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Historical notes on the social origins of golf in America (work in progress)©Geoff Mangum
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The sport of golf in its homeland Scotland and throughout the British Isles was long associated with gentlemen and kings, the "royal and ancient" game. American golf had its birth in the Gilded Age (1870s-1890s), and by the close of the 19th century the United States had more golf courses than Britain. This start is inextricably intertwined with the dominant Tycoons of the day, and this in turn entangles the foundation of golf in America with the expansion of their railroads and their associated Grand Hotels in exclusive resort locations.
From 1900 to the advent of WWII, golf in America added sinew and muscle on this underlying frame to make the Resort golf experience truly spectacular and widely accessible outside the echelons of elite society. The inherent "logic" of the industrialization of the American continent through the railroad system of the 19th century was the expansion of economic opportunity to a broad middle class. The enduring legacy has been that the popularization of golf in America is indelibly stamped with the watermark of excellence set by these fabulous early Resorts.
Colonial
days to War of 1812The first reference to golf in America actually was not related to the British but was from Dutch authorities. On December 10, 1659, the magistrates of Fort Orange (which became Albany, New York) issued an edict: ". . . having heard divers complaints from the burghers of this place against the practice of playing golf along the streets, which causes great damage to the windows of the houses, and also exposes people to the dangers of being injured . . . their honours, wishing to prevent the same, hereby forbid all persons to play golf in the streets, under the penalty of forfeiture of Fl. 25 for each person who shall be found doing so." In the April 21, 1779 edition of The Royal Gazette, a New York City newspaper published by an Englishman, there is an advertisement for the sale of "play clubs and featheries [golf balls] from Scotland." Several accounts suggest that rudimentary courses were laid out in 1786 in Charleston, South Carolina and in 1795 in Savannah, Georgia. Surviving is an invitation to a New Year's Eve party in 1811 at a golf club in Savannah, though there is no other evidence extant of a course there, and the club did not survive the War of 1812.
http://www.hamptons.com/hamptons_article_adventure_1934.htm
Golf is an ancient game but has only been played with popularity in this country for about a century. As far back as before the Revolution, golf immigrated to the colonies from Great Britain. There are records of golf clubs in Georgia at this time, though no records as to whether there was a course or if golf was even played. One problem with dating some modern American courses is the earlier existence of a hunting, field or polo club on the same grounds. Recognition of the first American course often goes to a six-hole course built in Yonkers, NY in 1888 by a local and dubbed St. Andrews. Other claimants are courses in Burlington, Iowa, White Sulpher Spring, West Virginia, Foxburg, Pennsylvania, and Dorset, Vermont. According to one source, once golf did establish itself, it spread quickly to approximately 80 courses in operation in 1896 and 982 just four years later in 1900.2 Once this rise to American popularity occurred, the game had already evolved from its Scottish roots.
B.
British Golf Culture in the Closing Years of the 19th Century Elite attitudes to sport changed significantly in the late 19th century as the notion of 'muscular Christianity' spread out from the English public schools. The landowners and professional men increasingly felt it appropriate to become patrons of sporting clubs in their area. More importantly they also made available the land required to play the games.
http://www.northberwick.org.uk/origins.html
Then in 1852 the railway came to St Andrews and with it the progenitors of the millions who have made the pilgrimage since. Now the links was played by all and sundry throughout the year and not simply restricted to the busy spring and autumn meetings. The R&A erected it's now famous clubhouse [in 1854] in consequence of the railway, scores of ex-pat colonialists retired to the town and families took up residence so that their sons could attend the University, which was gradually assuming a stature comparable with Oxford and Cambridge. If the 'gutty' transformed the game, the railway certainly transformed the town of St Andrews.
