Ken Black won the men’s championship at the Capilano Golf & Country Club only once but he was the venerable private institution’s #1 golfer from the day he joined until the day he died.

You see, when Capilano officially opened on April 1, 1939 – after two years of sporadic summer play as the course was being built – Black was already registered as the club’s charter member number 001 among the 170 that were afforded original-member status.

It was likeable Jock McKinnon, the club’s first head pro, who recruited the young Black (son of Shaughnessy Heights pro David Black and nephew to six uncles who were also golf pros) to forsake the old Vancouver course where he had first caddied and played and instead lend his considerable talent to the new venture in West Vancouver.

Just as significant in the intriguing history of our fair North Shore, Black and his new bride Mayme (Gehrke) were not just among the first homeowners in the newly-created British Pacific Properties but were actually the very first, or perhaps the second, depending on whose account you believe.

But it was on the golf course that Black legitimately earned his number one ranking.

Before McKinnon had even become Capilano’s inaugural pro in 1937, Black was making a name for himself as a teenage phenom, reaching the final of the B.C. Amateur in 1930 as an 18-year-old junior. In 1932, he became the first amateur to collar the B.C. Open and in 1933 claimed the B.C. Amateur and took second in the Canadian Amateur. In 1934 Black was runner-up in the Pacific Northwest Open and in 1935 reached the quarterfinals of the British Amateur.

But 1936 was extra special.

First he disposed of Stan Leonard 3 and 1 in the match play final of the B.C. Amateur at Shaughnessy Heights. Leonard, the defending champion, would go on to become one of B.C.’s greatest touring pros.

Then came the Vancouver Golden Jubilee Tournament, a one-time-only Professional Golfers’ Association tour event that celebrated the city’s 50th anniversary and which was also played at Black’s Shaughnessy Heights stomping grounds.

The tourney offered a total purse of $5,000 which – as noted by former North Vancouver golf writer Arv Olson in his exhaustive work entitled Backspin – made it the third richest payout on the North American circuit that season and equal to the prize money at that year’s U.S. Open. (Remember, this was the middle of the Great Depression.)

Among 92 entrants were 18 tour regulars. They included Byron Nelson, the Masters champion the next year (plus the U.S. Open in 1939 and the Masters in 1940) and the winner of 52 PGA tournaments during his 1932-46 career, who would win an amazing 18 championships in 1945, including an astounding 11 consecutively.

Also present was veteran Horton Smith, in the midst of accumulating 32 PGA victories. He’d won the first Masters in 1934 and repeated in 1936 prior to the Vancouver event.

Other notables included Tony Manero, the 1936 U.S. Open victor; Ralph Guldahl, who would go on to win the 1937 and 1938 U.S. Opens and 1939 Masters; and Lawson Little, the 1936 Canadian Open and future 1940 U.S. Open champ.

Black beat them all, becoming the first amateur to win a PGA event, with a four-round 275, three strokes better than Nelson. And Black did it in spectacular fashion, carding a 63 – thanks to an almost-inconceivable 29 on the par-37, back-nine – during the final day on July 25, 1936, exactly 73 years ago this weekend.

So it’s no wonder McKinnon was keen on getting Black to represent Capilano.

And, despite the cancellation of numerous events during the war years, Black didn’t disappoint. Highlights were six Vancouver Amateur titles (1937, 1938, 1939, 1941, 1942, 1946), the 1939 B.C. Amateur, 1941 Western Canada Open, 1945 B.C. Amateur Closed and runners-up in the 1939 and 1945 Pacific Northwest Golf Association championships.

The high point, however, was the 1939 Canadian Amateur at St. Bruno, Quebec, completed on July 29, 1939, coming up 70 years ago. Black clobbered Edmonton’s Henry Martell in the final 8 and 6 to become the first Westerner to win the title.

When Black arrived home, he was afforded a hero’s welcome: an open convertible car ride down Granville complete with streamers and ticker-tape; and a Pacific Athletic Club banquet with dignitaries and presents.

After winning Capilano’s club championship in 1945, he never competed in another one, due – according author and former Outlook editor Andrew McCredie’s comprehensive book Capilano Golf & Country Club: The Making of a Legend – to his belief there were many others at the club deserving of having their names on the trophy.

However, Black did more than win trophies and accolades under the banner of Capilano. He immersed himself in the club (he was president in 1951-52) and in West Vancouver, which was appropriate considering he was born in 1912, the same year the municipality formed by breaking away from North Van District.

He purchased land and built a house in the Properties, just before the Lions Gate Bridge was opened, across from the seventh fairway where he and Mayme began raising their children Donald and Barbara.

The Guinness family’s residential development was so new that for three years, beginning in 1939, the Black’s address in the Greater Vancouver directories was listed as simply BPP for British Pacific Properties. When the street became Eastcot Road, the Black’s home still had no address for five years, eventually being given the number 470.

Black, the manager of the Vancouver branch of A.G. Spalding sporting goods for some eight years before working in a Boeing plant for three years during World War Two, became sales manager and then president of Gehrke Stationery (founded by his wife’s family) from 1946 until retirement in 1977.

While the Blacks eventually left their pioneer Eastcot home in 1951, they remained in West Van, living at 670 Southborough, 865 St. Georges Way and 5214 Keith Road except for a three-year period on the NV-WV border at 3555 Capilano Road.

Ken Black, who died in 1995, has been inducted into the B.C. Golf Hall of Fame, B.C. Sports Hall of Fame and Canadian Golf Hall of Fame, the most appropriate resting places for a #1 golfer.

This is episode 340 from Len Corben’s treasure chest of stories – the great events and the quirky – that bring to life the North Shore’s rich sports history.