Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

James S Lawson
Carnoustie/Flint/Chicago

Born in Carnoustie in 1886, Jimmy Lawson excelled at two sports: football and golf. He had a successful junior football career, playing twice for Scotland in 1908, before becoming a full-time professional with Dundee FC, Dundee’s most successful team, later in the same year. He won a Scottish Cup-Winner’s medal with Dundee in 1910 and represented the Scottish League v Irish League in 1912. At the end of that season he was in dispute with the club but eventually won his case that his weekly pay packet should not be cut from £4 to £3 in the summer months. Nevertheless, he fell from favour and was sold to Airdrie the following season.

The Footballers’ Golf tournament of the time was a serious competition, a 16 player matchplay tournament following a qualifying event. Lawson won it in both 1913 and 1914 though his abilities were well known beforehand with a strong performance in the 1911 open tournament at Cruden Bay and setting a course record over Leven links when representing Carnoustie.

He went to the United States just a few days before the First World War broke out and coached football (soccer) at Lehigh University while winning a US soccer championship medal with Bethlehem FC. He began his golfing career as an assistant in Atlantic City before going to work for A G Spalding in Chicago.

During the war he was at the Lake Shore Country Club in Chicago before joining the Canadian Army rising to the rank of Captain but remaining with home training units throughout the war. He was professional to the Lakewood, TX, club at the end of the war.

After the war, he became professional to the Flint Country Club in Michigan where he remained until going to Indianapolis Country Club sometime between 1928 and the early 1930s and stayed until the end of the Second World War.

He was living in Florida in his retirement but died on holiday, in Nassau in the Bahamas, in 1962.

Two brothers, Herbert and Fred were both golf professionals in the US.

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