Re: Oldest golf course in the world

wow.... that really interesting.. good find

Re: Oldest golf course in the world

Good work Bill - really interesting.

Is there any record of 'what was in the bag' of Mary Seton ? Ping Irons by any chance .

Re: Oldest golf course in the world

i qassim
no pings as club back then as all clubs were made by bow-makers, the oldest record was of the McEwan making golf clubs in Musselburgh and Leith in 1770.
Alan Roberson a ball maker from St Andrews was the first player to break 80 at the old course Musselburgh in 1853.
Bow-makers Johnestoun were commissioned to make a set of "gowf" clubs for King James IV of Scotland in the year 1502 and the cost of a set of clubs and 3 ball was 14 shillings and that was a fortune back then and more than most Scots made in lifetime. King James IV played "Gowf at Scone Palace.
there use to be a bunker (Musselburgh links) at what is now the 9th and it was one 80 yards long and 24 feet deep and there was wooden steps down into it. the remains of the bunker is still there but its covered with grass now.
i live 50 yards from the course and remember playing football on the course back in the 60s and never seeing a golfer.
thankfully the course is now looked after and much better than it was back in the 60s.
you can still hire hickory shafted clubs and old balls and it a hard course to play with the old clubs. not so hard with new "PING" clubs.
some of the holes have been copied all over the world and the sea hole and Pandy are two that are copied a lot in the USA.
cheers
bill

Re: Oldest golf course in the world

Hi Bill,

Very interesting, indeed. This puts into perspective the "old" courses in North America.

Royal Montreal is attributed to be the oldest course in Noth America, and that wasn't until about the 1870's.

The Hamilton Golf and Country Club in Ontario was founded in 1894. I played there and it is a wonderful old style course. The PGA players loved it and there were Senior Tour events played there.

I'd forgotten about the bowmakers.

Ted

Re: Oldest golf course in the world

hi Ted
i have seen pictures of the old bunkers at Musselburgh back in the early 1900 and they would be scary to try and play out of today with the best sand wedges available. back then there was no sand wedges. i think it was Gene Sarazon that had the first sand wedge made in the 1950.
when i stand in the old bunker at the 9th hole and I'm standing 12 feet deep in the bunker and think back to the 1900 and this was 24 feet deep at the deepest spot it still scary.
do the early courses you spoke about also have deep bunkers. seemed to be something with links golf as its so windy with the wind coming off the sea that if the bunkers were shallow like inland courses then the wind would blow the sand away in a mater of days.
i love how spongy the fairway feels underfoot at Musselburgh and to think that people have played here for 500 years and to think what America was like say 500 years ago and we were playing Gowf!!!
cheers
bill

Re: Oldest golf course in the world

Hi Bill,

As I understand it, the bunkers (no respectable Scot would call them sand traps) were natural hollows in the land, in which sheep sheltered themselves from the wind. They also perhaps dug them deeper as time went on, and the wind currents did the rest creating the higher lips. I don't know if this is true.

Old courses such as Hamilton seem to be distinctive, in that they take advantage of the natural terrain. I believe that is the appeal of those courses. Even the pros seem to enjoy them, as they are so unlike the papercutter, contrived new Stadium arenas, with wood piling, phoney water hazards, and the like. They did not move a lot of earth around in the old days, they used the natural contours of the land, even on the greens.

Ted