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Francis Edward Story

From Waikato Daily News in 1974

Ted's great golf adventure 

Ted Story is 75 and has a passion for golf.  It's a passion that came late in life and now he consumes most of his time - whether it be at home thinking about how to improve his play or on the links at the New Plymouth Golf Club

He is a familiar figure at the golf club and you wouldn't miss him with his tall although gaunt figure, his woolen cap covering the whitened hair, his distinctive playing style or his little motor scooter, on which he trundles off to the links three or four or five times a week from his New Plymouth home.

Ted Story is no great golfer and has never been.  But he has a fascinating story to tell - not only about golf - and his life experiences could well have come straight out of any boys adventure book.

Bengal Cavalry

It is a life that takes in a boyhood in Ireland, a military college at Cheltenham in England, a six year stint with the Bengal Cavalry in India some 50 years ago, a taste of sheep station life in Australia and a varied activity in a over 40 years in new Zealand.

But now it is golf first, second and third with a little bit of garden thrown in between the tee-shots.

"Golf is extraordinary" Ted Story said in his light-toned very-English voice.

"It acts as a drug to me: the freedom of it: the fact that the ball is yours and yours alone."

"It's so individual and yet you always play with a partner.  In other games the ball is not yours.  Someone is going to take it away from you - violently or otherwise."

"Some people say golf is a selfish game - but it's not.

"The other day I played with young that Craig Wilson.  He is on a four or five handicap and hits the ball out of sight.  I might score 102, 101 or 97 in a round.  I'm on a 23 handicap but I can back him up with a stroke a hole.

" and it's such a beautiful place (the Ngamotu links).

" well I ask you...  It's fascinating to me.

Studies

Ted story studies the game too, from books.  Most of them are old books, but the advice they offer generally holds true, with it you be a young blood or an "oldie" like Ted Story.

For example, one of his golfing bibles is "A way to better golf" by Alex J. Morrison published in 1923, and there is another with tips from the golfing greats of 40 and 50 years ago Harry Varden and Bobby Jones.

Ted Story gets up early each morning and spends much time in reading about the game.  And before he goes to golf he writes with ballpoint pen on the palm of his left hand the things about the game he has to remember - "slow back," "head turn," "straight arm," "shaft".

Then out on the course off to false shot, a glance at his left palm hopefully puts him back on the right track.

As you might expect, around at the weekend exhausts him.

"Younger people have a physical reserve, and they don't call on it." Ted Story said. "At my age I call on that reserve, especially when I'm playing with younger fellows.  I don't want to hold them up and its drains me, mentally and physically.

"By the time I get home I'm pretty tired.  But I go to bed early and I'm up with the lark next morning - as fit as a fiddle ready for the next round."

Fascinating

Ted Story's life story is fascinating.  Back in the 1690s two Story brothers settled in County Cavan, Ireland from Northumberland in England often are the defeat of the Catholic King James II by William of Orange in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

The Storys, who trace family ancestry back to 1274, continued to live in Ireland, where Ted Story was born in 1899 the third son of a family of four boys and two girls.

Ted Story went to preparatory school in Dublin and then to Cheltenham College, Gloucestershire, to undertake a military career, following his father's footsteps.

Cheltenham, incidentally has a long Rugby tradition starting the code in 1844 and boasting the oldest rugby fixture playing one school team against another in annual matches.

North-West Frontier

In 1917 Ted Story was one of 120 young soldiers who journeyed to the north-west frontier in India and he spent six years in the Bengal Cavalry, rising to the rank of lieutenant and with a fund of stories about life in India and clashes with insurgent natives that would make any young listener's eyes gleam in anticipation.

In 1923, when his regiment broke up, Ted Story used his gratuity of several thousand dollars to buy a share in a 22,000 acre sheep station in Victoria Australia.  With 20 others he was taught how to farm by the manager.

"We were going to run it as a cooperative" he said.

However his life took another turn when off to the death of his father his mother decided to return to New Zealand, the country of her birth.  She wanted Ted Story to join her a and so he sold his share of the farm and travel to two New Zealand.

Paddle steamer

That was in 1929 and the start of a worldwide financial slump.  Since then Ted Story's life has taken many turns and included buying an old paddle steamer mooring to a wharf at Auckland and running a floating cabaret; chopping manuka scrub for firewood on the Coromandel Peninsula, working in freezing works, on a newspaper in Auckland and eventually shifting to New Plymouth where among other things he joined the New Plymouth Golf Club in 1960.

He soon caught the golf bug and has had it since.  It has been a happy relationship - golf and Ted Story - and if the drives don't always go straight down the middle and the putts sometimes veer waywardly, there is sometimes the par. And getting a par on a par three hole, in receipt pf a stroke on handicap can make Ted Story a playing partner to grab with both hands.

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