Play a round of golf history
St. Andrew’s of North America: Golf has been played on Peterborough courses since 1870
Twenty years ago, when I wrote the history of the Peterborough Golf and Country Club on the occasion of its centenary, there were four significant stories that were most compelling.
First, I found that golf has been played continuously in Peterborough since 1870, starting with three families who converged on Peterborough with wellhoned loves of golf. This proved to be unmatched anywhere in North America, and so I argued that Peterborough was the St. Andrew’s of North American golf. This would be a great way to promote golf tourism in our region. My fullest argument on this was in my 2009 book, An Historian’s Notebook, which is available from Trent Valley Archives.
Second, I was captivated by the possible links between Bob Abbott, our premier golfer from the 1920s to the 1960s, and Gene Sarazen, who won his first three majors at a younger age than anyone else, including Tiger Woods.
Third, the first major golfing trophy, the J.R. Stratton Trophy, was awarded simultaneously to the top female and male golfers, and their names were engraved on the trophy. The first recorded event at the club was mixed pairs. In Peterborough, golf was equally for men and women.
Fourth, the Peterborough Golf Club was established on a site in 1897, and it had expanded and changed in many ways, but part of that course was part of the 1997 course (and still in 2017). This was rare in the North American experience because golf courses tended to move from their first sites to roomier locations in the suburbs that allowed for longer yardage, more practice facilities, larger club houses, and financial rewards from selling the original course and from lower property taxes in the suburbs.
Two new books, both enjoyable in different ways, allowed me the opportunity to relive the great experiences I enjoyed while researching and writing the book on the Peterborough Golf and Country Club. I worked closely with some great golfers and greens keepers; I watched golfers of all ages hone their skills; I watched exciting tournaments; and I enjoyed the great foot. I learned that I was a golfist, and many people who define themselves as golfers, were really golfists too.
Ed Arnold and Roger Self made great use of Self’s vast archives of clippings and memorabilia. Titled Peterborough’s Golf Story and More, the book cleverly has chapters called holes all the way to the 19th Hole. The first hole confirmed that Peterborough is the St. Andrew’s of North American golf. Most of the holes spin around a particular decade and a special group of competitors, male, female and youth. Those getting the most attention were great golfers who showed their acumen by winning more titles, going further afield, or contributing to the growth of golfing in our area. Most of the best golfers came from the Peterborough Golf and Curling Club or from the Kawartha Golf Club. This proved to be a clever way to organize the material.
While Self’s archives identified the great moments in local golfing since the 1920s, the book’s main characteristic is interviews with the outstanding golfers, often commenting on rivals or friends. In a sense, the book is a collective biography of the best golfers, especially at Peterborough and Kawartha, and occasionally Pinecrest. The years are defined by the competitions and tournaments, and often by the gender issues at the clubs.
A fascinating part of their story covers what happened to the junior golfers that I watched in 1997. Vicky Appleton played on the pro tour. Reg Millage, after a university career at Virginia Commonwealth University, is coaching golfers for the Golf Association of Ontario. Several more young golfers have emerged from the strong program established by Randy Millage, and many have won golf scholarships mostly to American colleges and have proved to be strong additions to those golf programs.
Some golfers were legends for several decades: Bob Abbott and Bob Jamieson, for example, both of whom are threads to the narratives over several holes. This book is a celebration of the best golfers who came out of Peterborough, and that more recently the reach of local golfers is boundless.
The second book on golf is David Sowell’s biographical study of Gene Sarazen, one of the earliest golfers to win all the majors. Sarazen’s great win at the 1935 Masters is recounted every April, as he shot an albatross (three under par) on the 15th hole that allowed him to catch the leader in clubhouse. My earliest memories of Sarazen are when he hosted the television show, Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf in the 1960s and 1970s. I first golfed at a course that had sand greens and rubber mats, a contrast to Sarazen’s great courses all viewed in living colour. During the 1990s, Sarazen was one of the legends of golf that started proceedings by driving the first shots from the first tee.
