"Whether Musselburgh at the time was a better test of the game than the initial course at Muirfield is a question best left to those who were thoroughly acquainted with both links, but if Musselburgh did not provide a better test than the course over which the Championship was played in 1892, all I can say is that the Championship never should have been played over Musselburgh, as when one looks back and reflects, it is more and more driven home to one what a shockingly indifferent course [Muirfield] was. It lacked length, it moreover lacked condition, and altogether there were about four good holes on it."
- Harold Hilton on early Muirfield.
In his recent IMO and elsewhere Melvyn Hunter Murrow has emphasized that many of the old great old links courses did not just sprout of the ground naturally, but were created by years of hard work. Muirfield provides a good example in this regard. I am no expert on its history, but as I understand it the course was expanded to 18 holes for the 1892 Open, but at this point the course was considered largely deficient. By numerous accounts, its inclusion in the Championship rotation was more political than merit based. In short, the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers had moved (back) from Musselburgh to Muirfield, and, to the chagrin of many, insisted that the tournament be played there instead of Musselburgh. Early reviews of the course were scathing. While the course was greatly improved over the next decade or so, the reviews ten years later were not much better. Long story short, the course was further improved (and drainage issues fixed) until the course is as we think of it today.
Here are two articles written over a decade after the first Open, after many improvements were already in place.
From the June 12, 1903 Golf Illustrated:
Muirfield as a Championship Course.
BY HORACE G. HUTCHINSON.
THE poor course at Muirfield has had some hard things said of it as an arena for the amateur, or any other, championship, by the critics, and a good many of them are no doubt deserved.
Personally, if my own opinion may be mentioned for the nothing that it is worth, I do not think it is quite a championship course. I am quite sure that it is not a fitting amateur championship course while the present first hole is played as the nineteenth, for this is putting the whole of the decision between two players who have proved themselves equal over eighteen holes to the chance of a hole that is perhaps the most unfair that could be cited. This is a dificulty that might readily be removed by playing the twelfth hole, and so on, after a halved round, as has been suggested before. This particular trouble does not enter into the discussion of the fitness of the course for the open championship, which is a scoring affair, nor, seeing that it may be evaded so easily, need it affect the questionof Muirfield's adequacy for the amateur contest. Let it be said at once that I try not to look on Muirfield with unduly partial eye because I did better on it than anybody, myself included, expected me to do at the late amateur championship. One may hope to be able to exercise sufficient detachment in one's judgment to avoid such prejudice as that. Nor do I hold in any sense a brief in Muirfield’s favour, not having the honour to be numbered among the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. But I do think some of the critics have been just a little hard on the course. It is not all that it ought to be for the purpose. The wall is not the ideal golfing hazard, whether one be on this side of it or on the other; there are
a great many holes that are only a drive and a pitch—that most levelling length. I do not for a moment believe, nor does anvone, so far as I know, affect to believe, that Muirfield would ever-have been chosen as a championship had it not been the green of that very Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers who did so much to help in instituting the open championship and have given the best of encouragement to the best of golf ever since they have had their venerable corporate existence. Muirfield cannot boast transcendent merits. North Berwick, if the championship is to be plaved in the Lothians at all, is a much better and more testing course, and the absolute necessity of the championship in the Lothians is not obvious —to the mere Sassenach eye, at least. But the fact that Muirfield is the green to which the honourable and venerable society migrated after Musselburgh had become too hardly worn with the many years of its honourable service gives it a claim which it would be most graceless of one who is not a Scot nor a member of the societv to gainsay. It's claim is strong. It has been rumoured that the society is not unanimously enamoured of having the championship, either amateur or professional, on its green, but that is a view that seems to be restricted to a minority, and in any case does not affect the quality of the links.
The head and front of the offending of the green, considered as a championship one, seems, from the words of the critics, to be that
the approaching to the holes is so unsatisfactory. They say’ that the approaching approximates to the character of approaching on inland greens (and in saying so, by the bye, they give the strongest possible censure to a defect that might quite well be obviated, which is only too common on our inland greens); the ground on which you have to pitch your approach, they say, is all foggy and mossy, so that you cannot pitch short of the green, whereas neither can you pitch on the green without over-running. That is all quite true-—it has to be freely acknowledged—if you are to the side of the greens or beyond, but I cannot say that in my experience it is true if you keep straight to the greens. In that case, as it Seems to me, you get a fair place to pitch. Even if you grant the truth of the criticism in its deadly entirety, as affecting the straight approach also, that even does not condemn the course, for it is a trouble that can be cured by rolling and mowing so as to bring the approaching ground down to the same consistency as the putting green, even as it can also be done on our inland courses if the authorities will only recognise the trouble and try to deal with it. It is remediable.
I have stated, however, that in the case of Muirfield I do not consider that it has much appreciable existence. If you are to the side you have to face this not quite just difficulty; but if you are straight, I do not think you encounter it. The first hole has to be given to the critics. If you play the good safe shot a little to the right, there you have a hopeless approach of the most justly condemned sort. But the first is such a flagrant hole that it may be given to any fate. Again, at the amateur championship time, the sixteenth green was not big enough. If you approached at all strong you had an approach back of just this condemned nature, and an equally evil one if you were to the right. And you could not lie short nor to the left because of bunkers.
