According to the fusty, dusty, well-thumbed archives, the Olympics of 1900 sounded absolutely brilliant. Forget all this tight-fitting lycra, the shameless hawking of the five rings for commercial gain, David Coleman shrieking about Juantorena opening his legs and showing his class and widespread doping, the Games of the II Olympiad in Paris seemed to be a kind of jovial, come all ye, off the cuff caper that had all the old school charm and quirkiness of It’s A Knockout.
Look up there, it’s a neatly coiffured couple inching ahead in the hot air balloon contest. What’s that over there? Why, it’s a keenly fought tussle for the Basque Pelota title of course. And what’s going on down yonder? It appears to be a tense duel in the pigeon shooting … with live pigeons.
Amid all of this ballooning, Basque-ing and, er, blitzed beaks, the Royal & Ancient game of golf made its first appearance in the Games. When golf, led by global superstars like Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth, returns to the Olympics in 2016, after an absence of 112 years, it will be safe to say that the fanfare and fever will be a bit more boisterous than the atmosphere that surrounded the pursuit’s debut back in 1900. With the Olympics tagged onto the Paris World Fair of that year, 22 male and female competitors essentially pitched up, stuck their names down and battered away over 36-holes (the women’s contest was nine holes) at the Compiegne club just north of the French capital.
Among that intrepid number was David Robertson, a solicitor from Shawlands on Glasgow’s southside, who would eventually finish third behind his fellow Scot, Walter Rutherford of Jedburgh, and the winner, Charles Sands from New York. The line-up also included Albert Bond Lambert, who would later become one of the principal financial backers of Charles Lindbergh’s pioneering solo transatlantic flight on The Spirit of St Louis. “I thought it was a story that needed to be told,” said James Bancroft, a Manchester-based historian and author who has documented the tale in a publication called The First Olympic Golf Match. “Robertson, like Rutherford, is the forgotten Olympian, perhaps not to real Olympic enthusiasts and historians like myself but in the wider world of sport. The 1900 Games was a bit of a mishmash, probably even a bit of a farce to be honest. What appeared to have happened was that most of the Brits were in Paris on business during the trade fair. They heard that there was to be a golf event in connection with it and they just put their names down. It was as simple as that.”
Born in 1869, Robertson, who attended the Glasgow Academy and Glasgow University, as well as Christ’s College at Cambridge, was a dab hand with the sticks but he also represented Cambridge at rugby in a no score draw with Oxford in 1892 and played for Scotland in a 9-0 defeat to Wales in 1893. By 1900, Robertson, who played most of his golf at Northwood just outside London, was something of a trail-blazer for the game on the Olympic stage but that particular trail wouldn’t blaze for long. Golf remained at the 1904 Games in St Louis but it didn’t figure at London in 1908 and will finally reappear again in 2016.
“They tried to put it into the 1908 Games in London but there was some kind of dispute over eligibility between the Scottish and English players,” added Bancroft. “There are no real records of what happened but it was probably fairly petty. By the time they got their heads together, it was too late as the Games were already underway. If golf had been included in 1908 I think it would have been included at every Games thereafter. The 1908 Games was the one that essentially saved the Olympics. The Games of 1900 and 1904 were connected with the Paris World Fair and the St Louis World Fair respectively and they were getting pushed into the margins. London was a true Olympic Games. It was purely sport with nothing else happening.”
In 1900, there would be no medals for Robertson and company. They weren’t really golfing for gold. Instead, they were presented with silver cups. “Robertson went back into golfing obscurity after that but the fact that he and Rutherford were among the first Olympic golfers should stand as a great claim to fame,” said Bancroft.
Robertson died in 1937 at the age of 68 in Idstone, Oxfordshire. When the medals are dished out in faraway Rio next year, we should perhaps give a nod of acknowledgement to Robertson, Rutherford and the rest of those original golfing Olympians.
The First Olympic Golf Match by James Bancroft is available from jamesbancroftuk@aol.com or write to James Bancroft, 280 Liverpool Road, Eccles M30 0RZ. Price £5.
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