The 103rd year of the Lesley Cup at Royal Montreal G.C. last week

[TEPaul]

The Lesley Cup just held their annual competiton at Royal Montreal (the Lesley Cup is 103 years old, beginning at GCGC in 1905).

For some reason I didn't see any of the President's Cup last year at Royal Montreal and so I didn't know much about the courses.

Royal Montreal G.C. is the oldest golf club in North America (1873) but the site of the club (Ile Bizard) is their third site in Montreal.

The club has 45 holes and I think 36 of them are Dick Wilson from the 1950s with a Rees Jones redo for the last President's Cup.

We played both the Blue and the Red courses and they are good (I'd be glad to go into some detail).

There's a lot of pretty cool history surrounding that club and some nice historical resources in its clubhouse (and library).

Quebec won the Lesley Cup this year.

In the next four years the sites will be:

2009=New York at Tuxedo Park G.C
2010=Massachusetts at TCC at Brookline
2011=Pennsylvania at Fox Chapel G.C.
2013=Quebec at Kannawaki G.C.

Both days I don't think it got to 50 degrees and it was blowing about 20-30MPH. I'm back in Philly now and my ass is just beginning to warm up again! 


The star of the Lesley Cup this year? It was Canadian architect, Graham Cooke again. That guy can really play! This year he will be going into the Quebec golf Hall of Fame or maybe it's the RCGC Hall of Fame!

BTW, pretty well documented history says the formats of the Walker and Ryder Cups were taken from the Lesley Cup, and the Pennsylvania Golf Association was begun in 1909 in part so as to recruit Pittsburgh's (Oakmont's) W.C. Fownes for the Lesley Cup since the Golf Association of Philadelephia had gotten hammered in the previous four years by New York and Massachusetts.

The Lesley Cup was given by Robert Lesley, prominent MCC and Merion member, chairman of the Search Committee to move Merion golf club from Haverford to Ardmore, Merion golf chairman and president, long time president of the Golf Association of Philadelphia and obviously a guy very interested in fostering competition and the spirit of the game in early American golf.

In the old days the very best amateurs from those states went at it in the Lesley Cups---eg Travis, Travers, Behr, Quimet, Marston, Tillinghast, Crump, Macdonald etc, etc. If any of you expert researchers out there would like to weigh in with any items (newspapers and magazines or whatever) you come across on the history of the Lesley Cup and its competitions over the years it would be most appreciated.

Thank You!

[Jeff_Mingay]

Tom,

Cooke is a remarkable golfer. It was only a few years ago, if I'm not mistaken, he was in the final match of the Amateur, Mid-Amateur and Senior Amateur here, in Canada. He won two of the three, but not the Canadian Amateur.

Pretty amazing.

[PCCraig]

I'm pretty sure this event was considered the first international golf match when TCC-Brokline played Royal Montreal 103 years ago. There is a note of this on the water fountain between the 10th and 11th tee boxes.

[TEPaul]

Pat:

The annual competition between RMGC and TCC is the oldest international event in North America. It's been going on for around 120 years. The Lesley Cup started in 1905 although the basic competition preceded that by a few years. Originally it was between Mass, NY, and Philadelphia (Philadlephia transformed to Pennsylvania in 1909 due to W.C. Fownes) and some years later Quebec was added making it international.

[Phil_the_Author]

Pat & Tom,

Whereas there were international matches between teams of golfers from the U.S. & other countries, the first time a team of players officially representing the U.S. went out of the country to play a match was in 1907.

This was for the Cnada Cup matches and the Captain of the U.S. team was A.W. Tillinghast. There is a photograph of the team in my Tilly bio showing the 8 members: Horstman, Herreshoff, Peters, West, Conklin, Tyson, Corkran, & Tilly.

He wrote about this match in the American Golfer. Among the things he said was,"I remember with the greatest pleasure the customs about the Canadian clubhouses some years ago when I took my team there. Even at that time, when the red coat with its brass buttons had disappeared entirely from our courses, many Canadian golfers wore them as informal dinner coats at their clubs. Certainly it was typical of the clinging to the background of past days; reluctant to see them quite done away with, but it was a delightful whim after all..."

On the Canadian team was George Lyon who had won the Olympic golf championship at St. Louis in 1904. He was also a world class cricket player who held the Canadian record of 238 runs and none out. Tilly had the pleasure to play against him in both sports.   

[TEPaul]

Philip:

According to RMGC's history book, their matches with TCC at Brookline are the oldest international golf matches in the world. They began in 1898. They are not matches that represent the USA or Canada, just two clubs from those two countries.

The Lesley Cup which began in 1905 between two states and one state's region (Philadelphia) expanded into three US States and later a Canadian province (Quebec) competing against one another annually. The way the Lesley Cup is conducted now is with nine players from each team playing nine singles matches against each other (it can get a bit tricky keeping score with all four players in a group competing against one another Matter of fact in the first day's singles on the last hole one player had about a one foot putt. He finally putted it and then everyone looked at me like I smelled bad or something. Apparently he had that putt to beat me but since I though he already beat me about four holes previous I never thought to give it to him thinking he must be still competing against someone else). The next day is nine foursome matches followed by nine more singles matches between the four teams.

I could be wrong but I think at one time it was two sets of teams playing one another in both singles and then foursomes, and the two winning teams from the first day would play singles and foursome matches the following day for the Lesley Cup.

There was even a year or two where I believe they brought along a team of women who competed in the same manner. I could be wrong about this and that's why I'd like to research some of the old newspapers and magazines.

The problem with the record keeping of the Lesley Cup is that it doesn't have one central home and it looks like their records were either not kept for a number of years or they were lost somehow. We still have our cups though, and they are impressive.