Skip to main content

Celebrating the Home of Golf


It is with good reason that St Andrews, on the eastern Scottish coast a couple of hours north of Glasgow, is known as the home of golf.  According to the oldest known historical documentation, the game has been played there at least since 1552. 

Although the Scottish Reformation was just around the corner, nothing much could happen at that time, even in the way of leisure pursuits, without the say-so of senior clergy and it was Archbishop John Hamilton who apparently declared that it was okay for the folk of Scotland’s oldest university town to indulge in “playing at golf” on land adjacent to the “waters of [the river] Eden”.

There is some evidence to suggest that as early as the 12th century, before even legendary commentator Peter Alliss was born, shepherds in the area amused themselves by knocking stones into rabbit holes.

No one then saw the need to adopt formal rules.  That came 600 years later when, in 1754, a group of 22 enthusiasts, “being admirers of the ancient and healthful exercise of golf” formed the Society of St Andrews Golfers.  One of these chaps had a copy of the rules laid down by the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, founded in 1744, and it was agreed that golf contests in St Andrews would abide by this code.

The group were clearly well connected and, in 1834, through the patronage of King William IV, the Society of St Andrews Golfers changed its name to the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews. There is still no higher authority in the game.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Open Championship, first staged at St Andrews in 1873 after the original host course at Prestwick had agreed to enter into a rotation agreement with the Royal and Ancient and Musselburgh, which hosted the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers.

To commemorate the occasion, authors Henry Lord and Oliver Gregory -- the latter a graduate of St Andrews University -- have combined with photographer Kevin Murray to produce a lavishly illustrated exploration of the town and its seven golf courses, not only the famous Old Course, where the championship will tee off on Thursday, but the New Course, the Jubilee, Eden, Strathtyrum and Balgove courses and the latest addition, the stunning Castle Course, perched on cliffs overlooking the town and opened in 2008.

St Andrews: The Home of Golf, with a foreword by Seve Ballesteros, who won the second of his three Open championships at St Andrews in 1984, is published by Corinthian.

For more books on golf, visit The Sports Bookshelf Shop.

Home
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Leave a comment or submit your own sports book review

Popular posts from this blog

2018 Cross Sports Book of the Year Awards: all the winners are named

Brave Paralympian Martine Wright scoops Autobiography prize Add caption The inspiring story of the GB Paralympic athlete Martine Wright has been named Sports Autobiography of the Year at the 16th Sports Book Awards and will be a strong contender for overall Sports Book of the Year for 2018, which will be decided by a public vote. Written in collaboration with journalist Sue Mott, Unbroken , published by Simon & Schuster, tells the remarkable story of Martine’s incredible fight back from the horrors of the July 7 atrocities in London in 2005, when she was sharing a carriage on a tube train on the Circle Line with a suicide bomber, who detonated his device just outside Aldgate station. Seven passengers around her were killed among 52 who lost their lives that day but she survived, albeit at the cost of both her legs. Martine, who took up wheelchair tennis and sitting volleyball as part of her rehabilitation, represented Great Britain in the latter at the 2012 Paralympics...
19 comments
Read more

Secrets of Mickelson the Master

No instruction manual could teach a golfer to play the extraordinary trees-to-green shot that Phil Mickelson produced at the 13th on the way to winning his third US Masters in Augusta. There is much a player can learn, nonetheless, from the winner of the 2010 green jacket and his phenomenal skills with wedge and putter in Mickelson's Secrets of the Short Game , which can now expect a spike in sales. Mickelson believes that even a golfer of only average ability can become a highly effective short-game player by paying proper attention to mechanics and set-up and combining that scientific approach with a willingness to be imaginative. Published last autumn, the 224-page manual passes on some of the wisdom Mickelson has acquired over 35 years, since his first steps in the game as a small boy. By holding off Britain's Lee Westwood, Mickelson joined the company of Nick Faldo, Sam Snead and Gary Player in having won three Masters titles.  But for the presence of four-times win...
Post a Comment
Read more

No Nonsense: Joey Barton's autobiography on the William Hill Sports Book of the Year longlist after just one day in the shops

Joey Barton Controversial footballer Joey Barton's autobiography No Nonsense has been included on the longlist for the 2016 William Hill Sports Book of the Year even though it was published only yesterday. Written in collaboration with Michael Calvin, the award-winning author and sports journalist, Barton's book promises to deliver a candid account of a life never far from the headlines on and off the field. Calvin is the third writer to work with the player, who began the project in 2014 with Times journalist Matthew Syed and made one attempt to write it himself, which he did not sustain beyond nine chapters. There is much detail, some of it quite harrowing, about his upbringing in hard-edged working class Liverpool, where many of his associates and even family members were involved in crime at one level or another.  His brother, Michael, and his cousin, Paul Taylor, are serving jail sentences for the murder of an innocent black teenager. The book has no short...
18 comments
Read more