PBA Galleries

Arts & Crafts golf trophy awarded to golfing legend Chick Evans by the Rockport Country Club. Sterling on bronze with even overall brown patina in the shape of a vase; includes a 6" long decorative floral silver in-lay on one side and engraved lettering with circular embossed vignette on the other side. 7" tall; bottom base nearly 3" in diameter; top 1¾" in diameter. Lettered “Club Championship, Golf, Qualifying Round, Best Net, Won by Chick Evans.” Embossed vignette lettered “Rockport Country Club, Incorporated 1914.” Made by the Heintz Art Metal Shop of Buffalo, New York, with their "HAMS" logo within the diamond hallmark and patented in 1912, on the bottom.

Charles “Chick” Evans, Jr. (1890-1979) is one of the greatest amateur golfers of his day and one of the primary figures in twentieth century golf, best known for his sustained golfing career. He began to attract attention as a player about 1906. He qualified for every U.S. amateur championship tournament from 1907 to 1962. In 1909 Evans won the Western Amateur, a tournament he would win seven more times in his career, four consecutively. He won the Western Open in 1910 and the French Amateur in 1911. Chick finished second in the U.S. Amateur in 1912 and 1922 and the same in the 1914 U.S. Open. In 1916 he became the first player to win both of those tournaments in the same year; his Open score of 286 stood as a record for 20 years. In 1917–18 he was the partner of Bobby Jones in a series of exhibition matches for the benefit of the Red Cross. He defeated another American golfing legend, Francis Ouimet in 1920 at the U.S. Amateur. In 1930, he founded the Evans Scholars Foundation, the largest privately funded college scholarship program in the United States, which sends qualified caddies to college. Evans himself started out as caddie, thus returning the favor. It continues today and is sponsored by the Western Golf Association. In the inaugural election for the Golf Hall of Fame in 1940, Evans was one of twelve selected. Even at the age of 80, Chick Evans was still a popular visitor at major tournaments. The Heintz Art Metal Shop closed down in 1930 as a casualty of the Great Depression.