HOW GOLF SWEPT THE WORLD
By Iain Hamilton
EDINBURGH, July 12 - It is a truth universally acknowledged that golfers -- and Scottish golfers in particular -- do not lie.
It is thus with sincere appreciation that this reviewer approached a history of the game of golf, The Greatest Game, The Ancyent & Healthfulle Exercyse of the Golff, as written by Professor David Purdie, a retired medical professor, and marvellously illustrated by artist Hugh Dodd.
It is a full and detailed history: how the Great Game impacted on Ancient Rome, a subversive attempt by the Dutch to claim its origin, and the arrival of golf in China in the Ming Dynasty in the 15th century, it’s all there.
Of course, that well-known man about the golfing world, Scotland’s own Colin Montgomerie, does issue a small caveat in his forward the the book.
It was refreshing, he said, “to find the authors prepared to base historical statements on firm facts when available, and on equally firm powers of invention when not”.
“They have attempted nothing less than to fill the many gaps in our knowledge of the game, and they have done so with scholarship, much humour and glorious illustrations.”
The book has also been published to mark the 150th anniversary of the British Open Golf Championship, being played this week over probably the most famous venue in the world, the Old Course at St. Andrews.
Italians should feel at home. The soldiers of Imperial Rome, after all, only won the famous battle of Mons Graupius in AD 83 somewhere in Scotland’s Grampian mountains because much of the army of Picts and Scots was distracted by a golf tournament at nearby St. Andrews.
Basically, the Romans had no opposition on the battlefield, at least according to Purdie and Dodd.
Similarly, the arrival of the Chinese fleet under Admiral Zheng He at North Berwick as an offshoot of a documented foray into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420 must have led to the popularity in China during the Ming Dynasty of Chui Wan -- Hit Pellet - With Stick.
The fact that the Ming Chinese must have met the King’s Sheriff of East Lothian, Sir Menzie (pronounced Ming in Scotland) Imlay may have had a beneficial impact. At least that is Purdie’s view.
Golf may have flourished under the Ming emperors, but it faded in significance over the centuries until late in the 20th century, when it made a dramatic reappearance.
There are less contentious historical details, such as the founding of what was to become the Royal and Ancient (golf club) at St. Andrew’s in 1754 , Leith Links and the Rules, and its spread south into England, to the Americas, and to India -- where the oldest golf club outside Britain still functions, founded in Calcutta around 1829.
There is much fun to be found in the book, not least in Dodd’s marvellous and hilarious cartoon depictions of the great game in all its glory around the world.
Shakespeare is there, as is a Southern dandy in Early America, an Indian Maharajah, Mary Queen of Scots -- and a string of more recent characters undoubtedly recognisable to players of the 21st century.
“My apologies in advance if you find a resemblance within these pages. True drawings can only come from nature -- remind yourself that imitation is the finest form of flattery,” says Dodd.
The table-top book published by MacLean Dubois of Edinburgh at £25 also coinciding with a major exhibition of golf’s place in Scotland At the National Library in Edinburgh.
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