| If Reminiscences of Golf on St. Andrews Links contained only Balfour’s comments about the Old Course, it would still be a monumental work. But it is much more. This small package of a book packs a punch. History, records, eyewitness reports of an era or golf experienced by very few, and in the finishing chapter, ruminations on the merit of the game. All this, and an unrivaled look at the world’s greatest golf links.
If you have any interest in playing or understanding St. Andrews, this is a great start. If you already know the links, you will truly appreciate Balfour’s chronicle. The Old Course has captivated golfers and architects for as long as there have been either. It is the course of choice of so many it must be considered the people’s number one in the world. Every pilgrim plays it and others study, read and dream about their time. The course as we know it today came about during Balfour’s time and his descriptions of the original out-and-back course lay the foundation for the understanding of the present routing. The older course was considerably narrower with more trouble. As Balfour describes it, the layout “was flanked by high whins for the greater part of its extent…studded with sand-pits…with the ever-recurring hazards of whin, heather and bent…” The influx of golfers brought about by the cheaper gutty and the construction of a rail line across Fife to Lucars (six-miles from St. Andrews) necessitated a radical change on St. Andrews links. The course was widened by about two-thirds and separate cups were sunk for the incoming golfers, thus creating the now-standard 18-hole course. Balfour takes us through a hole-by-hole description of the course and points out the vast changes in its playing—particularly the inward half.
This memoir represents the most descriptive record existent of mid-19th century golf as played over its most historic links. These first-hand accounts by R & A member James Balfour—a very good gentleman player—cover 45 years, beginning around 1840. One can truly understand the era of the feather ball from his descriptions of the players and their 10-hole course over the St. Andrews links. Golf, he explains, was by no means endemic in Scotland during this period: “When I first visited St. Andrews there were only a few resident gentlemen who played, and some occasional strangers from a distance, from Musselburgh, Leith, and Perth.” These are the final decades of the first era of golf, when only handful of players or so a day matched skills over wild links, only modestly tended by man. It is a difficult time in the development of the game to fully understand—Balfour’s descriptions make this task easier.
Transitions always make for interesting times. One of the most important events Balfour participated in was the introduction of the gutta percha ball, first as a trial effort and then as part of permanent play.* The trial-and-error development of various surface designs as a means of correcting the flight patterns of golf balls took many years. Balfour recalls incidents concerning the subsequent disappearance of some of the specialty clubs designed for use with feather balls: the driving putter and the baffing spoon. Others replaced them as needed: the iron niblick or rut iron, and the wooden niblick. Balfour describes the latter, invented in the early 1880s, as “a long spoon, with a very short head, plated with brass on the bottom, from which it gets its other name of the ‘Brassy.’ It is used for playing a cupped or bad-lying ball, or a ball on a road…” Another unheralded milestone around the same time was the introduction of the “Eclipse” ball. A secret composition purportedly of gutta percha, vulcanized rubber and cork, it was softer off the club face and, according to Balfour, “the irons make no mark on it, nor does it ever lose its shape - Eclipse will be the ball of the future unless something else is invented. They last much longer [and] are a good deal cheaper than the guttas.” The age of technology in golf is dawning. | * The Paterson’s of St. Andrews “invented” the golf ball made out of gutta percha in their home, but it fell to a family member in Edinburgh to perfect a composite process. In 1846 a good number of “Paterson Composites” were manufactured and sent to a London exhibition, where they were largely ignored. In the spring of 1848, James Balfour’s brother-in-law, Admiral Maitland Dougall, played at Blackheath near London on a wet day with a friend’s “Paterson Composite” and was converted to the merits of the new ball. When Dougall returned to Scotland and told Balfour, they ordered some from London. The two took the Paterson balls to Musselburgh and showed Gourlay, the famous ball maker, how they played. They all agreed that this inexpensive, round ball of brown gutta percha was an inevitable replacement to the expensive, oblong feathery. Thus, the gutta ball returned triumphantly to its birthplace, St. Andrews, after a two-year journey of more than one thousand miles, in the hands of Mr. Balfour. | The author is perhaps at his best when recalling his playing opponents and the characters of the day. They are touching portraits not meant to be abridged, but one of caddie Lang Willie is brief: “He was very tall, about six feet, with bent knees and a slouching gait, a tall hat, swallow-tailed blue coat, and light trousers. His look was rather stupid, but he was in reality quite awake.” The professionals, Alan Robertson, Old Tom Morris, his son Young Tom, the Dunn brothers and others come alive in the reminiscences. Balfour has an uncanny way of constantly reminding us St. Andrews and the R & A is a special place. He mentions then- Secretary Mr. Grace is the fourth generation to hold the post continuously; that is to say, for the prior 140 years a Grace has been Secretary. Traditions run deep at St. Andrews.
Among the many distinctive attributes of golf is the fact that it can be enjoyed from youth to old age. Balfour once saw a foursome playing and tallied their ages to be an aggregate 323 years. “Probably it owes much to the variety of its attractions. It is a fine open-air, athletic exercise, not violent, but bringing into play nearly all the muscles of the body; while that exercise can be continued for hours…it is a game of skill…also a social game…it never pales or grows stale…even more, it absorbs the conversation of the evening.” He is aware of golf’s almost mystical attraction but is at a loss to explain it. Regardless, we owe Balfour a debt of gratitude for Reminiscences of Golf on St. Andrews Links. He would be the first to agree to leave the philosophy to others and set a time for tomorrow’s match.
REMINISCENCES OF GOLF ON ST. ANDREWS LINKS, by James Balfour, first published in 1887, with a Foreword by Herbert Warren Wind and an Afterword by Jack Nicklaus. |
