WEBVTT - Robert Crosby on the Influence of John Low 0:00:01.040 --> 0:00:04.720 Welcome back to another edition of the Frida Egg Podcast. 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:08.760 This episode is brought to you by our friends over 0:00:08.800 --> 0:00:12.719 at bet Dratty. Today, I actually played a golf tournament 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:17.040 and I wore a new be Dratty Sport. So they 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:19.840 just came out with us. They did a limited release 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:23.439 this fall and in a few pro shops and it's 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:27.520 really awesome. It's got that tech fabric and to go 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:30.360 along with their classic cotton, they now have this tech 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:32.960 fabric great shirt. 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:36.480 I really liked it kept me cool under pressure, even 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:39.919 though my game put me under pressure a lot. It 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:44.800 was not a good, good round of golf today, but anyways, 0:00:44.880 --> 0:00:48.400 the shirt was great if I played as well as 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:52.880 my shirt did. We've been playing the US four ball 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:57.280 next spring, so those will be in the pro shop 0:00:57.320 --> 0:01:01.640 hopefully next year right January one, but you can get 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:04.640 them at a few participating clubs, a lot of them 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:07.000 on the East Coast. If you're in one of those 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:08.760 pro shops, they might have be Dratty Sport. 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:14.440 Also with new happenings in the pro Shop, we have 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:19.320 a twenty five percent off code in the Pro Shop, 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:22.920 so use the code Fall twenty five and you'll get 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:27.040 twenty five percent off T shirts, the b Dratty T 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.399 shirts and then also with an Angles T shirts. So 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:36.600 we got a new podcast and actually Garrett Morrison, or 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:39.360 managing editor, is the host of this. So this will 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:43.039 be with Bob Crosby and Garrett you. 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:45.280 There, yep, right here. 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:49.440 So this is exciting. Yeah, so we're gonna We're gonna 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:52.320 have Garrett come in. He's gonna do some hosting. I'm 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:55.920 gonna do some hosting. But you know, Garrett's probably better 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:56.600 host than I am. 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:01.840 Anyways, I doubt that. But I'm getting my seed legs 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:04.880 and it's been really fun. And the conversation with with 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:06.080 Bob was great. 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:09.000 Yeah, he's he That was a great I listened to 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:12.079 it and what a what an intelligent guy. 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:16.080 I know, seriously intelligent. So my idea is that, you know, 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:19.440 when when I'm tracking down guests and asking people to 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:21.280 talk with me, I'm going to make sure that they're 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:24.640 uh smarter than me, which which won't be too difficult. 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:27.200 But Bob is definitely smarter than me, and so it 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:29.360 was really really fun to talk to him. 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:32.840 Yeah, I think that all of our guests are smarter 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:38.519 than I. I think, so it's a little bar so awesome. Well, 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:44.840 we'll hope you guys enjoy Bob Crosby and h Garrett 0:02:44.919 --> 0:02:47.560 as a host, and so we'll just you know, it'll 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:50.480 be noted in the notes who's hosting, but should be 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:53.640 should be, if anything, better than when I'm hosting. 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:56.919 And I should mention that my guest, Bob Crosby, who 0:02:56.960 --> 0:03:02.560 goes by Robert Crosby in publication, is a great golf historian, 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:05.640 and if you're interested in the content of this podcast, 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.919 you should check out his two essays on John Lowe 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:12.200 for the Journal Through the Green, which we'll link to 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:15.480 in the show notes. You can also follow him on 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:21.440 Twitter at otay seventy one. That's ote y seven to one. 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:25.800 All right, So, without further ado, here's my conversation with 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:26.560 Bob Crosby. 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:31.280 The Frida egg requires a different technique. What you need 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:34.399 to do is actually square the face so it'll dig 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:38.120 down underneath that bad lie and propel that ball right 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:38.840 out onto the green. 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:40.320 Here's the thing. 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:42.920 Playing out of a buried lion of bunker is completely 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:45.440 different than playing out of a night clean lion a 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:49.119 greenside bunker. You need to be aggressive on any show, 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:51.720 whether it's sitting cleanly, or it's Frida Egg. 