Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Harry Cowie
Boca Grande/Fort Myers

Henry “Harry” Alexander Cowie, born in the town on 21 May 1891, was a leading light of the Montrose Junior Club in the early years of the twentieth century with Charlie Adams, Archie Tosh, Eddie Towns and others who also went on to professional careers. Harry Cowie served a clubmaking apprenticeship with J & W Craigie in the town.

He sailed from Glasgow on the Furnessia arriving in New York on 16 May 1910. and first found work with the clubmakers Wanamakers in the city. Even in that first year favourable accounts of his play over Van Cortlandt Park in Brooklyn had found their way back to the Montrose Standard.

He was professional at Gulfport, Mississippi with George Ensminger in 1912 (I don’t know who was professional and who was assistant or if they had equal status). They played and won a match that March for a purse of $100 against George and Harry Turpie visiting from New Orleans.

Harry Cowie was in charge of construction at the Boca Grande Gulf Shore GC between 1913 and 1915 and then retained as professional and instructor. ‘The very best that time and money can produce’, wrote Golf in August 1914, ‘with the result that the grounds are second to none in Florida’. He represented the club at the Metropolitan Open at Hartsdale, NY, that year and entered the US Open and the Western Open at Interlachen. The Florida State Championship was played at Boca Grande in January 1916 and Cowie overcame Jim Barnes .

Although he was associated with golf in the south, beginning with a spell as instructor at Orlando in the winter of 1913, ‘he had something to do with almost every golf course in Florida’, wrote the Tampa Tribune, an article in the Montrose Standard in 1916 linked him with a course in Buffalo, NY, and one in St Louis, MO. The first, I presume was the two summer seasons in 1915 and 1916 he spent in charge of the 9-hole hotel golf course at Lake Dunsmore in Vermont. I also have found mention of him playing in tournaments from Portsmouth, NH, in 1914 though, as yet, I find nothing connected with Springfield.

In 1919 he played in the US Open again at Brae Burn from the luxurious Tate Springs club in Tennessee and, in August of that year, won the first Tennessee state championship.

He designed the first nine-hole course in Arcadia, De Soto County, Florida, in 1922 having looked at five possible locations for it with A C Polk in 1920.

In June 1928 he took over as professional at Fort Myers and made significant improvements to the course. The town is, of course, now well known as a golfing destination but Cowan helped to put it on the map, both by the course improvements, and by promoting the 1928 Open tournament which brought Gene Sarazen and Horton Smith as high-visibility competitors. Sadly, the next year, he had four teeth extracted and, having been given a painkilling injection, died in his bed on 24 August 1929 apparently from heart failure. He was only 38 and left a wife and four young children.

Image by kind permission of Boca Grande History Center

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