Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

Bob S Simpson
St Louis/Omaha/San Diego

Bob or Bobby Simpson as most US mentions of him are was born Robert Scott Simpson on 22 March 1879 in Carnoustie. His own preference was apparently Bob S Simpson to avoid confusion with Robert Simpson the famous clubmaker, also from Carnoustie but no relation, with whom he served his apprenticeship. I have never seen a club he made, and Pete Georgiady writes that ‘he was not prolific’ which seems strange given the high reputation in clubmaking he had in Carnoustie.

The piece in the Dundee Courier in 1899 announcing the departure of Bob Simpson for the New World with fellow clubmakers from Robert Simpson’s Carnoustie business, George Low and Arthur Rigby stated his destination was the Oconomowoc club in Wisconsin. He did end up there but not directly!

He went first to the St Louis Country Club in Missouri where he attracted much interest particularly when he announced his intention to enter the 1901 US Open at 22, one of the youngest professionals in the country. There was an extraordinary amount of coverage of golf in the St Louis press at this time considering that a match between Simpson and James Foulis n May 1901 to open the Glen Echo links was described in the St Louis Republic as ‘the first real match played in St Louis between professionals’. The rival St Louis Post-Dispatch earlier that year had even run a pictorial spread on him demonstrating ‘proper positions for golf shots’.

By 1902 he finally reached Oconomowoc. Golf, the US version of the magazine, had an article in 2016 in which owners and members of La Belle Golf Club in Wisconsin were amazed to learn of Willie Anderson, four times US Open champion, having been a professional at the club when it was known as Oconomowoc, and of Alec Smith being its first professional. It asks ‘what are the odds two legendary names in US Open history would pass through the same club in a sleepy Wisonsin resort town?’ Well, pretty good actually: it’s the way it worked. A small and close group of Carnoustie clubmakers emigrated to the US between 1899 and 1902 and wound up in Chicago. They played together, toured together and recommended one another for professional posts first throughout the mid-west and then later extending to California (Willie Anderson is an exception in that he came from North Berwick). The article completely misses the fact that, between Smith and Anderson, Bob Simpson (once the highest paid pro in American golf) was the club’s second professional, briefly, in 1902, between his time in St Louis and moving to Riverside, IL (though I see the club’s own website now includes mention of him).

In 1906 he was professional at the Country Club of Memphis and certainly dodged a bullet. ‘J W Skinner had been employed …. by the Country Club and his wife was thrown much in the society of Robert Simpson, golf instructor’. Both Peter Georgiady and Stewart Hackney [David Ainslie] go with the story that Mrs Bundy Gandy Skinner, seeing her husband approaching with a revolver, threw herself between him and Simpson and ‘receiving the shots in her own body, was killed’. The Tennessean newspaper reporting at the time is more prosaic. Simpson had been warned off by Skinner and when Mrs Skinner telephoned him, ‘he advised her not to come about him’. She did not heed the warning and when she called, Simpson went across the street from the club to a grocery store where ‘Skinner was lounging and requested that he take his wife home’. ‘Approaching the woman, Skinner placed a pistol to her forehead and fired, shooting twice more after she had fallen. He claims he was trying to shoot Simpson but circumstances are against his claim’.

You can’t blame Bob for getting as far away from Memphis as possible and in 1907 he became professional at the Omaha Country Club in Nebraska from where he won the 1907 Western Open with Fred McLeod and Willie Anderson in the places behind him.

1908 saw him at Blue Mound in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, and it was his move a little further south from Milwaukee to Kenosha in 1910 which prompted the story that he had become the highest paid professional in the United States. From here he won the Western Open again in 1911 but when he entered in 1913 he was not attached to any club.

Like many other of the early Carnoustie professionals, after the mid-west he moved to California becoming professional at the Orange County Country Club in November 1914. The Santa Ana Register celebrated his time there, and how he had improved players, in an article in January 1917 but shortly afterward he was to take up the plum job of professional at the Coronado Club. This was Hollywood’s playground, beside the hotel where the Duke of Windsor met Wallis Simpson, from where Lindbergh took off for New York for his transatlantic flight and Bob Simpson thrived. The course was extended but he still broke the old course record with a 68. He won the Southern California Open with a big purse when it was held here in 1922 and he built up the Spreckels (the resort’s owners) Gold Cup into a major tournament. With his assistant Jimmy Mason he laid out a new course at Calexico in 1926.

Then it all went wrong. With the advent of World War II the navy needed to expand their facilities and the golf course had to go. I have not yet verified all the details but the story I have is that Bob was no longer in demand. He had to earn a living at driving ranges in San Diego. Eventually he found a job as professional at a public course in La Mesa in East County, living in the back of the pro shop. He died here on 22 November 1945. The Nevada State Journal, no doubt remembering his time in Omaha, wrote a small piece captioned. ‘Ex-US Golfing King dies at 66’, ascribing the 1909 US Open to him (he tied for 44th). No article on the internet covers his career or has much information (which is why I wrote this one!).

He is buried in Mt Hope Cemetery, San Diego, alongside his wife Elsie who died in 1958.

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