Harold H. "Holly" Mandly Jr.
New England Amateur champion 1935, 1939; Connecticut Amateur champion 1940, 1947, 1949; Connecticut Open champion 1940; Connecticut Golf Hall of Fame 1960.
In
the course of more than a quarter-century of successful regional and state competition,
H.H. "Holly" Mandly Jr. brought reflected glory to three notable Connecticut
golf clubs: Wethersfield Country Club, where he belonged in the 1930s and early 1940s;
Manchester Country Club, from which he played in the late '40s through the '50s; and the
Golf Club of Avon, where he has now been a member since the early '60s, and where, but a
half dozen or so years ago, he majestically stroked his way to age-matching 75s on
consecutive days.
"Majestic. That's what this Holly Mandly is, majestic." The apt description was that of Harold "Red" Smith, master sports wordsmith who was then of the New York Herald Tribune, a now long-lost source of felicity similar to Connecticut's late lamented Hartford Times. Smith had just come in from walking Winged Foot West in early September 1940, during the practice- round days of U.S. Amateur Championship week. He had watched media favorite Bing Crosby and tournament favorite Dick Chapman, but he returned to the clubhouse terrace to sing the praises of Connecticut's reigning state Amateur and Open champion, the sweet- swinging Harold Hollingsworth Mandly Jr.
In his column the next day, Smith, neither a great fan nor aficionado of golf, made Holly his darkhorse pick to win it all. And he was not alone. C. Stuart "Skip" Henderson, truly knowledgeable golf writer for the Hartford Times, was joined by such informed golf observers of the day as Frank Ross, Bob Grant, and Charlie Clare, Connecticut's formidable amateur triumvirate of the 1930s, in the not necessarily naive conviction that Mandly possibly could make it, such was the high level of his play at the time. "Majestic" as a single precise modifier for the modest but supremely confident Holly Mandly effectively encompasses all that he has done in golf throughout his impressive playing years, competitive or casual, from lacing up his golf shoes to signing his card. He did it the way it was supposed to be done, by Bob Jones's textbook for play and comportment.
But, alas, the praising and admittedly somewhat prayerful predictions for him in that Amateur championship were not to be, as he met in his first match someone who, externally, at least, seemed the very antithesis of the model Mandly. Jim Oleska was a Brooklyn detective who, with a crosshanded 10-finger grip and less than aesthetic action, was then the scourge of Metropolitan New York's public courses. But, as they say, Jim could play, and he did Holly in by a slight margin, rather rudely dashing the hopes of Holly and a nevertheless perceptive Red Smith.
Holly Mandly first appeared in the CSGA competitive records as a teenager to presage a classic capability that would bring him rather quickly two New England Amateurs, three Connecticut Amateurs and a Connecticut Open. In the 1932 state Amateur at Shuttle Meadow in Kensington, he won the consolation competition in the championship flight. And in a CSGA One Day event at par-71 Wethersfield in August 1933, against a strong field, 18-year-old H.H. Mandly Jr. made 1-under 141 over 36 holes to take low gross honors. In 1940 he became the first amateur to win both the state Amateur and state Open championships, a feat matched to date by several, but only Don Hoenig, in 1957, did it in the same year.
Probably, though, Holly's most satisfying competitive moment came in the state Amateur at the Country Club of Waterbury in 1947, when, on the way to his second championship title, he beat Julius Boros and Felice Torza , at a time when HH was thought to be past his peak and they were considered by many as one-two in the state's amateur hierarchy.
Though age has worked its inevitable withering on the once- immaculate Mandly swing that even his idol Byron Nelson might have envied, as did Bobby Locke openly in an exhibition in which the two were on opposing sides at Rockledge in 1947, unmistakable traces of that once singular majesty can still be detected. And should you luckily get to sight them these days as he plays at Avon or JDM (Fla.), you've won a memorable prize.
-- Jack Burrill