Surely it is only in medical and dental waiting rooms that one can come across such arcane pieces of information such as that which follows.
It was while waiting for and then undergoing a CAT scan for my fractured heel that the article in a 3-year-old magazine caught my attention.
I will take up the story about half way through the article:
“Ernesto (Ernie) Guevara Lynch was born on June 14, 1928 and spent his first years in Buenos Aires, but, because of his severe asthma, when he was four his family moved 800 kilometres away to Alta Gracia, which had been founded as a Jesuit mission centre in 1588.
His father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, descended from an Irish family that emigrated to Argentina in the 19th century, Guevara, who died in 1987, was an engineer but also owned some tea plantations.
Ernie (Che Guevara) loved sports, although his asthma dogged him to the end of his days.
He lived close to the Sierras Hotel and Golf Course in Alta Gracia, where he quickly became proficient at the game. By the time he had turned 14, he was already playing off a single figure handicap, and his uncle, Frederico, thought that his nephew had the potential to become a professional golfer.
Besides golf, Ernie and his friends played soccer, tennis and swam at the Sierras Hotel and Golf complex.
Later rugby was to become his passion, at which stage he gave golf away. As a young man in Buenos Aires he started a rugby journal, “Tackle” signing his articles with the pen-name Chancho (piglet).
Between 1940 and 1941 the Sierras Hotel Gardens and Golf Course were redesigned by his uncle Frederico, who had studied architecture and landscape design. Ernie’s father , Guevara Lynch, supervised the construction work.
Evidently the work was of such high calibre, that the Lynch brothers were invited in 1943 to design and construct a new golf course on the outskirts of Cordoba, the Campa de Golf de Cordoba.
Work on that course was completed in 1945 and the brothers started a new job in Rosario, on what as to become a 27-hole course attached to a hotel complex.
In the years that followed, Frederico and Guevara Lynch combined to work on a number of projects, including golf courses, polo fields, landscaped gardens for the Buenos Aires elite, and government projects such as the Allevinda Gardens.
During this time Ernisto had completed his studies as a medical student, and bought a Norton 500 bike, on which he toured the whole of South America.
The last time Frederico and Guevara Lynch saw Ernisto was in 1958, while visiting a project on the outskirts of Montevideo. He informed them that the whole continent was riddled with disease, malfeasance, political and military corruption and that the whole of South America needed a revolution to rid it of the miseries.
The rest is history.
The Sierras Hotel and Golf complex, having fallen into ruin and disrepair is now undergoing rejuvenation. A high profile of American golf architects (article doesn’t mention any names) was called in to advise on the golf course, however, they were so impressed by the original layout by the Lynch brothers over 60 years ago, that they drew up only minimal changes to Frederico’s original design”.
So there it is. I would never have thought of Che Guevara being a golfer, or belonging to a family that had such connections to the sport, albeit, in the design and construction corridor.
As an aside, the article concludes that Che Guevara was killed in the Bolivian jungle on October 9, 1967. Inside his pack were found an inhaler and five Cuban cigars and a copy of Rugby International.
Now what was a chronic asthmatic doing with Cuban cigars, or did he just carry them for show? Also, had he not developed an interest in rugby, would he have taken up a career golf?
We will never know.