History of Golf - Scottish Perspective
Two Provosts of the Royal Burgh of North Berwick, Peter Brodie (1866-87) and John Whitecross (1893-96) were both accomplished golfers and took a leading role in promoting the game. Provost Brodie was a very sporty character and kept a string of weedy racehorses at Gullane which occasionally won a race at Kelso, Musselburgh or Perth. Whitecross was a leading grocer and as the town flourished so did he. When Brodie and Whitecross partnered Edward Blyth and Robert Chambers they could hold their own against any players sent from St Andrews and Musselburgh. The Town Council realised the economic benefit of attracting visitors to play golf at North Berwick and began an advertising campaign, describing the town as the 'Biarritz of the North'. Posters featuring the golf courses appeared at railway stations all over the country, and are now highly collectible. This initially attracted the well-to-do but later as the game become more affordable the middle-class took up the sport.
http://www.northberwick.org.uk/origins.html
Railroad development in England spurred golf tourism.
http://www.cmhpf.org/educationgreenspace3.htm
C.
American Clubs in the 1880sJoseph Mickle Fox, as part of the Merion Cricket Club team, visited Edinburgh, Scotland in 1884, and established the Foxburg Golf Club on his Clarion County Estate in 1887. The Clarion County estate was the summer home of Fox, an attorney, where he managed the vast land holdings of his great grandfather Samuel Mickle Fox, who had accumulated 118,000 acres before his death in 1808.
http://turf.lib.msu.edu/1950s/1952/520405.pdf
How Scots gave golf to America Tom English THE precious cargo of two dozen gutta-perch balls, three woods, three irons and a putter arrived at the doorstep of John Reid's new home in Yonkers not a day too soon. As a young man, Reid had left his native Dunfermline and had come to New York, as his famous townsman had, only Reid, unlike Andrew Carnegie, was not in the throes of creating an empire at the time. An executive position with an ironworks company in the city was as good as it got for him. But, as soon as that box landed, as soon as he delved in and lifted out his brassie and his spoon and his cleek, Reid did not have a single complaint in the whole wide world. The goods were quality. Many months before, they'd been shipped from Scotland, from the shop of Old Tom Morris himself, so Reid knew what he was getting was nothing but the finest equipment. It was the morning of February 22, 1888, and though all of America was celebrating George Washington's birthday, Reid had other plans. He told his friends to meet him on the old cow pasture across from where he lived. On that historic day, three golf holes, about 100 yards long, were laid out over the bumpy terrain and cups were dug up from the ground with the head of a cleek. Golf had finally come to America. Later in the year, at a dinner in Yonkers, the first permanent golf club in the United States was formed, with Reid at the helm. They called themselves the St Andrew's club, but with an apostrophe inserted to avoid confusion with the place back home, not that there was ever likely to be any. Reid's crew led a nomadic existence, moving from the cow pasture to the north east corner of Broadway, to an orchard on the Weston estate about a quarter of a mile from their old course. They pitched a tent under the shade of an apple tree and called it a clubhouse. Forever more, these men would be known as the Apple Tree Gang, with Reid, of humble Fife stock, to this day being remembered as the father of American golf.
http://sport.scotsman.com/golf.cfm?id=645892005
Golf really got going in the U.S. in the Northeast -- appropriately enough, given that its climate can rival Scotland's, and it was home to a well-populated leisure class. In 1888, John Reid, a transplanted Scottish businessman, asked a friend about to go to England to bring him back some clubs and balls. The friend, Robert Lockhart, went right to the top, buying six golf clubs and two dozen balls from Old Tom Morris at St. Andrews. Wanting to make sure the clubs and balls were okay before giving them to Reid, upon his return Lockhart tested them in Central Park and was arrested for the strange act by perplexed police. Thus armed, Reid took a patch of land across the street from his house in Yonkers, New York and created three holes, including fairways and rough greens. February 22, 1888 was an unusually balmy day, and Reid and a few friends, itching to try their "development," went out and played the three holes -- no doubt with some people looking on curiously at the players' odd gyrations. With the exception of the famous blizzard that March, 1888 offered many months of good golf weather. Reid and his friends purchased a 30-acre site not far away from the original three holes and created six holes, organizing as the St. Andrew's Club of Yonkers, with Reid as president (adding the apostrophe to distinguish itself). In 1892 the club was moved to an apple orchard, and the members became known as the "Apple Tree Gang" because, not having a clubhouse, they would hang jugs of their favorite drinks from the trees close to the home hole.
http://www.hamptons.com/hamptons_article_adventure_1934.htm
The Yale Golf Club was created in 1895 in association with the matriculation of John Redi's son, John Reid Jr., in Yale College that year.
