Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a bride egg
Speaker 2: Frida Egg, the dreaded Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Frida Egg,
Speaker 2: Brian Egg, Frida Egg, Bride Egg Lie, I'm about ready
Speaker 2: to run off the golf course.
Speaker 1: And welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison,
Speaker 1: and today we're talking about the Great English Golf Boom.
Speaker 1: My guest is Michael Morrison, a golf historian who just
Speaker 1: published a book of that very title, The Great English
Speaker 1: Golf Boom. You can get a copy of your own
Speaker 1: by simply emailing him at Mike dot Morrison fifty seven
Speaker 1: at outlook dot com. The book covers a fifty year
Speaker 1: period between eighteen sixty four and nineteen fourteen when golf
Speaker 1: became very popular in England. This was the first time
Speaker 1: that the game had really caught on anywhere outside of Scotland.
Speaker 1: And I think it's such an interesting period because the
Speaker 1: kind of golf that was played in England ended up
Speaker 1: being the kind of golf that was played many other places. Now. Obviously,
Speaker 1: golf is a Scottish invention, but the way we play
Speaker 1: the game today owes just as much, I think, to
Speaker 1: how English people took it up in the late eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. So let's just go straight
Speaker 1: to my interview with Michael Morrison. So briefly, Michael, when
Speaker 1: you say the Great English Golf Boom the title of
Speaker 1: your book, what are you referring to.
Speaker 2: Well, it covers the period essentially from when golf got
Speaker 2: started through until the First World War nineteen fourteen. It
Speaker 2: was a very slow build up and perhaps we wouldn't
Speaker 2: today consider that to be a boom because it was
Speaker 2: barely detectable for about a quarter of a century. But
Speaker 2: then in the second quarter of a century, from eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety to nineteen fourteen, that's when golf really took off
Speaker 2: in England and it surpassed the number of clubs the
Speaker 2: number of golfers that were playing golf in Scotland very
Speaker 2: very quickly into the early eighteen nineties, so very suddenly
Speaker 2: England became the country in the world where most golf
Speaker 2: was being played.
Speaker 1: So, in basic terms, why is this period important? So
Speaker 1: say somebody is thinking great English Golf Boom, why should
Speaker 1: I care about that it happened a long time ago.
Speaker 1: What is the importance of this period and this set
Speaker 1: of events to us now.
Speaker 2: Well, I think a starting point is that there's a
Speaker 2: temptation to believe that what happened in Scotland is what
Speaker 2: happened in England. And the boom that took place in
Speaker 2: Scotland when golf began to take off in the mid
Speaker 2: ninety teenth century was a dramatic change also, but it
Speaker 2: was driven by two quite important events that more or
Speaker 2: less coincided, and that was the invention of the gutter
Speaker 2: persho golf poll commonly assuming to be around eighteen forty eight,
Speaker 2: and about the same time the Scottish railway network was
Speaker 2: beginning to expand from just a link between Glasgow and
Speaker 2: Edinburgh to become a genuine network covering the whole country.
Speaker 2: And in fact, the largest number of railway stations to
Speaker 2: open in any given year in the nineteenth century was
Speaker 2: eighteen forty eight in Scotland. So you had a combination
Speaker 2: of events and on the back of that we went
Speaker 2: from around a dozen golf clubs scattered around the east
Speaker 2: coast of Scotland to thirty thirty four thirty five golf
Speaker 2: clubs in by the end of the eighteen fifties. So
Speaker 2: this was the golf taking off in Scotland, very specifically
Speaker 2: in Scotland, and I could maybe give you a very
Speaker 2: quick ills that eighteen fifty nine was one thousand miles
Speaker 2: of railway track in Scotland. There were thirty four clubs,
Speaker 2: all of them were in close proximity of a railway station.
Speaker 2: If you then look at England at exactly the same
Speaker 2: point in time, there was seven five hundred miles of
Speaker 2: railway track in the country. Every town with the population
Speaker 2: of over seven and a half thousand had a railway station,
Speaker 2: and there was only two golf clubs in the whole country.
Speaker 2: That was Blackheath and Old Manchester. Both were formed prior
Speaker 2: to the railway age. So there was no response in
Speaker 2: terms of the two factors that drove golf to become
Speaker 2: a major feature of Scottish life and in fact to
Speaker 2: become the sport of Scotland, and the same thing didn't
Speaker 2: happen in England, so there was a substantial delay between
Speaker 2: the two. And coming back to your original question, then,
Speaker 2: was the reason why the great boom in England is
Speaker 2: important because the characteristics of it were were so different
Speaker 2: from what happened in Scotland.
Speaker 1: So focusing on the Scottish golf boom for a second,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the Guta percha ball. Why was it that
Speaker 1: the Gutta percha ball made the game more popular in Scotland.
Speaker 2: Well, it boils down by large to economics. The feathery ball,
Speaker 2: which has been the ball in play for centuries, leather
Speaker 2: pouch stuff with feathers was expensive to make. A good
Speaker 2: quality ball maker could maybe make six balls per day
Speaker 2: of a feathery, and when they were used in play,
Speaker 2: a caddy might carry four or five golf balls in
Speaker 2: his pocket. So the cost of a feathery might range
Speaker 2: from in old money two shillings and sixpence to four
Speaker 2: shillings a ball. When the guta persher ball, which was
Speaker 2: this wonderful material which had been discovered in tree gum
Speaker 2: in Malaysia, could simply be sort of warmed up and
Speaker 2: rolled into a bowl shape, and it didn't require a
Speaker 2: great deal of skill at all to create a golf ball,
Speaker 2: and they sold almost immediately around that time for about
Speaker 2: one shilling. So it was a dramatic fall in the
Speaker 2: cost of the golf ball, which then to the extent
Speaker 2: that Scott's were familiar with the game, a greater number
Speaker 2: across the social classes could afford to play it.
Speaker 1: And then the other factor that you mentioned was the
Speaker 1: expansion of the railroad network, which, as you were arguing before,
Speaker 1: didn't have as much of an impact on golf in
Speaker 1: England as it did in Scotland, but it did have
Speaker 1: an impact on golf in Scotland. What was that impact,
Speaker 1: maybe you could make that connection for me. Why was
Speaker 1: it that the railroad was such a boon for golf
Speaker 1: in Scotland.
Speaker 2: Well, as I said, initially it was most of the
Speaker 2: golf clubs at that time were on the east coast
Speaker 2: of Scotland, and of course the largest part of the
Speaker 2: population were in the major cities, not on the coast.
