What happened in the 1920's to create the boom?

[Sven Nilsen]

Does anyone have a recommendation of any resources that discuss the factors that contributed to 1920's U.S. boom in golf course development? 

[Patrick_Mucci]

Sven,

The only thing that I can think of, in a parallel sense, is the popularity of Lacrosse over the last few years.

The sport languished in pockets for quite some time, but, in the last decade or so, has become almost universally popular in schools.

Perhaps golf had the same type of popularity burst.
It was relatively new to the U.S. and perhaps that was part of the lure.

[David_Elvins]

Sven,

A broad description here with references and further reading at bottom of page. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Twenties

[David_Tepper]

This book (The American Country Club: It Origins and Development) may be helpful:

http://www.amazon.com/American-Country-Club-Origins-Development/dp/0813524857

A good review of the book: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3423

[Sven Nilsen]

Pat:

Interesting comparison with lacrosse, and you could make some analogies as to how golf fit the ethos of the 20's and lacrosse meets the modern need for speed (and violence).  What intrigues me about the question is why golf became popular, why people decided it was the way they wanted to spend their leisure time.  And why did the "intrigue of the game" reach an apex during the 20's?

I was looking over a listing of golf courses built in Kansas.  Before 1920 there were a handful, mostly near the major metropolitan areas.  Between 1920 and 1930 it seems like every small town in the state built a nine hole course.  The same holds true for many other states.  Why would a farm town of 1000-2000 people see the need to build a golf course?

David:

The wikipedia article notes the rise of sports journalism during that time.  Undoubtedly, the rise of media coverage had a great deal of impact on the growth of the game.  But that still leaves the question of "why" unanswered.

David:

Thanks for the link to Mayo's book, looks like it is worth a read.  The review notes the advent of the real estate play, which undoubtedly was a factor in the overall picture of growth.  But how does that explain the small town boom I noted above? 

[David_Elvins]

David:

The wikipedia article notes the rise of sports journalism during that time.  Undoubtedly, the rise of media coverage had a great deal of impact on the growth of the game.  But that still leaves the question of "why" unanswered.

It is simplisitc, but the roaring 20s created a large increase of wealth in the middle and upper middle class.  The number of people who could afford to play golf increased markedly. 

No different to what is happening in Asia today. 

[Sven Nilsen]

David:

The wikipedia article notes the rise of sports journalism during that time.  Undoubtedly, the rise of media coverage had a great deal of impact on the growth of the game.  But that still leaves the question of "why" unanswered.

It is simplisitc, but the roaring 20s created a large increase of wealth in the middle and upper middle class.  The number of people who could afford to play golf increased markedly. 

No different to what is happening in Asia today. 

David:

That's part of the equation, but I think there's more to it than just money.  Look up St. John, Kansas on Google Maps.  Someone built a golf course there in 1923.  There are countless examples of these types of courses being built, just like there are countless examples of hotel courses in Florida, country clubs in the suburbs of New York and city clubs finding a parcel of land to build their country retreat.  It wasn't just about wealth and the wealth centers. 

Who was building these courses?  How did they hear about golf?  Why did they want to play it?

Why did a farm town in Kansas with a population of probably less than a 1000 people build a golf course in 1923?
 

[Colin Macqueen]

Sven,

Your statements "It wasn't just about wealth and the wealth centers"   and "....a farm town in Kansas with a population of probably less than a 1000 people buil(t) a golf course..." point me to the idea that the abilities to hand such as farm tractors, dozers and the skilled use of them meant that a golf course could actually be constructed .... it could easily be a staged construction. Build a hole .... what great fun .... lets build another couple! It would have provided a social and sporting ground for the small community to meet and compete on at next to no cost. The maintenance costs would have been minimal and after all 'twas golf! Small town community projects like this may well have attracted local council grants and helped the employment in these rural areas.

Just a thought with no data or references to back it up!

Cheers Colin

[David Harshbarger]

I would guess the following:

Prosperity
Increased leisure time
Decreasing equipment costs
Golf's aspirational qualities (as a mark of social and financial success)

Oh, did anyone happen to mention that golf is fun?

Pat, I wouldn't associate lacrosse with golf. Golf is a lifetime sport.  Lacrosse is an uptempo stick and ball alternative to baseball for the ADD youth of America.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Sven,

I was also thinking about how golf was unpopular with the better athletes in the 50's and then became a game/sport that they seemed to embrace.