http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/01_04/old_yale.html
It was not long before actual golf clubs with courses were being created. The first to incorporate was Shinnecock Hills in Southampton, New York, founded in 1891. (It became the site of U.S. Opens in 1896, 1986, 1995, and 2004.) The course was modeled on St. Andrews and the other courses in Scotland, England, and Ireland that border the sea that featured tall rough, narrow fairways, few trees, many sand traps, and little protection from the wind. Shinnecock Hills was designed initially as a 12-hole course by Scotsman Willie Dunn. Among other distinctions, the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club was the first one to have a clubhouse, built by the firm headed by Stanford White, the premier residential and commercial architect of the day who, among other structures, created the first Madison Square Garden (where, as portrayed by Norman Mailer in Ragtime, he was killed by a jealous husband).
One more first -- the first 18-hole course in the U.S. That honor goes to the Chicago Golf Club course in Wheaton, Illinois, designed by Charles Blair Macdonald and built in 1893. He was to design the National Golf Links next to Shinnecock Hills in 1911. Except for the first Walker Cup in 1922, National has been closed to international play and remains extremely private.
The Shinnecock Hills "Shingle" style clubhouse is reminiscent of the Newport Casino athletic club designed by McKim Mead & White in 1879-1880:
James Gordon Bennett Jr., publisher of the New York Herald, commissioned McKim, Mead, and White to design the Newport Casino.
Bennett
Program of Entertainment for the Casino 1886.
The term originally meant a small villa, summerhouse or pavilion built for pleasure, usually on the grounds of a larger Italian villa or palazzo. There are examples of such casinos at Villa Giulia and Villa Farnese. During the 19th century, the term casino came to include other public buildings where pleasurable activities, including gambling and sports, took place. An example of this type of building is the Newport Casino in Newport, Rhode Island.
A major source for the Newport Casino was White's study of the japanese Pavillion at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. This pavillion has been moved and preserved and today serves as the train station for Strafford PA.
In its heyday during the Gilded Age, the Newport Casino offered a wide array of social diversions to the summer colony including archery, billiards, bowling, concerts, dancing, dining, horse shows, lawn bowling, reading, real tennis, tea parties, and theatricals. It was best known as the home of American lawn tennis; the Casino hosted the 1881-1914 National Championships, later called the U.S. Open. Today, there is still an active grass-court tennis club, as well as an indoor tennis club. The Court Tennis Building burned down in 1945, but was rebuilt in 1980. It is home to the National Tennis Club.
The pavillion is an eample of the "Stick" or "Eastlake Style" of Queen Anne architecture in the Victorian era, featuring complex geometrical ornamentation. The "Shingle Style" of White and others was an effort inspired by the 1876 Centennial Exhibition to return to simpler American colonial roots, with a plainer, simpler, more rustic look. Hence, the clubhouse at Shinnecock Hills (constructed with Shinnecock Indian labor) has roots very deep in the American colnial experience.
http://www.hamptons.com/hamptons_article_magazine_2808.htm
http://www.usga.org/aboutus/usga_history/1894_1910.html
In 1894, six golf clubs -- Yonkers, Shinnecock Hills, Newport, The Country Club, Chicago, and St. Andrew's -- joined together to create America's own governing body, the United States Golf Association. That September, Newport hosted 20 players in a two-day stroke-play tournament that was supposed to determine the best golfer in the U.S. However, when the big man from Chicago, 38-year-old Charles Blair Macdonald (taught golf as a student in Scotland by Old Tom Morris himself), didn't win, he convinced the organizers that it had not been a true championship event.
The members of St. Andrew's agreed to try again the next month, with a match-play event. Macdonald won the first two matches and celebrated until 5 o'clock in the morning with the visiting Stanford White. He caught a couple of hours' sleep, and then rushed to the golf course. He won the morning round 2 and 1 despite a horrible hangover. At lunch, to cure his headache and at White's urging, Macdonald downed a bottle of champagne. In the afternoon finale, Macdonald weaved from hole to hole, yet amazingly was tied at the end of 18. But in the first playoff hole he ran out of gas and sent his drive into a farm field next door. Incredibly, Macdonald later convinced the powers that be again that the event had not been a legitimate championship.