Speaker 2: So then the railway network gave gave people the opportunity
Speaker 2: to go and have seaside holidays. Leisure time was increasing
Speaker 2: at this point in time, affordability to take train to
Speaker 2: take railway trips to the coast became a possibility, and
Speaker 2: the population was then seeing golf being played, So there
Speaker 2: was this increasing awareness at the same time as the
Speaker 2: game was becoming more affordable. So it was a combination
Speaker 2: of these two factors which were quite significant in the
Speaker 2: takeof of golf in the mid nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: And this was especially true of Saint Andrews. Right more
Speaker 1: people were getting to Saint Andrews and you know, vacationing
Speaker 1: there and seeing the golf that was being played there
Speaker 1: on that terrific golf course, which was you know, much
Speaker 1: different from other golf courses of that period. More people
Speaker 1: just got to see that, specifically saying Andrews Golf.
Speaker 2: So Andrews was at that time very much recognized as
Speaker 2: the best golf course that was and visitors, Scottish visitors,
Speaker 2: and I should add also English visitors were traveling up
Speaker 2: to the east coast resorts. North Berwick was very popular,
Speaker 2: Gullen of course, and of course Andrews. The railway networks
Speaker 2: of England and Scotland were connected together around about that
Speaker 2: same point in time, around about eighteen fifty, so for
Speaker 2: the first time English middle class people could afford and
Speaker 2: the time frame for getting from London to Edinburgh shrank
Speaker 2: from the better part of a week on a stagecoach
Speaker 2: to ten to twelve hours on a train. So this
Speaker 2: was a part of the process of initially English people
Speaker 2: being exposed to this crazy Scottish game called golf.
Speaker 1: Before we get to the English boom period, maybe you
Speaker 1: could just give me a general picture of Scottish golf
Speaker 1: during the Scottish boom period, specifically maybe focusing on elements
Speaker 1: that the English then changed or abandoned. What was you
Speaker 1: know unique about Scottish golf, especially as compared to the
Speaker 1: game that was played later in England.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, the most crucial distinction was was golf
Speaker 2: was played predominantly on Link's Land, not exclusively. There were
Speaker 2: there were places where Brunsfield and Edinburgh which was basically
Speaker 2: just Meadland, and also at Perth on the North Inch
Speaker 2: again that was pasture, but predominantly and of course the
Speaker 2: best courses were on Link's Land around the coast, which
Speaker 2: was created as a combination consequence of geological factors and
Speaker 2: weather patterns that created the June land around particularly on
Speaker 2: the east side, also on the west side of Scotland.
Speaker 2: But but but golf itself took off more on the
Speaker 2: east side and mostly on the links Land, so that
Speaker 2: that was very much a distinction, and that golf was
Speaker 2: seen to be an interesting game played on an undulating surface,
Speaker 2: with challenging weather conditions in terms of the wind. So
Speaker 2: it was it was an interesting game to play because
Speaker 2: there was many factors that were out with the golfers control,
Speaker 2: but they had to use the skill to get the
Speaker 2: ball round and into that small hole. So Scottish golf
Speaker 2: links land English golf much less so when when the
Speaker 2: boom began, already golf was moving inland closer to where
Speaker 2: people lived rather than at the coast. So there wasn't
Speaker 2: this as I mentioned, there wasn't this strong linkage between
Speaker 2: the railways where in Scotland people would would travel to
Speaker 2: the coast to play golf much less so in England
Speaker 2: there was a preference to play golf closer to home.
Speaker 2: Maybe they got more hooked on it and wanted to
Speaker 2: play it more often.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, So you know, English golf when it came
Speaker 1: about was a lot more inland than Scottish golf. And
Speaker 1: we can expand on that a little more later, but
Speaker 1: you know, just to drive this point home, the Scottish
Speaker 1: lynks Land was in many cases not what people now
Speaker 1: imagined to be a golf course. It was often shared
Speaker 1: among multiple different golf clubs and also multiple different activities,
Speaker 1: right and it was obviously very natural. Even if the
Speaker 1: lynks land was quite well suited to the game. If
Speaker 1: a modern person looked at at an old Scottish links course,
Speaker 1: it might take a little while for them to recognize
Speaker 1: it as a golf course.
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, it was pretty wild. I mean, it wasn't
Speaker 2: manicured in the way that we think of the best
Speaker 2: golf courses to this day. Even the bunkers were essentially
Speaker 2: what was created both by animals scrapings and golfers hitting
Speaker 2: shots of rough areas in the ground. So there it
Speaker 2: was more of a natural landscape. And as you say,
Speaker 2: it wasn't just for single usage. It wasn't just for golfers.
Speaker 2: It was common land and used for a whole range
Speaker 2: of different activities. Golf was just one of the activities
Speaker 2: that would take place on the links land. It wasn't
Speaker 2: exclusively for the golfers.
Speaker 1: All right. Let's move to England. The first couple of
Speaker 1: golf clubs in England were pretty early, right, They didn't
Speaker 1: come about in the late eighteen hundreds. Blackheath was there
Speaker 1: very early on, and then there was a golf club
Speaker 1: near Manchester. I believe that was there from the early
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, So could you tell me about these like
Speaker 1: early instances of English golf clubs. What were they like?
Speaker 2: As you mentioned black Heath Royal. Black Heath as it
Speaker 2: became known, was just to the southeast of the city
Speaker 2: of London on some rough heathland area which was very
Speaker 2: rudimentary again and I guess would be the best way
Speaker 2: to describe it, and sort of quarries and undulating territory.
Speaker 2: So there was some interest in it in terms of
Speaker 2: the playing the game there and they it was predominantly
Speaker 2: played by expatriot Scots who had settled in London, and
Speaker 2: the club was formed in the eighteenth century somewhere around
Speaker 2: about the seventeen sixties, I think, and pretty much was
Speaker 2: expatriot Scott's perhaps with a few English friends taking getting
Speaker 2: involved in the game. And it started out as a
Speaker 2: five hole golf course, subsequently extended to seven and then
Speaker 2: and then later two more holes in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: And the second club came along in eighteen eighteen, Manchester
Speaker 2: Golf Club, very small, typically no more than twelve golfers
Speaker 2: who were members. Again, they had a small five hole
Speaker 2: course on some rough heathland just on the periphery of
Speaker 2: the very rapidly growing industrial city of Manchester, and in
Speaker 2: fact subsequently the pressures of growth of the city resulted
Speaker 2: in them leaving that land and moving elsewhere. And by
Speaker 2: the time we get to the eighteen eighties but very
Speaker 2: modest set and again expatriate Scotts who were had owned
Speaker 2: mills and other activities they were involved in in merchants
Speaker 2: in Manchester. But it was basically two Scottish golf clubs.
