These were the guys who started it all
On Wednesday, February 22, 1888, two men played a three-hole course that had been hastily laid out across a cow pasture in Yonkers, N.Y. It wasn’t the first time golf had been played in the United States: Clubs and balls were shipped from Scotland to Charleston in 1743, Scottish troops in the Revolutionary War traveled with brassies and niblicks as well as muskets, and random play was reported around the country throughout the 19th century. But that Washington’s Birthday match is among the most significant in golf history.
Not much is known about one of the competitors that day, John B. Upham. But the other, John Reid, became known as “The Father of American Golf” for forming the country’s first golf club. They were watched by four spectators, at least one of whom also helped the game grow in the U.S.
The Great Blizzard of ’88 hit a few weeks later, so it wasn’t until April that the game could be picked up again, which it was with so much enthusiasm that a larger layout with longer holes was quickly needed; a six-hole course was cut through a meadow around the corner. After a summer honing their games, five of the friends met for dinner at Reid’s home on November 14 and officially formed the Saint Andrew’s Golf Club. Their reasons, according to Herbert Warren Wind’s The Story of American Golf, were more practical than prosaic: to handle financial matters and find new members. They also elected club officers: Reid as president, Upham as secretary-treasurer, and the other three—Harry Holbrook, Kingman Putnam, and Henry Tallmadge—to the board of governors.
By the next spring, membership was up to 13, and that March, the first mixed-foursome was played, with Reid and a Miss Carrie Low eking out a win over Upham and Mrs. Reid. In 1892, Yonkers was expanding, forcing the course to move again, to a 34-acre apple orchard where a six-hole course was laid among the fruit trees. A tree behind the final green became a combination locker room and 19th hole, where players hung their coats and enjoyed sandwiches and other fare after the round. It also gave the group its now famous nickname, The Apple Tree Gang. Their Saint Andrew’s—which has relocated twice since—claims the title of oldest golf club in America.
Its members introduced others to the game, and interest took off. In no time, there were clubs throughout the Northeast and beyond. Members from one played at others, leading to intra-club competitions and the need for rules and a governing body. In 1894, at a dinner hosted by Tallmadge, representatives of Saint Andrew’s—along with Newport, Shinnecock Hills, Chicago Golf Club, and The Country Club—formed the USGA. Tallmadge became the association’s first secretary; in the years that followed, Reid held a number of leadership roles.
Although not formally a part of the Gang, Robert Lockhart was instrumental to their feats. A childhood friend of Reid’s—they grew up in Dunfermline, Scotland—Lockhart became a linen merchant in New York, which meant regular travel back to his homeland. Before a visit in late summer 1887, Reid asked his old mate to order him six clubs and two dozen gutta percha balls from Old Tom Morris’s shop in St. Andrews.
The equipment arrived at Lockhart’s New York home that fall, but before passing them on, he took them for a trial run along what is now Riverside Drive. Joined by his two sons, who took a few swings as well, they were watched by a policeman on horseback who, his curiosity piqued, asked for a turn. His first shot was long and straight, and so encouraged he tried again: He whiffed on his next four attempts, got back on his horse, and rode away.
