Joe Carr’s life and legacy.

with Matt Jonella. Always good to get back to this fire pit. And for all you fathers out there, Happy Father's Day. I love and appreciate my father. Happy Father's Day, Papa John, but I appreciate him even more now that I'm a father. We're not perfect, but we live, we learn, and we evolve. So to the dad's out there, I hope you enjoy your day. And to the moms, trust me, we are all well aware we couldn't do it without you.

On this Father's Day. A tribute to Joe Carr, who, along with his wife Dorothy, raised six kids in a house overlooking the second Green of Sutton Golf Club in Dublin, Ireland. The opening clip was from ninety four Shells Wonderful World of Golf at Ireland's Killarney Golf and Fishing Club, in which Joe Carr and al Geiberger both shot seventy four, which was even part. Joe Carr was also known as j B. He won three British Amateur Championships and was a semi finalist at the nineteen sixty one U S

Amateur at Pebble Beach. He won six Irish Amateurs, were Irish Amateur Opens, twelve West of Ireland's twelve East of Ireland's three South of Irelands, and he played in ten Walker Cups. He was the first Irishman to become captain of the RNA in and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in two thousand seven by his friend Jack Nicholas. I go back to nineteen fifty I first met Joe car and played in the Walker Top matches at Rearfield, Scotland. And there was this big, lanky,

raw boned guy that hit it a long way. He played it all totally left or right. Uh hit a long way, kept in play and Jack told me he played a lot of golf with Joe Carr, and that JB paid for a lot of Barbara's finest sweaters. JB's sons will tell you he got his money back from Jack at the poker table. Well, let's first way he was he was not only a good player, he was a great friend. And both Barbara and I, uh I

love Joe Car. We just we had we thought the world of it, and uh it raised good kids and uh so you know that's not that's not nothing too bad about that. Nicholas told me he had great respect and admiration for Joe Car the player and the man. Jack shares a story now about his win at the nineteen sixty two US Open at oak Mark, which made me late entry for the Open Championship at Troon that year. Joe Car to the rescue. I qualified my pairing, I was added to the field. It was a hundred fifty

players plus Jack Nicholas. So I was. I was prepaired by myself with the marker in the opening round of the British Open. Be ridiculous. Joe Carr went to the R and A S and this is a disgrace. I said, how can you have the US Open champion over here. Uh, you have no respect for the for the U s g A, and they're they're champion to do this. So they changed the part because Joe and I had played in a threesome. Joe Carr had five sons and a daughter,

all within fourteen years of each other. Roddy, the second son, is the most accomplished golfer, sinking the winning part for Great Britain and Ireland on the eighteenth green of the Old Course at St Andrew's in the nineteen seventy one Walker Cup. Roddy played ten years on the European Tour, later working for IMG, going into business with Sevy by Osteros and has worked with Nicholas design. I asked Roddy to reflect on his father, the competitor he would set

out to break the man. He couldn't tell me have to do that, because he told me you played part, and if you played part, you beat the guy. But he and all he knew he couldn't have to do that. And I watched him. Great people like bodies and minds and souls were crushed because you'd be in the gore plushes summer thinking and the guy be one up and all of a sudden JA and hack out of this thing with a forwood into about front. There. I was done. I had two on and three button and the man

was lost. So he set out and he broke most of it. He broke people. Marty Carr, the youngest of the six car kids, is now the executive chairman of car Golf Travel, a company that coordinates golf trips to Ireland, Scotland and other top destinations around the world. Marty and his staff run the Father Son and the Father Daughter tournaments in Waterville, and I'm lucky enough to call him a dear friend. Marty shares some more of his father's

golf accomplishments. First Captain of the Royal Ancient Gold of St Andrews. There has been a kill one of the captains since first Irishman, and he's the first Irishman. I think he's the only first known the Irishman in the World Golf Hall of Fame, first Irishman member of a ghost to first Irishman to play in the Masters, So you know he in terms of golfing terms, I think you twenty eight honorary life memberships, thirty holds and one.

