The Medical Connection — Scotland's Early Golfing Links with America

The history of golf in America reaches much further back than the establishment of its first recognised golf clubs in the late nineteenth century.

This article explores the remarkable connections between Scottish medicine, maritime commerce and the early introduction of golf to colonial America.

The investigation began with a chnace golfing encounter at St Andrews in the annual Town Match with R. Robert Wilson III of the Country Club of Charleston. His family's medical ancestry provided a starting point for tracing the influence of Edinburgh-trained physicians, Scottish merchants and their professional and social networks in eighteenth-century South Carolina.

Documentary evidence reveals shipments of golf equipment to Charleston as early as 1739 and 1743, including a substantial consignment of 432 golf balls and 96 clubs. These records demonstrate that the game had crossed the Atlantic long before the emergence of organised American golf.

The article explores how the Scottish Enlightenment, medical education, trade and family relationships helped carry the traditions of golf across the ocean. By the time the South Carolina Golf Club was established at Harleston Green in 1786, the foundations of the game had already been laid through these transatlantic connections.

Drawing on the wider historical approach of The Gentry Links Trilogy, the story illustrates how the development of golf can be understood through the lives and relationships of those who carried it to new communities.

Previously published in The Golf, the journal of the Golf Heritage Society.