The "Father" of golf in North America!?

[TEPaul]

The history of The Royal Montreal Golf Club (1873, and believed to be the first golf club still in existence in North America) attributes this distinction to Alexander Dennistoun. I guess that distinction would need to be qualified with the first man to bring golf to North America via a club that endured.

But WOW, what an interesting guy! Has his name ever been mentioned on this website before? He and his family surely had an interesting history in Scotland too (Dumbarton Castle). One of his Scottish ancestors made himself the Bishop of St. Andrews by force of arms. He was known as the "Brigand Priest" of the fifteenth Century. His men spread terror in the land with "wicked deeds many and foul." He sounds like my kind of guy!

Alexander Dennistoun was the fifth of thirteen children and seeing as primogenitor probably reigned in those days it looks like he took off for Canada to make his way and his fortune in the New World. The history says he was thoroughly familiar with TOC and Musselburgh and the early courses of England. He grew up at Camis Eskan, the family residence that had been in the family for six hundred years. At RMGC it looks like he was totally "The Man"!

I'll add some of his details later but among other things he was a total giant, apparently using clubs that were so big noone else could use them.

In comparison, the man considered to be the "Father" of golf in the US, John Reid, introduced golf to the states (St. Andrews in Yonkers, NY) a full fifteen years after Alexander Dennistoun!

[TX Golf]

Tom,

When you say that Royal Montreal is "attributed" to Alexander Dennistoun what exactly do you mean. Was he the founder?? The designer?? Were the founder and the designer/architect the same person back then? Also, were there not any other courses of note built in the 15 years between Dennistoun and Reid? Thanks.

Robert

[Ally Mcintosh]

I'm not so sure you can pick something as random as "the first man to bring golf to North America via a club that endured" to name the Father of American Golf.

I realise that is what was supposedly done with John Reid (even though his friend Robert Lockhart probably has better claim) but I prefer picking someone who was influential in spreading the word fanatically...

My "Father of American Golf" is Alex Findlay... he has some good stories attributed to him...

[Peter Pallotta]

TE -

I went to do a quick search because it's interesting to think of how very early the game was being played here (and to wonder, as Robert asks, what that game was like and how it developed in the years before Reid).  In an 1898 "Outing" article, here's what they say about Dennistoun:

"The gentleman, however, who is recognized as the father of golf in Canada, that is, who fostered and encouraged the game, and was the means of starting the Royal Montreal Golf Club, was the Mr. Alexander Dennistoun who was elected the club’s first president. He recently died in Edinburgh, but for many years was a resident of Canada. Mr. Dennistoun had played in his early days over the famous links of St. Andrew’s and Musselburgh, and was a member of several other leading clubs in Scotland and England. He was not only an enthusiastic player, but an excellent exponent of all the intricacies of the game"

For me, whenever I read something like this from the very early days of North American golf, I always wonder the same thing: in this case, what were TOC and Musselburgh like in 1860-1870, how conscious/articulated was the understanding back then of the architectural virtues of those courses, how much of that understanding would someone like Dennistoun likely be familair with, and how likely was it that, even if he was aware of the architectural virtues of courses like TOC, he would be able (or even willing) to try to manifest those virtues in a brand new setting?

I guess there is no "one answer" to such broad questions, and maybe they aren't even answerable at all.

Peter

[TEPaul]

"For me, whenever I read something like this from the very early days of North American golf, I always wonder the same thing: in this case, what were TOC and Musselburgh like in 1860-1870, how conscious/articulated was the understanding back then of the architectural virtues of those courses, how much of that understanding would someone like Dennistoun likely be familair with, and how likely was it that, even if he was aware of the architectural virtues of courses like TOC, he would be able (or even willing) to try to manifest those virtues in a brand new setting?

I guess there is no "one answer" to such broad questions, and maybe they aren't even answerable at all."


Peter and Robert:

This is the point, I think---eg it was just too early and far too rudimentary to be thinking about such things as "architecture" with any kind of sophistication at all. Basically, Dennistoun and his fellow Montreal Golf Club founders (who were immigrant Scots too) realized they had nothing in Montreal even remotely like what they knew as "linksland" so in the first decade or more they basically just played around a sort of "moveable" course they "laid-out" at "Fletcher Field" in the "park" Montreal had created for the city in 1872. I doubt they actually tried to "make" anything architecturally in those early days.

One of the fundamental problems back then were all the people in the park and the fact that they did not have natural "swards" like the linksland had. Long grass and rough ground was a real problem for them in playing. Another aspect that we would probably never even think of today, is that they said since a nice lady who owned a fine house next to Fletcher Field allowed them to store their clubs in one of the rooms so they didn't have to lug their clubs back and forth to and from the city which might've made the whole thing too difficult to do! 

[TEPaul]

"For me, whenever I read something like this from the very early days of North American golf, I always wonder the same thing: in this case, what were TOC and Musselburgh like in 1860-1870, how conscious/articulated was the understanding back then of the architectural virtues of those courses, how much of that understanding would someone like Dennistoun likely be familair with, and how likely was it that, even if he was aware of the architectural virtues of courses like TOC, he would be able (or even willing) to try to manifest those virtues in a brand new setting?"


Peter:

Again, I think the basic question you are asking there just might be one of the most fundamental ones there is to truly understanding both HOW and WHY golf architecture began to evolve, particularly on INLAND sites of that early era.

It is not that men that early like Dennistoun did not understand the virtues of NATURAL linksland sites, it's just that they did not have sites like that where they first began golf so they just kind of muddled through for a couple of decades with whatever they did have for ground. I do not think they really did much of anything to alter it for golf. They just played over it.