Speaker 2: So when I think of the beginning of golf in England,
Speaker 2: it wasn't there. It was where golf was first played
Speaker 2: by Englishmen, and we have to wait till eighteen sixty
Speaker 2: four for that to happen, when the club was formed
Speaker 2: at Westwood ho and became Royal North Devon, and I
Speaker 2: think over seventy five percent of the initial members were English,
Speaker 2: and that to me was the starting point. You had
Speaker 2: Old Morris laid out the course at Westwood Hoe in
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty four. It was eighteen holes, only the second
Speaker 2: golf course to have eighteen holes after at Saint Andrews,
Speaker 2: and it was on Lynxsland. So there was early character
Speaker 2: beginning to look like well maybe maybe we're going to
Speaker 2: see a following on of what happened in Scotland being
Speaker 2: pursued in England. But as the story rolls through in time,
Speaker 2: that wasn't the case. It wasn't all about Lengthsland that
Speaker 2: it wasn't. It wasn't Nessley Coastal either.
Speaker 1: Westward Hoe is one of those historical moments that you
Speaker 1: just couldn't predict, right, like a golf club like that
Speaker 1: formed by English people where it was so for people
Speaker 1: who don't know where Royal North Devin is, what's its
Speaker 1: location like and why is it sort of surprising that golf,
Speaker 1: like English golf might take root there.
Speaker 2: Well, it's in the far southwest of England only or
Speaker 2: Wall is probably other away from from London in terms
Speaker 2: of accessibility. The railways could get people and some of
Speaker 2: the some of the Black Heath members would go down
Speaker 2: and play in the spring and autumn meetings once the
Speaker 2: club was established. But it was all I mean, as
Speaker 2: you say, it's quite unexpected. It started there, and it
Speaker 2: was started by a family called the Gossips, and the
Speaker 2: Reverend Gossip was the founder of the club. And again
Speaker 2: it was surely by chance that he had two brothers
Speaker 2: in law. One was in based in Saint Andrews and
Speaker 2: the other was in the engineer's Royal Engineers based at Prestwick.
Speaker 2: So he had two brothers in law who played golf
Speaker 2: and when he went to visit them, he learned to play.
Speaker 2: When he was up in Scotland and found the game
Speaker 2: fascinating and saw this as an opportunity where he settled
Speaker 2: as the local vicar down in that corner of Devon
Speaker 2: and laid out a very informal course until he got
Speaker 2: enough people interested in the game, and then subsequently they
Speaker 2: formed this club North Devon, and Old Tom Morris came
Speaker 2: down to lay out the course, was invited down to
Speaker 2: lay out the course.
Speaker 1: So then from there you know, how did English golf
Speaker 1: become popular?
Speaker 2: Well, as I mentioned earlier, it was a very slow process.
Speaker 2: I mean, so Royal North Devon formed in eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 2: By eighteen sixty nine there was only a further four
Speaker 2: clubs had been formed. In England. There was London Scottish
Speaker 2: on Wimbledon Common, there was Royal Liverpool at Hoylake, and
Speaker 2: there was a very small club up in the north
Speaker 2: northeast of England Northumberland called Almmouth and Cambridge University golf
Speaker 2: Club was formed in eighteen sixty nine as well, so
Speaker 2: that was it. There was seven golf clubs by eighteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine. If we rolled it forward another decade to
Speaker 2: eighteen seventy nine, then but then we only had sixteen
Speaker 2: golf clubs. So in Scotland by that time we were
Speaker 2: probably about eighty golf clubs in a country with a
Speaker 2: population of about one sixth of the population of England.
Speaker 2: But then it was the eighteen eighties that really saw
Speaker 2: the By eighteen eighty nine there were one hundred golf clubs,
Speaker 2: so things were then beginning to take off. And of
Speaker 2: those one hundred golf clubs, about forty percent of them
Speaker 2: were at the coast and sixty percent of them were inland.
Speaker 2: Most of them were on private land rather than on
Speaker 2: public land as in Scotland, and almost all the only
Speaker 2: exception was London. Scottish and Royal Wimbledon played shared a
Speaker 2: course on Wimbledon Common, but all the other clubs had
Speaker 2: their own golf courses. So it was the beginnings of
Speaker 2: the takeoff of golf in England already were of a
Speaker 2: quite different character to what we'd seen in terms of
Speaker 2: development of golf in Scotland.
Speaker 1: What is your basic interpretation of why golf took off
Speaker 1: in the eighteen eighties in England and not earlier and
Speaker 1: not later.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the sort of two factors. The two
Speaker 2: underlying factors is the growing awareness of golf as a
Speaker 2: game by English people, and that was initially, as I'd
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier, as a result of English people in greater
Speaker 2: numbers visiting Scotland for holidays in the summer time. And
Speaker 2: if you've seen the cover on my book, which The
Speaker 2: Great English Golfman, it's from. The cover is based on
Speaker 2: a cartoon appeared in Punch magazine in eighteen eighty five
Speaker 2: and it has a large group of English golfers, men, women,
Speaker 2: children and the elderly marching with their golf clubs up
Speaker 2: to Scotland and it's called the Golf Stream, and it
Speaker 2: was the cartoon was sort of signified the fact that
Speaker 2: golf now was seen as a and was a visible,
Speaker 2: a visible game amongst English people. And at the same
Speaker 2: time as english people going north and seeing golf the
Speaker 2: first time, a lot of Scots were emigrating south. They
Speaker 2: were emigrating all over the world in fact, but there
Speaker 2: was nevertheless a large number of middle class Scots ended
Speaker 2: up moving south and they had already experienced the golf
Speaker 2: boom in Scotland. So many of the Scots going south
Speaker 2: brought their golf clubs with them, and if they settled
Speaker 2: in various parts of the country then they were important
Speaker 2: in getting golf clubs off the ground. These initial clubs
Speaker 2: in the eighteen eighties, but gradually there was a transition
Speaker 2: towards more English people getting involved in that process of
Speaker 2: beginning clubs, and by the late eighteen eighties, the English
Speaker 2: English people, the new adopters of the game, were more
Speaker 2: important than the Scots who who who'd moved south, So
Speaker 2: there was a bit of a transition there in that sense.
