Ep 4: The First Golf Pro

In this episode
Topics in the order they appear. No timestamps included — add them from your final audio file.
• Why a Scotsman who barely set foot in Texas counts as Texas golf history, and a recap of Episodes 1 through 3
• Musselburgh: golf documented to 1672, certified as the oldest course in the world, and the charge that Mary, Queen of Scots played there days after her husband was found murdered
• Leith, 1744: the Gentlemen Golfers of Edinburgh, what links land actually was, and surgeon John Rattray named Captain of the Golf
• The first written rules of golf, lost until 1937 and found in the back of a club minute book — including teeing within a club length, “stones, bones or any break club,” and the invention of the free drop
• 1836: the club moves to Musselburgh and lays its holes inside a horse racing track, the same year Texas wins independence
• The Park family: Willie Park Sr. wins the first Open in 1860; his brother Mungo wins in 1874
• How a blacksmith’s hole cutter set the golf hole at four and a quarter inches
• British clubs sharing public links versus American country clubs that buy their own land
• The Park–Morris feud with St Andrews: newspaper challenges for £100 a side, a crowd so unruly the referee stopped play, and the tragedy at North Berwick in 1875
• The name Mungo: a sixth-century saint and a West African explorer
• Mungo Park Jr., born 1877, sent to run the family’s New York office in 1897, laying out courses across New York and Vermont
• Galveston, the Queen City of the South, brings him down to build its course on the beach near 53rd Street — how they found him is still an open question
• Argentina: the first Argentine Open in 1905, plus 1907 and 1912; his wife Grace becomes the first Ladies champion; he dies in Scotland in 1960
Also mentioned
Old Tom and Young Tom Morris · Allan Robertson · Willie Dunn · the featherie and gutta percha balls · Royal Musselburgh, the Royal Burgess Golfing Society, and Bruntsfield Links · Muirfield · Prestwick · the Dutchess Golf Club, Mount Anthony, St. Johnsbury Country Club, and Mohonk Mountain House · St. Andrew’s Golf Club, New York
Connect with the show
Leave a five-star review to help other golfers find the podcast. Instagram and Facebook: Wise About Golf. X/Twitter: @WiseAboutGolfTX. Send Texas golf history ideas to golf@wiseabouttexas.com. Also from Ken Wise: the Wise About Texas podcast.
Related episodes
Episode 1 — Introduction to Wise About Golf · Episode 2 — The earliest golf in Texas · Episode 3 — Galveston Country Club