In the autumn of 2001, ninety-three years after Old Tom Morris was
peacefully laid to rest in a small corner of his native St. Andrews, the world’s
best professional golfers returned to the Kingdom of Fife.
The purse for four days’ work? A massive prize of $5 million, the winner banking an astonishing $800,000. When old Tom won the Open
championship for the fourth time in 1867, he received just five pounds,
$26. His first three wins carried no prize money at all.
In time, no doubt, that $5 million will itself diminish into faded green
and gray, and our golfing grandchildren will have to delve deep in some
ancient tome to solve the puzzle of what such a sum might be worth in the
twenty-second century’s new world currency.
The seven hundred years since man’s earliest golfing steps have seen more
than a few changes. Yet the lands where the game began, the breezy estuaries and sharp, craggy headlands, remain largely unaltered by man or time.
An apt reminder that, even if during the passing centuries golf has donned
a more sophisticated set of clothes, the core challenge remains as enduring
as the motivation of all who play. Seven hundred years, a mere footstep in
eternity. Fortunate indeed are we who are a tiny part of this extraordinary
legacy. 1300–1900
Golf has ever been a game about money and sometimes of sheep. Back in
the 1300s, when two Scottish shepherds turned their crooks “tuther wey
roond” and took their new game—“tha gouf”—to Carnoustie’s links land,
it is easy to imagine after a few matches for the simple pleasure of winning,
the idea of a gentle wager captured the mind of at least one canny lad.
Sensing his deftness at firing stones into rabbit holes in the fewest number of strokes and hearing clansmen speak almost warily of his ever-growing
prowess, did he of the most silken swing not then wager his penny, silver
shilling, or perhaps even a black-faced ewe to prove beyond dispute he was
the best player on these short-grass sandy shores?
Unlikely it stopped there. When word went round the local communities and Thursday’s town-market whiskey-quaffing sessions that MacPherson was about to wager his best sheep on his skill at this newfangled game,
did not MacLennan and MacDougal and Frazer and Maxwell, along with
a whole army of MacDonalds and MacKays, gather to watch the proceedings, perhaps even risking a Scottish shilling or two in side bets during the
afternoon tussle?
And perhaps Chisholm or MacCloory or MacCloud left the proceedings with an itch to own a golfing crook, practice day and night to win an
entire farm—whilst perhaps MacInvish was thinking, if such a game was
beginning to attract such interest, surely he could come up with a way to
charge an entry fee for the spectacle.
Golf survived the next seven centuries despite being “cried down” and
run out of town by the king and by having its first golfing queen beheaded.
Men were encouraged to take archery seriously but preferred a weekend
match and a healthy side bet. Many were jailed for playing on Sundays or
generously fined forty Scottish shillings—a good deal more than a week’s
wage. Despite bread-and-water or pillory, the game was destined to be
stronger than procurator-fiscal indictment, than the magistrate’s heavyhanded punishment.
James VI—“James of the Iron Belt”—was the first Scottish Royal to take
a serious personal interest in golf. Later to die fighting with his men on
foot at dreadful Flodden Field, James demanded the lord high treasurer settle his regular accounts for clubs, balls, even his bets. In February 1503 the
official treasury records declared: “To the King to play at the Golf with the
214 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
Erle of Bothuile, iij Franch crowns.” Certainly unlikely to have been a green
fee—expect any king now or then to be comped—and unless the “Iron
Belt” even more improbably paid for a round of John Barleycorn, this sixhundred-year-old account is the first written record of the cost of losing a
five-way Nassau. Sadly the conversion value of “iij Franch Crowns” is lost
in history, but it is nevertheless probable the Earl of Bothwell went home
to his castle well satisfied with the day.
Things golf improved radically a century later under Iron Belt’s greatgrandson, James VI of Scotland, a fervent player and patron of the evermore-popular sport. When his new job as James I—omnipotent ruler of the
newly created United Kingdom—took him to London in 1603, the decision to treat his golf club-maker and “featherie” ball maker as essential members of his inner circle and expatriate them at his side was to have the
profoundest effect on the worldwide expansion of golf. Not only had King
James elevated the erstwhile pastime of shepherds and fisherfolk to highly
accepted social status but as a result the world’s first inland golf course
appeared, tucked around the king’s Eltham Palace in southeast London.
Subsequently a more testing challenge would be constructed on nearby
Blackheath Common.
More royal golf money changed hands in 1682. The duke of York, later
to become James II, had been sent north of Hadrian’s Wall by his brother,
ruler of the now United Kingdom, as commissioner to the Scottish Parliament. On the links surrounding Edinburgh the duke took to the game of
golf with passion, his fiery temperament producing one of the explosive
wagers of the age.
An incredible, white-heated dispute over the origins of golf angered the
duke to the extent he proposed the argument be settled by playing a golf
match. The winners would have the right to declare whether the game of
golf had originated in Scotland or England!
As his partner the duke chose a local cobbler, a commoner, but one with
a strong swing, a trusty putting iron, and a vast amount of local artisan
knowledge. Victory at the Leith links was an almost foregone conclusion
thanks to the duke’s astute but socially scandalous decision.
The House of Stuart duly accepted the winner’s large bag of gold coin
and declared Scotland the Home of Golf. John Pattersone greeted his wife
later that day with half the wager in his saddlebag. Sufficient money to pay
for the construction of a stout stone house in the grandest part of EdinThe Money Game 215
burgh, and enough left over to commission the splendid personal crest of
arms that adorned that new home for the rest of his lifetime.
That golf matches for money had been played from the game’s earliest
days is certain, and artisans such as John Pattersone probably made a handsome living from their part-time skills. Golf clubs, with their red coats and
military-derived traditions, would not arrive on the scene until the mid–
eighteenth century, along with which came the now-traditional silver trophies, winner boards, and, of course, the noble concept of “golf for honor.”
The largely U.S. tradition of honor boards seems neatly to captivate this
message.
First newspaper coverage of a game of golf for money appeared in Edinburgh almost half a century later, 1724 to be precise, announcing “a
solemn match at golf for the sum of 20 guineas” between Alexander
Elphinstone, the younger son of Lord Balmerino and Captain John Porteous, commander in chief of the Edinburgh City Guard. The subsequent
press report stated that the match—won by Elphinstone—had been witnessed by the duke of Hamilton, the earl of Morton, and a large concourse
of spectators.
The beginning of the game where everyone played in separate groups
for the same prize is not, as one might suspect, the 1860 Open championship. Presented in 1744 by the city of Edinburgh, the original “Opento-All” golf trophy was a silver golf club, later to become the outright
property of the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. The first and
subsequent tournaments were “Open to all Golfers from any part of Great
Britain and Ireland,” but in 1764 the Leith club golfers successfully petitioned the city of Edinburgh to restrict the competition to their own members. Oddly this Quaich tournament would continue uninterrupted not
only during the brief civil war instigated by Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745
but during the aftermath of French-Charlie’s bold but doomed venture—
when England took its savage reprisal.
Here was an “open” competition certainly, but one with an ironic twist.
The trophy was to be retained by the owners, there was no prize money,
and the winner, at his own cost, was required to buy a gold or silver golf
ball to add to the trophy.
A costly venture that perhaps gives us a clue as to that noble concept of
playing golf for the pure honor of victory. Only men with money, nobles
216 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
and financially secure esquires, might venture forth in such a competition
without the fear of financial embarrassment. It would perhaps have been
easier to explain how one lost an entire flock of sheep on a six-foot putt
after a bad day on the links.
That first “open” was hardly a success. Despite plenty of publicity in
Edinburgh and the surrounding lothians—the city’s town crier and his
drummers marched daily for almost two weeks announcing the forthcoming championship—only ten players took part, none from out of town.
There would be no more attempts at open-competition golf until 1857,
when the Prestwick Club on Scotland’s Ayrshire west coast, then the home
club of Old Tom Morris, proposed a match between eight clubs, including St. Andrews in the north and Royal Blackheath as the only English representative, each club to present four players.
Foursome teams would be blind-drawn, the winners determined by a
form of “all-against-all” round-robin-style matches. The winning pair
would then play a final singles match for the top prize, the victor entitled
to the champion’s medal.
Word got around, the idea so popular that by the time the program was
finalized a further five clubs had been incorporated. Not entirely “open” of
course, restricted to club-member amateurs, and no cash prizes, but a step
in the right direction nevertheless.
The success of that first 1857 match encouraged Prestwick members, at
the behest of Morris, to consider the inauguration of a similar event for
professional players. The timing was propitious. The recent death of Allan
Robertson—acknowledged by his peers as the greatest player of the times—
had left the champion’s dais vacant.
