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From: "Peter_McCrae" <>
Subject: CARR: Joseph Benedict Waters Carr--d.app.jun.2004>IRISH
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 12:58:48 -0000


Joe Carr
(Filed: 05/06/2004)
The Daily Telegraph and the telegraph.co.uk


Joe Carr, who died on Thursday aged 82, was one of the most successful
amateurs in the history of golf.


A warm and charismatic Irishman, he won three British amateur titles - at
Hoylake in 1953, at St Andrews in 1958, and at Royal Portrush in 1960. The
next year he reached the semi-finals of the US Amateur Championship at
Pebble Beach, and was given the Bob Jones Award for outstanding
sportsmanship in golf by the US Golf Association - the first time someone
who was not an American citizen had been thus honoured.

Although Carr won 37 national and provincial titles in Ireland alone,
winning was never more important to him than his love of the game. In 2002
Sir Michael Bonallack wrote of him: "I still have to meet a finer sportsman
who took victory or defeat in the same cheerful manner."

Carr made 11 appearances in the Walker Cup; in 1965 he was non-playing
captain when Britain and Ireland tied with the United States in Baltimore,
and two years later he was the playing captain on this side of the Atlantic.
In 1991-92 he became the first Irishman to captain the Royal & Ancient.

Carr was born Joseph Benedict Waters in Dublin on February 18 1922. He was
the fifth child of his mother, Margaret, who, when he was an infant, gave
him to her childless sister Kathleen. After serving with the British Army in
India, Kathleen's husband James Carr had returned to Ireland to become
steward at Portmarnock golf club near Dublin. The Carrs lived in
accommodation above the clubhouse; thus little Joe was exposed to the game
from his earliest years.

At his Christian Brothers' School in Dublin, O'Connell's, Joe did not shine
in the classroom - he was a poor attender, preferring to spend time on the
golf course (by the age of 14 he was playing off scratch). But he excelled
at sports, being a fine sprinter and representing the school at rugby.

Because the steward's son would not have been welcome as a member of
Portmarnock, the young Carr joined the nearby Sutton golf club, with which
he was to remain associated for 70 years. He was to be its captain three
times, and also its president. For many years he lived in a house on the
course, which players frequently mistook for the clubhouse itself.

Carr never turned professional because he had a highly successful career in
business. In 1946 he set up (with his partner Freddie McDonnell) Carr &
McDonnell, a ladies' fashion manufacturing and wholesaling company. While
Carr toured Ireland promoting and selling their wares, McDonnell organised
the enterprise from behind the scenes. Both became rich men.

In later life Carr moved to Howth, the promontory near Dublin overlooking
the Irish Sea, where he enjoyed landscape-painting (poorly, by his own
estimation). Until recently he played golf every Wednesday at Portmarnock.

He married his first wife, Dor, in 1947; they had a daughter and five sons,
one of whom, Roddy, was a Walker Cup player. Dor Carr died in 1976. Joe
Carr's second wife, Mary, survives him, as do his children.













© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2006.



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