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Scottish Golf History
ClubmakersKilled in the First World War(Source: © 2014-24, Douglas MacKenzie FSAScot) Golf professionals and clubmakers were, like every other section of society, affected by the First World War. Many clubmaking businesses went bust (Spence and Gourlay and Anderson and Blyth are two in St Andrews who met this fate) for the want of raw materials or trained staff, with their clubmakers in the trenches there were many hearings where business owners sought call-up exemption certificates for their most skilled workers. Alex Marling and George Smith just left their business Marling and Smith in Aberdeen and joined the Gordon Highlanders, Marling losing one eye, Smith his hearing in the fighting. They resumed their careers after the war as did others such as Ernest Jones despite the loss of a leg.
Others though did not return from the war. Indeed, the first British casualty of the war, John Parr, was a caddy at Friern Barnett who lied about his age (he was 16) when he joined the 4th Battalion, The Middlesex Regiment. I started off with no intention of creating a comprehensive list and I still want no connection with a roll of honour of those to whom Owen's 'old lie' dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is applied without consent after death. Were they heroes? Who can say. Many tried to avoid being sent abroad through appeals to military tribunals. Perhaps these is more heroism in doing what is expected of you when you are terrified and do not want to be there rather than simply being in the wrong place when shrapnel explodes. To me it is still a list of laddies killed in their prime for reasons which even after a century’s reflection are unclear. There are deeper issues here which I hope to write about at book length, the arguments as to whether sport should continue during conflict, most in Scotland will be familiar with McCrae's battalion; and the elderly gentlemen who could pontificate in the press about caddies being better used on the Somme while they themselves continued to play over the links. The British Legion's Sport and the War project encouraged sporting organisations to document the deaths of professional members and the PGA picked up on my work here. It's difficult: the PGA lost much of its archive during bombing in the Blitz; the R&A messed about with definitions so that clubmakers who perhaps never played the game were still classed as professionals even if they never sought this status (or contrary to the rules played in amateur competitions) nor did anything we would now think of as part of a golf professional's duties. Then there is terminology. Many clubs, especially in the West of Scotland, but not exclusively, used the term greenkeeper for professional whereas others meant by this someone who cut the grass. If there has been a long career before WWI it may be possible to unpick the difference from newspaper articles on tournament play but assistants may have gone from school to the golf course to death in the trenches in a very short time. If you have someone in your family you feel should be remembered or researched here, or particulary by the PGA who are creating a permanent memorial, please get in touch.
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