If you played golf or tennis in school you were viewed differently than the guys who played baseball, basketball, football or track, but decades later, the worlds greatest athletes, the professionals found and loved golf.  Once the Dan Marino's, Michael Jordan's and the great pitchers for the Braves of the world were playing, it became a "hip" sport for the better young athletes to take up.

The game enjoys a wonderfully unique lure.
It requires a blend of power and finesse, not to mention tactics.

Part of me thinks the popularity is linked to financial wherewithal and leisure time.
And who had both of those ?    Professional athletes.

So maybe the rise in popularity in America in the early part of the 20th century could be traced to the pre-depression prosperity.

[Jud_T]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6p_5dYiPLo

[Adam Clayman]

Sven,

The only thing that I can think of, in a parallel sense, is the popularity of Lacrosse over the last few years.

The sport languished in pockets for quite some time, but, in the last decade or so, has become almost universally popular in schools.

 Universally?

As with all the 'Why aren't more ....' questions, you really need to get out more to places other than the east coast.

Seems like the answer to the posit was a perfect storm of socio-economic evolution, and the lack in supply of courses.

[Mark McKeever]

David:

The wikipedia article notes the rise of sports journalism during that time.  Undoubtedly, the rise of media coverage had a great deal of impact on the growth of the game.  But that still leaves the question of "why" unanswered.

It is simplisitc, but the roaring 20s created a large increase of wealth in the middle and upper middle class.  The number of people who could afford to play golf increased markedly. 

No different to what is happening in Asia today. 

Spot on

Mark

[Steve_ Shaffer]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that golf was viewed as a form of outdoor recreation back in the day. People actually walked to play golf. It was not a spectator sport. I'm sure the rise of sports journalism helped along with Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen.

[Steve Burrows]

We should also not count out the confusion of industrialization and modernization of America during this historical period.  Numerous scholars have noted this tendency on a more general level (see The Machine in the Garden by Leo Marx or No Place of Grace by T.J. Jackson Lears).  America of this era was a rapidly changing world and was still seeing large numbers of European immigrants and African-Americans from the south relocating to burgeoning urban areas - and sometimes into the rural areas as well.  These changes area said to have brought about a great deal of social anxiety among the middle and upper classes.  A journal article about the development of the Pinehurst resort by Richard J. Moss says:

"The therapeutic bent of Pinehurst was, first and foremost, a business tactic, an image constructed to lure customers.  And lure customers it did – in part because the resort successfully defused the issues of race, ethnicity, and class.  But such exclusivity was not a goal viewed as separate from health but as integral to it; for an age that had broadened the definition of health to include steady nerves, the simple social structure and strict exclusivity of Pinehurst was central to its therapeutic value."

In this instance, golf was a means for dominant social groups to reassert cultural authority in an elegant, aesthetically pleasing manner.  Thus, golf (and other forms of recreation as well) were used as a way to soften the blow of the massive social changes happening in various communities. 

[Tony_Muldoon]

Sven, good question.

Most agree it was growing wealth and social mores that expanded golf, but why then? 

Have you looked at the expansion of courses decade by decade?  If ‘modernisation’ came to your part of the country in the 1920's,. ie later that e.g. the east coast,  your perspective could be swayed by your experiences.


Here's a thread that looked at how the Railway brought Golf to new areas
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,20030.0.html


the Railway, both helped great wealth and changed the way we live and play.  I’m sure there were other factors at play.   


I’m just guessing here, but on that thread the sadly missed Alfie Ward suggest that once they had a Railway Station every town wanted a golf course.  I wonder if post WW1 in the new country Golf or country Clubs were a way of getting similar social classes together, giving Golf a different and more exclusive social status than existed in the Old country (generalizing here, I don’t believe Golf was really inclusive here until after the 1960’s)?

[Jason Topp]

In the book referenced above by David Tepper, Amercian country clubs were initially thought of as a way for individuals to have a country estate even though they could not individually afford them.  That is why early clubs featured a bunch of activities beyond golf such as horse riding, sailing, etc.  Pretty quickly, golf courses became a necessary attraction for such clubs to thrive as the game soared in popularity.  I suspect the 20's added a lot of wealth to allow so many clubs to be built. 

[Rick Shefchik]

At the turn of the century, golf was covered almost as much by the society page writers as the sportswriters. By the teens and '20s, it had developed into an important spectator sport. Newspapers covered local golf tournaments far more extensively then than they do today. That coverage helped popularize the game everywhere. The concentration of golf courses in the major cities -- most with full member rosters and waiting lists -- began to spread out, as any self-respecting town of any size wanted at least a nine-hole golf course. It was something of a fad, but golf proved to have great staying power.