I think he had like Purty course records. He the older than News and that is at the same time he had port Rush record hol like all his course records are on that big dish set of golf. Like he he had an incredible, incredible record. John Carr, number four in the family, made it to the semifinals and a British amateur, has had a successful career in the oil business and as a member of Augusta National. John who still plays off the scratch on something most people

don't know about his father. I mean, listen, you could, you could. You can list off his accomplishments in golf, you can list off of the accomplishments in business. But actually you know he got an honorary degree in law from Trinity College having not finished high school and and and went to play the East of Iron Championship instead of finishing exams. So I think that's pretty cool. Me only you ever used it. I wouldn't say the name.

So there's two other un redoctorates in Ireland and he would only ever use his doctor title when he was when his assistant was ringing them for something, Doctor Carr on the phone. Over the years, as I've traveled around Ireland, I've become enamored by the fact that you can't go into any clubhouse without seeing Joe Carr's name on the walls of past champions. He's everywhere, which is ultimately what

inspired this podcast. I've always wanted to know more So, in addition to Jack Nicholas, I interviewed Roddy, John and Marty separately, asking them all the same set of questions. Here's Roddy John and then Marty on when they realized their father was great at golf. He was the man.

He was bigger than all the pros. So he was in the final of the British Amateur INTI and like, at that moment you really that he won the British Amateur in Port Rush, you know, in front of his home crowd and tomorrow into this guy over thirty six holes and then the drive back, So driving back with the old man, you kind of that was the first real you know, realization that my father was the champion

that he was. And then they was dectinitely got back in sudden they had a big dinner and then the people waiting and he was parading around in open rolls Royce down the streets of Suddon so you know, he was a superstar in those days before media kind of kicked in. So that was really the first memory. More perspective from John Carr, he was just my dad growing up. He wasn't he wasn't a famous golfer. I didn't really

appreciate it so much later in life. He was my Irish captain when I played for Ireland are and we went to Portugal after I left school to to play golf with Henry Cotton. But again it was it was just it was just growing up with that. It wasn't really, you know, spectacularly special as far as our appreciation of him as a confert. More from Marty, I think for me it was when when I was at sports day when I was in in lower high school, when my dad arrived the hole of sports, they would stop and

the sports teacher, the headmas should go over. There would be conversation with him when everybod's waiting around bridge. So then I kind of us he was. He was kind of a large like character. What's the swing tip that you always think about or are quick to pass on to others? Is there something as it relates to the game of golf that in your mind when you tee up a ball, or when you're over a wedge, when you're over a plot, was there is there something that

has always stuck with you? We had John Jacobs as our teacher, who is actually the fundamental teacher of Michael Bannon. Butch Harmon, I mean Bush came over to his funeral. He lives in our house, get side of eleven shoes and the b six kids jumping on his bed in the morning and stuff. So he would be the foundation of all the great teachers and today. So so all of the teachings were based on the simplicity of John Jacobs, which were turned turn your shoulders, I got club goes

up and turned through. So that was it. So every morning we would hit two hundred balls to be a snake of balls, teeth up outside of our house on the thing of jb would walk out in his track suit and just go turn hit, turn, hit, turn hit. So it was always just you know, and on the inside, turn wide back inside, much like Jacobs, which is mcail roy. So before John died, before Jacobs we call him died, he's I said to him, you know, isn't that mcal roy swing looks like this swing that you were trying

to get JB to do for years. He said, it's the best I've ever seen. So there's kind of that picture of set up, why turn and any inside and let a RiPP and JB ripped it. So that's the simple thoughts that he lived with all all his life. He was a wonderful bunker player, and he kind of he just got up very early. And he would always say, lift the ball. You don't, you don't splash it at, you lift the ball at. You lift the ball. I

have a rolling towards the boat. But obviously I wasn't this thing very well as you can sail, because you played a lot of golf for me, so I never really have a better bunch of lifted out, lifted out of the bunk around to try and hit it out

of the book and lifted out. And as a following story for that, inbou nineteen he was referring a match I think Roddy was commentating, actually a match between Jack Nicklaus and Christie O'Connor, Dannam and Juliot and on the second hold Jack short and short sighted himself in in the bunker right, and he splashed this thing out to about two inches. So after the game, I walked into my dad said, down, for all of my life, you've been saying lift the ball, lift the ball out of

the sun. And so the greatest god for the world has ever seen as commun Juliot short sight himself on two and splashed the all out to an inch, and I said, jack is a terrible bunker player. You can never play bunkers. And then I've had this conversation with Jackie Jackson when it wasn't and I really just played its play away from bunkers. I didn't I didn't think I had to be good at get out about it. So that's just the way he saw it. That's the way he saw the world. The life tip that has

always meant the most. You've beyond the game of golf. Outworked them. That was his male model, Like you know, I worked them simple, It's like carry you know, I mean maybe you know you think about it. I mean he had a nine to five jobs, six kids. I'm half dead trying to rear two. You know you're you're you're only starting six kids, a nine to five job.

