Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

James A Donaldson
Aberdeen/Boulogne/Chicago

The son of a keen Aberdeen amateur playing in the Victoria club in the 1880s, James A Donaldson first caught the public eye playing in the Evening Telegraph cup (effectively the Scottish Amateur Championship) from Aberdeen’s Bon Accord club in 1898. The next year he lost in the (UK) Amateur Champiomship to Robert Maxwell, certainly no disgrace.

In 1903 he won the Cruden Bay championship, defeating Harold Hilton in the final and, turning professional, served the Deeside club at Bieldside as their professional from 1905 until 1907. At the end of that year he seems to have acquired a wanderlust and advertised ‘100 golf clubs all kinds, slightly shop-soiled, to be cleared at about half-price’ from Bieldside. He went as the first professional to the newly laid out North Kent club (which disappeared before the First World War) in 1908 but was soon engaged as professional at Le Touquet where he was coach to Baron Erlanger. He was back briefly in Aberdeen in 1909 but was heading off across the channel again at the end of April to be professional at Boulogne with a young Aberdonian, William Leith, as his assistant. His wife was to be in charge of catering in the clubhouse. I presume the membership of the club was principally British rather than French so unlikely to be disturbed by vegetables cooked to death in the traditional Scottish fashion.

America was his next destination. He seems to have travelled on spec early in 1910 finding employment at Glenview, near Chicago, in March after he arrived, again with Willie Leith as his assistant. For, at least, 1911 to 1913 he was employed in the winter months as professional and clubmaker in San Antonio but he, in fact, took another Aberdonian, Tom McQuarrie, with him as clubmaker. During his time at Glenview he finished 6th in the US Open of 1914. A rare piece of good news among golf professionals being killed in the First World War was the announcement in the P&J of the birth of his faughter in Evanston, IL, on 10.3.1915.

He left Glenview in 1917 and the next year he was at the Norwood Links at West Long Branch on the Jersey Shore. Sometime in the early 1920s he moved to the Fenimore club in New York (named after nearby resident James Fenimore Cooper, author of Last of the Mohicans). I am not sure when but the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of October 1927 describes him as pro here ‘these many years’. The club took on Leo Diegel as playing professional in 1927 and, the following year, “Wild” Bill Mehlhorn. Mehlhorn described the arrangement thus, ‘Donaldson is the working pro. He teaches, manages the shop and does the usual things one expects from a professional. Diegel is the playing pro, the fellow who hops around, winning wherever he can for the edification of Fenimore’s members.’ Mehlhorn concluded by claiming he was the bridge professional.

Among the courses he designed was the Olympic Lakeside in San Francisco (a collaboration in 1917) and the Olivos GC’s course in Buenos Aires.

I have not seen many clubs bearing his name but those I have are irons imported from Tom Stewart in St Andrews.

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