Walter Fairbanks

The son of a Kent vicar, Walter Fairbanks was educated at Clifton College and Clare College, Cambridge, where he won a rugby Blue in 1873 and 1874. He also played cricket for the University, but never won a Blue. However, he played county cricket for Gloucestershire between 1877-84 and was a team-mate of the legendary W. G. Grace. Fairbanks also played rugby for Clifton and was a founder member of the Bristol and Clifton Golf Club in 1891, and was club captain from then until 1896. After leaving Cambridge, Fairbanks returned to his old school as a house master from 1875-96, after which time he went to live in the United States, before eventually settling in Denver, Colorado in 1898.

Fairbanks continued playing golf and was a member of the Denver Country Club and won the first of 10 club championships in 1899 at the age of 47. He also won the Colorado State Match-play Championships four years in succession 1902-05 and was the Southern California champion on three occasions. In addition, Fairbanks was Florida States champion and the first winner of the Pacific Coast Championship. His best finish in the US Amateur Championship was in reaching the last 16 in 1899 and after beating J. F. Curtis 1-up after 40 holes in his first round match, he acquired the nickname “40-holes Fairbanks.”

Fairbanks’ greatest moment in golf came beyond his 60th birthday, when he won the 1913 United States Senior Golf Association Championship at New York, the same year that the amateur Francis Ouimet sensationally won the US Open. Fairbanks became a director of the Denver Country Club in 1903 and was still a club member at the time of his death, four months after returning to England in to stay with his sister in Surrey in 1924.