From the archives we travel to August 1913, 100 years ago, to the pages of Walter Travis’ American Golfer. The issue has interesting accounts of Francis Ouimet’s golfing prowess leading up to the U.S. Open at Brookline, a treatise by Henry Leach on up-and-coming young American amateurs, accounts of the French and British national championships and, of course, notes from club championships around the country. We include here PDFs of several advertisements from the magazine, which are simply interesting in their own right, as well as an observant piece on The American Golfing Garb, by Harry Fulford – a Brit’s take on what the Yanks were wearing at The Open of 1913.
Enjoy.
Click here to see the PDF with the article on American Garb, plus a handful of period advertisements.
From The American Golfer, August 1913…
One of our subscribers writes as follows:
“I want to tell you of my gardener’s success in rejuvenating some greens that I have on my home property. They became worthless from too much rolling and cutting and too much crabgrass and too many worms and ants. He said that he was surprised I did not have better greens as I seemed to enjoy them so much, adding that he had had experience in such matters and could improve them. His method was as follows:
“He took about 100 gallons of gasoline for a green of 60 to 70 feet square and sprinkled quickly and thoroughly the whole surface so as to allow the gasoline to penetrate an inch or so. He said it would kill everything and so it did. Every blade of grass, every weed, every ant and every worm completely disappeared. In fact, there has never been a worm-cast on the ground since, and very few ants. After the application of the gasoline the ground was thoroughly raked and allowed to remain dormant for ten days, when it was sown with the proper seed. The seeding was done rather late last fall. If done in August, when the weather is propitious a green could be played on inside of three months. The method proved to be a success at a very moderate cost.”
(Eds. note: It might be observed that the owner of the greens was, perhaps, a non-smoker. Mention this method to your club’s head greenkeeper and note his response. It seems the practice was not widely adopted.)