Golf in America 1895 - an Article from Scribner's Magazine

[Neil Regan]

From the Cornell University Library project: Making of America

VOL XVII  SCRIBNER’S MAGAZINE MAY 1895
GOLF
By Henry E. Howland


   Of note to GCA is how much the architectural aspects of golf appealed to the first American golfers, and how many of the golf clubs mentioned in the article still have top-notch courses (much altered, of course, since 1895).

   Below is a sample page; the whole article can be read by clicking on its title, above. Notice the appreciation for hazards, including some that are beneath contempt now for many modern golfers:

... a purgatorial stone-
wall jump, a sand-bunker and
bastion, a water-jump, and finally
a vast gravel-pit or crater, which has made many a
golfing heart quail, and whose
depths the g r e a t Campbell
himself (the Scotch professional keeper)
has not disdained to explore. ...
the moral effect of these hazards is
such that the true drive or the fair
cleek is problematical. Stone walls,
trees, ploughed fields, fences, and
chasms, however, present excellent
sporting requirements on a course, for
variety is the spice of golf.
 
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(A side note: I knew the son of "the Great Campbell". My father was his lawyer, and we used to speak on the phone.)

[A_Clay_Man]

Fascinating series of posts Neil, Thanx.

I surmise from this article that the modern archie has it all wrong.
 The houses need to be more in play than not.

On a tangent; With recent shortages of building materials,
 perhaps the recycled type,
will win-out and can be made impervious to surlyn?

Americans really did ruin the sport and it can now be traced

to 1656 when those damned puritans  
restricted golfing in the streets, between the houses. Sacrelig!