Speaker 1: So the game in England basically took on a life
Speaker 1: of its own sometime in the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1: This is kind of the first phase of the great
Speaker 1: English golf boom that you cover in your book. Now,
Speaker 1: there was a second phase as well. So what happened
Speaker 1: between those two phases, the one in the eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: and eighteen nineties and then the one in the early
Speaker 1: twentieth century leading up to the beginning of World War One.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fourteen. What separated those two phases, and then
Speaker 1: what was the cause and kind of character of that
Speaker 1: second part of the boom.
Speaker 2: Well, there, you're quite right in distinguishing these these two
Speaker 2: distinct phases, because the as I've interpreted in my research,
Speaker 2: they had very different underlying factors behind them. The boom
Speaker 2: in the late eighteen eighties threw into the The entire
Speaker 2: decadive of the eighteen nineties was pretty much driven by demand.
Speaker 2: The enthusiasm for golf that was amongst English people was
Speaker 2: in this huge upsurgey in golf clubs being formed all
Speaker 2: across the country. I mean to give an example, in
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty nine, there were only two golf clubs in Yorkshire,
Speaker 2: the largest county in England. But by eighteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: just a few years later, every county in England had
Speaker 2: a golf club. So golf spread pretty much everywhere, and
Speaker 2: it was characterized by this predominantly the clubs being formed.
Speaker 2: I think the statistics are of the order of eighty
Speaker 2: five percent of the clubs formed were formed Inland in
Speaker 2: relatively rural settings, So it wasn't the case that the
Speaker 2: clubs were formed at the coast and people who lived
Speaker 2: in the cities took the train to play golf. That
Speaker 2: was an occasional thing they did in the summer holidays
Speaker 2: and at other occasions. But most of these golf clubs
Speaker 2: were being formed all over the country because people just
Speaker 2: had got the golf bug, would be the best way
Speaker 2: to describe it in the eighteen nineties. But as we
Speaker 2: got towards the end of the eighteen ninety it looked
Speaker 2: like it might be petering out. It was flattened. The
Speaker 2: number of golf clubs being formed was flattening out, and
Speaker 2: by round about the turn of the century, round about
Speaker 2: nineteen hundred, there was although it wasn't in decline, there
Speaker 2: was only a very modest number of clubs being formed
Speaker 2: each year compared to what we'd seen in the in
Speaker 2: the mid eighteen nineties. I mean, if we take eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety three eighteen ninety four as an example, a new
Speaker 2: golf club was being formed every four days in England
Speaker 2: during that those two years. That was the real peak
Speaker 2: of the boom. By round about nineteen hundred were looking
Speaker 2: more like a couple of golf clubs every month was
Speaker 2: being formed. Run about that turn of the century, there
Speaker 2: there was also an important event was that there was
Speaker 2: a war, the Boer War, being fought in South Africa,
Speaker 2: and a large number of young men went left the
Speaker 2: country to fight in that war. So I looked at
Speaker 2: that in some detail to see whether that might have
Speaker 2: been a contributory factor to the decline or the slower
Speaker 2: growth rate in golf, But it didn't seem to be.
Speaker 2: Golf was still being played all around the country even
Speaker 2: though there was a war on at the same time,
Speaker 2: albeit a very distant war.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was the war that Alistair mackenzie served
Speaker 1: in right and developed his ideas of camoufage, so little
Speaker 1: historical trivia there. So the Boor War was not a
Speaker 1: contributing factor. What did you find to be contributing factors
Speaker 1: to this, Well, that's the downturn, But maybe more interesting
Speaker 1: is the contributing factors to the upsarch. I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, what you concluded in your book, just to
Speaker 1: give people a basic idea, is that the downturn around
Speaker 1: the turn of the century and interest in golf was
Speaker 1: kind of a natural happening, right. The first kind of
Speaker 1: enthusiasm for golf, you know, was just tapering off a
Speaker 1: little bit, right, It couldn't continue at the torrid pace
Speaker 1: that it went in the eighteen nineties. But to me,
Speaker 1: the really interesting stuff is why it was that it
Speaker 1: upsurged again, because that's almost like that's the super unexpected
Speaker 1: thing that happened. It would be expected that interest would
Speaker 1: decline a little bit after you know, a number of
Speaker 1: years in golf, but then all of a sudden in
Speaker 1: the early years of the twentieth century it spiked back
Speaker 1: up again. Why was that?
Speaker 2: And again, maybe to characterize the distinction, the boom in
Speaker 2: the eighteen nineties were very much demand driven, but it
Speaker 2: was factors on the supply side that were important to
Speaker 2: the renewed boom that took place in the awarding period
Speaker 2: from around nineteen hundred through to the First World War.
Speaker 2: There were three distinct supply side factors and one other
Speaker 2: factor which we can also touch upon. So the three
Speaker 2: supply side factors were the invention of the Haskell ball,
Speaker 2: which Carl Haskell Colburn Haskell was in Vore created in
Speaker 2: about eighteen ninety eight, I believe, and that eventually made
Speaker 2: its way into England to round about nineteen oh two
Speaker 2: when in the Amateur Championship and the Open Championship of
Speaker 2: that year both winners played with the Haskell ball, so
Speaker 2: that was a start. The second key feature was the
Speaker 2: dramatic change in the style of golf courses that were
Speaker 2: beginning to the transition away from the rather basic, rudimentary
Speaker 2: courses with bunkers just stretched right across the fairways towards
Speaker 2: a more strategic game. And there was some of the
Speaker 2: key architects, and we were now talking about the term
Speaker 2: golf architects for the first time. Willie Park Junior, Harry Colet,
Speaker 2: subsequently Alison McKenzie and Herbert Fowler some of the key
Speaker 2: figures who were involved in taking golf in a new
Speaker 2: direction in terms of how it was played. And the
Speaker 2: third factor on the supply side was the improvement in
Speaker 2: the quality of the courses. The greenkeeping side, the idea,
Speaker 2: the concept of agronomy was beginning to appear rather than
Speaker 2: just predominantly in the eighteen nineties. These were greenkeepers who
Speaker 2: came down from Scotland who might have known something about
Speaker 2: how to prepare a course on links land, but it
Speaker 2: was completely a new challenge to develop and prepare golf
Speaker 2: courses to that standard on inland pasture, and it took
Speaker 2: time and technology and science to enable us to get
Speaker 2: to the stage where we could lay out courses that
Speaker 2: were attractive and appealing to golfers to play. And I
Speaker 2: think that was underlying it these factors was golf was
Speaker 2: a difficult game. In the eighteen nineties. We were playing
Speaker 2: with a Gutta Persha ball on very basic courses, on
Speaker 2: muddy parkland or pasture, and it was a difficult game.