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:55.600 Well, we've all faith that the dreaded Frida Egg. It's 0:03:55.680 --> 0:03:57.680 not to be feared, though. It's actually a pretty easy 0:03:57.720 --> 0:03:58.280 shot to hit. 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:12.600 How did you initially get into golf? Were you a 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:15.360 player when you were younger? Did you play on teams 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:16.080 and things like that? 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:19.520 I was, yeah, I was a fairly serious junior golfer. 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:21.000 Captain. 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:23.679 I went to Culver Military Academy, played in a wonderful 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:28.720 Langford and a role course at Culver, won some high 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:33.040 school tournaments, played golf for Harvard College for a couple 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:39.280 of years, and then the student demonstrations created enough cognitive 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:43.720 dissonance with that activity that I gave it up essentially 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:48.919 for twenty years, and got back to it sometime in 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:53.320 my mid late thirties and found I loved it more 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:57.400 than ever, Certainly without playing for tournaments and trying to 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:00.040 qualify for travel squads and that sort of stuff, it 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:02.760 was a lot more fun. So I've been a golfer 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:04.279 since I was seven or eight years old. 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:08.440 So tell me more about when you were at Harvard 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:12.120 and there were the student demonstrations, and it sounds like 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:16.239 it led you to question your involvement in the game. 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:20.960 I'll give you a very concrete example. Our two home 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:23.760 courses I didn't appreciate how good they were at the 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:29.040 time was the Myopia Hunt Club and the country Club 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:33.120 in Brookline. I was sitting in Brookline with I had 0:05:33.160 --> 0:05:36.960 long hair, I had a bandana, I had a black 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:43.200 armband of anti Vietnam stuff, and there was a student 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:47.560 demonstration going on back at campus, and I thought to myself, 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:51.960 I'm in the wrong place, and all that was much 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:59.040 more pressing. Walked, I caught a ride home that afternoon, 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:04.240 left my golf clubs at the country club and never 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:08.359 went back to fetch them. As far as I know, 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:11.880 nearly fifty years later, they're still there. 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:16.680 Were That's probably not possible, but. 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:19.440 That's how abrupt it all happened. And then I kind 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:21.200 of got swept up in events. 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:21.360 At the time. 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:27.800 So is there something about golf that just keeps itself 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:31.680 separate from the world at large? Do you think that 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:35.560 that cognitive dissonance, as you call it, between golf and 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:39.679 current events or politics is a natural thing that's always 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:40.680 going to be there. 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:43.440 You know, Garrett, For me, it really did. When I 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:46.200 walk onto a golf course, I really walk into a 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:50.360 different mental universe, at least for me, and that which 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:52.080 is one of the reasons I love it so much. 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:58.960 I'm a recently retired lawyer, and there were just so 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:01.200 many times when I walked, you know, got out of 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:03.599 the car, and it was a different universe at the 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:06.200 golf course as I was walking on to the practice. 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:10.160 To you or wherever, Yes, the answer is yes, and 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:11.400 strikingly so. 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:15.240 For me, right, And that can be either a good 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:17.360 thing or a bad thing. It can be an escape, 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:19.480 as you're talking about, or it can be a kind 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:20.760 of realm of denial. 