[Thomas Dai]

Those who are members of the British Golf Collectors Society ought by now to have received the most recent edition of the Society's splendid journal, 'Through the Green'.
Page 46 contains a piece by Bob Fletcher about Lindsay Ross, St Andrews born and a Pro in the late 1800's-early 1900's. The piece contains a few paragraphs written by Ross himself including the one reproduced below, about his time in the game and his earliest playing memories.

These days many players use clubs made of steel and titanium and graphite, play with scientifically designed balls, wear clothing and waterproof footwear made in factories and usually seem to desire to play on immaculately manicured green and lush golf courses often transported around in electrically powered vehicles.
Seems like the basis of the game has altered just a touch from Lindsay Ross's earliest days.
atb

[Brian_Ewen]

I always liked this one from Henry Longhurst:



FIRST PRINCIPLES by HENRY LONGHURST  1958

I often think that one's attidude to the game of golf is subconsciously conditioned for a lifetime by the circumstances in which one is first introduced to it. Those of us who see it first in its elementary primitive form, knocking a ball along with one club, or perhaps even two or three , cheerfully encountering all manner of unorthodox hazards on the way until eventually we get it into the hole , seem to have captured a a basic outlook on the game which can never later be revealed to those who travelled first class from the start.

My own beginnings were primitive in the extreme. I was introduced to the game before breakfast one morning on the common at Yelverton , Devon , by two other small boys whose parents were taking their holiday in the same hotel. They had devised a triangular course of three holes - no tees , flags , fairways or any such nonsense , of course - and with luck we could get in two rounds before breakfast.

None of us, therefore , was baptised in the faith that , if we drove onto the fairway , we were entitled to a "Fairway lie " and that , if we did not get it , we had been robbed .Ours was a simple creed . You played the ball where you found it .

The only true disaster in golf was when you could not find it.

[Peter Pallotta]

"....a basic outlook on the game which can never later be revealed to those who traveled first class from the start."

I can't think there are many youngsters today, and certainly almost none playing collegiate golf or in the early years on the pro tours, who *haven't* traveled first class from the very start.

It must change everything - maintenance expectations & practices certainly, but design-architecture too, no? 

[David Harshbarger]

There's truth in this for sure.  Being not to the manor born, my kids grew up playing on a low-budget course where the fairway rarely yields fairway lies.  The regulars feel they deserve a good lie so the local "rule", more a custom, is to play winter rules year round.  Ugh.  If there was one thing I kept from my kids it was the idea of winter rules.  I made a point to shield their young ears from this horrible corruption.  Is there a more corrosive example of entitlement thinking than the idea that in golf one is entitled to a good lie?


As I say to anyone who insists on rolling their ball before a shot at my little course: "if you want a perfect lie in the fairway go pay $6,000/year for a membership over at the National!  For $650/year, play it where it lies!"


Of course, there's nothing like a bout of righteous indignation to the get the blood going.  But on further reflection, I find myself pondering the "entitled lie" mentality a bit more.  If giving yourself a little better chance to make a pleasing shot is the price for you to choose to contribute that $650 to the success of our little venture, to get you out here in the rain to fill out a 90 year old tournament, or fatten the weekly skins pot, or to keep those $2.50 beers moving out of the cooler, to make the rest of us laugh and smile a little more, if "permission" to puff that lie up is part of the bargain to keep an important part of our little community fabric together, I think that's worth it.


Like Annie said: "honey, every girl deserves to wear white".  And, maybe if she chose to worship at the house of golf instead of baseball, she'd also say we all deserve to have the ball sit up a bit, even if, especially if, paying for the luxury of a thick greensward and a maintenance staff to keep it so isn't ever going to be in the cards.

[Bob Montle]

David:
Well said.
My thoughts exactly. 
Thank you for expressing them better than I ever could have.

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