Was the fascination with golf in the early 20th century partly due to...

[Joe Bausch]

... that IMO some of the best newspaper writers of that time were golf scribes?

[Kyle Harris]

I think it's the other way around, in that the quality of the writing was influenced by the fascination with the sport.

[Dan King]

Golf was more interesting then, giving writers more to write about. Golf now, with the obsession with medal play and fairness, is boring to watch and boring to write about.

Cheers,
Dan King

More than anything else, though, to anyone who would write about it, golf offers a four-hour drama in two acts, which becomes memorable even in the tape-recorded reminiscenses of old champs, and which -- in the hands of someone like Herb Wind -- can become a piece of war correspondence as artfully controlled as Alan Morehead's account of Gallipoli.
 --Alister Cooke

[Patrick_Mucci]

Joe,

I think it's a combination of what you , Kyle and Dan said.

There's no question that golf and especially amateur golf have been relegated to the back pages.

[David_Tepper]

"Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be."

[Peter Pallotta]

Joe - DT is probably right, but I'd suggest (to borrow from my own "In My Opinion" piece) the following:

"With this endorsement of personal religious experience, [William] James opened the door wide to emerging concepts about spiritual worship in daily life.  In a sense, he gave a whole generation (and indeed, future generations) of religious seekers permission to abandon traditional places of worship — the churches, temples and synagogues — and to instead worship and seek spiritual nourishment wherever and in whatever way suited them best.  Not surprisingly, many in the newly-minted Edwardian Age found that it was in Nature and in the natural world — so free from actual or perceived Victorian restraints — where they could most directly experience the divine Ground, where they could most easily share in the one Reality.  Lying with a lover on the banks of the Thames could be as spiritual as a Sunday sermon in St. Paul’s Cathedral; and so too could a round of golf played in the misty silence, as the rain fell from low grey clouds draped over a sea-side links in Scotland like a shroud".

I think the James-Hultain-Behr-Murphy links are pretty strong; and, while the Bernard Darwins of the world (from what I've read by him) rarely or ever made such thoughts explicit, there was in his already elegant writing an undercurrent, a sense that "these great courses and this great game mean something -- it is more than a game, more than a field of play".  And I think that feeling comes across the ages to us.

A peaceful and happy Christmas to you and yours

Peter