You get up in the morning. He'd hit two hundred balls, get in this car, drive to work, come home after at six o'clock, go out into the bunker with the lights on it. Spent two hours there and then go and hit another hunter of balls in the driving and you come back in and go to bed. And every weekend you're going to do eight hours stay digging up

half the practice. Gonna put my arnic until they banned them, because he was like pac Man eating the practice ground there with the amount of balls he took, you know, and hit with the drivers. So that's all we were ever taught, you know, outworked them. More perspective from John Carr. Very deep for me. I spent a lot of time with my dad, maybe the last and fifteen twenty years of his life. The biggest tip again which I passed down to my kids and I've lived it's almost like

a life code. It's give expecting nothing in return. So and I've lived by that creed and it's it's been incredible. It's an incredible gift to be able to give expecting nothing in return. More reflections from Marty Carr. He was an extraordinary man. He he you know, never really heard anybody ever say anything negative about he was. He was he was, he was He treated everybody the same. He used to always say to us, you know you're better than nobody, and nobody's better than you. Remember that in

your mind. What is JB's lasting legacy, Well, I think without a doubt, and for him it was being awarded the Bobby John's Award, which was for international sportsmanshipping an ambassador, international ambassador of goodwill and for the hegrity of the game. I mean he was invited by Bobby Jones personally to play in nineteen sixties seven as the amateur in Europe that Bobby Jones wanted to play at the Masters, and they would have afternoon tea, Mary and Bobby and my

father and my mother door. They would have afternoon tea every every afternoon because this was amateur to amateur in those days, people forget the amateurs were big news. So JB was kind of the counterpart for Jones as an amateur obviously do what Jones did, but there was a respect between Jones and my father. So he was really really tough to get that Bobby Jones Award, acknowledging his role in promoting international fellowship, integrity and sportsmanship, which is

what that award is all about. And there's not that many names on that that are that. You know, everybody, everybody is on that has done their thing and and deserved it. He went to sant Down's the nineteen fifty eight as a fifties seven as a preview for the amateur and and he played in NaN's and he came back and he said to my mother, you know I just figured it all that he said I have to do and say that it is the driver and eight

are in a wet and you can win. So that winter he hit fifty thousand drives, fifty thou and fifty thou wages. My mom logged every shot he wore at the face of a lanter topping driver or at the grooves of his eight are in his wedge, and he went over him on the tournament next to the next June. So he had you know, again, he trained with football teams in the fifties. You know, running he was, he was. He ran every morning. You know. He used to have his caddy would come and tee up a hundred bolls

outside our house on the golf course. When he got up every morning he hit a hundred drives. He'd run down the beach, come back and another hundred drives teed up. He did another hund of drives and he get into his car and we went to work. And when there was a frost out, the caddy would use a kettle of boiling water to break the ground so we could tea up the hundred balls. So he was just a prodigious worker. He worked so hard on his game. He understood the game really well, and he loves people and

he loves completing, you know. That's why it was also a very good catalyst for people's personality. So that's why I think you get on to someone with Jack Nicklaus. But I think his legacy was he was he was a really really solid fair He was a great friend. He tells a great story about the game of golf. In his relationship with the game of golf. He said, you know, he said, in those days, we had the troubles in the North. And he said, you know, we

come from a trouble island. He said, you know, North and South, Protestant, Catholic, you know all this all this conflict. And he said, but you know, the beauty thing about golf is it does a matter where in the words you wire, you're standing the first team doesn't matter whether you're black or white, Catholic or president. You know, nobody cares all they one of those what your handicap is. And then when you tell them, they don't believe you. I know, if you go, you know, and you end

