Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

D M Patrick
Wimbledon/Lundin Links
David Murdoch Patrick was born in Branch Street, Leven, on 8 June 1858, a son of John Patrick, a master cabinetmaker, and younger brother of Alex. His middle name of Murdoch was his mother Agnes’s maiden name. Unlike his brother, who played with the Leven club when an amateur, David was a leading player in the Leven Thistle club.

He was living with his wife Rebecca at Roseberry Terrace in Leven at the time of the 1891 census and listed as a clubmaker. I am not certain whether at this point he was working in the family business with his brother (John had died during the cholera epidemic of 1866 with Alex taking charge) or on his own account. In any event, in June of that year and on Alex’s recommendation, he took over from his brother at the Wimbledon club albeit on a much lower wage and with the title of greenkeeper rather than professional.

After five years in London he returned to Fife in 1896 to run a clubmaking business. He was long associated with Links View, a house beside the Lundin Links clubhouse which contained his workshop, and where he died in 1948. He commissioned the design of the house and shop from Gillespie and Scott in St Andrews in 1895 but it is unclear whether he lived here initially. In the 1901 census he was living at Gowanlea in the next village of Largo and moved to Links View by the time of the 1911 census. He was advertising a five-roomed house in Lundin Links (which Links View was) to let in 1908 so perhaps he used the workshop and let the house initially.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, he produced a very early wooden-headed socket putter, the “Foster’s Patent”. In addition to selling from his own premises, his clubs were advertised for sale at the new Motor, Cycle and Golf depot opened by Walter Hislop on Shandwick Place in Edinburgh in 1903 (where the Golf Depot was managed by R B Martin).

He was involved in laying out the now defunct Markinch Golf Course in 1905 (or at least he surveyed the ground sufficiently to offer the opinion to then Provost Dixon that ‘a respectable golf course can be laid out’).

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