Golf in St Andrews, the Critical Years, C. 1880-1914
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Golf in St Andrews, the critical years, c. 1880-1914 Gerardo Rebanal Martínez Introduction The two terms, ‘golf’ and ‘St Andrews’, have usually gone hand in hand as there is a close subconscious association between the two, whilst many people are familiar with St Andrews thanks to its central role in golf history.1 Such an association is based on truth, and golf protagonists or pioneers had usually stressed or included a chapter about the ‘St Andrews golfing way’ in their seminal golf books.2 This would have remained a minor question if this sport had not enjoyed from 1870 onwards, what has been labelled as ‘the greatest boom in any game’.3 This boom exported the game firstly from Scotland to the rest of the British Isles and subsequently broadened its scope to the whole world, in a movement which enhanced the development of St Andrews as a town, thereby allowing it to experience a welcome revival.4 As was expressed in a contemporary directory, St Andrews was probably the most populous urban centre in Scotland prior to the Reformation, housing the oldest (1413) Scottish University, but was later perceived as being increasingly run down.5 Around 1850, as could be seen on a map,6 St Andrews amounted to a trident of streets (North, Market and South), converging to the east at the ruins of the cathedral -which overlooks the port- and stretching westward for one kilometre or so in direction of the newly built railway station, which was in fact the terminus. Adjoining the town and station the streets eventually blended into fields, The Links and the shore. The cited Directory listed 135 localities in Fifeshire (the county which incorporates St Andrews). The town, with a population of 7.882, occupied the fifth position, the first being held by Dunfermline with 23.123 inhabitants.7 At the height of the golf boom, the town, along with other Scottish golfing destinations, played a key role. As was expressed by one of these early golf authors, ‘Of the late years the influx of English families for the summer in Scotland has been steadily on the increase, and Golf in consequence numbers many keen votaries among the Southerns. Links, we believed, have been staked out in various parts of England’.8 What has been labelled as a golf stream which flooded Scotland9 may have been seen as more of a two-way stream: people going north of the border to established Scottish golfing centres, taking up golf and adding momentum to the development of these resorts, and the same ones supported by Scottish natives returning south of the border to establish the game elsewhere. Such venues of newly established golfing activity in their turn gave birth to new players, also wishing to know for themselves the fatherland of their new sport. There seems to be no ready explanation for such a migratory process. The identification of Scotland as a sporting land,10 and the lure of St Andrews as an historic venue abounding in cultural attractions, outstripping the category of a run of the mill summer resort with adjoining golf course, clearly weighed heavily. Another reason could be the freedom to play golf for free at such a great and famous venue like St Andrews. From the outset this article intends to investigate social aspects of this freedom to play at St Andrews, in an attempt to counteract an everlasting stigma, namely the elitism which has traditionally been associated with this sport. Golf historians, such as David Hamilton perceived that in Scotland ‘play on the major links was open to all’, a category in which St Andrews excelled, an openness which was enhanced with the presence on the golf courses of ‘a variety of private clubs playing’.11 In contrast, new less friendly suburban golf clubs began to appear in the bigger towns.12 This state of happy conviviality on the Scottish resorts between untethered golf and golf club activities has been largely denied by John Lowerson, who stressed that Scotland was not and is not all embracing golfing paradise.13 A way of extricating ourselves from this omnipresent spectre of elitism is to differentiate precisely what characterises the lives of the golf clubs from what golf represents as a sport in general. Such disengagement has been attempted in the article14. In its infancy it was the sport, not the club. The club was founded to cater for the necessities of people who practised one or more sports. It wasn’t just a case of the sport being created to invigorate the membership with something attractive to do. The quest to identify simple players and ascertain their social background led to the search for archive documents, such as the records of applicants to the daily ballot to play the Old St Andrews’ Course, a system which has been in use since the end of the nineteenth century. Regrettably, however such documents don’t seem to have survived.15 The daily ballot system will be discussed in a later chapter of this article, as a part of the 1880-1914 story of golf at St Andrews. The aim of this article is, to paraphrase Peter Lewis’ title, to address a question, as to why there is at St Andrews a complex of seven public golf courses.16 Public means a place to play golf on a pay per play basis. Is there not a great and ancient golf club, the R&A? Can I play golf at the Old Course of St Andrews, a venue as important to golf as Wembley is to football, without being a member? The answer is yes, and that is so because the St Andrews Town Council made great efforts to acquire the ownership of the land and succeeded in doing so. Henceforth, all the parties implicated, the most relevant being the R&A, jointly took care of the venue and tried to adapt its requirements not only to members, but for the general good. It has been mentioned, in connection with the spread of golf, that a main boost to continental golf was the role of local resort entrepreneurs, offering the avid sport tourist new experiences, and that ‘the spread of golf in some resorts may be perceived as a sign of the general transition from spontaneous to induced tourism. It can also be seen as tourism breaking the closed structure of golf clubs and opening them to errant players and new ways of life’.17 It could not be said that in the chosen years, c. 1880–1914, the R&A -until then tacitly using and maintaining the golf course without being owners (the land remained in private hands from 1797)18- had not been totally immune, but was undoubtedly affected by the changes. Reading the R&A minutes of the time has proved to be invaluable in making such an assertion. The golf controversies arising at St Andrews, with the participation of the whole population and its institutions, involved not only sport, but also economic, social, policy and good neighbourhood issues. It seemed that the whole identity of the place was under threat. If St Andrews in the first half of the nineteenth century was a sleepy town, languishing in its past glories, the transition to the next century was about to whip up a veritable hornet’s nest. Nevertheless, this secluded sanctuary -which many people consider the headquarters of their beloved sport- would maintain the spirit of a free sporting arena throughout it all. The free golfing Links of St Andrews It is no uncommon thing for golfers thus allied in friendship to indulge in what is called a golfing tour […] Would you start with the old and venerable city, St. Andrews, in Fifeshire. There you will find the best links in all Britain, open and available to all comers, so long as the prescribed rules of the game are observed. And such are your privileges wherever you can find an open golf-course, of which there are now many.19 This text of W. T. Linskill (1855-1929) who presented himself on the cover of his book as honorary secretary and late captain of the Cambridge University Golf Club, offered an optimistic and almost idyllic point of view, of a sport which was for him ‘the most sociable of all games’. A modern version of the same process was offered by John Lowerson, who in his 1994 text attempted to demythologise ‘democratic’ golf in Scotland, trying to unmask what was hidden behind the assumption that golf was open to all there.20 This article is focused on a Scottish golfing resort, St Andrews -a case study which even Lowerson admitted ‘has long stood against the trend to selfishness’-21 and the changes in the ownership of its golfing Links, a key aspect, here and elsewhere to ascertain the restrictions or openness of access to golf venues.22 There is some confusion about golf as sport and golf as part of an established structure, such as a golf club. There are those who believe that Club and course are intrinsically linked. However, this can only be said of those clubs who own their own premises. There are also public places to play golf (like St Andrews), some with no club at all, others with one club in charge, or with many clubs using the course with equal rights. This confusion permeated Lowerson’s text, when he compared the characters playing at St Andrews’ Links around 1850, as portrayed in Charles Lees’ ‘Grand Match’, as opposed to the ‘pan-class Englishness’ reflected in Frith’s ‘Derby Day’ painting.23 The complete title of Lees portrait of golf players and spectators is ‘The Golfers: A Grand Match played over the Links of St Andrews on the day of the Annual Meeting of the R&A, 1847’.