This article originally appeared in the October issue of NCGA Golf Magazine
By Sean Tully
There was a period of time where golf courses lost their original design characteristics and some that would even lose track of who designed the original course. Unfortunately, in those same years historical documents would be thrown away or misplaced leaving large holes in the story for most courses.
Too many courses have lost their history through neglect or a sense of indifference to the old ways as often times the idea was to modernize the game and with that not relying on the past.
In the last 30 years, there has been a resurgence in learning more about the original design of older courses and of their architects. Efforts to restore courses back to the original design and intent of a course took hold which led to researching a course history to learn all that could be understood to help direct the architects work to better understand the course evolution.
How can you learn more about your course and do research on your course?
In most cases, a course will have a history committee that is tasked with a variety of functions that relates to the history of the course or club. Doing research can be time-consuming work and with a variety of angles to work on there is more than enough work to go around. Volunteering to help at your course can open up a lot of new opportunities and time spent with other like-minded individuals. If your course doesn’t have a history committee, find some other golfers and start your own committee and work with course staff to gain access to information.
There will be a lot of searching and digging for information and often one’s search comes up empty. When you do find something, it can often answer a question or two, but can also add more questions that will need answers. You will either get the bug to do more research or find it tedious and boring. The following recommendations are general in nature, but can start, or add to what you can do to find more information. Each course had its own audience, and some had a lot of representation in the newspapers and magazines of the time while others were rarely mentioned or even photographed.
Start first with information held at the course, review all information on the course and catalog what is held in the archives. Live by the motto of Trust but Verify. Too often I’ve heard that the club had a fire, or they threw everything away only to find things tucked away in a backroom, or attic space. Work with staff at the course and communicate with them what you are looking for and why you are doing it. Get others interested in what you are doing and have others on the lookout for things tucked away in storage and go through the facilities with a fine-tooth comb.
Identify a room at the course where access for a working area with a computer, and where items can be stored and/or presented and also have limited access. Preferably the room has climate control and has minimal sunlight that can degrade documents and images overtime.
Always make sure you have your work backed up in the Cloud, or offsite and you can have photographs and plans on display at the club that are not the originals, but high-quality scans or reproductions.
Clubhouses still burn down!
At most golf clubs there will be club minutes that should be reviewed for pertinent information as to founding members, course changes, architect mentions, and identify members on the board. One can learn quite a lot from the minutes and work on searching for things from there. Some details found in the minutes are not always fit for public consumption and will color some of the past poorly, so having items in your archives secured and available for review on request is preferred. Make sure to safeguard archived items by keeping them stored properly and get them scanned so they can be searched and used as a reference for future boards, Green Committee, and golf architects. Use the minutes to start a timeline of important things that occurred at the club and develop ideas on where to find more information for each individual point of interest.
Another option for finding new things is to communicate with members/golfers in an effort to locate old photos, scorecards and other club related items. Specifically, reach out to long standing families at the course as they should have items passed down to them and or held by current relatives. Work closely with older members and local historians that can help you connect the dots on family histories and connections. When you know of a founding member that is no longer connected with the club you can track down the decedents by using the California Death Index to identify the persons time of death. Once you have the date you can look at local newspapers for their obituaries and use that to identify their children and reach out to them, or repeat the process if they have already passed. Don’t forget about the daughters! Often times it is the matriarch that retains the family history and their photo albums among other things.
Work with local historians and historical societies. I always make a point to connect with other researchers as there could be some crossover. One researcher I spoke with was researching a curtain company and looking for advertisements featuring their curtains in golf clubhouses in the 1920-30’s. I told her I was researching golf courses, and she mentioned that one woman she was researching was married to a noted golf course architect. She was looking for some early images of the interior of Cal Club, so we were both able to share information that helped each other out!
Connecting with local and state historical societies will also connect you with information on members like oral histories, Bluebooks, and books/photos that cover the specific area. They will have maps that can help identify property lines and ownership of the property before the course was built and, in some cases, can even show the routing of the course.