Speaker 2: But these three inventions made golf a more interesting and
Speaker 2: more fun game to play. The Haskell ball meant that
Speaker 2: they could get the ball up in the air more
Speaker 2: easily and could hit it further, so that was always
Speaker 2: always fun, as we know to this day. The strategic
Speaker 2: design meant that we were no longer had golf courses
Speaker 2: that were purely meant to be penal if you hit
Speaker 2: a bad shot. There were other challenges, but not the
Speaker 2: challenge that most most golf professionals thought had to be
Speaker 2: achieved was to get the ball in the air, and
Speaker 2: hence bunkers were laid across the middle of fairways. So
Speaker 2: it was a new, more thoughtful game that was emerging.
Speaker 2: And again and toutly the quality of the courses being improved,
Speaker 2: it was a more enjoyable experience to walk around a
Speaker 2: golf course rather than plow around the muddy field.
Speaker 1: Two of those factors I really want to pick up
Speaker 1: on here are strategic golf design and the advances in
Speaker 1: agronomy that you're talking about, because those are two such
Speaker 1: fascinating factors in the first decade of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: you know, really our modern ideas of strategic golf design
Speaker 1: and agronomy emerged in that decade. And I think part
Speaker 1: of what had to be a big factor was just
Speaker 1: that English golf courses, as you've mentioned a couple of times,
Speaker 1: were primarily inland. They were not on Link's land anymore.
Speaker 1: They weren't on this kind of perfectly suited land, and
Speaker 1: so there needed to be some human intervention to adapt
Speaker 1: this land to the game. And what this spurred was
Speaker 1: innovation in agronomy and architecture. Do you think that that
Speaker 1: theory holds water? Did these things come about really because
Speaker 1: they started golfers started working with ill suited pieces of
Speaker 1: land and they had to figure out how to work
Speaker 1: with this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yes, but it always needs a leader, always needs key
Speaker 2: figures to be able to make that to take things
Speaker 2: forward in an innovative sense. To break new ground, to
Speaker 2: take anything a new business, a new sport, a sport
Speaker 2: in a different direction. And I've highlighted Willie Park Jr.
Speaker 2: As one of the key figures because in eighth in
Speaker 2: nineteen oh one, three of his he opened three golf
Speaker 2: courses in that year Sunningdale, the old course as we
Speaker 2: think of it nowadays, hunter Comb and Hollinwell. And these
Speaker 2: particularly the first two, these were the first move in
Speaker 2: the direction of strategic design and golf courses that looked
Speaker 2: and played more like links courses, looked the best links
Speaker 2: courses looked around the country. And Willie Park Jr. Was
Speaker 2: of course a professional by background, a two time Open
Speaker 2: champion who had came from Musselborough by background.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the great Park family. He was a spectacular golfing family.
Speaker 2: Yes. And Mungo Park a good friend of ours here
Speaker 2: in England golfer story and is going to bring a
Speaker 2: fantastic book next year, hopefully on the Park families and
Speaker 2: the other Musclebrough families, so that I'm sure that's someone
Speaker 2: you might want to talk to in the year ahead.
Speaker 1: All Right, let's talk a little bit about the Frida
Speaker 1: Egg's new membership called CLUBTFE and it launches on January second,
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Speaker 1: a weekly course profile with an official Egg rating, and
Speaker 1: if you want to know what Egg rating means, go
Speaker 1: to the Frida Egg dot com and check out Andy
Speaker 1: Johnson's piece called how the Frida Egg Rates Golf Courses
Speaker 1: and he goes into some depth there about how we're
Speaker 1: raiding golf courses. If you'd also like to see what
Speaker 1: a course profile looks like, we have a new one
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Speaker 1: I think it's really fantastic. So that's the kind of
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Speaker 1: Let's go back to the episode. Willie Park Junior is
Speaker 1: someone you've identified as extremely important in the history of
Speaker 1: architecture because of these three courses that came out in
Speaker 1: nineteen oh one, holl Andwell, Hunter, Come and Sunningdale. What
Speaker 1: made these courses different from what came before.
Speaker 2: The strategic design of the courses. And Willie part had
Speaker 2: written a book on golf in eighteen ninety six. He
Speaker 2: was the first professional to actually put his ideas in
Speaker 2: print and it was a very popular and very successful book.
Speaker 2: And although they weren't fully formed when he wrote the book,
Speaker 2: there was already some ideas emerging that bunkers shouldn't necessarily
Speaker 2: be stretched straight across the fairway to stop people from
Speaker 2: hitting being successful, from hitting a shot that's topped. He
Speaker 2: was starting to consider that bunkers should be to the
Speaker 2: sides of fairways to catch slices and pools, and also
Speaker 2: the greens not just to be simple squares and very flat,
Speaker 2: but to have undulations and to be much larger. The
Speaker 2: fact that he was a very good putter was probably
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why he wanted the challenge of
Speaker 2: putting to be more part of the game, but that
Speaker 2: it was with these sort of design features that he
Speaker 2: was he was formulating at that time that he had
Speaker 2: the opportunity then to implement first at Sunningdale, where they
Speaker 2: provided him with sufficient funds to clear a large area
Speaker 2: of heathland to the west of London Common Common, and
Speaker 2: he used a large team of men and horses and
Speaker 2: machinery to do that, and he cleared away the heather
Speaker 2: and the and the gorse to create essentially to carve
Speaker 2: a golf course out of the heathland that existed there.
