Glasgow

Today there are well-known golf links courses in the south-west of Scotland, but in the 16th and 17th Centuries, golf was a game played between December and March, when the grass was naturally cropped short and there was no agricultural work to be done. At this time of the year, prominent Scots from the shires went to Edinburgh for the social ‘season’ and the convenience of warmer winter city living. This meant they mainly played their golf in the east.

First mentions of golf in the west, as is common elsewhere, are in the annals of the Kirk. In 1589, the Glasgow Kirk Session decreed ‘no golf, carrict, shinnie, in the High or Blackfriars yard, Sunday or weekday’. As this stricture does not limit itself to just ‘Sunday observance’, it may have been occasioned by the dangers of playing ball and stick games in confined spaces, much as you see the signs today ‘NO BALL GAMES ALLOWED.’ The location also implies the game being banned was the ‘short’ form of golf, as discussed at length by David Hamilton.

Possibly because there were no coastal links accessible to the good burgesses of Glasgow in the early days of golf, they used Glasgow Green, shown above as it is today. Glasgow Green has been landscaped and most of it looks very different now to the time when the golfers played there.

In 1642, Glasgow University, like St Andrews University in the same year, declared their approval of such sports as ‘Gouffe, Archerie, and the lyk’ (sic). In 1674, there is a record of golf equipment being bought for the young Earl William of Annandale, who was attending Glasgow Grammar School.

In 1721, James Arbuckle, a student at Glasgow University, wrote a poem about the River Clyde, which he called ‘Glotta’. In it, he incidentally records several details about golf on Glasgow Green, the clubs and the game, though he does not appear to have been a golfer himself.

Care is needed in interpreting exact details, given the difficulties of poetic rhyme and the ‘licence’ poets take as a result.

Glasgow Golf Club played on Glasgow Green from 1787 to 1870 when they moved to Queens Park because the Green was common ground and becoming popular. From the beginning of the 19th Century play became difficult. The overcrowding was compounded by a municipal drainage scheme in 1813, which apparently made the area ‘unpleasant’. This role is now fulfilled by the local brewery.