Links Between Golf and Poetry from the Earliest Days

The numbers really don’t add up,
But nevertheless, it’s true,
Golf is nine-tenth skillfulness
And nine-tenths mental too.

Around Thanksgiving in 1894, Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the fictional detective Sherlock Homes, visited the author and poet, Rudyard Kipling at his American home outside of Brattleboro, Vermont. Later Doyle wrote in his diary, “I had brought my clubs and gave him lessons in a field while the New England rustics watched us from afar, wondering what we were at …”

Doyle, born in Scotland in 1859, was a lifelong golfer who loved the game. He lived for many years next to the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in Sussex, England, where he was a member. When writing his detective stories, he could look up from his desk and out onto the course. Although he did not write about golf in his books, Doyle made his poetical statement about the joys of the game in a poem called “A Lay (song) of the Links.” Here is the last stanza of his poem:

Come youth and come age, from the study or stage,
From Bar or from Bench—high and low
A green you must use as a cure for the blues—
You drive them away as you go.
We’re outward bound on a long, long round,
And it’s time to be up and away:
If worry and sorrow come back with the morrow
At least we’ll be happy today.

Golf brings joy but also frustration and agony. It teaches humility. It requires patience and persistence. It focuses on success but centers as well on perceived failure. It is played in beautiful, sheltered settings offering brief escape from the real world. It promotes relationships, collaboration and community. It teaches the reality that perfection is only an aspiration and unattainable with any permanence. Clearly, golf offers a plethora of material for the golfer-poet.

Here is one example of how the game has been described poetically,

Golf is a singular way
to take temporary leave
following a zigzag path
in search of a small white ball;

to abandon reality,
but stay the course,
hole after hole;

to create a new story,
always different
to be told to someone
before it’s forgotten.

An extraordinary chance
to pretend for a brief time
no matter how unskilled
that each stroke will be flawless;

to endure the pain of failure
without really failing,
and even if only once a round,

to truly enjoy
the pure pleasure
of hitting the ball rock-solid
or sinking a long tricky putt.

Golf poetry goes back to the early days of the game. The first poem devoted entirely to golf was found in a 1687 diary entry of Thomas Kincaid, an Edinburgh medical student. In 12 lines, Kincaid established himself as golf’s first swing instructor. The poem begins,

Grip fast stand with your left leg first not farr
Incline your back and shoulders but beware
You raise them not when back the club you bring.

The first separately printed book of poetry devoted entirely to golf, called The Goff, is a 358-line mock-epic poem initially published in 1743. With the rise of Golf Clubs in Scotland, the first being the Honourable Company of Edinburgh in 1744, golf poetry would find its first home. Joseph S. F. Murdoch, a renowned golf book collector and bibliographer, wrote that “poetry made up most of the original writing on the game.” He attributed this fact to the general popularity of poetry in the 19th century as a means for storytelling. Describing Scotland as a “nation of poets,” Murdoch surmised, “. . . it is not difficult to believe that most of the early golf literature sprang from the lips of early after-dinner speakers who, lauding the merits of their national sport and finding some of their efforts enthusiastically received, printed the poems for distribution to their club-mates.”

An early example of a golfer who wrote poems for his club-mates is George Fullerton Carnegie (1795–1851), who played his golf at St. Andrews, Montrose, and Musselburgh. Carnegie wrote and privately printed a small book of poetry in 1833 called Golfiana or Niceties Connected with the Game of Golf . . . Dedicated, with Respect, to the Members of All Golfing Clubs, and to those of St. Andrews and North Berwick in Particular. The title of a recent book describes Carnegie as The Golfer’s Poet (Grant Books Ltd., 2023). Golfiana, Carnegie’s book, went through four editions, the last one published posthumously in 1863. The second and third editions included additional poems. Quoting from The Golfer’s Poet, “Golfiana is one of the most important collections of poems and songs within the library of golf. There is no better source that illuminates golf and golfers in the 1830s and 1840s …”

A second important clubhouse poet was David Jackson, the Captain of the Thistle Golf Club in Leven, Scotland. In 1886, Jackson published Golf – Songs and Recitations, a 32-page tract of poems and songs at the “repeated request of many members of my own and other Clubs.” At the start of the Introduction to his book, Jackson writes, “The only excuse that I can offer for writing these few Songs and Pieces on the grand Old Game is that having been to a good many Golf Matches and Social Meetings connected with Golf, I have heard very few Songs in honour of the Game, and I have often thought what a pity that such a popular recreation should be so little celebrated by the Poets.”

