Meadowbrook to revive city tournament

Meadowbrook Country Club has always embraced its rich history, which dates back to the early days of the city of Kilgore itself.

So perhaps it's only fitting that the club's new idea for a tournament is actually an old one.

This year, for the first time since 1942, Meadowbrook will host a city championship tournament, a tournament that, at its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, showcased some of the greatest golfing talent in East Texas. The tournament will be played once again on Saturday, Sept. 26 and Sunday, Sept. 27, with a tee time of 9 a.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday. Lunch will be provided on Saturday, and there are still slots available to enter. For entry information, contact the club's pro shop at (903) 984-3387.

The requirement is simply to be a Kilgore resident, to own a business in Kilgore or to be a member at MCC.

The original city tournament was the first tournament ever played at Meadowbrook in 1933. It was conducted amid national depression and local boom. The tournament was open to all residents of Kilgore, no membership in Meadowbrook required and not much of an entry fee.

There had been a few "off-brand" one-day minor events for enjoyment of the club members and some of the locals who paid a small green fee to use the course, but no test of golf designed to identify a real champion.

Today, almost nothing is known of the 1933 championship except the names of S.L. "Red" McDowell, the champion, and B.M. King, the runner-up. The 1934 pre-tournament newspaper stories mention them as the finalists in 1933, but make no other mention of the event. For some unexplained reason, there is a six-month gap in the 1933 archives of the Kilgore Daily News. While microfilm libraries at both the Kilgore News Herald and Kilgore College are extensive, neither of them have microfilm on file for May through October, 1933.

Most likely the tournament was held during those months.

It is known that the city tournament was organized by Meadowbrook's first pro, Tilly Wilcox. Tilly had arrived in Kilgore in 1932, and was at the center of all golf activity at Meadowbrook. The tournament was played over the sand greens course that had been laid out east of the city limits in February, 1932. Wilcox had worked and played in many tournaments in Wichita Falls and North Texas during the late 1920s. The North Texas communities of Tilly's youth were years ahead of rural East Texas in discovering golf.

From 1934 until the tournament was no longer played, the Daily News gave the city championship plenty of attention and when the News Herald started printing a weekly in 1935, there were two papers to record the results of the tournaments. Sometimes there were conflicts between the papers in the recording of some facts, and one glaring absence: neither paper had a story covering the final match of the tournament in 1936. But Jack Gates, who won the even three times, has the trophy showing his championships of 1934, 1935 and 1936.

The city championship was contested nine times at match play in 10 years, beginning in 1933 and ending in 1942. There was no tournament in 1939, and no reason for the hiatus reported in the papers. It might have been that the Meadowbrook Club championship, first played in '39 , interrupted the city tournament. By 1939, the club was playing three tournaments: the city, the invitational (known now as the Meadowbrook Classic) and the club championship. This multiplicity of events often resulted in identity problems.

As the depression years faded into 1940, a year of shadows and impending war, the city tournament seemed to take a back seat to the invitational, with its barbecue, calcuttas and large list of entries. The Meadowbrook Championship was becoming a more prestigious title. The fields of the club and city titles were now among the same set of players. To be sure, some excelled players captured th city title during these years.

In 1937, Bill Welch had won the NCAA college championship while at the University of Texas. That fall, he was in Kilgore, working for Tidewater. He entered the Kilgore Championship and prevailed over a future Longhorn golfer, Billy Russell. Russell wasn't quite 16 years old at the time, and was a student at Kilgore High School. In this tournament, Billy defeated his father, John, in the first round, and beat Raliegh Selby, one of Meadowbrook's biggest legends now, in an exciting 21- hole match. All of this great golf, and there was only a $2 entry fee.

In the 1938 tournament, Russell bested Ray Lewis 3 & 2 in the semifinals and Dr. Vellinsky 7 & 6 in the finals. It took only two years for Russell to make his mark in Kilgore golf.

Russell won both the city and invitational tournaments in '38 and was second in the 1937 city matches. Other victories were just over the horizon: the state high school championship in 1939, another invitational win in 1940, and the 1940 Texas State Junior crown. There is no question about the impact Russell had in the early history of golf here. Yet by the end of World War II, Russell, like the city tournament, had passed from the local scene. He had become part of a seldom remembered era. The war had been long and Kilgore was much different by 1946. There were new people and new energy everywhere in the city. Yesterday was a long time ago, so to speak. Russell's family had moved from Kilgore and Billy had gone from a great college career at Texas to a career with a major oil company. He seldom returned to Kilgore.

The lack of documentation of this time in Kilgore's golfing history is somewhat eyeopening. Stembridge, a longtime Kilgore historian, had never heard any mention of Russell's great wins or the city championship prior to doing research for a story on Tilly Wilcox and Meadowbrook's beginnings, and nothing on any wall plaques at MCC or in any of the club's newspaper accounts made any mention of Russell and the city championship. Kilgore High School has no picture or plaque commemorating the only state golf champion in the school's history.

Jimmy Crouch would turn out to be the winner of the final city tournament in 1942. Crouch beat John Young 4 &3 to win the championship. Young, a pretty fair player and member of Meadowbrook from its beginning, often played well, but this was the only time he played for a championship. Young is well-remembered in Kilgore for his years of golf and love of a money game. He had come to Kilgore from Arkansas at the outset of the oil boom and owned the Ford dealership here for nearly two decades.

Crouch went on to beat Doug Herring 1-up in the club championship, and when both the city and club championship tournaments were canceled in 1943-45 due to the war, it allowed Crouch to remain the holder of both crowns longer than anyone else. In fact, he is still the defending champion. His two sons still live here.

The wife of former threetime champion Jack Gates found the tournament's trophy not long ago, and Meadowbrook has made a replica of the token for this year.

The city championship began on the sand greens of early day Meadowbrook, a rural setting of hay meadows, pig farms, meandering creeks and massive trees. It lasted from the exciting days of the boom period into the early years of World War II, and simply wasn't played after 1943... until now.