Gary Participant is taking issues to court docket.
After a number of stories indicated that Participant’s reproduction Claret Jug from his 1974 Open win at Royal Lytham & St. Annes offered for almost $500,000, the 9-time main winner cleared the air in an announcement he posted on social media.
“A number of articles have been written concerning the current sale of a duplicate Claret Jug that I received on the 1974 Open and that was not too long ago auctioned and I really feel that it’s needed for me to appropriate inaccuracies contained in these articles,” Participant posted on X.
“Neither of the 1974 Masters Trophy nor the 1974 Open Trophy have been offered by me or by considered one of my corporations. Every of those trophies was granted to me for my sole use and delight as winner of the respective Majors. The particular person entrusted with making certain the safekeeping of this stuff on my behalf and who was tasked with utilizing them to enshrine my {golfing} achievements has executed the other by providing them on the market with out my consent and in opposition to my needs. My authorized staff is taking applicable steps to resolve this illegal state of affairs.”
The reproduction Claret Jug offered for $481,068 on July 29, in response to Golfweek. Eleven days earlier, Golden Age Golf Auctions unveiled the trophy and began the bidding at $5,000. Thirty-nine bids adopted, with no person going above that determine of almost $500,000.
Golden Age Auctions famous that this was the one official massive Claret Jug the corporate has ever dropped at public sale. It has additionally auctioned off seven totally different Masters Match trophies, however by no means the Claret Jug, a trophy they are saying is “unquestionably golf gathering’s Holy Grail.”
The corporate additionally acknowledged that this Claret Jug is 90% to scale of the unique, which is bestowed to the Champion Golfer of the 12 months yearly. The winner of The Open will get to maintain the Claret Jug for 12 months and should return it to the R&A the next yr. The R&A then distributes a duplicate Claret Jug to the winner, barely smaller than the unique.
However Participant by no means needed his beloved reproduction ever to go away his possession. Therefore, the ‘Black Knight’ will sue, and hopefully, for his sake, his Claret Jug, the trophy he received after his unimaginable wire-to-wire victory in 1974, will return to its rightful proprietor.
Jack Milko is a golf employees author for SB Nation’s Taking part in By way of. Remember to try @_PlayingThrough for extra golf protection. You may observe him on Twitter @jack_milko as nicely.