Carnegie, Jackson and the other clubhouse poets wrote about with an enthusiasm, love and respect, and a kind of innocence that was unique to their time. From his pamphlet, Jackson’s famous song, “Gouff Dings A,” loosely translated as “Golf Surpasses All” is a good example. Subtitled, “Sung at a Convivial Meeting,” here is the chorus:

For Gouff dings a’, my boys, Gouff will aye ding a’
With joy we’ll swing our Clubs and Cleek and drive the bounding Ba’;
Then over bunkers, braes (hills), and bent, we’ll gang (go) out twa (two) by twa,
With hearts elate and mind content–oh, Gouff dings a’.

And here is the last verse:

Then, let us swell the mighty throng of Princes, Lords, and Kings
Who have enjoyed the game of Golf above all other things
And wish success to everyone, let him be great or sma’,
Who loves the jolly game o’ Gouff–for Gouff dings a’.

By the late 1880’s golf course construction was increasing, and the game was expanding to other countries, including the United States. The prospect of a substantial readership led to the launch of the first golf magazines in Britain, Golf Illustrated (1890), The Golfer (1891), Golf Monthly (1911), and in America, Golf Magazine (1897), Golf Illustrated and Outdoor America (1900) and American Golfer(1908). All of these publications welcomed golf poets and included their poems extensively. Soon after, golf poetry made its way into newspapers as well.

The golf magazines contained golf poems in almost every issue. Even a few advertisements were versified! Here is the first stanza from a Spaulding golf ball ad that appeared on the back cover of the August 1914 issue of Golf Magazine,

When the greens were fast and freakish,
Once my putts were either weakish
Or absurdly strong.
Now I calmly snap my digits
For I play with
Spaulding “Midgets,”
Not a putt goes wrong.

In the first decades of the 20^th century, as more and more men took up golf as a leisure activity, the term “golf widow” arose to describe the wives of golfers who played excessively. J.P. McEvoy, the creator of the comic strip Dixie Dugan, humorously took up the neglected women’s cause in a poem, “The Stranger,” that appeared in a book of compiled golf poems called Lyrics of the Links published in 1921,

Who’s that stranger, mother dear?
Look, he knows us . . . Ain’t he queer?”

“Hush, my own, don’t talk so wild;
He’s your father, dearest child!”

“He’s my father? No such thing!
Father died away last Spring!”

“Father didn’t die, you dub!
Father joined a golfing club.

“But they’ve closed the club, so he
Has no place to go you see—

“No place left for him to roam—
That is why he’s coming home.

“Kiss him . . . he won’t bite you, child
All them golfing guys look wild.

And here are the last four lines from “The Golfing Fiend” by an anonymous poet printed in the same book,

He used to call men foolish when they raved about the links,
But since he’s been converted, it’s a splendid game, he thinks.
He is out there every Sunday and each afternoon he’s off;
Ma’s a widow and we’re orphans since he started playing golf.

Recall that in his poem, Arthur Conan Doyle’s extoled the joys of golf. But as you might expect, others have focused on the sundry agonies and frustrations that arise when playing. “Off My Game,” “If only I could play that hole again,” “The Lay for the Troubled Golfer” are illustrative titles. The last, composed by Edgar A. Guest (1881-1959), a columnist for the Detroit Free Press and prolific poet, includes this painful refrain,

I’d an easy five for a seventy-nine-in sight of the golden goal-
An easy five and I took an eight-an eight on the eighteenth hole!

