Dai Rees: Welsh Golfer Won a Lot, Thrived in Match Play
Full name: David James Rees
Date of birth: March 31, 1913
Place of birth: Font-y-gary, Glamorgan, Wales
Date and place of death: November 15, 1983, in London, England
Nickname: "Dai" is a Welsh nickname for "David"
In the Majors
The British Open was the only one of the four professional major championships that Dai Rees played in, first appearing in the 1935 Open and last in 1974. He never won, but was runner-up three times and had seven total Top 10 finishes.His best showing was solo second in the 1961 British Open, one stroke behind the winner, Arnold Palmer. Rees, at age 48, shared the second-round lead, and was one stroke off Palmer's lead following the third round. In the final round, both scored 72, Palmer finishing on 284 and Rees on 285. They were the only golfers to finish under par.
Rees tied for second in both 1953 and 1954. In the 1953 Open, he shared the second-round lead and trailed by one going into the final round. After a 71 in Round 4, he finished four behind Ben Hogan. In the 1954 Open, Rees was the co-leader after Round 3. He scored 72 in the final round, but another of the third-round co-leaders, Peter Thomson, had a 71 to win by one stroke. Rees reached the last hole in 1954 needing par to force a playoff, but his 4-iron approach ran off the back of the green and he was unable to get up-and-down.
Rees' first brush with an Open title was in the 1946 British Open where he was the third-round co-leader. And his fellow co-leaders didn't light it up in a very high-scoring final round: Sam Snead had a 75, Johnny Bulla a 79. Alas, Rees soared to an 80 and dropped into a tied-fourth finish.
Yet another time Rees had the lead was in the 1950 British Open, where Rees was the outright leader following Round 2 and shared the third-round lead. But his 71 in Round 4 was only good enough for a tied-third finish.
Rees also tied ninth in both 1959 and 1960, was 11th in 1936, and also had Top 15 finishes in 1938, 1939, 1948, 1951, 1956 and 1958.
In the Ryder Cup
Rees was famous in his time as an intense Ryder Cup participant, someone who took great pride playing in the event and competed furiously for Team Great Britain — at a time of near-total domination by Team USA. Golf Digest once referred to Rees as "The original Mr. Ryder Cup" in a headline, and the author of that article wrote that "No one has ever displayed more enthusiasm for the Ryder Cup than the wee Welshman."Rees played in nine Ryder Cups, each one that took place from 1937 through 1961. He captained Team GB&I five times, the first four (1955, 1957, 1959, 1961) as playing captain, the last time (1967) as non-playing captain.
In his nine playing appearances, Rees played 18 matches total with a record of 7-10-1. (That record was actually pretty good for Team GB&I in this era.) Rees was 2-5-1 in foursomes play, but 5-5-0 in singles matches. His nine playing appearances was the Ryder Cup record for either side at the time of his last; his five singles victories were also the GB&I/Europe Ryder Cup record at the time of his last.
The 1957 Ryder Cup, in which Rees was player-captain, is the one for which he is most-famous. It was the only Ryder Cup that GB&I/Europe won between 1933 and 1985, and Rees was in the thick of it. At the time, the format was four, 36-hole foursomes matches on Day 1, and eight, 36-hole singles matches on Day 2.
In the foursomes, Rees and partner Ken Bousfield beat Art Wall/Fred Hawkins, 3 and 2, after trailing 1-down with nine holes left. But Team USA won the other three to lead 3-1.
Captain Rees called a team meeting after the foursomes, examining player scorecards to determine which two golfers would sit in the following day's singles. Max Faulkner, playing poorly, volunteered himself. Rees then picked his friend Harry Weetman as the other golfer to bench for singles. A furious Weetman stormed out and went right to the media, vowing he'd never again play for a Captain Rees in the Ryder Cup. (Weetman received a one-year ban from the British PGA, but with Rees' support the ban was eventually overturned. And Weetman did, in fact, play for Captain Rees in another Ryder Cup.)
Perhaps the contretemps fired up the Brits, because on Day 2 they dominated the singles, winning all but one match. Rees himself shared the largest winning margin of the day, beating Ed Furgol 7-and-6. Team GB&I wound up winning 7.5 to 4.5. And Rees went on to be named BBC Sportsman of the Year, the first golfer so honored.
Rees made his debut in the 1937 Ryder Cup, in which he beat Byron Nelson in singles, 3 and 1. But every other Ryder Cup in which he appeared was a Team USA victory. That included his final playing appearance in the 1961 Ryder Cup. At age 48, he was the second-oldest Ryder Cup player to that point. But he won one of his two foursomes matches, and won both his singles matches (2 and 1 over Jay Hebert, and 4 and 3 over Doug Ford).
