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14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read it and marvel at the strength of one man's spirit, 31 Oct 2001
THE summer of 1997 provided the best of times and the worst of times for Barclay Howard. At the age of 44, the recovering alcoholic from Johnstone was a folk hero on both sides of the Atlantic after finishing top amateur at the Troon Open in July.
Just a matter of weeks later, doctors told him he had leukaemia.
Whereas Barclay had merely contemplated suicide during his long, lonely and degrading years on the sauce, the torment of chemotherapy and his cancer
treatment left him pleading with his sister, Morag, to end his tribulations. The Barclay Howard story is a harrowing one but, mercifully, also uplifting.
This week sees the publication of a book, co-written with journalist Jonathan Russell, which chronicles the far-from-straightforward life of a boy who fell in love with golf, but very badly lost his way. By the time he made the twin dis- covery of Alcoholics Anonymous and his third wife, Tish, in 1991, what should have been the golden years of a European Tour career were scattered in empty lager cans over some of Scotland's finest courses. Between 1992 and 1997 Barclay was one of the best amateurs in the world, twice playing in the Walker Cup, but just as he was enjoying personal happiness and golfing fulfilment, along came leukaemia.
There are, as the man will tell you, two Barclay Howards. The first, who I met again at the John Letters factory in Hillington on Wednesday is the cheery, sober Renfrewshire chappie; the second, who was often in the ascendancy between the ages of 20 and 40, was an unpleasant, even poisonous, drunk.
That Howard is prepared, with considerable candour, to commit this part of his life to print says much for the man. That he is foregoing his fee and royalties, which will instead go to the leukaemia unit at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, says even more.
It is now four years since Howard's fight against cancer began and, despite his welcome reappearance as customer relations manager at John Letters, his health clearly remains fragile. The setbacks have been many and varied, and for the last 30 weeks he has been on a course of steroids, rather than a course of golf. When, in a fortnight, he comes off the drugs, he will finally be in a position to try to build up his strength and return to some semblance of normality.
Now weighing in at under 11st, he says: 'It gets depressing at times. Sometimes I can't even open a bottle of Coke. And I do miss the golf. That's four years. It has been a long time.'
Barclay has a dream and, improbable though it may seem, it is one which will give him succour in the months and even years ahead. 'I know it's maybe pie in the sky,' he admits, 'but you've got to have a ridiculous outlook, and targets which are so high people will laugh. Paul Azinger [the golfer] did it, and Lance Armstrong [the cyclist] is a phenomenal story. Talk about courage.'
In January 2003, Barclay will turn 50, the age at which he will become eligible for the European Seniors Tour. He aims, health willing, to turn professional for the first time, then go on to win a tournament.
'Then I would know the ability was still there,' he says. 'The seniors only play one round a day, whereas I was used to 72 holes in two days as an amateur. And the 2004 Open Championship is being played at Royal Troon . . .'
With the benefit of hindsight, Howard knows he should have turned pro around the same time as his contemporary, Sam Torrance, whom he met and played as a boy for the first time in 1969. If Torrance was outstanding, Howard wasn't far behind and could have carved out a lucrative career on the European Tour.
To this day Howard can offer no rational explanation for not following the route both he and his late father wanted him to take. Instead, he drifted into a job in a bank, got disastrously married at 19, and started to hit the bottle with ever-increasing ferocity. The marriage ended when he was 25, leaving two young daughters who wanted nothing more to do with their father.
The early 1980s brought a second marriage, again unsuccessful, and a Scotland career which was becoming more and more fractured by his drunken and abusive behaviour. A journey home from Dublin in 1983 brought a serious warning, but at Rosemount the following year a friendly against Italy was followed by more unpleasantness.
'I was my usual inebriated self, spitting bile and venom at anyone foolish enough to come near me,' he recalls. This time the ban was final.
Howard continued to play in tournaments and, incredibly, win some, but both on and off the course his drinking was becoming an ever more serious problem. During the week, when he worked at Rolls-Royce, just round the corner from his present employers, John Letters, he wouldn't touch a drop, but take-off would be signalled when he left the factory on a Friday afternoon. Fortified by carry-outs of strong lager and vodka, Howard would get tanked up before setting out to cause mayhem in Johnstone. Such was his nuisance value that he was banned from every pub in the town. In the summer, Saturday would bring a golf tournament, and the slugging back of cans on the course to maintain his equilibrium, before another night of drinking himself insensible, sometimes accompanied by bed-wetting.
Winter weekends were even more dismal. 'I wouldn't get out of bed till 3pm or 4pm on Saturday afternoons in the winter because I couldn't face people,' he says. 'I used to wait till darkness came in, then I'd go across the road and get a carry-out.
As soon as I got a couple of drinks down me, the world was my oyster again. And that's the way it went every Friday and Saturday.'
It had to stop, and it finally did in 1991. The West of Scotland Open was being held at Renfrew, and was won by Andrew Coltart. The Thornhill player filled the cup with whisky and invited Howard to get stuck in. He says he remembers nothing else of the night, but for everybody else present it was an evening never to be forgotten as
they were confronted by Mr Hyde. The upshot was that Howard was banned by his club, Cochrane Castle, for a year, and his handicap suspended, meaning he was unable to compete. 'In 1991 I reached the bottom,' he says. 'There was no-where
else to go.' Except Alcoholics Anonymous. Although he didn't want to go, he says: 'I would say it took fully 10 minutes for me to realise just how much I had been kidding myself for years.'
Later that same night he was driven back to the home of an AA member, where he met the man's daughter and the woman who was to become his third wife. Six happy and fulfill ing years, with only the very occasional fall from the wagon, followed,
culminating in Tish and their daughter, Laura-Jane, watching this heroic figure march up the 72nd at Troon in 1997 before later being presented with the Silver Medal.
The joy, tragically, wasn't to last long. Problems surfaced at the Walker Cup in America the following month, and then the leukaemia was diagnosed.
'At Troon I was high as a kite, then two weeks later I wasn't worth a button,' he recalls sadly. 'I told my mother: 'I've been kicked in the teeth so often, this has just killed me'.'
But, despite some close calls and the depth of his despair in 1998 when he asked sister Morag to help him die, it hasn't. The last four years have been desperately hard for Barclay and his family, but the wee man is still fighting and holding on to his dreams.
And even if, heaven forbid, he can't fulfil them himself, he has promised daughter Laura-Jane, now nine, a junior membership at Cochrane Castle next year. There is much in Barclay Howard's book that could reduce the reader to tears, but the real
lump in the throat comes from his continuing courage (and that of his family) in the face of adversity.
Read it and marvel at the strength of one man's spirit.
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