up being friends of the golf course. So I suppose it does. It is the ultimate. It is the ultimate, you know. I think, I think, I think. I think his friendship and his and his fair sense of fairness and a sense of equality. He was. He was. He was truly a great guy. What would be your favorite story about your dad's greatness, something that kind of encapsulates

how good he was. When dad was about eight, just around the time when we were working on the book Breaking a d I managed to find some archive footage and I got it. I've got a lot of archive footage of my dad in the early years. Well. One of the one of the pieces I found was in NT one Irish amateur final at Portmartik when he was

beaten by cessi Ewing. It was a kind of money he was like there were archrivals of the day and he was beating on the seventeen and he walked off the green and he was smiling, and he shook everybody's hand. And I used that as an example to my kids to say, look at this man here walking up the seven green. Has he won or has he lost? He wouldn't know that, friends, And to me, that was the greatness of the man. You know, he was a great competitor, but he was a great winner, and he he was

a great wizard. So I think that's a great quality and that's you know, as I said, I used that as a guide to my kids. He played the Walk up in sixty nine. I played in seventy one, so we played for Leinster together. We only missed it by one. We were really I was trying to get him to hang out but like he was fifty at that stay, so we were really trying to be a father on

sun job on that. So anyway, about nine nine he sent me off to Florida to Pine Tree where crewman can all to learn how to play out to that that so I was there, came back to play in the South of Ireland and I was a good player then and I didn't make the cut to get into the match play and he was confounded him because he knew I was a good player, but like for him. And he kind of came to me and he said, no,

you're going to caddy for me. And this was his thirty nine championship that he you know, this is before, and he said, I'm going to show you how easy just to win one of these things. It's ridiculous. He said, you're good enough to win, you can't even qualify. Now

you're gonna cartach for me. I'm gonna show you. My favorite story is he's done on a hinch playing in the in the South of Virlin against the semifinal of the final the South of Ireland back in in the late fifties and he's playing a match against old Fogerty and Ruddy's on the bag. I'm sure Roddy might tell this one better. He always had this thing in match play with my mother, who would walk every hall with him.

When he got to three up, there's always too you know, two matches morning afternoon, my mother would go in and make the sandwiches for the car because no man alive could ever get out, could beat you know, could beat JB if you got three up, because nobody can ever win four homes off and so match over three up, not to mother mother, But head and make the sandwiches for the afternoon match. Wait for him to come in.

He got at the car, half the sandwich, come out and dust the next guy six and five, seven and six, whatever it was. This was the scene. And we get through and he says to me as we go along, he said, now, he said, I'm I'm kind of two up on the first team, and the guy's expecting to be two down after four. You know, my job is to make sure he is two down after four. We get to the final and he's playing against No Fogerty, his own book maker friend, you know, who only shook hands.

He shook the hand with these guys, no contracts or whatever. And all was one of his great buddies from earlier. And they had seven kids, and we had six kids, and we're playing in the south to see but fog and I was a fearsome friend of his, and he was a good boxer, so he wouldn't have been intimidated like a lot of the other guys that would have fallen by the wayside, just on nerves alone. Like and

those those days it was rootless hand to hand combat. Right, four thousand people, I've come back from America, caddying for Poppy've justusted everybody along the way. Nobody got past the fifteen hole. We're three down after five in the hinch, and I'm like John chiggy chiggy cheeky, heading for the dell hole, and I'm looking at the Pop was marching along thousands of people everywhere as a pop. You know that three down run? This isn't funny, is it? That's

do you know? You you're three down? Pop? Because I was translating it the other way, you know, he said what he said? What are you talking? If I don't lose another hole, I win by two and one if I don't lose another hole. It was an incredible strategy. Didn't go chasing. I didn't say I gotta win. He hung around. He was man to man, don't go chasing. Then you go four down, you go five down. Part party man throws the one back, part part throws another

one back. Things going to court, the plan, No panic, back to one down with five to go, perfectly on schedule. No panic. What's whoever saw we get? It's two drivers onto the third thing to think in three pots that you know, which upset him a little bit. Well, one down the sixteen part three. And at this stage, like he had trained me with yardages, books, you know, measurements everything, he didn't do that never just what he couldn't do.