[Sven Nilsen]

Tony:

The railroads definitely played a key role, especially in the first great boom of golf course construction in the US from 1890 to 1900.  If you look at the Harper's Reports from that era, the listing for each course (or club) is given with a notation of what railroad line you would take to get there and how far the course was from the depot.  Golf in Florida was mainly a play by the railroads to draw northern tourists to the hotels they were building along their lines.  There are pamphlets from that era describing the golf courses you could play along the major railroad lines throughout the country, including in Michigan.  I bet if you overlaid the development of golf courses during that era with a railroad map, there would be a very high corollary.

The automobile seems to have become the method of transportation of choice as time went along.  The Annual Reports from 1916-1931 no longer include the rail line notations, but would have notations such as "located 3 miles from town, accessible by automobile."  Obviously, the increased options for getting to the course added to the growth of the game, as now courses could be built in remote locations and did not have to be in the center of town or just off the rail line.  During the teens there were a series of golf automobile tours that were being touted, including a tour of New England.

Steve makes a great point about how the course/club became a predictable retreat in a time when change and "advancement" was prevalent.  But I don't think that tells the whole picture.  I keep going back to the small generic midwestern/plains state farm town as an example.  Its not on the train line, there were probably only a handful of "well-to-do" people in the town and most likely you were dealing with a fairly homogeneous society.  There was something about the game that fit with the American spirit/ethos/attitude at the time.  Its some mix of an appreciation of leisure time (and what it represented), the desire to spend time outdoors, a spirit of taking on new challenges, the draw of a game where the challenge is against oneself and probably a myriad of other factors.  Don't forget that the 20's were almost defined by the word "fad" and perhaps for a time golf was just that.

David makes a good point about the fun factor.  There is something about the game that gave it staying power.  I don't see a lot of jitterbugging or flagpole sitting going on these days, but people still play golf.

Sven

[Phil McDade]

Francis Ouimet. To a lesser extent, Bobby Jones.

[Wayne_Kozun]

The other thing that makes the 20s stand out is that everything stopped at the end of the 20s with the onset of the depression and with the war soon after you didn't get course construction picking up again until the 50s.  So that made the 20s really stand out since there is essentially no competion from courses built in the 30s and 40s.

[jeffwarne]

It wasn't the NGF experts suggesting we needed to build a course a day to keep up with demand?

[John McCarthy]

Sven: 

I agree with you that the mass produced automobile did much to greatly expand the game.  Pre automobile the roads were terrible.  The only fast way to get around was the train - and that was a pretty new invention.  If it rained the roads were impassible.  The cities were packed and there is no way there was room for a golf course near most city centers (btw, was there ever a golf course on the island of Manhatten?  I never heard of one.) 

Anyway, The oldest golf courses in the US were pretty remote but not that far from train lines at the time:  Chicago Golf was a block from the rail line.  Shinnecock is close to the rail also if I recall. 

With the auto, much more land became available. 

Finally, there was a reason many of the new clubs were called country clubs - they were in the country. 

When were the first balls mass produced? 

[Patrick_Mucci]

The other thing that makes the 20s stand out is that everything stopped at the end of the 20s with the onset of the depression and with the war soon after you didn't get course construction picking up again until the 50s.  So that made the 20s really stand out since there is essentially no competion from courses built in the 30s and 40s.

Wayne,

I'd agree, that explains the lack of course construction in the 30's and 40's, but, it doesn't explain the boom in the 20's.

[Sean_A]

There was a huge explosion of car ownership in the US by 1920 - something like at least 10x the number as in 1910.  There was also a little bit of legislation called the Federal Highway Act (early 20s) which gave cars some decent roads to travel.  Still, car ownership was fairly rare - I think comfortably less than 10% of the population - probably less than 5%.  Still, this would help explain backwoods places having golf courses.  The real explosion in car ownership occurred in the next decade despite the depression and I don't think numbers increased all that much until after WWII.  Even with the full maturity of Baby Boomers (1970ish) I think less than 50% of the population owned cars.  It also wasn't until the Boomers matured that cars really became widely affordable as we think of today.  We also shouldn't forget that the freeway system started properly in the late 50s - many think at the expense of public transport.

Ciao