Rare Philp putter could fetch £25,000 at auction

A rare golf club made in Fife nearly 200 years ago is expected to sell for about £25,000 at an auction in America.

The long nose putter was made by Fife-born Hugh Philp at around the time that the Society of St Andrews Golfers changed its name, in 1834, to the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. Philp was the R& A’s golf club maker. Now the Philp putter is up for sale and is set to fetch about $30,000 at Bonhams in Los Angeles on March 29.

The putter is part of a collection of 200 antique golf clubs and golfing mementoes lovingly assembled over a lifetime by American attorney Will Roberto which are expected to sell for about £800,000 at the forthcoming Bonhams auction.

According to auctioneers Bonhams: “Hugh Philp was born at Cameron in Fife. He learned his trade as a joiner and carpenter in St Andrews.

“With no club makers in the area golfers began to take their broken clubs to Philip on Argyle Street for repair.

“Within a few years he had mastered the art of club making. In 1819, the Society of St Andrews Golfers (now the R& A) appointed Allan Robertson as a ball maker and Hugh Philp as its club maker.

“Philp moved his shop to be near the links.”

In his 1887 work, Reminiscences Of Golf On St Andrews Links, James Balfour says : “Of club makers no man has ever approached Hugh Philp.

“Even now to possess a club of his is a treasure like an old Cremona violin to a musician, or a Toledo blade to a swordsman.”

The imminent auction of Philp’s putter coincides with the 231st anniversary of Philp’s birth at Cameron, on March 19 1786. Philp was 70 when he died at St Andrews on April 2 1856.

The rare Hugh Philp putter which is in the Bonhams auction at the end of this month.