Of all the armchair tour books of golf courses of a particular region, The Golf Courses of the British Isles is the most eloquent in language, accurate in assessment, and impressive in illustration. The 64 water colors painted especially for the book by Harry Rountree* are breathtaking. If Bernard Darwin had ceased his career after the publication of this, his first book, his name would still be well remembered in the literature of golf. Classics of Golf is pleased to offer this selection in a facsimile of the original edition. Herbert Warren Wind wrote in 1956 for Sports Illustrated: “Thanks to Bernard, golf has acquired the sturdiest literature of any game…Bernard never tried to bowl his readers over with exhibitions of his brilliance or power, but his writing, modest and restrained as it is, has a quiet magic and a terrific staying power. Though never intended to be literature, it is.”

* Rountree, Harry B. 1880 New Zealand D. 1950 Rountree was an English landscape painter and illustrator for Little Folks, Punch, The Strand and other magazines. His golf course scenes were immortalized in The Golf Courses of the British Isles.

Darwin describes the majority of the important courses in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and England in detail; many additional clubs mentioned in passing are likely to deserve a salient comment. He divides England geographically into seven regions, one of which is London. The two chapters covering the surrounds of that great metropolis detail a dozen courses and mention more than a dozen more. These early layouts often “consisted of fields interspersed by trees and artificial ramparts…were villainously muddy in winter, of an impossible and adamantine hardness in summer, and just endurable in spring and autumn…” Later courses, built in more sandy areas, showed vast improvements. “These heathery courses are, for the most part, very good, and so indeed they ought to be. They have, in the first place, the priceless gift of youth.” Wisdom gained from assorted past efforts in design and renovation had evolved into a more formal science of course architecture, and the newest clubs began “with the advantage of all this accumulated mass of knowledge.”

Early courses had naturally sited greens and tees; the length of the hole was of no consideration. New courses described in the book were carved out of forests or over untouched acreage, with every conceptualized detail drawn for 18 holes. Each hole, ideally, was a stand-alone good hole. Walton Heath and Sunningdale, courses Darwin knew from their inception, are deservedly profiled, hole-by-hole. Ever honest, he tells us that the latter’s seventh hole still “is a bone of contention…the ‘Switch-back’ hole. Those who like a blind tee shot and a blind second will admire it, and those who don’t won’t, and there is the whole matter in a very short compass.”

The beauty of Rountree’s paintings is undeniable, and his renditions frequently serve to emphasize the text. An example is seen when Darwin visits ‘Death or Glory,’ the eighth at Northwood. He writes: “It supplies a standing refutation of the theory that a hole cannot be a good one if it is of that mongrel length known as ‘a drive and a pitch,’ or as it has been brilliantly though indelicately described, ‘a kick and a spit.’” The drive over fairly flat ground needs only be moderately straight toward the distant bunker. “Then as we walk up to the green the full horror of our situation bursts upon us. We have to pitch over a bunker straight in front of the green.” A vivid description, but without Rountree’s illustration of the vast sandy pit, its face shored up by black railway sleepers, one unfamiliar with the eighth could never grasp ‘the full horror’ the shot is capable of instilling in a player.

One is never sure which is more pleasurable, reading about familiar links or about an untried track. The former may elicit memories of past personal glories, of a friend who cold-topped a tee ball into a hole-in-one, or of needed renovations. On the other hand, the accounts of unknown courses speak to our spirit of adventure, of discoveries to be made, of new worlds to conquer. Darwin entices us to travel, even off the beaten path. “I must put in one word for the quaintest and most charming little nine hole course at Macamish, also on the shores of Lough Swilly, which can be reached by sailing across from Buncrana or by driving from anywhere else an interminable number of Irish miles over a rocky make-shift road. It is the most purely amateur course in the world…” When treating the famous and greatest links, Darwin becomes even more inviting. “The ordinary golfer, whose head is not too full of modern architectural ideas, would jump for joy when first beholding Prestwick. There is nothing subtle or recondite about it; it has a beauty which explains itself. There are the great sandhills bristling with bents and the little nestling valleys beyond them, a rushing burn and a stone wall, and it is perfectly clear that man was meant to hit the ball over them.”

Southerndown, Harlech and Porthcawl are fine golf courses, but for Darwin, Aberdovey is home in Wales. “…It is the course that my soul loves best of all the courses in the world. Every golfer has a course for which he feels some such blind and unreasoning affection.” Legend has Colonel Ruck initiating golf there in the early 1880’s, sinking nine borrowed flower pots into holes in the marshy wilderness. The records show that Darwin was present at the first meeting of the club in the spring of 1893, modestly recalling “…though I cannot think that the play was very good, since I remember winning the scratch medal with 100, and the best actual score returned during the three days was but three strokes lower.”

Ben Crenshaw writes in the Afterword: “A good golf course makes you want to play so badly that you hardly have the patience to change your shoes.” The Golf Courses of the British Isles is a bit like that. Every page is so good it is hard to savor the one you are on and not rush to see the next. Reading closely, you begin to appreciate Darwin’s uncanny ability to put you on the hole about which he is writing. With so many good courses tantalizingly described, it is impossible not to fantasize itineraries for several trips. Whether they come to fruition or are just for fun, The Golf Courses of the British Isles is your guidebook for the journey.

London: Duckworth, first edition 1910, 253 pages, illustrated by Harry Rountree, decorative cloth. {Norwalk, CT): Classics of Golf, 1988, 253 pages, illustrated by Harry Rountree, decorative cloth, Foreword by Herbert Warren Wind, Afterword by Ben Crenshaw.

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