I am really beginning to wonder both WHERE and particularly WHEN this fairly well-known Scottish linksman "Putdown"---eg "Nae links, nae golf" began to get their attention enough for them to really begin to look back at the natural linksland, particularly TOC and to look seriously at the natural aspects of the linksland and come to realize that if they did want better golf they had to figure out a way to begin to actually "make" things somewhat reminiscent of it, such things as sand bunkers and the like that looked more like the natural linksland than like a rectangular pit in front of a steeplechase jump that had the water removed and replaced by dirt or sand.

Frankly, I think these early golfers probably went through a couple of decades on the early inland sites of England, Ireland and the Americas (basically pasture land or park land) with what was sometimes referred to as "steeplechase" golf (essentially mimicking steeplechase features for hazards and such) before they realized they had to do better inland and then became enough aware and enough motivated to do something about it and something better that looked more like linksland shapes and features.

I think this is when real golf course architecture was finally born outside the Scottish linksland and I think it began to happen in this improved way probably near the end of the last decade of the 19th century! I think this was when a course like TOC first began to be considered the "protoype" of golf architecture.

This is why I'm so interested in a man like Herbert Leeds of Myopia. In other words, what he created at Myopia between 1896 and 1900 just seems to be so very much better in an "architectural" context than anything over here INLAND or otherwise that came before it.

[Peter Pallotta]

TE - thanks for the posts. Reading them, another (maybe related) thought came to mind, i.e. that it seems to have been about 30 years from the founding of Royal Montreal before the appreciation of golf architecture AS golf architecture started to take hold. What I mean is, these early Scot immigrants who had grown up playing the classic links courses nonetheless seemed satisfied here in America to play what were in comparison vastly inferior golf courses. Now, maybe they weren't making that comparison at all, and it is only we in retrospect who are making it for them. (?) Or maybe the relationship between the game of golf and its fields of play wasn't as well established or as highly prized back then, and, especially for those arriving here to find no golf at all, it was the playing of the game that was by far the more important part. (?) But nonetheless, 30 years does seem like a long time for golfers who knew well the great British courses to have accepted a lot less here in America. (Did even Macdonald, when he designed the Chicago Golf Club, accept that?) I imagine there was some kind of reason for this (other than a complete lack of awareness of and appreciation for what make courses like TOC great), and maybe the agronomy angle you are taking is a likely or even the most important one, i.e. they accepted it because they had to.  But somewhere along the line, say in the early 1900s, it seems like everyone in America had suddenly started taking "architecture appreciation" classes...and that only then did the "Nae links, nae golf" take hold here.

Peter

[TEPaul]

"But nonetheless, 30 years does seem like a long time for golfers who knew well the great British courses to have accepted a lot less here in America. (Did even Macdonald, when he designed the Chicago Golf Club, accept that?) I imagine there was some kind of reason for this (other than a complete lack of awareness of and appreciation for what make courses like TOC great), and maybe the agronomy angle you are taking is a likely or even the most important one, i.e. they accepted it because they had to.  But somewhere along the line, say in the early 1900s, it seems like everyone in America had suddenly started taking "architecture appreciation" classes...and that only then did the "Nae links, nae golf" take hold here."


Peter:

I think they accepted it for a couple of decades not because they were unaware of the benefical natural aspects of the linksland (call it basically really good "Nature made" architecture if you want to) but because they basically had to----eg they were taking the game to sites for the first time which were nothing at all like the linksland or seaside golf where it all began and had only been for so many years.

I don't think the idea occured to any of them to essentially try to copy linksland natural features by actually making it inland to the extent they eventully began to do after the turn of the century. There are obviously all kinds of contributing factors to that I'm sure---eg cost, grass, lack of water, maintenance, lack of mechanical techniques and equipment etc, etc. One might even throw club and ball equipment in there too.

Max Behr probably said it best---"They took the letter out and left the spirit behind when they first took the game out of Scotland and home with them when they first went to inland sites around the world wholly unsuited to receive the game compared to the natural seaside linksland of Scotland."

To me, it is completely logical that for up to a couple of decades after the first emigration of golf and courses out of Scotland that many of them would copy a type of feature and style they all knew and used everyday---eg the recreational/sporting world of the horse----hence the extremely commonly used term back then "Steeplechase" architecture (some of the early observers of golf over here then actually thought golf was a race! to get the ball in the hole first).

I think "steeplechase" architecture actually somewhat preceded the style we sometimes call "geometric" architecture and after so many of both started popping up all over the place in the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century guys like Hutchinson, Park, Colt, Fowler, Mackenzie, Leeds, Emmet and then Macdonald basically looked out on all that crap and essentially screamed:

"Enough ("It makes the very soul of golf Shriek"), we need to look back to the linksland and learn to start to actually MAKE some of the shapes for golf that happened naturally back there."

[Peter Pallotta]

Max Behr probably said it best---"They took the letter out and left the spirit behind when they first took the game out of Scotland and home with them when they first went to inland sites around the world wholly unsuited to receive the game compared to the natural seaside linksland of Scotland."

Shame on me, Tom. I've read that quote a half a dozen times, and probably quoted it in my posts at least twice...but I never quite connected the dots before. Ah, Maxie, I hardly knew you. (Now if I could only find some detailed information about the religion-based-on-numbers he apparently developed later in life....I want to see how it relates to his chiding of Joshua Crane for wanting in his golf courses and in his feelings about those golf courses a 'mathematical' precision that, if anywhere,  existed only in heaven...)

Peter 

[TEPaul]

Peter:

The way Max thought, I'm not sure one could assume there was necessarily any real connection between Behr's homemade religion based on numerology and Josh Crane's application of mathematical precision applied to golf, architecture or rating.