So I get up to the seventies and then throwing the grass up, not funny, four tailsand people it says, I said, pop, it's a hundred and seventy five. One club wins one club elevation. He said, eight iron, eight iron, eight iron, because that's the shot. He saw, a raking hook with a divid two foot long, you know, driven into the wind, you know whatever. Anyway, if he lis this thing, it plugs under the face of this seaside bunker as and you can barely see, like an egg pitch.

Now fo gets up with a fore iron and hits this kind of a chokey hook that scrambled down to the front of the green. Not funny, one down, three to play, you know, plugged in the face of the bunk. Here man at the front edge of the green forty away, get down into the bunker. I look at it, and, as I would always do, thinking what's the best I could do here? I'm thinking I couldn't see the bone, never mind moved JB had a club called the Monster, which had a flange on it was a big, huge

flag of the old days. So he gets into the bunker. He lifted the front of the bunker onto the green. The whole the ball then burst out at the debris and then trickled itself out of the debris. Literally half the bunker face ended up on the game. The ball first for about two feet inside of fog you know what. Fogerty was the guy's name. So I'm thinking, Jesus, how do we lifted out there? So anyway, just about Fogo puts it up to four ft little choky you can feel it, and JBB the know to be, you know,

on that stuff. So just JB is just about to put the Angelus goes. It is twelve o'clock in the hinge. Twelve o'clock the prayer, the Angelus. Everybody's wearing hats in those days, so everything stops. The crowds of those days were bigger than the crowds and professional tournaments in Europe now, so it was extradited. But five thousand people around the green,

the Angela spells on the local church ring. Everybody gets down on their hands and these and they say the decade of the Rosary, right, so they will marry for the grace. Caddy puts the pin down, named the fathers son of the Holly, the angel Lord. It's it's a six minute prayer. You know. Hats are on the things. I'm signed with the bag looking around this scene. No one I'm supposed to have my head bout thinking choking me. You know this is crazy. But so I look over

at JP, and JP wing set me to myself. What has he got to wink at the amounts up there? Four ft, he's thirty five ft. He's one dawn with three to play. Not funny. So anyway, Andel has finished his hats go back on. Things settled down again. JP goes up, breaks the back of the hole. Paul goes in, your man, your janks at two ft left, you know win. He hooked it out of bounds in the next hole.

We win the championship. He is dy a big week and they moved on and he won the tournament and the driving back of the car j he says, ready, that's not how to win a championship. Cut. I'm driving home that night. The six of us in this mark for speeding at a. I'm looking in the mirror JB's eyes. I said, how did you know, Pop? How did you know? You know you're gonna hold it? He said, what I said, how did you know? You winked at me? He said,

should he left the door open? Didn't he? And that's that's man of the manor that's when you understood about your old man and funny No. Further on down the road we ended up sliding off the end of the road. We went to the Curlews. In those days, they were all slides, and then we were driving the car slid off the side of the road. So Fogo, the guy you beat in the final was driving by with the seven kids in the back of the carrier, the station wagon, and he pulls over. He sees jbs car slid down

kind of a side of the DNS. Okay. He phones down the window and he says, Joe, you can't keep it on the fairway and you can't keep it on the road. Good luck and prove what would you believe? He's most proud of in terms of you in your life. He couldn't ever understand how I failed on the tour, because he knew how good a player was I could beat the kite from Watson and those guys in the

Walker Cup and stuff like that. But when I went to the tour, I started, so that would be the public the area that he could never come to terms with. I think the fact that I ended up going off and then developing another career thanks to Mark for comic getting my I calling my Harvard education, he kind of liked that. And then I ended up kind of with Sevy and and working with Jack and bringing Jack to Ireland to play, you know, play there for the first time.

So things like that that he kind of got along the way that he would have. In fact that I stayed in golf and was in the top end of the management and promoting tour events, running Ryder Cups, Solheim Cups and stuff like that, that all gave him a bit of a buzz. He was happy for me to get memberships of someone golf clubs. He liked that. But so generally, I think he was very proud of all

of us in his own way. Probably the ones of us who played golf at a higher level had a slightly better peek behind the curtain and some of the others, you know, we got to know him a little bit better because he was always even. I remember the last time I seven, Ronny played golf with my dad. You know, Ronny hit this beautiful feathered seven iron on the eighth

of Port Marnoch. It was just a magnificent shot and like that made my dad totally happy, the fact that Roddy could execute that shot, and he knew exactly the talented too to feel it. You know, the talented took to move the ball left or right, the talented took to stop it. So I think he was proud of every good golf shop we've ever hit. I think he was very proud of our of our kids and those that they were born when he was alive, and I think, you know, he's just very proud of all of us.

