First in Golf: Harleston Green

By 1786, Scottish merchants had organized themselves into the first golf club in America: the South Carolina Golf Club of Charleston. Although a club later emerged in Savannah around 1794, both predate what is generally reckoned as the oldest continuously operating club in the United States—the Saint Andrews Golf Club in Yonkers, New York, founded in 1888.

Within a decade, a clubhouse was built on a patch of land between Bull and Pitt streets, just south of where the College of Charleston’s Addlestone Library is today. Members would meet nearby for food and drink at William’s Coffee House and then make their way to the “course” (a misnomer, as it was merely an overgrown pasture). The land was known then, as it is today, as Harleston Green. Here, sometime in the late 18th century, the first game of golf was played in America. Participants had to pay to play—that is, money was needed to maintain the grounds—and so the fees they forked over for the game came to be known as “green fees.”

What was known originally as “The Ancyent & Healthfulle Exercyse of the Golff” bore only a faint resemblance to the game that is played today. There were no set number of holes, to begin with, and the “holes” were just that—crudely dug excavations with no putting surface surrounding them. There weren’t even any pins or flags to mark the target. Instead, a finder or “forecaddie,” usually a young boy, was sent ahead to find the hole and stand near it, often holding a gull’s feather as a signpost. The forecaddie also cleared the fairway of animals and other people on the land—perhaps strollers, courters, and others enjoying fine weather—by yelling “Fore!”—as in, “you have been forewarned!”

Caddies carried the clubs in a bundle (“pencil bags,” named for their shape, were a late 19th-century invention), though the so-called “play club” was the most used. The shaft was made of hickory and the head of hardwoods. Other clubs, called “spoons,” were fabricated with facings that had various degrees of loft, just as today. These, too, were wood, however. The only metal club to be used was one to retrieve errant balls from out of bounds.

The balls, called “featheries,” were made of three or four pieces of untanned bull’s hide stitched together, leaving a small opening into which wet goose feathers that had been boiled or steamed were stuffed. As the feathers dried, they expanded, creating a hard, compact ball. Though costly and prone to damage, a well-made feathery could travel up to 150 yards in the hands of a skilled player—remarkably lively, though no match for today’s high-tech counterparts.