A few poems have claimed golf as a cure for what ails you. As an illustration, consider the prescription given in the first four lines of a song sung at the 1841 autumn meeting of the Innerleven Golf Club in Scotland:

Wha wad (Who would) be free from doctor’s bills—
From trash o’powders and o’pills—
Will find a cure for a’ his ills
On the links o’ Innerleven.

Some more serious poems have dealt with aspects of politics and war. Arguably the most powerful lines of poetry using golf to make a political statement were written by an American woman poet, Sarah N. Cleghorn, a peaceful but committed activist in reform movements ranging from anti-lynching to opposition to child labor.

In the January 1, 1915 issue of the New York Tribune, she wrote this stanza as part of a larger work, “Through the Needle’s Eye,” that was used in a campaign to outlaw child labor,

The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.

Golf-related poetry was also used in England to protest the women’s movement asking for the right to vote. Starting in 1866, the “suffragists” began working for their cause. In 1903, a violent offshoot of this movement, called the “suffragettes,” instituted militant means to force the issue. One of their tactics was to destroy the turf at golf courses. Such a peril was reported in the May 1913 issue of The American Golfer, “. . . that if they could manage it, the ‘wild women,’ as they are being called, meant to do some considerable harm to the [Royal Liverpool Club] and interfere as far as they could with the success of what is expected to be the biggest championship meeting that has ever taken place.” The article then explains how this threat was met, “. . . in the emergency the club called on the villagers to assist them in the protection of the course. . . These efforts were successful, and the 1913 Open Championship went off without any problems.”

In the same magazine, a month before, an unknown poet provided an eight line “remedy” for this intended golf course terrorism.

When Suffragettes deface our greens
By various unlawful means,
What shall we golfers do to these
Intolerable Divottees?

Clear is the answer in our rules,
Plain to be read by even fools:
“Replace the turf!” and why not let
It be above the Suffragette?

The Foreign Notes section of the March 1917 issue of The American Golfer includes an unexpected connection between several famous English golfers, the First World War and golf poetry. The British correspondent to the magazine, Henry Leach, wrote that four of England’s greatest golfers, Harry Vardon, J. H. Taylor, James Braid, and Alexander Herd were asked to write four-line poems that as a group would be “disposed of in the way of a lottery for the benefit of one of the war funds.” The poems were written, framed and delivered to the Mid-Surrey Golf Club where the lottery was to take place.

All four golfers were Open Champions during the period 1894 to 1914, but as golfer-poets, none would have made the cut. However, Vardon’s poem proved interesting in a different way. He wrote,

He should wear an angel’s wings
Who paths of truth hath trod.
When left alone with just two things-
His Score Card and his God.

In response to these lines, Leach wrote, “This is tremendous. There is hardly anything like it in the whole library and history of poetry. Only, as practical men we wonder why one is less liable to speak or think the truth about one’s own score when alone than at any other time, for that seems to be what is meant.”

Well, it turns out that Leach was right when he added “hardly” before “anything.” An American poet and short story writer named Douglas Malloch wrote a poem called “Golf” that appeared in the September 1912 issue of The American Golfer, four and a half years earlier than the fund-raising lottery. The fourth stanza of his poem is as follows,

It is a game of honor, too,
That tries the souls of men.
It’s easy in the public view
To all be honest then;
But he deserves an angel’s wings
Who paths of truth has trod
When left alone with just two things-
His score card and his God.

So, who wrote Harry Vardon’s poem? The likely answer is that Vardon passed off the poetry writing assignment to a more literate associate. Since Vardon left school at the age of 12 his acquaintance with poetry would have been minimal. And apparently, his collaborator leafing through old issues of The American Golfer found Malloch’s poem and with slight changes gave Vardon his needed four lines. As to the lottery, Leach did not report on whether or not it was a success.

The women’s game began in the 16^th century with Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, regarded by golf historians as the first woman player in Scotland. However, for a long time after golf was strictly a man’s game. The St. Andrews golf poet, George Carnegie put it succinctly,

The game is ancient—manly—and employs
In its departments, women, men, and boys;
Men play the game, the boys the clubs convey,
And lovely woman gives the prize away.

However, by the late 19th century women began to take up the game seriously. The Ladies’ Golf Union was formed to act as the governing body for ladies’ amateur golf in Great Britain and Ireland. In 1893, its inaugural year, the Union conducted the first British Ladies’ Championship. The Championship was deemed a great success even though just prior to the matches, Horace Hutchinson, one of the greatest amateur golfers and golf minds of the time, wrote that “Constitutionally and physically women are unfitted for golf.” But events then and later clearly proved him wrong.

The second year, the Ladies’ Championship was played at Littlestone-on-Sea, on the Southeast coast of England. Inexplicably, a number of the women who competed in that tournament were memorialized in a poem said to be “found one

morning during the Championship lying on the clubhouse floor.” The untitled poem is thought to have been written by some of the women competitors. This is the first known golf poem focused entirely on women golfers. It begins,

Sixty-four ladies, golfers all,
Stout and large and thin and small,
For the championship fought at Littlestone,
To let the champion there be shown.

It goes on for 17 more stanzas, each describing one of the players. Here is an example,

Dame Cameron will hammer on,
In spite of all disaster.
With stately mien, a golfer keen,
There’s few who can outlast her.

For an elite golfer, woman or man, nothing can be more frustrating than coming close but never winning a major event. That’s the challenge that Charles “Chick” Evans, Jr. faced for a number of years after becoming a leading amateur player in America at the beginning of the 20^th century. Evans lost in the semi-finals of the National Amateur Championship three years in a row, 1909–1911. In the January 1912 issue of The American Golfer, Evans showed that at least he could beat his English rivals Vardon, Taylor, Braid and Herd by publishing his woes in a very cleverly written series of verses with the title, “A Chronic Semi-Finalist.” Reflecting on his inability to go further, he wrote,

I’m a semi-final hoodoo,
I’m afraid
I can never do as you do
Jimmie Braid:
I’ve a genius not to do it,
I excel at almost to it,
But I never can go through it,
I’m afraid.

And the next to last stanza,

So this is a heartfelt cry
Of my muse.
Fate, I beg you hear my sigh,
Don’t refuse.
I ask not the nation’s prize,
But the finals tempt my eyes,
Halfway-finals I despise
When I lose.

Unfortunately, in the 1913 National Amateur Championship Evans lost again in the semifinals. Later, writing his impressions of the tournament in the October 1913 issue of the magazine Golf, Evans observed: “My greatest and most lasting impression . . . is that [the Championship] represented Opportunity No. 5 thrown away by me . . . It emphasized once more the strange fate that annually destroys me, usually on the afternoon half of the 36-hole semifinal round … This chronic happening is tragic or comic, as one chances to view it . . .” Happily, though not immediately, Evan’s luck changed. In 1916 he became the first golfer to win both the National Amateur and the U.S. Open Championship in the same year. The only other golfer to achieve this feat was Bobby Jones in 1930 when he won the Grand Slam.

Evans is also remembered for competing in a record fifty amateur championships in a row. Today his name is associated with the Evans Scholars Foundation, a charitable organization that awards college scholarships to golf caddies with strong academic records and financial need. Since its inception in 1930, it has helped over 11,000 students.

A book called A Line o’ Gowf or Two was published in 1923 by Bert Leston Taylor, a Chicago Tribunecolumnist. Evans, a friend of Taylor’s, wrote the Introduction. From 1910, until his death in 1921, Taylor wrote a daily column in under the byline “A Line o’ Type or Two.” During this time, he became one of the most widely read newspaper humorists. His book is a posthumous compilation of his golf writings and poetry taken from his Tribune column. Here is one of his brief but perceptive poems:

A golfer, when he plays with you,
Should speak when he is spoken to,
And keep his score-card free from fable;
At least as far as he is able.