But giving these two holes away——and the sixteenth could be easily put to rights-there is nothing in the rest of them to worry
about.
And what good holes there are-the second, the fourth, fifth, and sixth, and some of the home-coming ones! To be sure, the “ rough" at the sides of the mown part is iniquitous: you may lie teed up, you may lie desperate. That is all as it should not be, and a nice selection of bunkers would be far better. But the putting greens are on the whole good. May be it is not quite a championship course, save for the claim of the very Honourable Company; but it does not seem to have such shortcomings that so strong a claim cannot more than overcome them.
After all—regarded as a test of golf it has not, experimentally considered, done so badly. Harry Vardon won there, after a tie with Taylor—the course did not make such a bad selection in bracketting these two equal, and letting Vardon just win. Mr. Hilton won there in the open championship, and he has won elsewhere by way of confirming the verdict. And now Mr. Maxwell has won the amateur championship there. That, after all, was not so far out of the line of reasonable expectations as to condemn the standard. Poor Muirfield is better than she might be, and will not thank the writer for this apology for her fame.
Here is Harold Hilton, writing about Muirfield in Hutchinson's Golf Green's and Green-keeping (1906):
Section II.--Muirfield
Muirfield is generally accredited with the character of being the one of the five Championship courses which cannot quite claim on merit alone to be altogether worthy of the honour conferred upon it. The fact is, Muirfield was thrust upon the golfing world as a Championship course, and thrust for the reason that the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers is one of the five clubs governing the Open Championship, and when its members decided to remove their golfing habitation from Musselburgh they settled their minds upon this walled-in enclosure near Drem, and the Championship had to be played there whether the golfing world wanted to or not. The good people of Musselburgh were amongst those who did not want it to be played at Muirfield, for the sufficient reason that it was taking the Championship meeting away from their own links. Their protest resolved itself into the holding of an open meeting just prior to the meeting at Muirfield, and some fondly hoped that this meeting would be looked upon as the real Championship meeting. The entry was an excellent one, as nearly every professional of note competed—and wisely too, as the prize money was lavish, and it is a professional's business to earn money by the playing of the game of golf— but I hardly think that anyone, aside and apart from those who had reason to take a vivid interest in the Musselburgh course, ever considered that there was any possibility of this opposition show being considered the real Championship contest.
Whether Musselburgh at the time was a better test of the game than the initial course at Muirfield is a question best left to those who were thoroughly acquainted with both links, but if Musselburgh did not provide a better test than the course over which the Championship was played in 1892, all I can say is that the Championship never should have been played over Musselburgh, as when one looks back and reflects, it is more and more driven home to one what a shockingly indifferent course it was. It lacked length, it moreover lacked condition, and altogether there were about four good holes on it. In later years someone set to work and attempted a metamorphosis at Muirfield, and the man who did it accomplished wonders. He got more out of the ground than ever appeared possible, and as a feat of golf links architecture it stands unrivalled, as, in the first instance, he obtained length, and that was very difficult in such a confined space, and moreover he managed to eliminate several indifferent holes. That was not so difficult on account of the fact that he had so much material to work upon. And, again, he considerably improved many of the holes. In fact he accomplished just about all that was possible for a human being to do; and still there is a doubt whether Muirfield is quite a sufficiently good course to merit the distinction of a Championship being played over it. The truth is, nature has not been sufficiently kind to allow a first-class course to be built in the space at command, and, again, the hand of man has built a wall round the links, and that wall is neither fair as a hazard nor is it picturesque in appearance. There are good holes at Muirfield, and a goodly number of them, as, for instance, the second, the twelfth, and the eighteenth, all, peculiar to say, of a somewhat similar character, but there are few holes that are really interesting at Muirfield. No doubt every man when he is playing an important medal round finds in his mind sufficient anxiety to make every hole interesting, but it is a very different matter to judge a course in cold blood, and you can only arrive at an equitable conclusion by watching others play the course. The main hazard at Muirfield, which is undoubtedly the rough grass on either side of the course, does not always mete out just punishment to the wandering player, as, whilst it is often possible to obtain a very bad lie therein, on the other hand many a very wild stroke goes literally unpunished. It is a peculiar kind of " rough," as the grass grows in tufts, and seems to be intersected by numerous narrow pathways, and the lies in these pathways are invariably good, but if you do happen to find a tuft of grass just behind your ball, much better would it be for you that your ball had found a sand hazard. Muirfield has two great qualifications, one being that the teeing grounds are good, and the other that the putting greens are, on the whole, very fair. One or two, notably the second, third, and twelfth, are a little apt to become too keen, and in consequence tricky, but, on the whole, the putting is fair, and, moreover, not as easy as it looks, as there are numberless minute hummocks on many of the greens, which cause trouble to the careless putter who will not take the trouble to find out the correct line to the hole.