Golf Business News – Blairgowrie pays tribute to ‘Wee Jessie’
Blairgowrie Golf Club in Scotland has commemorated the achievements of Jessie Valentine, a former member who was a dominant force in the ladies amateur game either side of the Second World War, by displaying a series of photographs, trophies and equipment that reflect her impressive career in the game.
Her son Iain Valentine, a Blairgowrie member and former chief executive of the Hong Kong Golf Association, recently joined other family members and guests for the unveiling of the ‘Jessie Valentine Wall’ in the dining room of Blairgowrie’s clubhouse, with Jessie’s biographer, Dr Eve Soulsby, also in attendance.
Ladies captain Margaret Marshall said the restaurant at Blairgowrie had long been named after Jessie, but a visit to the Home of Golf sowed the seeds of the project.
“In the Links Clubhouse at St Andrews I noticed the gallery wall paying homage to Old Tom Morris and golf in general. I thought we could have something like it to remember Jessie,” she explained. “Iain, the family and Eve have been very supportive, and we have gathered some marvellous photographs capturing Jessie’s extraordinary life and career.”
Iain said: “Mother loved this club, and it was a big moment for her when she was made an honorary member in 1969.”
Ten years earlier, in 1959, Perth-born Jessie, the daughter of Craigie Hill professional and coach Joe Anderson, became the first golfer to receive an MBE for services to the sport – reflecting an extraordinary career spanning three decades. She was also granted honorary membership at her beloved Craigie Hill and inducted into the Scottish Sporting Hall of Fame.
Six times Scottish Ladies Champion in the 1930s and 1950s, Jessie represented GB&I in seven Curtis Cups – and famously holed a long putt on the 18th green of the King’s Course at Gleneagles to secure a point to tie the match with the USA.
After winning national championships in New Zealand and France, in 1937 Jessie won the British Ladies Amateur at Turnberry. Her career went on hold during the war years, when she drove an ambulance while her fiancé and future husband George, a Fair City motor dealership owner, councillor and St Johnstone director, was held as a prisoner of war.
Jessie had to turn professional at the age of 45 to take over the reins of a Perth sports store from her father. She went on to design a range of Dunlop clubs for women and wrote an instruction book called ‘Better Golf, Definitely’.
Before then, the 5ft 2ins golfer with the ‘spirit level backswing’ known fondly as ‘Wee Jessie’ and the ‘Fairway Maid of Perth’, had added two further British Ladies titles to her collection in 1955 and 1958.
Eve observed that in 1967 Jessie, “a wonderful ambassador for golf and Perth,” received the Frank Moran Trophy for “the Scot who has done most for the game of golf.”
Her enduring standing in the sport she loved was reflected when Jessie, at the age of 78, was invited to join celebrities playing at the opening of the Jack Nicklaus designed Monarch’s course at Gleneagles, which, as the renamed PGA Centenary Course, went on to host the 2014 Ryder Cup.
Jessie died in 2006, aged, 91, having continued playing at Blairgowrie well into her 80s.