Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

Registration
Edit profile

catalogue
auction
shopping cart
shipping

history
makers

search
faq
news
links
about
contact

Clubmakers

David Given
Earlsferry/Irvine
There are two Givens, if that doesn’t sound like the start of a philosophical treatise, this David and Douglas Given, his younger brother, both members of the Earlsferry Thistle club and both becoming professionals at Ayrshire clubs within a few years of each other and both competing in the Irvine Bogside professional tournament of 1904.

Announcing his appointment as Irvine Bogside greenkeeper, clubmaker and professional in 1902, the East Fife Record described him ‘as connected with this place [Earlsferry] for several years’. He was born there, David Affleck Given, on 1 November 1876, to David Given, at that time a shoemaker and later a postman, and wife Jane. By 1901 he was married to Jessie, and a clubmaker living at Sea Side, Earlsferry. He had been a regular prizewinner in Earlsferry Thistle’s competitions and had competed in the Elie Professional Tournament of 1898 won by David McEwan and featuring Taylor, Braid and Vardon and most of the other stars of the day.

In 1904 he broke the professional record for the Bogside course by five strokes. He played in the 1906 Open Championship at Muirfield and again in 1908 at Prestwick. The family had moved to Troon by the time of the 1911 census and David may have taken over from his brother at Barassie when Douglas went south to Sunningdale. He probably worked as a clubmaker for Willie Fernie at the Troon Club as the next year, when Jessie died, the address was Golf Club House, Troon. Further misfortune struck the family in 1914 when his eleven yeare old son, Leonard, died from tuberculosis in 1914.

I find nothing more about him until a note of his death. At the time of his death in Kinghorn in July 1928 he was employed as a clubmaker by William Gibson & Co in the town. The short obituary noted that he also spent time as a clubmaker at the St Cloud club in Paris.

Search the catalogue for clubs by this maker