Rees appeared in the Ryder Cup as a player only in 1937, 1947, 1949, 1951 and 1953; as the player-captain in 1955, 1957, 1959 and 1961; and as the non-playing captain in 1967. His other singles victory was 6-and-4 over Bob Hamilton in the 1949 Ryder Cup. His losses in singles were to Jimmy Demaret (twice), Jack Burke Jr., Sam Snead and Dow Finsterwald. Every opponent Rees faced in Ryder Cup singles was (or would become) a major championship winner. His five times as captain is the GB&I/Europe record and second only to Walter Hagen's six.
Rees' influence in the Ryder Cup was felt long after his death, as writer John Huggan explained in that aforementioned Golf Digest article: "In 1985, when Europe won for the first time, Rees provided the crate of pink champagne sprayed over the cheering crowds from the hotel balcony. Purchased not long after that equally momentous victory at Lindrick 28 years earlier, he bequeathed the traditional celebratory alcohol on the condition that it was not to be opened by anyone other than the 'next team to beat the Americans'." And after Player-Captain Rees' 1957 triumph, the next team to beat the Americans didn't arrive until Team Europe in 1985.
More About Dai Rees
The Ryder Cup wasn't the only competition in which Dai Rees' reputation as a tough match player was earned. He won the News of the World Match Play (later known as the British PGA Match Play and called by Peter Alliss "the premier event after the Open" in Britain during Rees' era) four times. And he reached the championship match three other times. Those four victories give Rees a share of the tournament record along with James Braid and Peter Thomson.His first victory in the News of the World Match Play, and the tournament win that put Rees on the map in the golf world, was in 1936. In the final, Rees was 5-down to Ernest Whitcombe after the morning 18. He was still 4-down with 12 holes left in the afternoon. But he squared the match on the 29th hole and went on to win, 1-up.
Two years later in the title match, Rees beat Eddie Whitcombe (Ernest's son), 4 and 3. He also won in 1950, beating Henry Cotton, 1-up, in the final; and in 1951 (7-and-6 over Frank Jowle).
Rees also lost in the final in 1953 (to Max Faulkner), 1967 (to Peter Thomson) and 1969 (to Maurice Bembridge). In that 1969 appearance, Rees was 56 years old, and it was 33 years since his first New of the World Match Play championship in 1936.
Rees, in one of his books, once tried to explain his match-play prowess: "My method in match play has been always simply to play against the course rather than against my opponent. And to anticipate his performing great feats rather than hoping he will commit vast blunders. I have never minded losing a match, provided I have played well. If someone has outplayed me, he is welcome to victory. I always try to go boldly for the correct shot, rather than easing up and playing safely."
Alliss, in one of his books, described Rees' game as early-on being strong on putting, weak on the long game. But that reversed over time, so that Rees became a very straight hitter and a player well-known for fairway-wood approaches into greens. Rees used a baseball grip (aka a double-handed or two-handed grip) and a wide stance.
"Having played his shot," Alliss wrote, "Rees would then move off at high speed, usually talking at the same rate."
The editors of the 1975 The Encyclopedia of Golf wrote of Rees' "remarkable zest and enthusiasm for the game," and his "swing that was fast, natural, aggressive and rhythmic."
Rees was born in Wales, where his father was a golf professional, in 1913. He turned pro himself at age 16 in 1929 to become his father's assistant.
When Rees played in the 1932 British Assistants Championship, he drew the eye of Harry Vardon, who was the pro at the host course, South Herts Golf Club in England. According to the South Herts club history, Vardon commented, "There's only one real player among that lot — the young boy Rees. He'll do well."
And he did: Rees' first significant pro victory was in the Daily Mirror Assistants' Tournament in 1935, and a year later he was busting out with his first News of the World Match Play win.
British pro tournament golf came to a halt in 1939 (by which time Rees had won several other big titles on the British PGA circuit) due to World War II. During the war, Rees served in the Royal Air Force, and eventually became the driver for Air Marshal Sir Harry Broadhurst. In that role, Rees also had occasion to drive Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery (with whom he also golfed, during and after the war) and Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.
When British tournament golf picked up again in 1946, Rees raced right back into action, winning the Silver King Tournament and Spalding Tournament that year.
And he continued winning a lot through the 1950s and into the 1960s. Rees topped the British circuit in earnings in 1950, when he won the Yorkshire Evening News Tournament, News Chronicle Tournament, News of the World Match Play, and Dunlop Masters (aka the British Masters). He was the circuit's Harry Vardon Trophy winner for low scoring average in 1955 and 1959.