Speaker 2: But also importantly he seeded the ground with bents and fescues,
Speaker 2: the grasses that typically were associated with the links land,
Speaker 2: and he also put in watering to ensure that the
Speaker 2: greens could be managed and cut and prepared to a
Speaker 2: standard that would have been acceptable at those times. So
Speaker 2: Sunningdale was very much a start point, followed on very
Speaker 2: quickly by Huntercombe, which rare amongst golf professionals that Willie
Speaker 2: Park was actually making enough money that he could afford
Speaker 2: to with some investors in supporting him, he could afford
Speaker 2: to actually acquire the land and develop the course at
Speaker 2: Huntercombe himself. So he did that and very rapidly laid
Speaker 2: out a very challenging golf course there which was very
Speaker 2: much his own. Unfortunately, a few years down the road
Speaker 2: for other factors, it was less successful and in the
Speaker 2: end he pretty much lost the money that he had
Speaker 2: put into it. But Hollingwell was the third of the three,
Speaker 2: perhaps had less resources initially to develop that one, but
Speaker 2: nevertheless it was on a very interesting piece of land
Speaker 2: and his ideas were beginning to take shape there.
Speaker 1: Also, I just want to underline how different the architecture
Speaker 1: was at these courses, how different the process that went
Speaker 1: into making these courses was, by maybe comparing it to
Speaker 1: what architects or designers, they wouldn't have called themselves architects
Speaker 1: I don't think in the eighteen nineties what English designers
Speaker 1: were doing on parkland inland courses before the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: So could you give me a picture of what the
Speaker 1: methods were, what the prevailing methods were to lay out
Speaker 1: courses on inland properties before Willie Park put out these
Speaker 1: three impressive projects.
Speaker 2: Well, it's remarkably simple because they did very little. Yes,
Speaker 2: there wasn't much added to what was there. So again,
Speaker 2: coming back just a bit of statistical fat material here
Speaker 2: a run about eighty percent of these of these golf
Speaker 2: courses that were being developed at that time before before
Speaker 2: nineteen hundred were nine hole courses and they tended to
Speaker 2: be on a small piece of parkland on the periphery
Speaker 2: of whichever town near to where the golfers lived, not
Speaker 2: usually more than thirty five acres of land for nine holes.
Speaker 2: So the first steps that the founders took was to
Speaker 2: try and get as either a local pro of a
Speaker 2: golf club nearby or bring a Scotsman down to give
Speaker 2: them some guidance and how they could lay out nine
Speaker 2: holes on this modest piece of land. Essentially, it was
Speaker 2: the professional or even the committee on some occasions would
Speaker 2: just peg out where they saw an appropriate place to
Speaker 2: put a tea and where to put a green, and
Speaker 2: that job could be done in half a day. The
Speaker 2: tools of the trade were no more than a heavy
Speaker 2: roller and a lawnmower to cut the grass and to
Speaker 2: flatten the area where the teas and the greens would be.
Speaker 2: And of course sheep and sometimes less appealingly cattle were
Speaker 2: used to keep the fairways sort of sufficiently short for
Speaker 2: the golfers to play on. But these were muddy conditions,
Speaker 2: I mean through the winter it would be, it would
Speaker 2: be awful conditions. You didn't have the firm turf of
Speaker 2: the of the Lynx land, so they had to put
Speaker 2: up with the the relatively poor quality golf courses. And
Speaker 2: that's all there was in the eighteen nineties in terms
Speaker 2: of inland golf. It was it was of that character.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't unique to English golf, this method of
Speaker 1: building golf courses, this is essentially what Scottish golf designers
Speaker 1: were doing as well, what old Tom Morris would do
Speaker 1: when he showed up at a piece of links land.
Speaker 1: But it just happened to be the case that Scottish
Speaker 1: courses were built on better land for golf, and so
Speaker 1: these methods of kind of natural golf design worked better,
Speaker 1: got better results.
Speaker 2: And of course you had you had the natural june
Speaker 2: land and the possibility of natural bunkers, which became a
Speaker 2: feature of golf as a result of it starting on
Speaker 2: the june land, whereas an inland. You know, some artificial
Speaker 2: bunkers may have been created, but they weren't a major
Speaker 2: feature of these simple nine hole courses. You read when
Speaker 2: you read the Golfing Annual and some of the other
Speaker 2: annuals of that time, which gave brief descriptions of these
Speaker 2: golf courses, the hazards were commonly described as hedges, ditches,
Speaker 2: and streams rather than and occasionally there's a mention of
Speaker 2: an artificial bunker. So they just these working class professionals
Speaker 2: who were helping to get these golf courses off the
Speaker 2: ground were just making use of whatever was the natural
Speaker 2: landscape and the natural habitat to create some sort of
Speaker 2: challenge for the golfers, but not necessarily one that mirrorred
Speaker 2: the challenge of playing on linksland.
Speaker 1: There are relatively few landscapes in the world that have
Speaker 1: natural sand bunkers, right, and so you know, like Blackheath
Speaker 1: for instance. I think you mentioned in your book the
Speaker 1: hazards there were early on were maybe gravel pits. Am
Speaker 1: I right about that?
Speaker 2: Gravel pits?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2: Neither those two early courses, Manchester and Blackheath, had any
Speaker 2: bunkers at all, you know, as we would call them today.
Speaker 2: So these courses in the eighteen nineties were built within
Speaker 2: weeks and they were up and running within no more
Speaker 2: than a month, so because again the demand was so
Speaker 2: great to get golf courses going. But then Willie Park
Speaker 2: Junior actually had two years to put together sunning though
Speaker 2: he did Hunter come a bit quicker than that. But
Speaker 2: then when some of the other great architects of that
Speaker 2: year were coming along, like foul Or, he took two
Speaker 2: years to do Walton Heath. This was on a completely
Speaker 2: different scale, both financially and the amount of time and
Speaker 2: investment that went into creating the new strategic design courses.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so the effort that time and the money
Speaker 1: that went into construction, the construction of courses like Sunningdale
Speaker 1: and later Walton Heath. And then you know, some courses
Speaker 1: in America not too long later, like National Golf Links
Speaker 1: and Pine Valley, the scale of those projects was so
Speaker 1: much bigger than what you saw in the eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties that it's almost like it was a completely
Speaker 1: different thing, like a golf course had become something totally different.
Speaker 1: And so I guess. So my question is, what I've
Speaker 1: never known is what enabled Willie Park Junior, for instance,
Speaker 1: to spend so much money and so much time on Sunningdale.
Speaker 1: Did the model of financing a club change in some
Speaker 1: essential way around that time? What were the factors that
Speaker 1: allowed him to spend so much time, so much money,
Speaker 1: so much labor on creating an inland golf course because
Speaker 1: this had like never been done before, this was new.
Speaker 2: Well an affluent members it certainly helped and each of
Speaker 2: each of each of the initial members put up one
Speaker 2: hundred pounds as their contribution to the formation of Sunningdale.
