On Wednesday 13 December 1961, after the landlady smells gas, the police burst into the flat to find the double suicide of Harry Williams and his mother. There is only a lettuce leaf in the refrigerator and a box of golfing trophies in the living room. These are the only remains of a brilliant but short golfing career.

Harry Williams burst on to the scene in 1931 at the age of sixteen, the most scintillating talent ever seen in Australian golf. Australian Amateur Champion several times and consistently Victorian Amateur Champion through the decade, Harry Williams was offered and rejected a fortune to join Gene Sarazen on the lucrative US professional tour.

Yet, within a few years, the hopes held for him had disappeared. Had his father belted him once too often? Or his mother too constantly indulged him? Was it that the demands of golf broke him? Or was it that Harry was swept away by the establishment and changes in the organisation of the sport?

Like two other Australian sporting champions of the era, Phar Lap and Les Darcy, the enigmatic Harry Williams departed the sporting arena and left us with poignant memories of a brilliant career that ended in tragedy

About The Author

June Senyard is a Senior Lecturer in the History Department at the University of Melbourne and coordinates studies in Australian sporting culture. June plays golf, has a mother who was a left-handed golfer and is a doting mother herself. She also had an Uncle Harry who was born in the same year as the subject of this biography. June has published several monographs, including "A Country Album" and a range of articles on Australian sporting history.