Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

Registration
Edit profile

catalogue
auction
shopping cart
shipping

history
makers

search
faq
news
links
about
contact

Clubmakers

Frank Hoy
Strathpeffer
Frank Hoy was born Francis Hoy in Scoonie Parish (Leven), Fife in 1880 and is listed there in the 1881, 1891 and 1901 censuses.

Sometime in the first decade of the 20th century he moved to St Andrews to start a clubmaking apprenticeships with Robert Forgan. The 1911 census records him as a Golf Club Maker, living with wife Elsie (née Grant) and children Agnes (7) and Frank (2). As both children were born in St Andrews he must have moved about 1903 or 1904.

He was entered by the Liberal Golf Club in St Andrews to compete for the R&A amateur club medal in 1903 (I have read the pontifications of the Rules of Golf committee regarding the changing legislation on clubmakers and their exclusion and reinclusion in amateur competition between 1890 and 1910 but adduce it is only a subject to be enjoyed by Talmudic or Qu’ranic scholars and, in common with most religious prohibitions, largely honoured in the breach.) He was one of the four who won the Fife Championship in 1905 for the Liberal Club which prompted congratulations from the Liberal opposition of the day in Westminster (probably as a poke in the eye to the Conservative prime minister Balfour whose main interest was golf followed by shooting unarmed Irish protesters and setting out a disastrous policy for the Middle East). They did joke about Balfour not resigning at that point but he did later in the year!

Despite the move to St Andrews and representing a club there, he remained loyal to his roots and played for Leven Thistle in a match against St Andrews in 1907.

He was called up to the army in 1916 but Forgan appealed at a tribunal on the basis that the company would lose business to America if its clubmakers were gone. The case for two other clubmakers was dismissed but Hoy was given conditional exemption.

It was announced in March 1921 that he had been appointed to the professional’s post at Strathpeffer. This was a long trek away from any major competitions but the St Andrews Citizen kept an eye on him and reported that he had been playing excellent golf and set a professional record of 64 for the Strathpeffer course in July 1922. This record held until 1935 when Archie Compston, Open runner-up and Ryder Cup player, came north to take the waters and played a round with Frank Hoy against two local amateurs and lowered it to 63.

His association with the Strathpeffer club was a long and happy one. He was still professional when he died on 29 May 1958 and his gravestone in Fodderty records his 38 years as professional at Strathpeffer.

Search the catalogue for clubs by this maker