Just finished
A Clearing In the Distance by Witold Rybczynski. Great read about Frederick Law Olmsted and one of the best looks at American life during the mid-late 1800s, including the Civil War, I have ever read. Never knew Olmsted has such a diverse life...author, public servant and farmer. The account of his dementia late in life was something I had never heard.
There is but one mention of golf, that being his work at Franklin Park (Boston) and the early use of the Commons Area for golf. Does anyone have any early (pre-Ross) maps or photos? Would be interesting to study.
I did run across this (excerpted) which is entertaining — the wooden tee being invented by a dentist:
(Entire contents at:
http://www.dotnews.com/franklin%20park.html )
Fit to a Tee at Franklin ParkBy Peter F. Stevens
"Diversity" has long proven a watchword at the William J. Devine Golf Course at Franklin Park. Since long-overdue renovations in the 1980s brought the venerable old tract back from the debris-choked ruin it had been well on its way to [having] ... the rejuvenated fairways and greens that still bear so many of famed Scottish-American architect Donald Ross's landscaping touches ...
... In 1890, roughly two years after a transplanted Scot named John Reid and several friends laid out a crude three-hole course in Yonkers, New York, and kindled a passion for the game that would spread throughout the nation, a rough course was laid out at Franklin Park. Opened as a course "for everyone," Franklin Park claimed a niche in early American golf as the nation's second public course. Van Cortlandt Park, a layout in the Bronx, beat Franklin Park to the proverbial punch ...
... While Bobby Jones and Francis Ouimet figure in the annals and lore of Franklin Park, the Dorchester course can claim special status as the site that changed the very way in which golf was and is played. The course's earliest players teed off in the traditional way — they bent down at each "driving area," carefully fashioned tiny, cone-shaped piles of dirt or sand, and carefully perched balls atop the diminutive mounds. In 1899, all of that changed, thanks to a local dentist named Dr. George F. Grant ...
... Dr. Grant held not only the first Harvard Dental School degree awarded to an African-American, but also a deep interest in physics — including the physics of golf. At Franklin Park, he studied the makeshift "natural" tees and pondered the results of drives lofted or topped down the fairways. He noticed that no matter how flawless the swing, virtually every drive off the tiny mounds differed in height and length, and fingered the traditional "sand pile" as the culprit. What was needed, he determined, was a dose of links engineering and physics ...
... With the same craft and precision that he employed to fashion fillings and false teeth, Grant went to work on a cure for "drivers' dilemma." His solution would prove nothing short of landmark &emdash; the first artificial golf tee ...
... On December 12, 1899, following months of trial and error, after months of studying drives at Franklin Park, Grant submitted an application and a detailed design to the U.S. Patent Office. The local dentist's opening lines proclaimed, "Be it known that I, George F. Grant, of Boston...have invented the Golf-Tee." ...
... Grant's invention consisted of a small, wooden shaft with a tapered and pointed base and "a flexible tubular concave shoulder to hold the golf ball": the world's first patented golf tee. Inspired by the tribulations of Franklin Park golfers, his creation would literally lift the level of play by professionals and duffers alike ...
Grant wrote: "This invention has for its object the production of a simple, cheap, and effective tee for use in the game of golf, obviating the use of the conical mounds of sand or similar material formed by the fingers of the player on which the ball is supported when driving off....By the use of the tee...the player is sure that his ball is uniformly elevated from the ground at each drive, and the uncertainty of a sand [or dirt] tee is overcome, as it is practically impossible to make them of uniform height each time."
... Simplicity, genius, innovation, or a mix of all of these — Grant's invention literally changed the way golfers played the game and did so in a welcome way ...