts far superior
to his opponent on the day, consistently outdriving him by as
much as fifty yards and if it wasn't for his quarry's putting,
the match wouldn't have gone as far as the twenty-ninth.
In
the same year the Irish Open Championship was played at Royal
Portrush from 8-12 September, after a six year absence. Carter's
titanic struggle with Rev. E. Ulyatt (Hunstanton) caught the imagination
of a huge gallery swelling in numbers to nearly two thousand.
In the end Carter lost his fourth round match on the twenty-second
hole as the strain began to tell. The Times newspaper assessed
Carter during the match when it said:
"There
is a wholly admirable firmness and accuracy about his game,
especially in his iron play, and he is also a good putter, but
he lacks finish and that is the reason he was beaten."
Carter
was a semi-finalist the following year losing (unluckily some
say) to C.L. Crawford ( Portstewart) when the Irish Close Championship
was played at Castlerock. If there were ever a case for stymie
abolitionists, this match would stand out like a sore thumb. The
players were a class apart yet some freakish putting by Crawford
together with three stymies resulted in the match going the distance.
To add insult to injury a bad bounce from the fairway into a rabbit
scrape and a near unplayable lie on the final hole sealed the
hole and match for Crawford. When luck runs its course the gap
between good and great meant a one-sided final that finished on
the eighth hole of the second round with Major Charles Owen Hezlet
winning by a margin of 12 & 10.
In
the 1920 Irish Open Amateur Championship Carter suffered a crushing
6 & 5 defeat to Ector Munn from the North West club as his
game especially his putting from close range just disintegrated
before a large gallery.
When
the Irish Close Championship returned to Portmarnock in 1921 he
succeeded in taking the trophy on the 12th May, again by a substantial
margin. Despite 1919-1921 being the struggle for Irish Independence,
the Championship continued regardless. The Saturday following
the 1921 Championship there was a curfew in place in Dublin between
10.30pm and 4am. Ireland was still a further two months from a
truce and the IRA had stepped up its campaign of violence and
guerrilla warfare in the Spring. In the 1920 South of Ireland
Championship which Carter won, the legendary Irish golfer John
Burke, adjutant of the local IRA Battalion based in Ennistymon,
recalled an incident during the final. Burke, his brother Tom
and Pakey Lehane took down the Union Jack flag and set it on fire,
replacing it with the Irish tricolour. As the match approached
the second hole the officials noticed the change and british military
personnel were quickly on the scene to replace the Union Jack
flag. When the events were repeated the whiff of trouble in the
air ensured a vastly reduced gallery to watch Carter now attached
to Milltown beat Derry O'Brien, the Douglas player, by 10 &
9.
Carter
played in the British Amateur Championship 1920 at Muirfield,
the first post-war championship but despite winning his first
round match by 10 & 8 he was knocked out in the second round.
In 1921, at which stage he was playing out of Royal Dublin, he
lost his first round match to P. Hunter from the US by 4 and 3.
In 1922 when it was played at Prestwick he reached the quarter-finals
in a match against William Irvine Hunter, in what many considered
a travesty as he was seen as the finer golfer. The defining moment
in the match came when Carter's drive at the sixteenth was too
well struck insofar as it trickled into the Cardinal's Bunker
and he failed to find the green after three attempts eventually
picking up and losing the match by one hole on the eighteenth
in front of a crowd of six thousand.
Bernard
Darwin in his report for The Times put the story of the match
in his own eloquent style:
"But
for the sheer goodness of golf, I must give the palm to the
match between Mr. Hunter and Captain Carter. Other people, perhaps,
may have done lower scores this week, but this was so far the
best golf I have seen. Thrust came in anwser to thrust; time
after time, the golf approached to the heroic"
It
was afterwards reported that so impressed were the powers that
be with his golf that he was picked as part of the international
team to go to America. However, when the team was finally announced
on the 22 June neither Carter or William Irvine Hunter (the 1921
Amateur Champion and 1922 semi-finalist), his vanquisher, were
included even though they were, according to the papers, generally
acknowledged as the best amateur golfers in Great Britain and
Ireland, at the time. The international team event referred to
above was the inaugural playing of the Walker Cup at the National
Golf Links of America in Southhampton, Long Island. Ironically
he would eventually spend much of his time in America playing
on Long Island and its environs.
