Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

James A Black
Montreal/Dorval

James Anderson Black was a Scottish professional in Montreal (playing regularly in the Canadian championship from its first staging in 1904) and becoming one of the founder members in 1911 of what became the Canadian PGA.

He was born in St Andrews in 1879, a son of Thomas Black, a fisher, and his wife Euphemia Waters. The large family (there were eight children at home on the 1901 census) lived at 8 Market Street. He served his clubmaking apprenticeship in Old Tom Morris’s shop.

Black was one of those golfers, common in Scotland but far rarer in England, who combined this sport with football. Although he did not play football professionally, he was secretary and treasurer of the Templars Club FC in St Andrews which was quite a breeding ground for footballing golfers: John Gatherum being a fine outside right, Andrew Dewar, on the other wing, went on to play professionally for East Fife before emigrating to the United States as a golf pro.

James emigrated to Canada in 1902 andis listed as a professional at Royal Montreal but I have not seen precise dates for this. If the lists are in sequential order then it must have been sometime between 1900 and 1905, the first date being when Tom Smith, as the local professional, played against the visiting Harry Vardon, the second when Charlie Murray took over for a 33 year stay at the club. A piece written by James Sorley in 1913 said Black had been in Montreal for ‘nearly ten years’.

This would fit with him becoming professional at the Beaconsfield club, an affiliation I first find reported in an account of a competition in Outremont in 1906.

From a slow start, growth in Canadian golf accelerated quickly. In 1914 there were such long waiting lists at Beaconsfield, Royal Montreal and Kanawaki, Black was asked to produce plans for another Beaconsfield course at Beaurepaire although it did not open until 1926.

Black remained at Beaconsfield until taking up the post of professional at the Elm Ridge club in Dorval in March 1927. After a year here he became professional at Gray’s Rock Inn, St Jovite, where he spent 21 years as professional.

His death, 'after a short illness' was reported in December 1949.

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