Speaker 2: So that was a huge amount of money in comparison
Speaker 2: to the very modest sums that were spent and could
Speaker 2: be afforded in these small market town golf courses scattered
Speaker 2: all across England where golf clubs were basically started, perhaps
Speaker 2: with no more than one hundred to two hundred pounds
Speaker 2: in entirety, whereas at Sunningdale. They spent a bit less
Speaker 2: on the golf I think about four or five thousand
Speaker 2: pounds they spent on the golf course. Well, at the
Speaker 2: same time they spent about seven thousand pounds on building
Speaker 2: the clubhouse. So this was for affluent gentlemen who wished
Speaker 2: to play golf, and money wasn't a limiting a limiting
Speaker 2: factor in what they could do. But it was nevertheless
Speaker 2: quite inspirational to get Willie Park Jr. To come and
Speaker 2: do it. I mean he'd only was only beginning to
Speaker 2: make his name as a golf course architect at that time.
Speaker 2: He'd developed a small number of other courses in England,
Speaker 2: but not many, so it was quite it was quite
Speaker 2: a step to get him involved.
Speaker 1: So the development of golf course design was was financed
Speaker 1: by wealthy people. In the end, I suppose.
Speaker 2: The strategic, the courses that we might think of as
Speaker 2: the big name courses, the ones that began to take
Speaker 2: off at that time, were clubs at the affluent end.
Speaker 2: It still meant, even though there were clubs being formed
Speaker 2: in the Edwardian period, were still more of the simple,
Speaker 2: the simpler character. But over time. Again again this is
Speaker 2: time is an important factor and knowledge and the increasing
Speaker 2: transfer of information around the country. Gradually, some of these
Speaker 2: golf courses, even at the lower end of the of
Speaker 2: the scale, began to consider in a more rudimentary way,
Speaker 2: having a layout which had a more strategic intent rather
Speaker 2: than just the penal form that had been put in
Speaker 2: place in the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1: Was this the start of golf becoming less and less affordable.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say so, because the number of golfers kept
Speaker 2: growing dramatically, so we could say that golf was becoming
Speaker 2: more expensive, and there's evidence of that because I looked
Speaker 2: carefully at what membership costs of different golf clubs were
Speaker 2: across the country, and they were growing over time. But
Speaker 2: the income of the middle classes in particular was also
Speaker 2: growing very rapidly. So yeah, the situation where in about
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty, I think there was something of the order
Speaker 2: of four hundred thousand people in Great Britain paying taxes,
Speaker 2: which meant earning over one hundred and fifty pounds a year. Roughly.
Speaker 2: By nineteen eleven, one point two million people were in
Speaker 2: that same category. So there was the middle classes were
Speaker 2: a growing percentage of the population and becoming better off.
Speaker 2: So that was one factor. The other thing was there
Speaker 2: was quite a widespread of costs of joining clubs. The
Speaker 2: Sunningdale's and the hunter Combs and the Walton Heath and
Speaker 2: about fifty or so others were very much the elite
Speaker 2: clubs where you might have to spend the term they
Speaker 2: used to use guineas rather than pounds, which is just
Speaker 2: one pound and one shilling, But you might have to
Speaker 2: spend ten pounds to join, another ten pounds perannum as
Speaker 2: your annual subscription. But there were many clubs across the
Speaker 2: country where you didn't have to pay a joining fee
Speaker 2: and it might only cost you one guinea to play golf.
Speaker 2: So there was quite a quite a spread. It wasn't
Speaker 2: simply that. It wasn't simply the case that golf for
Speaker 2: everyone was becoming more expensive.
Speaker 1: So you wouldn't endorse the kind of simplistic idea that
Speaker 1: the English game was a game for rich men, whereas
Speaker 1: the Scottish game was more for the working and middle
Speaker 1: classes and more for humble people. It was more complicated
Speaker 1: than that, is what I'm hearing.
Speaker 2: The picture is. Again, the perception has been very much
Speaker 2: a black and white picture that everybody who could play
Speaker 2: golf who was interested in playing golf could play golf.
Speaker 2: In Scotland very egalitarian, whereas in England it was seen
Speaker 2: as a rich man and maybe perhaps emphasis on the
Speaker 2: male it was a rich man's game. But when you
Speaker 2: look at the when you actually look at the clubs
Speaker 2: that were formed during that period, and you see that
Speaker 2: there was a very wide disparity in the cost of
Speaker 2: playing between the very modest clubs in the rural settings
Speaker 2: and the number of golfers who were taking up the game.
Speaker 2: It's just isn't simply possible that it was purely a
Speaker 2: rich man's game, and because those number of clubs just
Speaker 2: couldn't possibly have taken off if it was limited to
Speaker 2: the upper middle classes. And also in addition to that,
Speaker 2: women took up the game in big numbers in England
Speaker 2: in this period, more so than in Scotland. To some degree.
Speaker 2: It became when the Ladies Golfing Union was formed in
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety three, that was a starting point that triggered
Speaker 2: interest amongst women across the country and playing the game,
Speaker 2: and the number of women playing golf grew dramatically through
Speaker 2: particularly in the Edwardian period, to the extent that by
Speaker 2: nineteen fourteen. My estimates that I've made in my book,
Speaker 2: about one in every four of the golfers in England
Speaker 2: at that time was a woman, So and the participation
Speaker 2: and membership of women in golf clubs was an important feature.
Speaker 2: Almost all golf clubs in England were mixed, and this
Speaker 2: is quite surprising because again typically they're viewed as being
Speaker 2: sort of male male domains. Albeit women didn't have the
Speaker 2: same full rights of voting at agms, and they had
Speaker 2: their own rooms to have tea rather than shared rooms
Speaker 2: with the men in the club. But nevertheless, there was
Speaker 2: many women who took up the game, and many young
Speaker 2: women as well. Young un married women were quite a
Speaker 2: significant significant proportion of the women who took up the game.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of interesting social strands to this
Speaker 2: story of how golf boomed in England.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's just sort of like today where
Speaker 1: there's a maybe a simple perception of golf as a
Speaker 1: rich man's game. But once you look at the golf
Speaker 1: that's played in any particular region, there tends to be
Speaker 1: more diversity in the way that the game is played.