In
1922 Captain Carter won the short-lived Welsh Open Amateur Championship
at Royal St. David's Golf Club by beating Bernard Drew from Stoke
Poges in a classic and, it has to be said, uncharacteristic fight-back
during the final stages of a championship. Bernard Drew was the
favourite going into this match and from the evidence of the first
round the reason was clear as his steady golf meant Carter went
into lunch three down. In the afternoon Carter turned in a display
of exhibition golf, so much, so that by the fifth he had taken
the lead and closed out the match on the fifteenth by 4 &
3. Carter was again affiliating himself to Royal Portrush and
in the fourth round of the championship he had defeated Major
Charles Owen Hezlet from the same club.
Their
absence from the team couldn't be easily be explained but the
New York Times felt that although there was no official explanation
there may have been a question mark over their amateur status
as they had some connection with golfing firms: despite this there
were allowed play in the British Amateur and were never given
non-amateur status. The loss by the GB&I by 8 games to 4 made
their non-selection even more controversial, given the seemingly
inexplicable reason for not choosing either player.
The
R&A gave a three month notice of a proposed ban on players
making monetary gain from their skill on the golf course and
to this end Carter resigned his association with a golf ball
firm before his move to America which the R&A may have taken
into account in deciding whether his amateur status would remain.
Royal
St. David's Golf Club and Harlech Castle, Wales
After
the Welsh Championship he accepted a wager by a well known lady
golfer that he wouldn't put a ball into Harlech Castle from
the golf course. The nearest point on the course to Harlech
Castle was two hundred yards away and would require the shot
to scale the battlement walls that guard the castle, two hundred
feet above the level of the course. Using a baffy he failed
at his first attempt but managed on his second and repeated
the feat a further two times. As the feat was officially witnessed
it was recorded in the record books as such and the odds for
the bet were struck at one hundred to one so this feat earned
him £100 (present day equivalent of EUR5k) which doesn't
appear to have interfered with his amateur status. Just as well
it hadn't happened before the selection of the International
team as it would have given the Royal & Ancient just cause
for his non-selection. Alas, that was one record of the story,
another, according to Richard Fisher's, A Centenary History
of the Royal
St. David's Golf Club was that the wager was never paid,
whether this was someone welshing (if you'll excuse the pun)
on a half-hearted bet or an act of chivalry on Captain Carter's
part isn't recorded.
All-in-all
1922 was a good year for Carter which all started when, over
the Reuters newswire, came a report on the 22 February that
Captain Carter had a record 65 strokes around the Biarritz course,
Out: 4,4,4,3,4,3,3,5,3 = 33 ; In: 4,3,3,4,4,4,2,3,5 = 32.
On
the 8 January 1923 Carter boarded the White Star Liner - Baltic
bound for America. He was due to spend three months in Florida
playing golf but had no definite plans beyond that but it wasn't
for the want of offers. Carter played in that year's US Amateur
at Flossmore CC but was beaten by George Von Elm from Salt Lake
City by 8 & 7. At the time Carter was playing out of Chicago.
Von Elm was runner-up to Bobby Jones at Merrion in 1924, positions
that were reversed in 1926 when the championship was played
at Baltusrol.
In
1925 Carter is recorded as having played in the US Open Championship
at the Worcester Country Club but was well down the field finishing
on 322 compared with the winning score of 291 managed by William
MacFarlane and Bobby Jones, the former winning in a play-off.
However, this was the US Open and most of the best golfers in
the world were in the field including Hagen, Jones, Sarazen, Quimet
etc. so it was an achievement just to find himself in such illustrious
company.
In
1927 he joined the Sands Point Club, Port Washington, New York
as secretary.
"If
Harriman was the Club’s “father” Captain Ernest
F. Carter deserved to be considered its “mother” for
he hovered over it, like a hen over its nest, for the first
15 years of its existence. During this entire period Carter
was the Club’s secretary and manager and literally devoted
his life to it. The Club’s files are replete with minutes
and correspondence reflecting these activities for he attended
all Board meetings and all Committee meetings, kept complete,
careful minutes of all, and corresponded continuously on all
matters concerning the Club with Harriman, whose good right
arm he was. Carter was also a great golfer who long held the
course record for members- 65. He resigned and became an Honorary
Member in 1942, and has since gone to his Maker."
Monetti
continues by relaying the tough times being experienced by this
"rich's man's" club following the great depression
and Carter's attempts to bridge deficits by going cap in hand
to Harriman. Eventually in 1937 a foreclosure order was placed
on the club's premises but the largesse of an heir to the clubhouse
resurrected it as the Sands Point Golf Club in 1940 and later
renamed the Sand Point
Country Club. All during this Carter seems to have been
instrumental and remained as secretary of the new club.
Sources:
' From College Courses
to Lasting Links - A History of Dublin University Golfing Society
1909-2009 - Michael Halliday & Gavin Caldwell
Other reading sources:
