How well do you know your golf history? Some of you reading this may be great scholars of the game, with erudite minds that can effortlessly recall many of the significant moments and key movers and shakers in the evolution of this auld stick and ba’ pursuit.
As for your correspondent? Well, given that my memory leaks like the cistern on a torpedoed battleship, I’ve just about forgotten what I wrote after the word ‘history’ in that opening sentence.
Help, thankfully, is at hand in the shape of Roger McStravick, a wonderful authority on golf’s days of yore and a man so steeped in all things St Andrews, he just about needs to wring his brain dry on the West Sands every week.
McStravick’s latest book tells the story of Allan Robertson, one of the most important golfing figures to emerge from the Auld Grey Toun yet one whose life has, in many ways, been shrouded in mystery and misconception.
Given that he was a ball-maker of distinction, a dominant, unrivalled champion, the first player to break 80 on the Old Course and a figure who inspired the birth of The Open in the wake of his death at just 43, the lack of recognition is somewhat befuddling.
In ‘Allan Robertson of St Andrews: The King of Clubs’, McStravick finally gives the game’s first real superstar the acclaim he deserves.
It was, however, a project tinged with sadness. “The original author was a man called Bill Williams, who came to meet myself and a few other historians in St Andrews,” said McStravick.
“Sadly, Bill died suddenly. His daughter came over to spread Bill’s ashes in St Andrews as the place meant so much to him. She brought a wee linen bag filled with all his notes and asked if I could take the book on.”
It was a task McStravick embarked upon with eye-opening gusto. “My initial impressions of Allan Robertson weren’t great and that was based on a larger book about Old Tom Morris,” admitted McStravick of a man who was often wrongly portrayed as taciturn, dubious, pawky and vainglorious and relegated to footnotes in the more celebrated careers of both Old and Young Tom Morris.
“Allan was never the hero. He was always the side mention. I was so wrong about him, though. There was a whole world that existed where Allan was the king. He was revered as a star.”
The Robertson family had been making featherie golf balls in St Andrews since the 16th century when “religious fervour and the existence of witches were everyday normal.”
Funnily enough, evidence of such piety and heresy can still be seen today when the golf writers debate a gimme during our annual outing on the Strathtyrum course.
Robertson would carry on the family business with dedication and devotion, eventually taking on Old Tom Morris – Auld Tom was young once you know – as an apprentice and playing partner.
When Morris started to play with the new guttie ball, a product which Robertson feared would render his featherie industry obsolete, the fall-out was broadly equivalent to the stooshie whipped up by a modern-day player joining LIV.
“It was so much more than an argument over a ball,” added McStravick. “Allan thought he would suffer penury. He had staff, he was looking after his mother and younger brother and there was the ball-making heritage of the family to protect. You can understand his worry.
“But Allan and Tom were great friends. They got over every blip. If you have an argument with a guy you love going for a pint with, you still meet up again the next week. Allan was extremely proud of Tom. His scrapbook was filled with cuttings about Old Tom’s successes.”
As a player, Robertson was a prolific, pioneering champion. Between 1830 and 1859, Robertson and his equally adept dad, Davie, held the champion golfer title for 24 of those years.
“Allan was the most scientific,” noted McStravick. “He studied greens and undulations. He invented the lofted shot and took the high route to the hole which was unheard of in those days.”
When a young Willie Park, full of pith and vinegar, emerged on the scene, there were suggestions that Robertson was frightened to take him on in a duel. McStravick refutes those claims.
“This young whippersnapper came in and said, ‘I want to play the champion’,” he said. “But that’s like someone taking up boxing and saying, ‘I want to take on Mike Tyson’. You had to earn your stripes to play the champion.
“The idea that Allan had been afraid of a 21-year-old Park is simply not what I, and Bill before me, found in our research.”
Park, of course, would eventually have his moment. In 1860, a year after Robertson’s death, he won the very first Open at Prestwick in the tournament devised to find a worthy successor to the throne.
Robertson, though, would remain a true king of clubs. McStravick’s book now celebrates his majesty.
Allan Robertson of St Andrews: The King of Clubs is available to pre-order at www.finegolfbooks.com