Speaker 1: Then people think, and that's maybe a factor of us
Speaker 1: just kind of focusing on the most famous clubs, the
Speaker 1: most famous course is, which often are the best finance
Speaker 1: courses like Sunningdale. You know, for instance, Sunningdale doesn't define
Speaker 1: this period that you wrote about. It's part of it,
Speaker 1: but it's not the entire picture.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly so, and there is a bit of a
Speaker 2: reporting bias here. I mean, the newspapers were full of
Speaker 2: as they became more illustrated newspapers, they were tended to
Speaker 2: focus on the great clubs where the great championships were
Speaker 2: being played. And so there's this perception that people have
Speaker 2: I've seen these grand clubhouses and wonderful golf courses, whereas
Speaker 2: probably still seventy five eighty percent of them were much
Speaker 2: more modest, much less cost and still golf was being
Speaker 2: participated in by a wider cross section of people around
Speaker 2: the country, both men and women.
Speaker 1: So if you were to identify a few really important
Speaker 1: lingering effects, long term effects that the great English off
Speaker 1: boom had, what would you focus on.
Speaker 2: Well, the first thing is is the number of golf
Speaker 2: clubs that have survived. Again, just to put the numbers
Speaker 2: in context, so eighteen sixty four to eighteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: one hundred golf clubs were formed in England. Eighteen ninety
Speaker 2: to nineteen fourteen. Twelve hundred golf clubs were formed in
Speaker 2: England in that period. That was, on average, nearly one
Speaker 2: new golf club was formed every week, and very few
Speaker 2: of them failed. By nineteen fourteen, less than one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty of those golf clubs that have been formed
Speaker 2: since eighteen sixty four failed. So and then we look
Speaker 2: to where we are today. Inevitably, clubs were lost, particularly
Speaker 2: during the Two World Wars where the land was given
Speaker 2: up for agriculture or just golf courses went into beans.
Speaker 2: But today there are seven hundred and eighty clubs in
Speaker 2: England who can put their foundation date as before the
Speaker 2: First World War, and that makes up about forty five
Speaker 2: percent of all the clubs that exist in England today.
Speaker 2: So they're tremendously resilient organizations. They're still with us. And
Speaker 2: perhaps that's one of the great appeal of our game
Speaker 2: of golf, is that you can walk in the footsteps
Speaker 2: of your forefathers on the same land and play golf
Speaker 2: in broadly the same conditions that they played when they
Speaker 2: were playing it two three generations before.
Speaker 1: Another theory that I was sort of bouncing around my
Speaker 1: head as I was reading your book. Is that the
Speaker 1: character that the game took on in England during this
Speaker 1: boom really had a big influence on the character of
Speaker 1: the game many other places that it expanded to later Australia,
Speaker 1: the United States and elsewhere where there was an emphasis
Speaker 1: on nine and eighteen whole courses. If you look at
Speaker 1: early sky courses, you know they have five holes, they
Speaker 1: have seven holes, they have you know, fourteen holes, whereas
Speaker 1: in England it was more the trend to make a
Speaker 1: nine hole course with the intention of maybe adding another
Speaker 1: nine later on. It became more regimented the way courses
Speaker 1: began to be built inland, on parkland in England, where
Speaker 1: architecture was done on them, where agronomic science was applied
Speaker 1: to them. All of these things are things that happened
Speaker 1: elsewhere as golf moved to other places in the world.
Speaker 1: So is it an exaggeration to say that the Great
Speaker 1: English Golf Boom was kind of a foundational moment for golf,
Speaker 1: maybe even as much as the Scottish invention of the
Speaker 1: game was, Because the character of the game in England
Speaker 1: became so much The character of the game everywhere else afterwards.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's a very good point you make,
Speaker 2: because you know, the most of the clubs initially started
Speaker 2: off with nine holes, and that's because most of the
Speaker 2: golfers were absolute beginners, and so it's quite a risky
Speaker 2: proposition to get a club off the ground. You're never
Speaker 2: quite sure whether people are going to stick with it.
Speaker 2: But remarkably golf seems to have hooked even the beginners playing,
Speaker 2: perhaps on these rather basic courses, so when the opportunity arose,
Speaker 2: it didn't happen for every club. There was the expansion
Speaker 2: from nine to eighteen holes, and another feature of English
Speaker 2: golf which perhaps distinguished it from Scottish. The early days
Speaker 2: of Scottish golf, which was predominantly played in a match
Speaker 2: play format, handicaps were really just a negotiation with regards
Speaker 2: to how much money would be better on the game,
Speaker 2: whereas in England we moved towards stroke play competitions. There
Speaker 2: was much more interest in what score you could obtain
Speaker 2: at the end of a round. This was not part
Speaker 2: of the Scottish tradition at all. So again another feature
Speaker 2: which you might add into your combination of inland golf
Speaker 2: courses being designed as distinct from just what you get
Speaker 2: with the natural land, and the way in which golf
Speaker 2: was being played, all those factors I think, say you know,
Speaker 2: say the English golf was a very important part of
Speaker 2: that step and that process towards the modern golf we
Speaker 2: play in contemporary times.
Speaker 1: Well, Michael, your book is called The Great English Golf Boom.
Speaker 1: I think it's a really important contribution to historical scholarship
Speaker 1: about golf. So can you tell people how they could
Speaker 1: get a copy of the book for themselves, maybe for
Speaker 1: the holidays.
Speaker 2: Most certainly I self published the book, so if you
Speaker 2: want to get a copy, you have to contact me.
Speaker 2: I didn't go through a major publisher, and the simplest
Speaker 2: way to do that is to contact me either on Twitter,
Speaker 2: where I'm at Golf History, my is my is my
Speaker 2: title there, or probably much easier more directly by email,
Speaker 2: and my email address is Mike dot Morrison fifty seven
Speaker 2: at outlook dot com. And the book costs twenty five
Speaker 2: pounds if you were to purchase it here in England,
Speaker 2: plus postage. Unfortunately, the postage is somewhat somewhat more expensive
Speaker 2: to get it across the Atlantic, so it's probably closer
Speaker 2: to fifty six pounds for the book to be to
Speaker 2: be sold to Americans and North Americans.
Speaker 1: This episode of the Frida Egg Podcast was edited by
Speaker 1: Matt Ruschius. As a reminder, you can sign up for
Speaker 1: our new membership CLUBTFE at the fridagg dot com slash membership.
Speaker 1: So we're going to take a little break for the
Speaker 1: holidays here. We should be back for I think one
Speaker 1: episode before the new year. In the meantime, Happy holidays
Speaker 1: to you, hope you're doing well, and thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening.