Fifty Years of Golf
First Published in 1919
The writer, the first English Captain of the Royal and Ancient, buying back, according to custom, the ball struck off to win the Captaincy.
( Written in 1914 )
I agreed to the suggestion that I should write these reminiscences, mainly because it seems to me that circumstances have thrown my life along such lines that I really have been more than any other man at the centre of the growth of golf—a growth out of nothingness in England, and of relative littleness in Scotland, fifty years ago, to its present condition of a fact of real national importance. I saw all the beginnings, at Westward Ho! of the new life of English golf. I followed its movement at Hoylake and later at Sandwich. I was on the Committee initiating the Amateur Championship, the International Match, the Rules of Golf Committee and so on. I have been Captain in succession of the Royal North Devon, Royal Liverpool, Royal St. George's and Royal and Ancient Clubs, as well as many others, and in these offices have been not only able but even obliged to follow closely every step in the popular advancement of the game. I do not mention these honours vaingloriously, but only by way of showing that no one else perhaps has had quite the same opportunities.
Possibly I should explain, too, the apparent magniloquence of the phrase describing golf as a fact of real national importance. I do not think it is an over-statement. I use it irrespective of the intrinsic merits of the game, as such. When we consider the amount of healthy exercise that it gives to all ages and sexes, the amount of money annually expended on it, the area of land (in many places otherwise valueless) that is devoted to it, the accession in house and land values for which it is responsible, the miles of railway and motor travel of which it is the reason, the extent of house building of which it has been the cause, and the amount of employment which it affords—when these and other incidental features are totalled up, it will be found, I think, that there is no extravagance at all in speaking of the golf of the present day as an item of national importance. At least, if golf be not so, it is difficult to know what is.
Horace G. Hutchinson
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FIFTY YEARS OF GOLF
FIFTY YEARS OF GOLF
HORACE G. HUTCHINSON
PREFACE
POSTSCRIPT TO PREFACE
FOOTNOTES:
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE BEGINNING OF ALL THINGS
HOW GOLF IN ENGLAND GREW
FOOTNOTES:
OF YOUNG TOMMY MORRIS AND OTHER GREAT MEN
THE SPREAD OF GOLFING IN ENGLAND
FOOTNOTES:
THE WEAPONS OF GOLF IN THE SEVENTIES
HOW MEN OF WESTWARD HO! WENT ADVENTURING IN THE NORTH
GOLF AT OXFORD
THE START OF THE OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE GOLF MATCHES
GOLFING PILGRIMAGES
WESTWARD HO! HOYLAKE AND ST. ANDREWS IN THE EARLY EIGHTIES
FIRST DAYS AT ST. ANDREWS
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP
ON GOLF BOOKS AND GOLF BALLS
THE FIRST AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP
MR. ARTHUR BALFOUR AND HIS INFLUENCE IN GOLF
THE SECOND AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP
THE FIRST GOLF IN AMERICA
HOW I LOST THE CHAMPIONSHIP AND PLAYED THE MOST WONDERFUL SHOT IN THE WORLD
JOHNNY BALL AND JOHNNY LAIDLAY
A CHAPTER OF ODDS AND ENDS
FOOTNOTES:
A MORE LIBERAL POLICY AT ST. ANDREWS
FOOTNOTES:
THE FIRST AMATEUR WIN OF THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP
GOLF ON THE CONTINENT AND IN THE CHANNEL ISLANDS
FOOTNOTES:
ABOUT HAROLD HILTON, FREDDY TAIT AND OTHERS
THE COMING OF THE THREE GREAT MEN
THE REVOLT OF THE AMAZONS
THE MAKING OF INLAND COURSES
VARIOUS CHAMPIONSHIPS AND THE WANDERING SOCIETIES
THE COMIC COMING OF THE HASKELL BALL
AN HISTORIC MATCH AND AN HISTORIC TYPE
THE INTERNATIONAL MATCH
FOOTNOTES:
HOW MR. JUSTICE BUCKLEY KEPT HIS EYE ON THE HASKELL BALL
THE AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP OF 1903
TRAVIS'S YEAR
FOOTNOTES:
HOW GOLF HAS GRIPPED AMERICA
THE END OF THE ROUND
A
CATALOGUE OF BOOKS
OFFICES OF "COUNTRY LIFE"
WINDSOR CASTLE
AN ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY
GARDEN ORNAMENT
IN ENGLISH HOMES
ENGLISH HOMES OF THE EARLY RENAISSANCE
GARDENS OLD AND NEW
TWENTY-FIVE GREAT HOUSES OF FRANCE
SMALL COUNTRY HOUSES:
HOUSES AND GARDENS
GRINLING GIBBONS
and the Woodwork of his Age 1648-1720
THE STORY OF THE OXFORDSHIRE AND BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY.
THE STORY OF THE ROYAL SCOTS. By LAWRENCE WEAVER, F.S.A.
THE STORY OF THE KING'S (LIVERPOOL REGIMENT). By T.R. THRELFALL.
THE STORY OF THE MIDDLESEX REGIMENT.
THE O.T.C. AND THE GREAT WAR. By ALAN R. HAIG-BROWN.
THE FIGHTING TERRITORIALS. By PERCY HURD.
THE LANCASHIRE TERRITORIALS. By GEORGE BIGWOOD.
MEMORIALS AND MONUMENTS OLD AND NEW:
OUR COMMON SEA-BIRDS
THE PEREGRINE FALCON AT THE EYRIE
Pastime with Good Company
Fishing
Animal Life by the Sea-Shore
The Horse and the War