WIKI list of Historical Societies of California
Special Collection libraries! My favorite place to do research as it tends to have the harder to find item(s) like personal papers, rare magazines, and even old routing maps. Universities will have a special collection with the Bancroft at UC Berkeley being one of the best sources for information in the country. They tend to have regional information and will have the papers of alumni and other local people that wanted to have their personal/work papers available for research efforts. Be sure to review the rules at each library or institution you are planning on attending. They can be very specific and some items are stored off property and they usually take 1-7 days to retrieve the item(s). Review their procedures that they allow for copies, or photography of items. When looking to see if a person left their papers in a special collection check local universities first and then determine where they went to college and check there.
Plan Your Visit to the Bancroft
Online Archives California--Search Over 350 Instititions
Postcard and Paper shows are a great way to find ephemeral items that can include scorecards, membership books, photos, and postcards. I’ve found some good stuff at these shows and develop a relationship with collectors that have golf stuff — not all do. Let them know what you are looking for and they will let you know when they acquire new items. Local shows are easy to find, but there aren’t as many as there used to be.
I’d love to go to some shows in other states as they are bound to have more postcards sent home from California. Something a little harder is flea markets, but I have found a couple
trophies that way along with some photos.
National Post Card & Paper Shows
Antique shops are also an option to look into and leave your contact info for current and future golf items. I have found some trophies, scorecards, and clubs. Newspaper searches are a great way to add to a courses history. Mentions of formation of clubs, course openings, changes to course and other related topics can be found. Some newspapers are not digitized, so you have to do a microfilm search at a local library or at the UC Berkeley collection of newspapers. Digital newspaper can be found on some pay sites and there are some that are free. A great way to dig into your history of your course, members, golf pros, and related issues in the area. Get a library card and it unlocks a lot of options to search newspapers online through San Francisco and Oakland libraries. Newspaper.com is also great as they cover a big area and are always adding new papers into their collection. The CDNC is great for earlier turn of the century newspapers that can help unlock some good information.
California Digital Newspaper Collection
Photo collections and online archives. There are any number of state and local societies or institutions that have photos online. The OAC website pulls together a wealth of information at your fingertips. There are smaller libraries with a focus on local history. The USGA is a must to search for older items and some wonderful collections of golf magazines that are more national in nature. HathiTrust has a wonderful access to other golf magazines and books and it’s easy to get lost in there. LA84 has issues of American Golfer and Golf Illustrated and other books as well, albeit their search engine is not the best. The last one is new to me as I was looking at the Bancroft Library website for hours I noted that they have a digital collections! Much to my surprise I found a lot of golf images with a small chunk of it being from the Julian P. Graham collection!! There are pictures of all the SF Public courses and some of Claremont, Beresford, Menlo and others that are more of club life related images.
San Francissco Public Library History Center
Marin Libraries--California Room
Berkeley Library Digital Collections
The best way to highlight one’s course is through maps and aerial images. Aerial imagery has been made available through the UCSB frame finder website. There are other services and some smaller collections that can be found. Be warned that the UCSB site can be very addictive if you like to see how things looked almost a hundred years ago. UC Berkeley has a wonderful map collection that can be viewed in person. If you have big infrastructure near the course like a railroad or a reservoir for example there could be maps, photos, and aerials in the records for the company/agency responsible for these things. I have looked through photos of construction of roads and found images of golf course in the background of a new road being built. In the last link you can view San Francisco with an overlay of a 1937-8 aerials with recent imagery from 2024—a fun exercise to see the courses and sand dunes in the Sunset District.
UC-Berkeley Earth Sciences and Map Library
UC-Berkeley Maps and Air Photos
San Francisco County 1938-2024 Slider Comparison
Online auctions like eBay can be a good source but needs attention to keep up with items. There are a number of golf specific auctions online and is relatively quick and easy to keep up with auctions. Trophies and score cards and golf clubs can be found here.
Looking for golf books to fill the library. Some books can get really expensive, so try AddAll as a source where you are buying from a large group of booksellers. I’ve found some pretty neat things on there. If you are looking for books and magazines WorldCat is your friend and it shows you the closest library/institution where you can find the item.
That should be enough to get you started and give you some new places to look. Know that finding new information is not always as easy as turning the page it will require hours of searching and looking through documents and special collections. There is more information to be found as new photographs are still being found and more and more information is being digitized and being made available. Good luck hunting!
Sean Tully, who is known as ‘The Professor’, was featured in the Winter issue of NCGA Golf Magazine.