Heritage Golfing Society St Andrews - Memberships, golf vacations and golf training

Early Times

The origins of the Game of Golf can be traced back over 600 years in St Andrews. There are many anecdotes, but the most likely can be attributed to fisherman, whilst waiting for the tide to turn, using sticks to knock round stones and pebbles into rabbit holes.

Clubheads, in a very basic from, were added, and “players” turned to a hardened wooden ball, often painted bright red. Handcrafting of clubs slowly developed, with players taking three and more clubs onto the Links. Clubs were carried under the arm, and over time, sometimes by the player’s caddie (a man probably in the employment of the player).

Why the name of the game as golf?

There are many modern ideas, but, most likely, it can be attributed back to the Old Scots word “gowfe” – meaning hit or slap.

1457

The first written reference to golf (“gowfe”) can be found in an Act of Scotland’s Parliament in 1457 - imposing a ban on the sport because it had begun to interfere with the archery practice - deemed necessary for the wars and conflicts with England.

Scots were allowed back on "the green" - the old term for a Golf Course, in 1502, when the Peace of Glasgow brought temporary respite from hostilities, whereupon Scotland's King James IV had a set of clubs made for him and thus became the first in a long line of keen Royal golfers.

In 1552 the links at St Andrews were given to the people of St Andrews, under licence of Archbishop Hamilton, for free and unfettered use of its citizens at football, golf and other games.

Golf’s first keen lady player was Mary Queen of Scots. Such was her obsession with the game that in 1567, she was rumoured to have been out on the Course at Seton, near Musselburgh (east of Edinburgh), only a day or two after her husband Lord Darnley had been murdered in the grounds of the Palace of Holyrood.

The spread of golf south of the border came in 1603, when Elizabeth I died childless, and the James VI of Scotland assumed the English throne (in the title of James I of England and VI of Scotland). He had a powerful influence in favour of golf and made his view known that the people's right to enjoy sport on a Sunday was to be respected, as long a religious observances had been completed first.

1650

James, Duke of York, later James II, is credited with setting up and playing in the first international match in 1661. Partnered by a shoemaker named Patersone, the Scots were victorious against two English noblemen.

Early clubs had an elongated slender club head with a shallow face and were referred to as long-nosed. The most popular woods were made from blackthorn and beech, while ash was commonly used for shafts.

By the 1720s, the featherie - a leather ball stuffed with feathers, was the first manufactured golf ball.

The first written Rules of Golf were recorded in 1744, by a group of golfers, who played locally on the Old Town Boundary in Edinburgh (in fact, from 1496) and they latterly became the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers (whose home is Muirfield, east of Edinburgh). Te original texts are held in their Clubhouse to this day.

At the same time, a group of players who practiced on Leith Links petitioned the City of Edinburgh to provide a prize for the winner of an open competition. A local surgeon named John Rattray was the winner of the Silver Club and successfully defended his trophy the following year. The club, who were bound only by the annual competition, were know as the Gentlemen Golfers of Leith, and were the first to play under the new code .

1766 saw the first club to emerge in England, when a group of expatriate Scots established competition in Blackheath, Kent. Twenty years later, America got its first club - in South Carolina. There had already been reports of Scots military men playing in the New York area although the game was slow to take root in the US. In 1810 Musselburgh Golf Club established a prize for "the best female golfer who plays on the annual occasion".

By the 1820s the British discovered the resilience and weather resistant qualities of hickory and began importing it from the US and it soon replaced ash as the wood used for most club shafts.

1843 saw an epic contest between two of the great players of the day when Allan Robertson from St Andrews took on Willie Dunn of Musselburgh in a 20 round match (two rounds per day for ten days). Allan Robertson was the world’s first professional, soon to be joined by Willie Dunn and Old Tom Morris.

An inter-club foursomes competition, known as the Grand National Tournament was set up in 1857 and constituted the first Championship Meeting to be played at St Andrews - with the host club beaten in the final by Blackheath's Scottish representatives George Glennie and Lieutenant John Stewart. The Society of St Andrews Golfers (latterly to become the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews) had assumed authority as the Game's law-givers by this time.

The following year the Grand National became a singles event. When Robert Chambers Jr. took the medal he effectively became the first Scottish Amateur Champion.

The 1850s marked the dawn of the "gutty" - a harder, cheaper to assemble golf ball. Gutta percha was obtained from the sap of the palaquin genus of trees native to Southeat Asia, it was then softened, in strips, in boiling water moulded into shape and dropped in cold water to harden, then left to season for six months. The durability of the new ball encouraged the development of iron faced clubs.