Places

Golf in Egypt is hardly a subject intrinsically linked to Scottish clubmaking but, firstly, I felt the image of putting in front of a pyramid in Golf, the USGA magazine, from 1898, was too good to pass up and, secondly, I was contacted by one of the descendants of James Hastie, professional at the Khedive (or Khedivial) Club between 1902 and 1925 looking for information.

Golf at Mena House, 1898

The Khedive club is probably the oldest golf club in the Middle-East dating from the first arrival of British troops in 1882 and was named in honour of Khedive Mohammed Tewfik. At the start of the First World War in 1914, the club included a tea pavilion, 4 polo grounds, 2 racecourses, a 12-hole golf course, 6 squash courts, 13 tennis courts, cricket pitch and 8 croquet lawns. Lord Kitchener, who was Consul-General (so effectively Gauleiter or Viceroy) as his last act before returning to join the cabinet as Secretary of State for War, demanded all Egyptian members be barred and to strip the Khedive (then Abbas Hilmi II), for his anti-British views, of honorary patronage. The first objective was easily achieved and the second was accomplished in spades with the installation of the Khedive's uncle, Hussein Khamel, on the throne in December of that year as Sultan. Accordingly, the name of the club had to change and became the Gezira Club whish persists to this day. The Oregon Daily Journal of 18 June 1907 reports on the course thar, 'from certain spots one is able with a real hard stroke to send the ball into the Nile'. We all have our golfing ambitions.

It was not the last cameo it played in Egyptian-British relations: the argument over the Sudan question in 1951, and British troops in the Canal Zone, led to Gezira Island being taken into Egyptian ownership 'for public utility purposes and for the construction of the projected Mohammed Ali stadium' and, at the same time, 'all remaining British officials in universities, government schools, the Ministry of Public Works and Egyptian State Railways' were dismissed. This was an Egyptian compromise to avoid nationalising the Suez Canal which, of course, happened five years later under Nasser.

Khedive was not the only golf course in Egypt in the nineteenth century. The picture of putting in front of the pyramid is from the Mena House Club at Giza. This was originally a hunting lodge for an earlier Khedive, Ismail the Magnificent, but sold by him and ultimately ending up in the hands of an English couple, Ethel and Hugh Fortescue Locke-King (the creator of Brooklands motor-racing circuit) who opened it as a hotel in 1886. The course at Ramleh, founded in 1893, is described in the Golfing Annual of 1898-99 as having hazards of a railway embankment, a number of bunkers and one of the entrenchments thrown up when the British Forces occupied the land in 1882 among its 18 holes. Being less than 4 miles from Alexandria it was likely to have a lot of military visitors so there were monthly rates of 5 shillings for ships, 10 for regiments (officers only, of course).

The Oregon Daily Journal cited above mentions some more of the early Egyptian courses under the headline 'Golf is Becoming Popular Game on Sunny Egypt's Sands' though one wonders about the availability of package tours from Portland in 1907. The Helouan course (they say Halouan) in the Libyan desert they note, in a mastery of understatement, 'is naturally very sandy'. Bunkers, apparently, are built from clay. A J Midgeley, who returned to be professional at Hexham in Northumberland just before the outbreak of the First World War, was the first professional here and followed by another British professional, E Jones from 1913-29 and then the innovative club designer J B Fulford who finished his career at Bulwell Forest in Nottingham. Heliopolis has more legends attached to it than most Pharaoh's tombs. Heliopolis was built as a new town (think Xanadu rather than Milton Keynes or Cumbernauld) with a palace by the Belgian Baron-General Edouard Louis Joseph Empain in 1907. Part of this complex was a golf course where Nathan Cornfoot, a globetrotting St Andrean, was a professional between 1912 and 1914. The Oregon newspaper also mentions a Kibyer Pass course (supposedly named for its remoteness) which I have not been able to identify.

The last pillar in Egypt's golfing development post-dates the Oregon Daily Journal article. This was the Maadi Sporting and Yacht Club, founded in 1921. P A Wood was professional here between 1992 and 1924.

If you were an intrepid traveller in 1907 heading for a golf tour of Egypt, the Portland newspaper warned, 'There is more trouble in Egypt with the caddies than in our own country. Unless the young Egyptians ae given sufficient backsheesh the balls of their masters get lost with a surprising rapidity. The regular pay of these lads is about 20 cents a day, but an additional 10 is required.'