Over his career, he won the British Masters twice, the Swiss Open three times, the Yorkshire Evening News Tournament five times, plus the Irish Open and Belgian Open. In 1958 he took the South African Professional Match Play, beating Harold Henning and Gary Player en route to the title.
His final win in the Swiss Open was in 1963 at age 50. By that point Rees was eligible to play in the very few tournaments for senior pros that existed at the time. The biggest in Europe was the British PGA Seniors Championship. Rees was runner-up in 1964 and 1965, won it in 1966, and was second again in 1970.
Over his career Rees rarely played in America, usually only appearing in a tournament or two in years when the Ryder Cup was played in the States. According to PGA Tour stats, Rees made only eight starts in tour events. Four of those starts were in 1947, and he finished in the Top 10 in two of them. That included Rees' best showing in the U.S., third place in the Los Angeles Open.
(It was the norm at the time, because international travel was much harder, that British golfers played very few tournaments in America, and vice-versa. But the slower pace of the game in the U.S. may have contributed to Rees' very low total of starts there. He once wrote that, "In the USA a number of first-class golfers take as long to choose a wife as a club.")
The modern European Tour launched in 1972, when Rees was 59 years old, but he did make a handful of appearances there through 1978. In 1973 Martini International, Rees tied for second place at age 60. His final victory of note was in the non-tour 1975 Southern Professional Championship (aka the South of England PGA) at age 62.
In addition to his Ryder Cup play, Rees played internationally for Wales in the Canada Cup (later called the World Cup) nine times, 1954, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962 and 1964.
Rees enjoyed writing about golf and did so in multiple venues over his career, including newspapers and magazines. He also wrote five books: Golf My Way (affiliate links) was published in 1951, followed by Dai Rees on Golf (1959), The Key to Golf (1961), Golf Today (1962), and his retrospective on his career, Thirty Years of Championship Golf in 1968.
In 1946, 13 years after Vardon praised his play at South Herts Golf Club, Rees became pro at South Herts. He served in that role until is death in 1983 at age 73.
Rees was a big fan of Arsenal football. He was injured in a car accident after attending an Arsenal soccer match in September 1983. He spent the last seven weeks of his life in a hospital in London before succumbing to his injuries.
Rees was awarded Commander of the British Order (CBE) in 1958.
Dai Rees' Tournament Victories
- 1935 Daily Mirror Assistants' Tournament
- 1936 News of the World Match Play
- 1936 Daily Mirror Assistants' Tournament
- 1936 Surrey Open Championship
- 1937 Sunningdale Foursomes (partnered by Stanley Anderson)
- 1938 News of the World Match Play
- 1939 Yorkshire Evening News Tournament
- 1939 Addington Foursomes (partnered by Alfred Critchley)
- 1946 Silver King Tournament
- 1946 Spalding Tournament
- 1947 Penfold Tournament (tie with Reg Whitcombe and Norman Von Nida)
- 1947 Daily Mail Tournament
- 1947 News Chronicle Tournament
- 1948 Irish Open
- 1949 News of the World Match Play
- 1950 Yorkshire Evening News Tournament
- 1950 News Chronicle Tournament
- 1950 News of the World Match Play
- 1950 Dunlop Masters
- 1951 Royal Canberra Professional Purse
- 1951 New South Wales Jubilee Open
- 1951 Yorkshire Evening News Tournament (tie with Norman Von Nida)
- 1952 Wiseman's Tournament
- 1952 Yorkshire Evening News Tournament
- 1953 Daks Tournament
- 1954 Spalding Tournament
- 1954 Belgian Open
- 1954 Southern Professional Championship
- 1956 Swiss Open
- 1956 Yorkshire Evening News Tournament (tie with Ken Bousfield)
- 1958 Dunlop South African Professional Match Play
- 1959 PGA Close Championship
- 1959 Swiss Open
- 1959 Sherwood Forest Foursomes Tournament (partnered by Dennis Smalldon)
- 1960 Hammonds-Carling Jubilee Tournament
- 1960 Gleneagles Hotel Foursomes Tournament (partnered by W. Glennie)
- 1962 Dunlop Masters
- 1962 Daks Tournament (tie with Bob Charles)
- 1963 Swiss Open
- 1966 PGA Seniors Championship
- 1966 Southern Professional Championship
- 1970 Bermuda Beefeater Tournament
- 1975 Southern Professional Championship
(Book titles are affiliate links; commissions earned)
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