Golf originated in England and Scotland, and though American colonists played, the game quickly disappeared from the United States after the Revolutionary War. It came back in the 1880s, when the founders of the first country clubs discovered that golf suited their needs better than the traditional pastimes of horsing and hunting. Until the 1970s, private courses outnumbered municipal and daily-fee courses open to the public. The link between golf and the country club largely determined how the game developed, who played it, and how it has been perceived.
Elites developed country clubs in the late-nineteenth century to restore social order in the face of rapid immigration, industrialization, and urbanization. Country club members found golf especially appealing because it promised to revive the health of upper-class Victorians, some of whom believed they were suffering from a collective attack of nerves called neurasthenia. By the 1920s, country clubs had become appealing to the middle class. Modest clubs marked class, religious, and social distinctions as surely as wealthy white Protestant clubs did, but they also introduced golf to a wider audience. In 1916, there were fewer than 1,000 courses; by 1930, there were almost 6,000.
Golf also provided some of the earliest opportunities for women in sport. Though some clubs discriminate against women even today (by restricting weekend play to men, for example, or requiring wives or daughters to join in the names of husbands or fathers), many allowed women to play from the beginning. Men considered golf appropriate for the feminine constitution and temperament. It required more finesse than brute strength, and golfers competed against themselves and the course, not each other. Given the chance to play, however, women established themselves on their own terms. Olympic champion Babe Didrikson Zaharias pursued golf later in her career because she believed it would soften her unpopular androgynous image, but she immediately became famous for her powerful drives.
In 1894, representatives of the leading clubs created golf's first governing body, the United States Golf Association
(USGA), to promote the increasingly popular game, set rules, and sponsor tournaments. In 1916, a group of professionals, fed up with USGA policies that clearly favored amateurs, formed the Professional Golfers Association (PGA). The Ladies Professional Golfers Association was constituted in 1950.
American golfers lagged behind Europeans until 1913, when Francis Ouimet shocked the golf world by defeating England's best at the U.S. Open. Ouimet, who learned the game as a caddie, was the first of many working-class kids who taught themselves golf by carrying equipment at private clubs that would never accept them as members. The list also includes Walter Hagen, Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, and Byron Nelson. Hagen and Bobby Jones, an aristocratic amateur, dominated the game in the 1920s and became America's first golf superstars. Hagen won eleven "majors" in his career: two U.S. Opens, four British Opens, and five PGA Championships. Jones, who in the 1930s founded the fourth major, the Masters, took three British Opens and four U.S. Opens, plus five U.S. amateur titles. Together they established golf as a spectator sport.
During the Depression and World War II, golf's reputation suffered. Americans were feeling sober, and nothing seemed to symbolize the frivolous leisure class better than rich men in knickers chasing a ball around the manicured lawn of a private club. In the 1950s, the civil rights movement focused attention on the game's racism and on the segregation of most country clubs. As private organizations, the clubs were not required to integrate, and most did not. Many cities transferred public courses to private owners to keep them white. The golf establishment did not confront its race problem until 1990, when civil rights groups threatened to picket the PGA Championship, scheduled for the all-white Shoal Creek Country Club. Shoal Creek quickly admitted a black member, and the PGA promised to hold subsequent tournaments only at integrated courses. The same year, the U.S. Open champion Tom Watson resigned from his club because it refused a Jewish member. The desire for PGA events has encouraged most clubs to open their admission policies, but actual progress remains slow.
Nevertheless, golf has enjoyed years of fantastic growth. In the 1960s, Arnold Palmer, whose loyal fans are known as "Arnie's Army," and Jack Nicklaus, the "Golden Bear," helped make televised golf a success. At the beginning of the twenty-first century the game thrives inter-nationally, with celebrated players from all over the world and Ryder Cup competition between national teams. In 2002, Tiger Woods led the surge in the sport's popularity. As the game's most dominant player and first African American star, he introduced golf to a much wider demographic. With about 10,000 municipal or daily-fee courses and only half that many private courses, golf has become more accessible than ever.
Bibliography
Cayleff, Susan E. Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.
Chambers, Marcia. The Unplayable Lie: The Untold Story of Women and Discrimination in American Golf. New York: Pocket Books, 1995.
Lowe, Stephen R. Sir Walter and Mr. Jones: Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones, and the Rise of American Golf. Chelsea, Mich.: Sleeping Bear Press, 2000.
Moss, Richard J. Golf and the American Country Club. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