I didn't really get to know very well until I came back to the States in nine, right. I was always the kind of the rebel son who was aver the very it was. It was a huge about of good news coming from very good as usually it was usually a cash call or so. So I would say I got to know when I came back in and when I set up car Golf. He really he kind

of retired that stage. So was there really something that you know, I ended up generating a very close relationship with him on and he was very old school, but certainly as the father and son developed, and and and he came out and kind of met you know, groups of people or met him in Portmarnick or Sucon golf club. He I think he got a really really good sense of pride. It gave him, It gave him a kind of a second a second run of it. I think that's that's probably what he's most proud of in terms

of me in our relationship in later life. Like it was a very competitive man and you know, he didn't really mind what you were doing as long as you was a sas that. How about your mom? Where does she fit in all this? She was incredible. She managed him in those days there was no management of amateurs or anything, but she managed his brand. So she would like four hundred postcards every Christmas, handwritten with a photograph of the family, and send everybody he had met. She

had the most beautiful handwriting. She wrote everybody that he ever met her stayed with. So she was the actual and this was just good manners in those days, but that actually established Joe Carr as the famous individual that he was. She was like superwoman, you know. She basically she had six kids. She hit the ball about a hundred yards off the tree. She could don a twelve handicap. They won like seven all Ireland Mixed forces together. She

hit him a hundred chards down the fairway. Here's like two hundred and fifty yards on the green. She was the best potter in the family, a little blade potter, used to cut the ball, always kept her head study so so that she basically was an amazing golfer for for the for the distance she hit the ball. She ran his whole life and she ran our house with six kids. She was an amazing an amazing woman. Unfortunately left us in notteen seventy six too early, but but

she was a power behind the throne. Definitely he was driven. He was definitely driven. He was adopted. He came from absolutely nothing. He worked, He left school at fifteen and cared for his mother. He you know, he would have said address as he practiced hard. He literally literally just beat his way out of Vichy Core, which is not He's probably one of the least after places in Ireland, you know, so he he did it on himself and he married, well he married, he married my mother who

was who was a saint. This podcast is called the fire Pit because it's the kind of stories you'd want to be. You know, here tell around a part. But do you have a favorite fire pit? And why what about a pillage at the moment, buddy, I actually have an American friend, Andy Pierce, and we get together every year. He worked with me an I MG and he he had a group of you call it the Creechy group, and they're a bunch of kind of main fellas who

went to college in Bowden. I have my four retrobate friends who are the shoeman, the music man, the stockman, and myself who are from all box to life. We've kind of joined together and we get together every year and we have He's into pitch, so I really everywhere we go we build this pit fire and we sit around the drinking and talent stories. So when you when I saw the name of the fire Pit, I wouldn't have known that as Ireland and Ireland as you know,

it's the public public fire pits. You know, it's like putch their arms as the fire piers in Bodeville, right, And there's a little small fire in the corner which kind of does his job with anything else, puts the pub in and and then yeah, but the fire pit of me is the one of them are which I have a far outside my back door. It's a far place. And during the lockdown, we've had lots of sing songs and drinks and load music and you know, annoying the

neighbors and stuff happening on our fire pits. Yeah, now we have. We we led a quite a lot. In fact, it's ready to be lived with tonight. Another logo five, nobody here is getting time? Are you looking for good value on great golf apparel? As a listener to this podcast, my friends John Ashworth and Jeff Cunningham at links Soul in Oceanside, California are offering you a discount on all future orders of what I wear all day, every day,

on and off the course. Whenever you go to link soul dot com, just use promo code matty G twenty five m A T t y G twenty five. Thank you for listening to the fire Pit. It's produced by Alex Upeggy. It's edited by Rex Lint. The theme song is by Joe Horowitz. Please rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts, and we might track you down and send you one of our new Imperial Row Pats. Got a question, comment, or a story for us to track down, You can find me on Twitter at Matt Janella or

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