When I was researching the history of the Peterborough Golf Club, one compelling story was that Bob Abbott, the star of the local club and formerly the star of the Yale golf team when Yale was the NCAA powerhouse in golfing, once had Gene Sarazen as a caddie while golfing in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The story was plausible as Sarazen was raised on the strip of New York state that bordered Connecticut and was known to have learned his golf as a caddie. I even phoned the USGA headquarters in Florida and in due course talked to Sarazen’s agent. Of course, the story was more important to Abbott than to Sarazen.
Plausible was not good enough. The story that troubled me was that Sarazen played Abbott at the Peterborough Golf Club in 1936, and the extensive coverage in the Examiner never even hinted that they might have met nearly 20 years earlier. Sarazen was in Peterborough accompanied by Joe Kirkwood, an Australian golfer who was famed for his many tricks in hitting golf balls. The visitors played the club pro, William Fairweather, and Abbott, and won handily. Ed Arnold and Roger Self credited the story on pages 19-20: “… with future golf legend Gene Sarazen his 14-year-old caddie, he won the Brooklyn Country Club championship in 1916.” Maybe.
The Sarazen book discusses Sarazen’s years as a caddie, and the years in which he toured with Joe Kirkwood. During his caddy years, he was Eugenio Saraceni, which he changed when he was working in the pro shop. Sarazen’s big break came at the Brooklawn Country Club in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where the pro was George Sparling. Sparling thought caddies hoping to become golfers were common and Sarazen had to be persistent to get Sparling’s attention. That came on a par five at Brooklawn where the young Sarazen reached the green of a par five in two blazing shots, as he had bet he could do. As with so many stories tied to legends and to many Sarazen stories, the exact date is not apparent. Bob Abbott came to Peterborough from Bridgeport, Connecticut to found the Canadian operations of Raybestos, and so could have been at Brooklawn when Sarazen was also.
The other moment of Sarazan’s connection to Peterborough would be when he and Kirkwood were touring en route to the Canadian Open. In 1932, when Sarazen won both the British Open and the U.S. Open, he chose to skip the Canadian Open. His promotion for Ovaltine, which had its North American offices in Peterborough, that year, appeared in the August issue of Golf and Sports Illustrated. When Sarazen and Kirkwood appeared in Peterborough on August 12, 1936, the papers suggested they had also been here in 1934. Kirkwood, according to a promotion in 1936, had “long been in the headlines for his play and for his uncanny trick shots. They are both amazing and humourous and have earned him a world-wide reputation among golfers.
He can grind a ball into the turf and dig it out cleanly with a shot; he can drive off hard with so much back-spin that the ball falls behind him; he can drive off six balls so fast they are all in the air at once; he can shoot and slice from all angles. And he can imitate a duffer so well that even the duffer laughs.” (Examiner, August 6, 1936).
David Sowell comments on the teamwork of Kirkwood and Sarazen which made money to supplement the meagre purses at the tournaments. In 1933, they played 30 matches in 30 days, from Georgia to Massachusetts. In 1934, they toured South America from January to mid-May. They could have played matches before the U.S. Open, in mid-June at the Merion Cricket Club outside Philadelphia. After the PGA, they did a far-western tour of the U.S. and Canada ending in Vancouver; they went to the Pacific and Australia. I was surprised that the KirkwoodSarazen team had gone to so many places, including two visits to the Peterborough club.
Both books are fascinating and offer insights into stories that have dogged me for 20 years. Sarazen was here in 1934 and 1936. Women were very important to the local golfing scene. Peterborough is the St. Andrew’s of North American golf. And as Arnold and Self would agree, golf is life.
NOTES: The books cited are Ed Arnold and Roger Self, Peterborough’s Golf Story and More (Peterborough, Sketches to Remember, 2017), and David Sowell, Sarazen: the story of a golfing legend and his epic moment (Rowan and Littlefield, 2017) ... For Doors Open on May 6, Elwood Jones will be joining Don Willcock to lead a story about the downtown streetscapes of the block from Hunter to Simcoe and George to Water after the Great Fire of 1861. These tours will begin at 10 am and at 2 pm. As well, he will be at St. John’s Anglican Church around noon for the unveiling of the new Pilgrim’s Guide to the church, a book designed as an illustrated guide to let people do view the history of the church. Visit www. doorsopenontario.on.ca/peterborough for details.