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:25.200 You know, I know too much about this, so I 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:28.640 don't know how much time you have. But Bernard Darwin 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:34.000 wrote a piece in nineteen fourteen called The Fascination of Golf, 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:38.920 and it was about the power of golf to in 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:42.600 some cases, simply take over somebody's life. He worked less hard, 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:46.080 he spent less time in the office. His wife was 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:48.120 mad at him all the time, but he was at 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:52.080 His fascination was such and it was so different from 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:55.360 the rest of his life that he, you know, spent 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:58.280 way too much time in the game. But Darwin thought 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:01.720 that was actually probably a good thing. He published that 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:03.440 in the Times. I wrote a piece on this for 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:05.640 Through the Green. He published that in the Times in 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:10.520 I think it was April of nineteen fourteen. For the 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:15.720 next two months there were sixty five or seventy counter 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:19.920 letters and articles outraged at Bernard Darlwin's view of the 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:22.840 importance and fascination of golf. How it was a bad 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:26.720 thing for society, how it corrected young men, how it 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:31.960 was not a good thing in the long term. It 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:36.240 was unbelievable dispute. The ending irony of all of that 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:42.240 is that arch Duke Ferdinand was assassinated in August second 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:46.160 or third they launched, you know, World War One is 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:51.319 kicked off, and all of those young dissolute golfers marched 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:56.360 dutifully off to war. So it hadn't been that harmful. 0:08:56.640 --> 0:09:01.440 But the whole topic is the topic really goes back, 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.160 and you'll appreciate this. It goes back to theories of education. 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:08.400 Should young boys be taught golf? Now, everybody agreed to 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:11.080 teaching cricket was a good thing because it was a 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:14.160 rough team sport, or soccer was a rough team sport. 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:17.640 But golf was an individual, quote selfish sport, and there 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:19.400 were a lot of people that said, it was a 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:25.160 bad influence on boys, but that's another topic for them. 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:31.480 So how did you become serious about researching golf history, 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:34.679 or maybe the better question is at what point did 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:37.960 you become interested in the game beyond just playing it. 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:44.240 I had always been interested in golf architecture, primarily because 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:47.760 I kept scratching my head over what I thought were 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:50.600 odd bunkers and odd things on the golf course I 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:58.480 grew up on, which is in Athens, Georgia, and there's 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:01.800 this oddly placed bunker, the first hold Athns Country Club, 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:04.680 But I never quite understood why it was there. And 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:06.880 then I got to thinking, well, you know, everything that's 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:09.800 on that golf course is there for a reason. Somebody 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:12.559 decided to put it there or not put something there, 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:16.760 and that led to just a whole bunch of sort 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:22.600 of meditations on my own. It wasn't until Frankly Golf 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:25.600 Club Atless and some of those old blogs that cranked 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:28.760 up in the late nineties that I realized that other 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:32.600 people wondered about the same things, and it was an 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:38.320 enormous relief. I thought I was sort of crazy, And 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:40.880 out of those blogs, I've made some of the best 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:45.719 friends I have. We share an interest in golf architecture, 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:51.440 and it's been wonderful the Internet has made has richly 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:52.640 enhanced my life. 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:56.040 For that reason, What was the role of golf Club 0:10:56.120 --> 0:11:00.760 Atlas specifically in your exploration of the history of the game. 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:07.640 There were a number of really serious architectural historians, and 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:12.160 I was absolutely fascinated by their research. A couple of 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:16.000 them are dead now. They led to some very very 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:24.240 bitter fights, which were unfortunate, but the research and I 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:26.280 came to see. Let me back up a mite. I 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:31.120 came to see golf courses as objects of art that 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:36.640 had a history that reflected various ideas about how golf 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:39.880 ought to be played. And I thought that whole nexus 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:41.360 was absolutely fascinate. 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:42.400 The history part in particular. 0:11:43.080 --> 0:11:46.800 The other part of that is that I came to 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:49.880 see and this is really a tell tale for golf 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:51.480 history in a lot of ways that I can get 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:52.280 into this later. 