Our Most Famous Champion
Bruce Devlin won the Club title in 1956, 57, 58 and 60, the foursomes with Perce
Yrie in 1953, and the mixed with Anne Bourchier in 1958. He won NSW Country Championships
(in 1955 and 1957), NSW Country Foursomes in 1954 (with John Powell) and 1957 (Noel
Wade, Kandos).
An apprentice plumber with his father, Artie, who lost an arm in a car accident
when Bruce was a junior, the Goulburn star competed as an amateur in the 1958 National
Open Championship at Kooyonga and finished fifth behind Gary Player, Kel Nagle,
Frank Phillips and Eric Cremin. He finished 11th in the following year's open, won
by his closest professional friend, Kel Nagle.
Devlin went on to win the National Amateur Championship in 1959, at Royal Sydney. He then was a member of the Commonwealth Club. He won the NSW Amateur title in 1958
at St Michael; s from Harry Berwick.
He won the NSW Foursomes Championship in 1957 with K.F. Pickering (New Brighton)
and was NSW Junior Champion in 1957,
after being beaten in a play-off by Bruce Crampton
in 1953. His 1957 rounds with 69, 72.
He also won the NSW Junior Intermediate titles in 1954 and 1955.
Bruce was selected in the Australian Team to contest the Inaugural Eistenhower Cup series at St Andrews with Bob Stevens, Doug Bachli and Peter Toogood in 1958.
The team tied with the American team on a combined score of 918.
In the play-off Bruce shot 72, Stevens and Toogood 75, Bachli 78, to win by two
strokes.
1959 Bruce won the Australian Amateur Championship defeating Jack Coogan 2 up in
the final at Royal Sydney, then in 1960 won Australian Open Championship as an amateur
at Lake Karrinyup, Perth.