The Island Club of Singapore
Laycock founded the Race Course Golf Club, Singapore's first truly multi-racial club on 1 October 1924 at Farrer Park. The club served Asians who wanted to learn to play golf but could not join the exclusively-European Royal Singapore Golf Club, and other avid golfers living around Bukit Timah area. The Club lasted for three years, before it was evicted by the Turf Club land-owners who had sold the land.
Thus Laycock began searching for a new location for the Golf Club, and in 1929 found the perfect location in the MacRitchie catchment area. Laycock, then a Municipal Commissioner of Singapore, and his friends A.P. Rajah and C.C. Tan, immediately submitted their plans for the new Club for the locations, and received their stamp of approval at the General Committee Meeting of the Singapore Municipal Council on 28 June 1929.
Design for the 18-hole course was done by Peter Robinson of Braid Hills, Edinburgh and the construction began on March 1930. Laycock and his grounds committee with members such as Dr Harold Lim, supervised the entire project for the next two years.
The new club was officially opened and renamed The Island Club on 27 August 1932, officiated by Sir Cecil Clementi, Governor of Singapore. Sir Chan Sze Jin, CMG (S.J. Chan) became the Club's first President, and Laycock took on the role as First Captain.
Read more about this topic: John Laycock
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