In May 1860 Prestwick Club members quickly raised five guineas for a
medal, later to be substituted for a thirty-guinea red morocco leather belt
with handsome solid-silver side plates and clasp-buckle. As no other club
wished to become involved in the organization of the championship, Prestwick took sole charge.
Three rounds of the quirky twelve-hole course gave Musselburgh’s Willie
Park the open title and one year’s use of the resplendent belt. There was no
prize money. Thus the venerable Park, Sr., won the first championship. But
not the first “Open” as is now commonly perceived. The 1860 event was
a purely professional affair. That omission was soon to be rectified, with
The Money Game 217
one small blip. First came a club member’s proposal that the 1861 title be
opened to “gentlemen-players” (that’s amateurs in today-speak) from a mere
eight clubs. The resolution was passed unanimously.
On the eve of the 1861 competition, however, the championship committee declared the second contest for the Championship Belt would in
future be open to the entire world.
Just eight professionals made up the 1860 field played for the honor of
the title—“Champion Golfer of the Year”—the same words the R&A use
today at their investiture of the new Open champion. There was no prize
money at all, also the case in 1861, ’62, and ’63. In 1864, the fourth year
of the competition, prize money was offered, a paltry five pounds for the
runner-up, three pounds for third, two pounds for coming in fourth. The
winner: still nothing at all!
Things would not get much better over the next few years, although
when young Tom Morris won his first of four consecutive titles in 1868,
he received six pounds plus use of the championship belt. After his third
successive win in 1871, Morris took outright ownership of the belt, causing that two-year championship hiatus in the history books.
When the current championship Claret Jug appeared on the scene, and
once again Morris emerged triumphant, the winner was now also entitled
to a massive eight pounds. Professional golf for cash was emerging, if still
ever so slowly, from a five-hundred-year incubation period.
The nineteenth century drew to a close on a vociferous note, a resonant clarion call to the future. In a rapidly industrializing Great Britain
that still sent small boys up factory flues and stately-home chimneys to
scour away choking coal dust for penny wages, professional golf was not
even a latent gleam in the minds of the later-to-be-powerful trades union
movement.
Yet the 1899 Open Championship, played over the links of St. George’s,
Sandwich, for just the second time, which had attracted a record entry of
101 competitors, almost collapsed as a result of the first concerted effort
by professional golfers to better their condition. They called a strike!
Just days before the tournament where the R&A would crown the last
“Champion Golfer of the Year” of the nineteenth century, a majority of the
field threatened to withdraw from competition—unless prize money was
increased substantially. The first prize of forty pounds had remained
unchanged for eight years, despite sufficient public interest in the game
218 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
that the organizers could now charge gate money for the spectacle. Poor
MacInvish, alas born a few centuries before his time!
Looking at the many millions of dollars the game now offers, it is easy
to side with competitors whose changing areas were frequently rank stables, entry by the servants’ entrance to a clubhouse kitchen where standup leftovers might or might not be served, the front door forbidden by
members who had recently applauded their skills in public.
Yet in these same closing moments of the nineteenth century, the annual
rent of a good croft (small Scottish farm)—those to be had with the incursion of sheep and enforced depopulation of the Highlands—was still considerably less than the first prize of forty pounds sterling.
Which is possibly why the three top players of the era, Harry Vardon,
John Henry (J. H.) Taylor, and James Braid—“The Great Triumvirate”—
decided to forgo the pleasure of leading or even participating in the dissent. A different slant is equally probable.
Vardon and Taylor were Englishmen; Braid, then twenty-nine, although
born in north-of-the-border Earls Ferry, was an adopted Englishman who
would spend forty-five years of life as the professional at London’s rich Walton Heath Club.
This 1899 Open was being played in these Englishmen’s backyard, the
St. George’s Club, Sandwich (later to become Royal St. George’s), huddled
around Pegwell Bay, the white cliffs of Dover a small kiss to the south. And
while the major championship of the British Isles annually garnered the
best players, this did not necessarily produce the hand-shaking camaraderie
we’d like to believe is an age-old tradition. Moreover, the majority of that
week’s invading Scots, to put it bluntly, were as uncouth as they were ragged
and were more than unlikely to strike up instant friendships with their
smoother southern cocompetitors.
