Charleston Golf Guide: HIGH TIMES IN THE LOWCOUNTRY (page 2)

was recently uncovered at the customs house at the Port of Leith, near Edinburgh. It clearly showed that some semblance of golf was enjoyed on Yankee soil long before a clutch of mashie-armed gents called themselves a club.
The 96 clubs and 36 dozen balls went to David Deas, a merchant who later went into business with his brother, John. The brothers hailed from a shipping family in Leith, where, it is speculated, they received their initiation into the royal and ancient game and on the five-hole Leith Links, home to the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, which is recognized as the oldest golf club in the world.
David and John apparently could not shake their addiction when they reached America. According to their descendants, at least, the honor of having introduced golf to the New World belongs to the Deas brothers.
But wait.
There is evidence that American golf didn’t get its start in Charleston at all, but in Fort Orange (now Albany), N.Y. It wasn’t the most glorious start, granted, but local records reveal that in March of 1657, a group of irate citizens complained to the town magistrates that inconsiderate golfers were playing in the streets and causing damage.
In 1659, an ordinance was passed that prohibited the playing of golf in the streets.
Never mind. That form of golf was more like street hockey.
Charleston is where the Scottish passion officially sank roots. Although this graceful, moss-draped city has no Old Course or imposing edifice to which pilgrims solemnly trek, it has in its archives intriguing data about the sport that determinedly found its way across the Atlantic.
Andrew Carnegie called golf the "natural adjunct of the civilized man." If that’s true, the sport could not have chosen a more appropriate place to begin a second life. The post-Revolutionary era in Charleston was classically genteel. There were soirees, balls, plays and concerts. Many of the elite traveled regularly from their mansions to second homes in Britain.
Conjecture has it that the Deas brothers fashioned the holes at Harleston’s Green after those at Leith Links. Whatever their inspiration, their course was smack in the middle of a public park.
But then, that was very much the custom in 18th century Scotland and England. The term "green fee" evolved from the use of public

parks, or greens, as golfing ground. Said monies were collected by town authorities.
Golf at Harleston’s Green was a wildly random affair.
Teeing areas, putting surfaces and flagsticks were nonexistent. One simply aimed for a specified hole in the ground. Keeping score was unheard of.
To facilitate this "blindman’s" version of golf, a "finder" a kind of forecaddie, possibly another member or a slave was delegated to keep ahead of the players, locate each hole and mark it with a gull’s feather or simply point to it.
Those forecaddies of yore had quite a job on their hands. They not only had to zero in on the obscure holes, but they had to clear traffic as well.

Harleston’s Green was a popular park, and golfers could sometimes find their round blocked by a horse race, a cattle show, a cricket match, children playing or a nanny pushing a perambulator.
If any of the above was in the golfer’s line of fire, the forecaddie would cry, "Fore!" (short for "You are forewarned!") and point to the advancing golfers who wore scarlet coasts for high visibility.
The South Carolina Golf Club was Scottish to the core, a clan whose members stuck together. There was still a good deal of anti-Scottish sentiment after the war.
Indeed, one Charlestonian wrote in 1787 about his distaste for the seemingly omnipresent burr: "I regret that in walking our streets, whether convinced by the Dialect or the Names of those supply our wants ... we should rather conceive ourselves in the Highlands of Scotland, than in an American state."
The formidable Scottish mercantile community (almost all of Charleston’s merchants were from Scotland) was socially non grata. Planters would have nothing to do with the Scots or their pastime.

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