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:53.680 If you want. 0:11:53.240 --> 0:11:58.080 I began to read Alistair McKenzie, Max Bear, you know, 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:02.800 the usual suspects, and I realized at some point that 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:08.040 they weren't really writing descriptively. They were writing arguments. They 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:12.679 were being polemical, and as I dug more into it. 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:16.760 I kept the question kept coming up, who are they 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:25.040 arguing with? And that led to a lot of discoveries 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:29.240 about sort of other theories of golf architectures that they 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:31.480 were trying to beat back in one way or another. 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:35.000 And those other theories had to some extent been lost 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:38.760 to history. Not lost, but they were just lightly buried 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:41.320 and nobody had bothered to dig back into them. The 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:44.880 first long thing I wrote on golf architecture was a 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:49.920 four part essay in Golf Club Attlas on the Joshua 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:56.720 Crane Alistair McKenzie Max Bair debates. Literally nobody knew anything 0:12:56.760 --> 0:12:59.600 about Joshua Crane, but that's who they were writing. 0:12:59.679 --> 0:13:00.160 Again. 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:04.360 They hated him, And then I further came to find 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:06.600 out that really the one of the reasons they disliked 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:08.559 him so intensely. First of all, he was a jerk, 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:14.080 but very wealthy Bostonian. But the real reason they came 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:17.360 to dislike him so intensely was because he really reflected 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:21.079 a lot of older Victorian golf architecture ideas and he 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:25.880 carried them forward into the nineteen twenties. And then that 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:30.480 led me to John Lowe, who fought the same battles 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:34.600 with a different cast of characters circa nineteen hundred through 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:41.120 nineteen oh five. And I came to think that Lowe 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:45.720 was both a better writer, a better thinker, and had 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:50.600 more worthy opponents to argue against than Mackenzie Bear and 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:55.600 Joshua Crane were. And plus it predated them all by 0:13:55.920 --> 0:14:00.720 almost two decades. And so I dug into it. I 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:03.280 dug into it, and that's really how I got to look. 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:07.959 I have a problem with most golf histories. I'm on 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:11.040 the Herbert Warren Win Golf Book Award Committee at the USGA, 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:13.560 been honored for five or six years. I read a 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:16.000 lot of golf books, some of them really really bad, 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:22.200 some of them very good, but very very few of 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:25.640 them see golf history as other than a series of 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:32.240 more or less isolated events. You know, Harry Cole did 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:35.160 Swinley Forrest on this date, and he did this to 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:38.400 the he built, He built these sorts of holes. The 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:42.200 stymy was was eliminated from the code book in this year. 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:43.440 Uh. 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:46.440 You know, Jade Taylor wins the Open in nineteen oh five. 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:51.720 I don't find that very interesting. I mean, I'm happy 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:53.640 to be informed. I can sort of show off at 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:57.440 a cocktail party. But it's just it's not terribly interesting 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:00.720 that there. What I did come to discover, and I 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:03.720 think I'm right about this, is that there are long 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:08.640 term storylines in the history of golf, and nobody in 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:11.800 bodies what I took to be the most important of 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:16.480 those storylines better than John Lowe, not just in his 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:26.200 own time, but continuing today. And that the storyline that 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:33.840 I'm trying to articulate that basically encompassed Lowe's career in 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:40.600 the game began about eighteen ninety five, where the game 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:44.560 the game was very, very different from the game we 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:50.200 know today. There were the rules were basically driven by 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:57.000 various clubs. They set their own rules. Golf courses were 0:15:57.200 --> 0:16:00.280 tended to be very Victorian, with these cross bunkers and 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:03.000 steeple chase things other than the traditional links courses, but 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:05.880 anything that anything that was inland tended to be these 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:10.440 horrendous Victorian golf courses. And there were literally no rules 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:13.560 by balls. You could use anything you wanted, anything. 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:14.160 You wanted. 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:20.560 What Low as a Scott faced and Low grew up 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:25.360 in Dundee, went to Repton Public School, graduated from Cambridge 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:26.960 Claire College at Cambridge in. 