Photos in a recent edition of the Tele’s excellent Wednesday pull-out The Dundonian prompted a Lochee reader to get in touch.
Not that Andy Walker ever needs any real reason to get in touch as he has all the details for the ‘BwB hotline’!
Said Andy: “The recent tales about celebrities visiting Dundee has convinced me to tell all about a famous American golfer getting lost in Lochee!
“This story started in 1971 when I was working on decorating a house on Strathern Road in Broughty Ferry.
“I was moving a piece of furniture when two photographs fell to the floor.
“On picking them up, I recognised Jack Nicklaus. Placing them on a chair, I carried on working.”
Andy, a regular contributor to this column, went on: “When lunch-time came, the lady of the house brought me sandwiches (with no crusts!) and tea.
“She noticed I had found the photos of ‘some American’,” she flippantly remarked.
“After telling the lady who the ‘American’ was, I was told they were a gift to her husband from the NCR company.
“He held a managerial position at the Dundee factory.
“At the conclusion of the job, I was given the photos as part of the tip.”
The story now fasts forward 12 years, and Andy continued: “Around approximately 1983, I was sitting in the Lochee United Social Club in the company of the late Alec Balmer, of NCR AFC fame, and Andy Conway, of Lochee Renton.
“They were discussing the golf which was on TV at the time, then the chat switched to ‘the day that Jack Nicklaus did an exhibition at the Cash grounds in 1964’.
“He was supposed to start at 2pm for management only, and the workforce were barred from the event.
“However, he did not arrive until around 4pm as the car picking them up at the airport got lost coming into Dundee.”
The journey was not all plain sailing, as Andy explains: “The Invergowrie circle back then was not what it is now.
“The Greystanes Hotel was on a junction where any transport would carry on straight on up the Kingsway. The driver, for whatever reason, turned right along South Road and eventually ended up in Bank Street, Lochee, outside Massey’s grocer shop.
“The passenger in the back seat rolled down the window and asked Bert Inglis: ‘Where is the NCR factory and sports stadium?’
“The directions went something like this . . . tap o’ the road, turn left at DPM, pass the church, Mrs Kidd’s, police box, Liff Road school.
“Years later, Bert still defends this as true and points to the fact as proof with the photos I was given from the lady in Strathern Road of Nicklaus putting on shoes in the Cash changing-rooms and also one of him driving off a tee.
“Note the increased numbers watching as the factory was coming out at the time.”
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