Stymied! Supplemental information to Spring Wee Nip

The following information is supplemental to the article on stymies by John Fischer III in the spring 2016 Wee Nip. Below are pages from a 1915 USGA Bulletin article written by Alex Smith. The article is abreviated and his thoughts on the stymie begin near the bottom of the first column on the first page of that PDF. The article is followed by four photographs of Smith at work on a stymie.

Alex Smith on the stymie USGABulletin 12-1915 6

Also included is an article by Max Behr for Golf Illustrated in September 1916. It appears that one magazine editor knew the other was to produce something on the stymie and was not to be outdone!

Max Behr on the stymie Golf Illustrated 1915

Below you will find Mr. Fischer’s bibliography for his article in the Wee Nip. We did not have room to produce it there and hope it will serve its purpose in this location.

Braid, James, Advanced Golf (Kessinger Publishing reprint)

Browning, Robert, A History of Golf (Classics of Golf reprint, 1986)

Morrison, J.S.F., Around Golf, London, Arthur Barker Limited (1939)

Leith, Cecil, Golf, Philadelphia and London, J.B. Lippincott Company (1922)

Francis, Richard S., Golf, It’s Rules and Decisions, New York, The Macmillan Company (1937)

Vardon, Harry, The Complete Golfer, Amsterdam, Fredonia Books (Reprint of 1909 edition)

Shapiro, Mel; Dohn, Warren; and Berger, Leonard (editors), Golf, A Turn-of-the-Century-Treasury, Secaucus NJ, Castle (1986)

MacDonald, Charles Blair, Scotland’s Gift – Golf, (Classics of Golf reprint, 1986)

McGimpsey, Kevin and Neech, David, Golf Implements and Memorabilia, London, Philip Wilson Publishers (1999)

Longhurst, Henry, Golf, London, J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd, (1937)

Jones, Robert Tyre Jr., Golf is My Game, Garden City, NY, Doubleday & Company, Inc., (1960)

Cousins, Geoffrey, Golfers At Law, New York, Alfred A. Knopf (1959)

Davies, Peter, Davies’ Dictionary of Golfing Terms, New York, Simon and Schuster (1980)

Golf clubs of the day, such as this one, often had six-inch stymie marks near the grip.

Scorecards, below, show the stymie measure as a convenience for players, to keep things official and to reduce or eliminate questions about what might or might not be a stymie. The card from Sunningdale  has the stymie measurement in a diagonal across the scoring page. The cards, and the photo above, are from Mr. Fischer’s collection.