Golf

Golf. Although “golf balls and sticks” from Scotland arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, in the mid–eighteenth century, not until the late 1880s did upper‐class easterners and midwesterners found the nation's first permanent courses and country clubs. Representatives of the five most exclusive clubs met in New York in 1894 to organize the U.S. Golf Association. The USGA staged the first national amateur and open championships in 1895 and soon emerged as the game's governing body in America.

Between 1900 and 1920, sporting‐goods companies supported construction of public courses and introduced improved equipment that made golf cheaper and easier to play. Although transplanted English and Scottish professionals initially dominated the game, a “homebred” pro first won the U.S. Open in 1911. When the young Boston amateur Francis Ouimet defeated Britain's two best professionals to win the 1913 Open, the game's popularity soared.

During the prosperous 1920s, the dominance of Americans both in tournaments and in the new Walker and Ryder Cup competitions against Great Britain assured golf’s prominence. The 350,000 American golfers of 1913 increased to more than 2 million ten years later. Golf fans cheered the game's greatest amateur, Robert Tyre (“Bobby”) Jones Jr., and professionals like Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen; Jones's sweep of the amateur and open championships of Great Britain and America (the “Grand Slam”) in 1930 was front‐page news. An unrivaled generation of architects led by Donald Ross, Alister Mackenzie, and A.W. Tillinghast designed private and public courses, many linked to resorts and real‐estate developments. Golf became more democratized, spreading beyond the bounds of the USGA's elite clubs, while gentlemen amateurs lost ground to professionals from poor and/or previously unrepresented ethnic groups.

The Great Depression and World War II took a heavy toll, as many courses disappeared, but the fledgling Professional Golf Association tour survived, with such leading professionals as Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, and Sam Snead displacing amateurs as the game's best players.

The 1950s ushered in another boom. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was an avid golfer, and television made the charismatic Arnold Palmer a national hero whose unique status survived even Jack Nicklaus's preeminence. Suburbanization, Sun Belt migration, and growing numbers of well‐off retirees meant more courses and players.

By the 1990s, baby boomers helped make golf a major spectator and participant sport and a big business. Despite its continued reputation as an elite white male sport, golf made its greatest percentage gains among women and minorities, a trend furthered by the celebrity of the mixed‐race superstar prodigy Eldrick “Tiger” Woods in the late 1990s. Woods won the 2000 British Open at historic St. Andrews golf course in Scotland, joining Sarazen, Hogan, Nicklaus, and Gary Player as the only golfers to have won all four major golf titles: the British Open, the U.S. Open, the Masters, and the PGA championship.

By the end of the twentieth century, the United States boasted more than fifteen thousand golf courses and an estimated 25 million golfers. Ironically, the game's soaring popularity represented its greatest challenge, as skyrocketing greens fees and new environmental restrictions posed daunting problems, particularly in metropolitan areas.
See also Sports.

Bibliography

Herbert Warren Wind , The Story of American Golf, 3d rev. ed., 1975.
George Pepper, ed., Golf in America: The First One Hundred Years, 1988.

Howard N. Rabinowitz