A fly on the wall at meetings that blustery summer week would have
observed a small piece of golf’s history in the making. Here a plotting huddle of fairly ragged men in a lowly outhouse, there the illustrious and aloof
Triumvirate, in all probability comfortably ensconced at the Bell pub-hotel
on Sandwich harbor. And worried R&A officials, in the palatial surrounds
of the long since demolished Guildford Hotel, were fearful a flawed decision could end the championship forever.
The second Open championship to be played in England (the first venture south of the border was in 1894) thus got under way in the midst of
The Money Game 219
acrimonious and unresolved polemic. With the four rounds to decide the
championship then played over two days, the canny northern professionals planned a skillful coup.
So many players withdrew after the first round the resulting chaos
required the entire afternoon round to be entirely reorganized. The same
evening the organizers announced an increase in the top prize, from forty
to fifty pounds, the second place from twenty to twenty-five.
The winner might now pay annual rent on an additional fifty acres of
good grazing with the difference, but it’s equally probable the repositories
of any new funds would be a series of public houses on the long route
north.
When much-the-favorite and well-educated Englishman Harry Vardon
claimed the title, and accepted the trophy with a polite thank-you, the
organizers were probably spared some embarrassment.
If the suggestion that nineteenth-century golf professionals spent most
of their free time in barroom pursuits appears excessively critical, although
golf was less than a decade old in the United States, the darker side of the
John Barleycorn–induced antics of this mostly disheveled band was already
public concern on the western side of the Atlantic. For instance, in 1898
Scotsman Fred Herd won the U.S. Open, whereupon the relatively newly
formed United States Golf Association required Herd pay a security fee
were he to take the winner’s trophy off the premises, fearing he’d pawn the
cup for drinking money.
To give the R&A their due, in line with awakening public interest in the
sport the prize purse had been boosted from the miserly 20 pounds of 1891
to 110 pounds the following year. On the other side of the equation, those
20 pounds had been static for more than two decades.
The 1896 edition of the Open at the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers Muirfield links perhaps best exemplifies the value placed on
the championship by the players themselves; an important title, yes, but
far and away less significant than earning a living by “playing for money.”
After seventy-two holes Harry Vardon and J. H. Taylor were tied, and
an eighteen-hole play-off the following day was dictated by competition
rules. “Sorry,” they responded. “Tomorrow we have an important money
game down the road at North Berwick.” A small but important victory for
players’ rights, the play-off was postponed until later that week, when Vardon claimed his first of six Open titles.
220 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
O’er the Waves—Bright Beginnings
The standard version of how golf finally took hold in the USA is an 1887
Christmas gift of six Tom Morris hickory sticks among Yonkers, New York,
friends. Rather more inexplicable is why the game failed to take root much
earlier—although various American towns now lay claim to early golf venues, subsequently abandoned from lack of interest.
In the period between the mid-1800s and the latter part of the nineteenth century, some 350,000 Highland men and their families made the
perilous journey to the New World, initially settling for the main in North
Carolina, subsequently around the Cape Fear region, and, after Wolfe
gained the upper hand over the French in Quebec, around the eastern
seaboards of Canada, including Nova Scotia.
Later immigrants were impoverished, sad, disenfranchised Highlanders,
erstwhile tenants of English landlords put in place by a London government that, after the 1745 rampages of Bonnie Prince Charlie, determined
northern rebellions would never again destabilize an ostensibly United
Kingdom.
Anxious to increase lands revenues, first from seashore kelp harvesting
and later by sheep grazing, the new masters of northern Scotland forced a
significant proportion of the mostly agrarian population to flee to wherever refuge and food could be found. Many landlords simply dispatched
their problems across the Atlantic as cheap westward ballast of the transatlantic wood-freight trade, a despicable albeit economical solution.
Before these unfortunate souls, however, a solid proportion of Scottish
emigrants derived from a separate Celtic vein. Many families of certain
wealth—tacksmen, the middle to upper echelons of the clan system—
arrived with adequate funds to join the land-owning classes of the Carolinas and Cape Fear region. Yet it would appear not one single Highlander
brought with him, in addition to a well-moistened bag of pipes, a sackcloth bundle containing a cleek or a long-nosed spoon with which to while
away a sun-soft evening in the Carolina meadows—even although by all
contemporary accounts they’d fled a Scotland already caught up in the
excited clamor of golf.
