Chapter Title: the Americanization of Golf Book Title: Golf in America

Chapter Title: The Americanization of Golf Book Title: Golf in America Book Author(s): George B. Kirsch Published by: University of Illinois Press. (2009) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt4cgg11.5 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Golf in America This content downloaded from 76.77.171.106 on Wed, 28 Sep 2016 17:36:03 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 2 The Americanization of Golf As golf conquered the United States in the decades preceding World War I, the British import took on new forms. Americans infatuated with golf established country and golf clubs, built ornate club- houses, laid out inland park courses, experimented with new types of equip- ment, and even modified time-honored rules. Scottish and English officials resented the upstart Americans who dared to challenge the traditions and authority of the sportsmen of St. Andrews and other hallowed centers of British golf, but in the long run the British had little power to stop or even slow down the inexorable tide of change. Enthusiasts in the United States aggressively modified the sport to suit their needs. The country clubs that spearheaded the golf revolution in the United States were products of several trends and forces among the nation’s elite and middle classes during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These included the rise of gentlemen’s city clubs and especially athletic associations, the growing popularity of summer resorts, the passion for outdoor sports, and increasing suburbanization. The first urban men’s clubs in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York were dining and social organizations that restricted membership to local elites. The most exclusive were founded prior to the Civil War and generally did not sponsor sports, but the wealthiest gentlemen who were athletically inclined formed yacht and horse racing associations. Beginning in the mid-1800s, men of more modest means who sought more active recreation launched cricket, baseball, row- ing, track and field, and lacrosse clubs. By the late 1800s affluent urbanites sought to escape from the heat and stench of their cities in the summer by traveling to seaside or rural resorts or health spas, especially Newport, Rhode Island; Saratoga Springs, New York; White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia; and the mountains of New York State and New England. They enjoyed simply being in fresh air in beautiful surroundings, and they also This content downloaded from 76.77.171.106 on Wed, 28 Sep 2016 17:36:03 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Americanization of Golf amused themselves with fishing, equestrianism (especially horseback riding), game and fox hunting, and other pastimes. The advent of commuter rail- roads enabled many to move to the suburbs, where middle- and upper-class families could pursue their favorite sports year round. New “borderland” communities featured private homes on landscaped spaces, modifications of the urban gridiron system of streets, park-like settings, and plenty of open land for recreational use, including golf courses. The first country clubs naturally evolved from these developments. Two associations outside of Boston, the Myopia Club and The Country Club of Brookline, share the honor of being the first of their type in the nation. In 1878, Frederick O. Prince, a Boston lawyer, recruited 150 members for the Myopia Club on his estate eight miles north of Boston. His organization built a clubhouse and had grounds for tennis and baseball, but the featured activities were fox hunting and horse racing. A few years later several members sought a more convenient location for a retreat closer to their homes. In 1882 a group of Boston Brahmins led by J. Murray Forbes established The Country Club of Brookline. Their aim was “to have a comfortable clubhouse for the use of members with their families, a simple restaurant, bed-rooms, bowling-alley, lawn tennis grounds, etc; also to have race-meetings and occasionally, music in the afternoon.” These two pioneer country clubs established the pattern that would be imitated by dozens and later hundreds of organizations over the next decade. Officials located their clubs near their members’ residential neighborhoods and provided a comfortable clubhouse with dining facilities, a few bedrooms, indoor space for social events and games, and playing grounds for outdoor sports. Before long golf would replace equestrianism and hunting as the favorite pastimes. Significantly, these new associations differed from the earlier upper-class city and athletic organizations in that they welcomed women and children. They played a major role in promoting exercise and sporting participation among the wives and daughters of the American aristocracy. The example of upper-class females enjoying horseback riding, archery, croquet, tennis, golf, and other amusements also stimulated greater interest and acceptance of women’s sports among the middle classes. The country club movement of the late 1800s was in part a reaction by privileged urbanites against forces that were threatening the status of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Increasing industrialization, urbanization, and the growing power of big business created a new class of corporate leaders and power brokers who were displacing the older elites. During these years, hordes of immigrant newcomers from eastern and southern Europe were 25 This content downloaded from 76.77.171.106 on Wed, 28 Sep 2016 17:36:03 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Golf in America struggling to achieve middle-class standing, thereby dramatically chang- ing the cultural landscape for native-born citizens. Although the founding of these upscale associations and the golf boom they fostered had clear democratic implications, they also generated certain elitist, exclusionary, and antidemocratic tendencies. The founders and first members of these clubs sought to create small communities where members could find refuge from the modernizing forces of their times and socialize and play with friends and family. Historian Richard J. Moss views the founders of these first country clubs as local leaders who were striving to re-establish the vanishing vil- lage of nineteenth-century America, even as the federal government sought national solutions to social and political problems. In April 1902, Frank Arnett, writing for Munsey’s Magazine, highlighted the communal appeal of country clubs: “It is really the love of home and the love of friends whom one would have about one’s hearth that has brought about their organization. For the love of home involves also the neighborly idea, the love of one’s fellows, of companionship, of something beyond ‘highballs’ and poker and the scandal or shop talk of the smoking room.” In November 1905 Robert Dunn of Outing magazine expanded upon these themes by explaining the significance of the new country clubs for community, business, social class, and family across the country. He remarked: The country club seems almost destined to satisfy the somewhat communis- tic dream that in the middle of the last century, and sporadically ever since, brought about Brook Farm and such places; . Without the stress and ten- sion of new-century town life, so generally condemned, country clubs could not have so multiplied. In states, as in individuals, vices encourage counter- balancing virtues. The amazing wholesomeness of country club life becomes the complement of the worst evils of the money struggle; our office faults are exaggerated into virtues, according to the paradox of tradition, after business hours and over Sunday at the club. A club, by gathering under one roof persons of similar tastes and means, brings order to the chaos created by sudden prosperity. It stratifies social development, and thus assures its permanence. Probably no two country clubs the land over are quite alike in ideals and manners, thus averting degeneration into rigid class distinctions, with inevitable vanity and adulation. But early chroniclers of the country club phenomenon also recognized the contradictory trends they embodied. In their history of The Country Club of Brookline, Frederic H. Curtiss and John Heard explained: “In terms of psychology, the club, and especially the country club, is the prod- uct of democracy, and at the same time is a revolt against and a negation of 26 This content downloaded from 76.77.171.106 on Wed, 28 Sep 2016 17:36:03 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Americanization of Golf democracy. It is a banding together for the purpose of making available to the group facilities which previously had been the privilege of the wealthy aristocrat. And, almost in the same hour, it is a denial of the spirit of democracy, since a small group sets itself apart from the majority, building, as it were, a wall around its pastimes, and making admission thereto more or less difficult according to the temper and the social requirements of its members. Socially speaking, the spirit of Boston in the ’70s and ’80s was far removed from the spreadeagle democracy of which the United States so cried aloud, and of which it was so proud.” Prior to World War I, the rise of country and golf clubs and the growth of golf itself would express the conflicting trends of democracy and equality along with elitism and social exclusion.

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