Another newspaper man, Samuel E. Kiser (1862-1942), who wrote for the Cleveland Leader and the Chicago Record-Herald, authored of one of the most poignant golf poems ever written. The poem called “If Gray had been a Golfer” is a parody of the famous poem by Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” Three of the nine stanzas are enough to show how Kinser used Gray’s poem to contrast the lives of poor laborers with more fortunate golfers. Here are the first, second and next to last stanzas,

Beneath these rugged elms, that maple’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his last eternal bunker laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

Oft to the harvest did their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe (land) has broke—
Ah, but they had no mashies then to wield,
They never learned to use the Vardon stroke.

And the next to the last stanza,

Far from the eager foursome’s noble strife
They levelled bunkers and they piled the hay,
Content to go uncaddied all through life,
And never were two up and one to play!

One of the most famous American sports writers, Grantland Rice wrote for several papers, including The New York Tribune, and was editor of The American Golfer from 1920 to 1933. Prior to his editorship, in 1917, a fellow golfer wrote in the same magazine, “Here in America there has for long been the tendency in the game to versify. Our own pages . . .from time-to-time bear witness of it. Perhaps Grantland Rice [America’s first great sportswriter] has come nearest of all Americans to the true sentiment coupled with graceful phrasing . . . He has known that the truth can often be told in verse better than any other way. In his ‘Dedication to the Duffer’ at the beginning of The Winning Shot, and elsewhere in that book, there are some pretty pearls,

This is the substance of our Plot—
For those who play the Perfect Shot,
There are ten thousand who do not.
For each who comes to growl and whine
Because one putt broke out of line
And left him but a Sixty-Nine,
At least ten thousand on the slate
Rise up and cheer their blessed fate
Because they got a Ninety-Eight.”

Like others before him, Rice also made use of famous poems to parody. Taking Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Requiem” as his template, he wrote,

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie;
Gladly I’ve lived and gladly die
Far from this world of strife.

These be the lines you grave for me—
“Here he lies where he wants to be;
Here he lies by the Nineteenth Tee,
Where he’s lied all through his life.”

In the early ‘30s, though, as the great depression took hold and the gilded age came to an end, poetry about golf went missing. As Grantland Rice saw it, “…good poets suddenly disappeared and readers for some reason lost the old poetic zest.” With the depression, most golfers played less, some Golf Clubs folded, and most golf magazines ceased publication. Movies, radio and other sources of mass entertainment also began to attract audiences away from poetry; and poetry in general was becoming more associated with academia and less integrated into mainstream reading.

Still, golf poetry has been written in more recent times, some by prominent poets and writers such as the English Poet Laureate John Betjeman, the American Poet Laureate Billy Collins and the author John Updike. Even the beloved New Yorker golf writer Herbert Warren Wind tried his hand though not very successfully. A few amateur golfers have authored books of poems and golf poetry can also be found on a few Blogs.

Starting with Dr. Kincaid, the provision of golf lessons through various mediums has been a part of golf. Professional golfers offer instruction at golf courses or at driving ranges. Lessons can be found in golf books and magazines, and on the Internet. In earlier times lesson-giving pros had to be more creative. A short note in the January 1915 issue of The American Golfer provides an extreme example,

“Willie Leith, professional at the Tacoma Golf and Country Club, is planning to give lessons by means of the phonograph. He will talk into the machine and then mail the records to players who cannot visit him in his ‘study’.” This story provides for one more poem,

A dub went out to the putting green
With his gramophone, record and all.
He listened intently
Then stroked balls so gently,
But still couldn’t get them to fall.

©Leon S White, PhD 2025

Short Bio

Leon S White, a graduate of Stanford University with a PhD from Columbia University, taught at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management and later worked as a health care executive in both the public and private sectors. His love of golf and interest in poetry led him to discover a treasure-trove of old golf poetry much of which is included in his 2012 book Golf Course of Rhymes – Links between Golf and Poetry Through the Ages. A collection of his own golf poetry, If Golf Balls Could Talk – Collected Golf Poems, was published in August 2022.Both books are available on Amazon worldwide. He has offered a Blog about golf poetry at golfpoet.com since 2009. The Blog has had visitors from more than 120 countries.