On the face of it, that not a single Scots immigrant was a golf addict
seems quite extraordinary. The superficial and perhaps logical explanation
appears to be that almost without exception these early settlers were clansThe Money Game 221
men from the west and the high-north Sutherland end of the country,
whereas early golf in Scotland was limited to the mideastern seaboard of
the country.
Even that seems a flimsy and less than wholly satisfactory explanation,
but the facts are incontrovertible, more astonishing when one considers
that for close to one hundred years up to the mid-1800s, the principal language of the Cape Fear region was Scotland’s own Gaelic.
For whatever reason, golf lay dormant in the Land of Opportunity until
a huge groundswell of desire was awakened by two school chums originally
from Dunfermline, Scotland, but in adult life, expatriate businessmen
based in Yonkers, New York.
Robert Lockhart, a traveling linen merchant, often brought travel gifts
for his friend John Reed, the local steelworks manager. A visit by generous
Lockhart to Old Tom Morris’s shop in St. Andrews during 1887, where he
bought the clubs and balls to be shipped to his friend as a Christmas gift,
would soon reshape sporting recreation throughout the entire North American continent.
The immediate popularity of the game in the United States of America
was truly formidable, as if a pent-up dam had exploded at the seams. In
1888 just six men formed the St. Andrews Club in Yonkers; come 1894
there were fifteen clubs dotted around New York: two on Long Island, four
in Westchester, one in Connecticut, and six in New Jersey, including Baltusrol. And of course, St. Andrews remained strong, now with a new home
on the outskirts of Yonkers.
A mere seven years later, at the dawn of a new century, there wasn’t a
state in the entire United States of America that did not boast at least one
golf course. More than one thousand all told—a number that amazingly
would double yet again over the next decade—virtually every club teeming with aspirants. The Golden Years they certainly were, and the Scots,
although hardly pioneers in the field, were now quick to take advantage.
One estimate of the period suggests no fewer than 250 men from the
then-small Scottish fishing village of Carnoustie emigrated to the United
States over a stretch of ten years, their sole purpose to teach the game of
golf to their American cousins.
An early arrival on U.S. shores, Willie Dunn, had met W. E. Vanderbilt
while teaching the game in France. A man of immense wealth, Vanderbilt
contracted Dunn to construct the Shinnecock Hills Club on Long Island
222 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
in 1891. Three years later Dunn won the first U.S. Open, subsequently
considered unofficial—a “championship” that would lead to the formation
of the USGA that same year.
In the following year, 1895, Dunn was able to bring the famed money
matches of his homeland to the attention of the American fan. Willie Park,
Jr., son of the first Open champion, was brought from Scotland to challenge
Dunn in a three-match series at the princely sum of $200 per match. The
purchasing power of this $600 purse is possibly best compared with the $50
paid two years earlier by the Country Club of Boston to establish their first
six-hole golf course. In the same year Horace Rawlins won the first “official” U.S. Open, his earnings—one gold medal and $150 in cash.
Park’s tour would be the forerunner of many more exhibitions and sponsored money matches during the next five years, none more important than
Harry Vardon’s famed nine-month tour of the country in 1900. Sponsored
by the burgeoning sports empire of A. G. Spalding, the reigning Open
champion received the staggering sum of 900 pounds ($4350) as recompense for playing exhibitions that featured the new Spalding gutty ball, the
“Vardon Flier.” In addition, Vardon’s lucrative contract allowed him to
retain all monies won during the tour.
There were now more than a quarter of a million golfers in the United
States, most of whom had started playing with the imported Eclipse at
thirty-five cents apiece, later graduating to a fifty-cent ball. Golf had rapidly become corporate business, and a new era was coming into sight.
Henceforth, big business would seek out golfers to publicize its products. Exhibition matches would offer rewards vastly in excess of tournament prize money. Players could frequently add to their wealth by a
significant share of gate money. In the space of a decade, the top professional golfers had evolved from mere tradesmen of the lower orders to stars
of a bright new firmament. When Vardon’s tour reached New York, even
the Stock Exchange closed for his visit.
Money, the onetime villain that had not so long before been considered
a threat to the integrity and honor of golf, would thenceforth and forever
after play a dominant part in its spectacular evolution.