The following year the six clubs joined forces to create an official "United States Open" and hold it at Newport. The 36-hole event in 1895 was won by an Englishman, Horace Rawlins, with a 173 total. Rawlins was just 19, and only Johnny McDermott won the Open at a younger age (by only a few months). Willie Dunn was runner-up, and Macdonald wasn't anywhere near first place.
With its own National Championship, golf in the U.S. was off and running. There were plenty of growing pains, though. For example, Englishman Fred Herd won by seven strokes at the Myopia Hunt Club outside Boston in 1898. His triumph was tainted a bit by the demand by the U.S. Golf Association that he put up a security deposit for the trophy before it would be given to him -- based on Herd's reputation, the USGA feared that he would pawn the trophy for drinking money.
By the dawn of the new century, industrious American golf aficionados had built and opened 871 clubs devoted to the sport -- 715 nine-hole courses, 90 18-hole courses, and 66 six-hole courses. This total was more than the number of golf clubs in the rest of the world combined. Four years later, it was estimated that there were 2000 golf courses in the States. The upper class in the U.S. took to golf, among the reasons being they had the most free time and the sport was associated with royalty. However, it remained that the rules, the best players, and the best courses belonged to the British. So did the first-place finishes in the early tournaments. The focus was on the U.S. and British Opens as the high-profile events in a still-emerging sport, and without exception British players took home the trophies.
http://www.victoriana.com/golf/greatestgameeverplayed.html
http://www.victoriana.com/golf/greatestgameeverplayed.html
WILLIE CAMPBELL Willie was born on 14th July 1862 in Musselburgh. Working as a caddie he caught the eye of Bob Ferguson, who taught Willie the finer points of the game, and was sure that one day Willie would win the Open. His great moment came in 1886 when he was in a strong position playing the last nine holes at Musselburgh, but drove into Pandy bunker and took seven, losing the championship by two strokes. He played his first big money match in 1884 winning by seven holes over Musselburgh and St Andrews. He then played a series of six matches against J.O.F. Morris in 1885-86 winning all but one. He emigrated to the USA in March 1894, where he gained fame as an instructor and player. He lost the first unofficial US Open by two shots in 1894 to Willie Dunn. That same year he became the first professional at the Country Club, Brookline Massachusetts. He established the foundations of its present course and planned other courses in the North East of America. His designs were very basic done in a matter of hours or days, but he was among the earliest to design golf courses in America. He moved onto Myopia Hunt Club in 1896 and then in 1897 was put in charge of the public links at Franklin Park, Boston. Willie's wife Georgina Campbell was the first ladies golf professional in the USA. Mrs Campbell followed in her husbands footsteps as instructress at Franklin Park in 1900, she had previously assisted him in the shop and in teaching the ladies. She also found time to instruct at Wellington Hill a spot adjoining the public links. It was nothing for her to be up at 6am and to teach until darkness fell.
http://www.musselburgholdlinks.co.uk/history/heroes.html
http://www.thelakewoodcountryclub.com/history.php
The origin of golf clubs in North America can be traced to the year 1786 with the founding of a club in Charleston, S.C., and the charter of the Royal Montreal Golf Club in 1873. Golf was played at Oakhurst, W. Va., in 1884, the Dorset Field Club, Vt., in 1886, and in Foxburg, Pa., in 1887. The St. Andrews Club in Hastings-on-the-Hudson, N.Y., has been documented as the longest continually running club since its founding in 1888. As much as historians focus on golf history in the Northeast, USGA club members have told us that the game was introduced to other areas, some not often referenced in history books, including Brookline, Mass., in 1882; Princeton, Ind., 1883; Tacoma, Wash., 1884; Kingman, Kan., 1887; Fullerton, Neb., 1887; St. Paul, Minn., 1888; Rockwood, Maine, 1889; Indianapolis, Ind., 1891; Chicago, Ill., 1892; Gearheart, Ore., 1892; Southampton, N.Y., 1892; Burlingame, Calif., 1893; Newport, R.I., 1893, and many more cities prior to 1900.
http://www.usga.org/aboutus/club_membership/history/history.html
Gerheart Hotel and Golf, Portland OR 1888
GOLF
HISTORY REFERENCES
