History of Golf - Part Four: The First Heroes

When you spoke the word ‘professional’ in the early 1800s, you were referring to a professional caddie. The caddies were the only group that made a living from the game. They carried the clubs, certainly, but in 1800 they did so much more. In Robert Browning’s book “A History of Golf” he describes the early caddie as “his patron’s guide, philosopher, and his friend, his instructor when he was off his game, and co-arbiter with the opposition caddie in all disputes.”
 
Caddies were, in short, usually the best players. The best known in the early 1800s was David Robertson of St. Andrews. He was known as a “senior caddie, ” whose duties were primarily to carry for the captain of St. Andrews on important occasions.
 
Robertson was the last of the senior caddies. His son, Allan Robertson, was also a caddie as a youth, but he emerged as the first great professional player.
 
The Robertsons were also ball-makers, carefully stuffing feathers into leather spheroids. But Allan was an exceptional golfer. In a series of famous matches watched by one of Scotland’s largest sporting crowds of the 19th century, he teamed with his assistant, Tom (Old Tom) Morris, to play the Dunn brothers, Willie and Jamie of Musselburgh.
 
The four were to play a trio of matches in 1849, the first to be at the Dunn’s course at Musselburgh. The second was at St. Andrews, the home of Robertson and Morris. The third was at the neutral location of North Berwick. The matches were each to be 20 holes, and at stake was 400 pounds – a huge sum in those days. Of course, side-bets were made from the spectators totaling many times more than that.
 
The Dunns won the first match easily on their home course, 13 and 12, principally because Robertson played poorly. Allan and Tom barely won the second match at St. Andrews. And at North Berwick in the decider, Robertson and Morris were down four with but eight holes to play.
 
Then, in one of the great comebacks in golf history, Robertson and Morris rallied to win six holes in a row, taking the match 2-up and winning the series, 2-1.
 
It was a great golfing tandem, the old master Robertson and his apprentice Morris. However, they would split friendships before too long over a dispute about golf balls. Robertson was a featherie man all the way. Morris had begun to use the gutta percha ball, which had come into widespread use in the middle of the 1800s.
 
The gutta percha was much superior to the featherie, hard as opposed to the soft ball which was subject to abuse by so many objects along the ground. Robertson, remember, was a ball-maker and did not want to see the age of the featherie come to an end. The dispute caused a split between the two which lasted the remainder of Robertson’s life. However, the featherie was doomed with the gutta percha quickly taking over as the ball of choice – Robertson’s angry protests notwithstanding.
 
Robertson did, however, make one contribution to the game, the effects of which are still felt today. Previous to Robertson, the iron club was used strictly to extricate oneself from difficult lies. The rest of the clubs were used to score, and they all had wooden faces. Robertson introduced the iron as the way to approach the green. No longer would golfers use woods with their greater mass only for extrication from ruts and such.