Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

Registration
Edit profile

catalogue
auction
shopping cart
shipping

history
makers

search
faq
news
links
about
contact

Clubmakers

Albert Kam
Canada/Long Ashton

This is an unusual one. Plenty examples of Scots and English professionals going to Canada but here is someone who began his professional career in Canada coming to Bristol.

The beginning of the story was missing and I am very grateful to Don Childs for investigating it and sharing his findings with me. The Western Daily Press wrote of his appointment at Long Ashton that he 'learnt his golf at Minchinhampton'. Albert Oscar Waldemar Kamienski was born in Enfield, Middlesex, early in 1881, the second son of Polish Count Waldemar Alexander Oscar Kamienski and his English wife, Jennie Louise Hengler. The family lived in Gloucestershire and Albert played golf at Minchinhampton. Whether he just played frequently or was apprenticed to A H Toogood is still open. I suspect the former. As an assistant he would as often have a spade in his hand as a spade mashie and would also be involved in clubmaking. As Kam (he shortened his name in Canada) does not appear to have been much involved in this later in his career, other than offering repair and clubmaking services through a sports shop, P J Cantwell, in Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, in 1912. I think he may just have used the leisure time afforded him as the scion of an affluent family to spend it on the course. (When he returned to England in 1914, he played against Minchinhampton’s best amateur and a Bristol paper reported, “The men are old opponents and have played many strenuous games together at Minchinhampton, where the professional learned most of his golf”.)

The 1901 census gives no suggestion of having been a golf professional. He is described as an ‘iron fitter’ which was rather a catch-all for anyone from a simple metal-basher to a skilled engineer. Presumably it refers to skills he acquired at the Enfield Flue Company of which his father was managing director.

His time between 1901 and 1904 was probably spent working on his brother’s farm in Winnipeg but in 1905 he was appointed professional at the Winnipeg Golf Club. He was also, overlapping with this period, possibly as a winter appointment, professional at the Jericho course, the first in the Vancouver area, in 1907, with his wife as housekeeper. He laid out the first course but this was radically changed by his successor Alex Duthie

In 1909 he moved on to lay out the new nine hole course at Norwood in Winnipeg and be its professional and he took part in the first Canadian PGA championship at Royal Ottawa in 1911.

He was back and forth to England regularly but the unusual move came in 1914 when he stayed and became professional at the Long Ashton club in Bristol, coming with the reputation of being a very long driver. He was here until 1917 and then it's not quite clear what he did. There is a record of him playing in a News of the World qualifier at Long Ashton in April 1921 with the affiliation of Ladyhill (a now defunct course across the border in Wales) but it is the only mention I can find of him with that club.

Later in the decade he was back in Canada. He was engaged in March 1927 to be professional at the new Yorktown Golf and Country Club, Saskatchewan, for the coming season. His services remained in demand in Canada: in 1929, in conjunction with Parks Canada engineer, J H Atkinson, he designed and Waskesiu (despite the club to this day advertising it as a Stanley Thompson design) although he never saw it built. This, and Kam’s career, has been thoroughly documented by Donald Childs and will no doubt arrive on his website (see the links section of this site) before too long.

Albert Kam left Canada in 1930 and returned to Gloucestershire where he retired. He died on 2 February 1955 in Gloucester at the age of 74.

Search the catalogue for clubs by this maker