Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

Tom Stewart
St Andrews

Tom Stewart is another famous St Andrean who is not from St Andrews at all having been born in Barry (Carnoustie) in 1861. It was there he learned his trade as a blacksmith and apparently had a fine reputation for making horseshoes.

He came to St Andrews about 1894 and after serving an apprenticeship with Robert White started in business on his own in the mid-1890s in Market Street, St Andrews, but also took over premises in The Pends when Robert White went bankrupt.

He made irons with his own name on them and, indeed, for most of the top makers and players of his time (Freddie Tait, Auchterlonie, Robert T Jones, Harry Vardon etc.) Stewart was one of the most respected club makers in Scotland and his early irons were used by Old Tom Morris himself. For quite some time irons were forged in The Pends then taken across to Market Street for finishing. St Andrews is not huge but that could not continue as the business expanded so he took premises in Greyfriars Gardens before moving to the address in Argyle Street where the business remained until his death and beyond.

His own maker's mark was a clay pipe (for the sound business reason that his brother, an engineer in Dundee, smoked such a pipe) but you will also see a stylised spider-like star on heads which he himself rejected on grounds of quality but sold on to other makers. In 1905 he registered the pipe mark as a trademark and post-1905 clubs contain this trademark information below the pipe.

In addition to his clubs his patented iron hole liners and cups (with a rounded buttom rather than flat) were used on the Old Course at St Andrews.

He retired around 1930, his business carried on by his sons, Thomas, John and Malcolm and he died in 1931. His obituary in the Dundee evening paper claims he was the first man to make a matched set of clubs. My understanding has always been that honour went to George Nicoll of Leven with the Indicator series in 1926. On looking at this in more depth it seems that the distinction is that Nicoll was the first to make sets as a mass-market project. On the other hand, Stewart made matched sets for individual golfers. So, Sir Guy Campbell, reminiscing in Golf Illustrated in 1931 said Tom had made five sets of matched irons for his father based on specifications from John Low.

There was a fourth son David who emigrated to the United States and Canada then returned to a very sad end in St Andrews two years before his father’s death.

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