THE INTRODUCTION OF GOLF INTO THE UNITED STATES.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—I have just been reading an entertaining little pamphlet written by Mr. Samuel L. Parrish about the formation of the first incorporated golf club in the United States. Mr. Parrish was among those Americans who urged their country to enter the War almost from the beginning, and readers of the Spectator may remember letters lie wrote in that connexion.
Mr. Parrish relates how he was travelling in Italy in the spring of 1891 when he received a letter from an American friend in Biarritz who had just discovered golf. Mr. Parritht says that up to that time he had never even heard the word. In the summer of that year he and Mr. Edward S. Mead (one of the Americans who had discovered golf at Biarritz), on returning home froth Europe, determined to start a golf club in Long Island. General Thomas Barber became infected with their enthusiasm, and the result was that the help of the Royal Montreal Golf Club—the oldest golf club in Canada, founded in 1873—was invoked. The Montreal Club sent its Scotch-Canadian professional to Southampton in Long Island, and, as a result, a course was laid out on the Shinnecock Hills. Although the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club was the first incorporated dub in the United States it had been preceded by the casually created St. Andrew's Club at Yonkers, formed in 1888, and by the Tuxedo Golf Club.
The visit of the Montreal professional to the Shinnecock Hills in Long Island very nearly ended in nothing. After his first glance at the hills the professional, Willie Dunn by name, exclaimed that he was sorry that the gentlemen had put themselves to so much trouble and expense in fetching him as no golf course could be made on land of that character. The party had already turned away in disappointment when Mr. Parrish happened to ask Dunn what kind of land he did want for a course. Mr. Parrish remarks that he was so ignorant at that time about golf that he had it in his mind that trees or other natural obstacles might be required. Dunn explained what sort of ground was desirable,whereupon Mr. Parrish exclaimed that the very thing was to be found on another part of the Shinnecock Hills. Directly Dunn saw this new site he began to map out a course. Mr. Elihu Root was one of the original members of the Club. The pamphlet throughout has an air of antiquarian research, yet it deals with things that happened only thirty-two years
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