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:28.480 Eighteen ninety one or ninety two. 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:32.360 What was happening in golf at the time was that 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:37.920 it had exploded in England. England had new golf courses 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:41.120 were popping up daily in England, new clubs. England had 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:46.640 more money, They had more political clout, They published all 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:47.760 the golf magazines. 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:50.120 In other words, they had all the power. 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:55.240 And they brought to golf these Victorian preconceptions about how 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:59.200 golf and any sport ought to operate, and that basically 0:16:59.280 --> 0:17:04.440 was highly realistic. Low described them as the Party of Equity, 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:07.960 and he described his traditional Scottish take on things as 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:15.240 the Conservative Party. So one of the long running themes 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:19.479 that begins with rules debates in eighteen ninety five between 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:23.399 Low and others and Englishmen like laid Law Purposal the 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:26.480 technically he grew up he was born in Scotland almost 0:17:26.520 --> 0:17:31.919 likely and other people based in the London area, was 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:35.359 the extent to which the rules ought to be answerable 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:40.800 to concerns of equity or fairness. Low, the traditional scott 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:44.920 along with Walter Simpson and others, said that's got nothing 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:46.479 to do with the rule. The rules of the rules. 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:49.480 Some are fair, some aren't fair. It's part of what 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.879 makes golf so interesting, and they has no duty to 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:59.040 some higher moral concept. At the same time, everybody was 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:03.560 promulgating theory Victorian golf courses, which really turned on similar issues. 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:07.240 That is to say, hazards are to be laid out 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:10.840 on a golf course, which were fair and proportionate based 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:14.200 on the quality of the shot. Good shots should be rewarded, 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:17.840 any bad shot should be punished, worst shots should be 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:23.800 punished more heavily. It was this neat Victorian moralistic universe 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:28.920 of how a golf course are to operate, and Lowe said, no, no, 0:18:30.480 --> 0:18:34.600 the old course at St. Andrews and other great lengths 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:38.680 courses don't operate on those principles. They operate on what 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:41.360 we now call he didn't call it the time strategic 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:44.480 golf architecture principles, which is to say, I'm going to 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:47.560 give you choices to the extent you want to take 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:50.960 on risks for easier shots later on the whole. 0:18:51.040 --> 0:18:53.160 You can do that, but if you. 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:55.639 Don't successfully pull them off, you're going to be in 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:58.919 deep trouble. And bad golfers, let's leave them alone. More 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:02.679 or less, they're their own world enemies. So there was 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:07.919 this deep rupture in golf. Well, it was really a 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:12.840 fight between two camps, the Conservative Party and the Party 0:19:12.840 --> 0:19:17.600 of Equity, which were roughly divided along geographic lines Scotland 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:25.080 versus England. And I would argue that out of that 0:19:25.800 --> 0:19:29.119 the basics of modern golf emerge, the golf we are 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:30.280 familiar with today. 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:31.879 And what I mean by that. 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:38.720 Is that a rules a codebook that is basically rooted 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:41.480 in older Saint Andrew's codes. There's been lots of tweaks 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:45.119 to it since it's basically the St. Andrews Code was 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:49.000 established with the formation of the RNA Rules Committee in 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:51.560 eighteen ninety seven, on which Flow served as a very 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:58.239 young man. At the same time, the architectural principles that 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:04.639 were found in courses and for which Lowe was the 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:06.960 first to argue for, and I think the first read 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:12.040 to discover, came to very quickly dominate golf course architecture 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:16.040 through Harry Coles, Alison Simpson and a whole bunch of others, 0:20:17.680 --> 0:20:22.719 so that the rules we play under today, the basic 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:25.960 rules we plunder today, the basic kinds of golf courses 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:30.119 we play on, and the kinds of balls and equipment 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:34.960 we play with all can be dated back to the 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:39.200 early Edwardian era, and in the middle of every one 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:44.560 of those issues was my man John Langlowe, either as 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:48.520 a member of the rules committee, either as an incredible 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:52.760 or incredibly articulate exponent for a wholly different kind of 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:57.480 golf architecture, or in his fight to regulate the Haskell 0:20:57.480 --> 0:20:59.880 ball and later clubs. 