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You can argue until
you’re blue in the face about where golf started in America; about
where the first shot was struck; about when the first golf course was
built. But the truth appears to be that the game was initially imported
to the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Maybe that’s why there’s such
great golf in South Carolina. |
 omebody
had it bad. The year was 1743, some four decades before Charleston,
S.C., would become the queen of the Southeast. Golf was virtually
unheard of in the fledgling nation, much less in the coastal setting of
Charleston, which would eventually grow into the busiest port between
Philadelphia and the West Indies, a booming hub teeming with merchant
princes and a cultural oasis often referred to as "Little
London."
Yet there arrived at her sleepy docks a shipment of 96 golf clubs and
432 golf balls.
Yes, somebody had it bad.
It was always thought that 1786 was the first year in which golf was
born in America, for that was when the first organized group of linksmen
- the Charleston-based South Carolina Golf Club - was formed.
Members played the game over what was then known as Harleston’s Green,
a park that has long since been overgrown by the city.
But the bill of lading for the clubs and the balls that arrived in 1743 |