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:03.960 That's fascinating. So that gives us kind of the general 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:07.600 outline of it. Could you tell me a little bit 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:11.680 about who John Lowe was? You mentioned a bit earlier 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:14.760 about where he was from, but you know, who was 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:19.440 he outside of golf? What was his general social status? 0:21:19.840 --> 0:21:22.280 What kind of person was he in the world. 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:26.480 John Lowe was born north of Dundee and he was 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:29.920 born to a manorial estate. His father owned a lot 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:33.439 of land in an area called dunk Eld the Duncle 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:36.320 Castle Mansion house, I'm not sure it was called. He's 0:21:36.320 --> 0:21:38.480 still there and I would love to go there visit 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:42.040 one day. Lowe is buried there on the premises there. 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:47.480 He married into a very wealthy Dundee family, the Langs. 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:53.840 His middle name is Lang, I'm sorry. His mother was 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:56.399 a Lang and they were a very wealthy Dundee family. 0:21:57.400 --> 0:22:00.160 He spent a lot of time in his childhood in Dundee. 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:03.919 They were major jute manufacturers, which is which in the 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:07.240 time was the major component for ropes. 0:22:09.160 --> 0:22:10.480 Wasn't smoked, I don't think. 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:15.240 Low grew up playing a lot of golf at the 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:22.399 old course with his mother's brothers, the Langs. Tragically, his 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:25.480 father died as he was going off to college. His 0:22:25.600 --> 0:22:29.400 older brother died at about the same time, and low 0:22:29.880 --> 0:22:33.359 was charged with taking over the family business when he 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:37.879 was still nineteen or twenty years old. He was so 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:40.480 he was late getting to Cambridge. He took a year off, 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:43.119 did some traveling in Europe, but was late getting He 0:22:43.160 --> 0:22:45.480 and Harry Cope, by the way, exactly the same agent 0:22:45.480 --> 0:22:49.919 and were classmates at Cambridge and very close friends. But 0:22:49.960 --> 0:22:55.080 at any rate, Lowe then sells the company made a 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:57.720 bud I'm not clear how much money he cleared in 0:22:57.760 --> 0:23:00.640 the sale, but he was very wealthy and never had 0:23:00.640 --> 0:23:05.159 to work a day in his life. Before he graduated 0:23:05.160 --> 0:23:08.240 from Cambridge, he was became a member of the RNA, 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:13.040 ditto for Harry Colt, his classmate. He captained the Cambridge 0:23:13.080 --> 0:23:19.600 golf team and then moved his principal residence became Woking 0:23:19.680 --> 0:23:23.000 on the Woking golf Course in Surrey outside of London 0:23:23.480 --> 0:23:26.880 about nineteen hundred, and that's where he spent. Between Saint 0:23:26.920 --> 0:23:28.960 Andrews and Woking is where he spent most of his 0:23:29.080 --> 0:23:35.560 time thereafter. Close friends with Bernard Darwin, who was also 0:23:35.600 --> 0:23:38.200 a member at Woking and who also went to Cambridge, 0:23:38.800 --> 0:23:42.800 he founded the Oxford helped found the Oxford Cambridge Golfing Society, 0:23:42.840 --> 0:23:46.439 in which everybody that was anybody in golf architecture was 0:23:46.440 --> 0:23:48.920 a member because they all went to college at Cambridge 0:23:49.000 --> 0:23:55.200 or Oxford. Was on the rules Committee from nineteen twenty. 0:23:55.280 --> 0:23:59.480 From eighteen ninety seven until just before he died in 0:23:59.600 --> 0:24:03.119 nineteen twenty nine, was chairman of the Rules Committee for 0:24:03.160 --> 0:24:05.840 eight of those eight critical years. In the middle of 0:24:05.880 --> 0:24:11.240 that span, died though he was only sixty when he died. 0:24:11.359 --> 0:24:16.240 He died what I think was from throat cancer. He 0:24:16.359 --> 0:24:19.359 was still not he had not turned his sixtieth birthday, 0:24:19.440 --> 0:24:22.840 had not He'd not got his sixtieth birthday. Yet there 0:24:22.840 --> 0:24:27.520 was an outpour. He was really beloved, outpouring of oh bits, 0:24:27.560 --> 0:24:32.359 including a very long loving one from Bernard Darwin, a 0:24:32.520 --> 0:24:35.720 major figure in the game who has been largely forgotten. 0:24:36.640 --> 0:24:40.840 Right now, did he first really rise to prominence in 0:24:40.880 --> 0:24:44.760 the world of golf during the rules debates of the 0:24:44.800 --> 0:24:48.400 mid eighteen nineties or was he a kind of well 0:24:48.440 --> 0:24:50.000 known figure in the game before that. 0:24:50.800 --> 0:24:56.359 He that's a great question. He as an undergraduate at Cambridge. 0:24:56.359 --> 0:24:59.440 He weighs into what was a really really nasty rules 0:24:59.480 --> 0:25:01.800 debate but between the English and the Scots about the 0:25:01.920 --> 0:25:05.080 role of equity and the rules in eighteen ninety one, 0:25:05.119 --> 0:25:07.439 which is incredible. I mean, this is a nineteen year 0:25:07.480 --> 0:25:09.800 old weighing in with these guys who were forty and 0:25:09.800 --> 0:25:10.639 fifty years old. 0:25:11.480 --> 0:25:12.280 Didn't flinch. 0:25:13.600 --> 0:25:17.600 He was a very fine golfer, so he had a 0:25:17.640 --> 0:25:21.800 reputation for both being a good writer and a fine golfer. 0:25:21.840 --> 0:25:24.719 He he got more deeply involved in that same debate 0:25:25.200 --> 0:25:27.879 on the eve of the formation of the Rules Committee. 0:25:28.720 --> 0:25:32.080 I'm telling you more you want to know. But the 0:25:32.240 --> 0:25:36.959