Golf Before the Trophy Case: 

Three Artifacts From the Game’s Earliest Centuries

 

The Troon Collection consists of six wooden clubs and two irons discovered in a sealed cupboard at Maister House in Hull. The clubs are displayed at the R&A World Golf Museum in St Andrews.Courtesy of the R&A World Golf Museum and Royal Troon Golf Club.

 

Every golfer has picked up an old club and wondered about the hands that once held it.

Usually, the trail ends there. Names disappear. Stories become family lore. A club described as “very old” turns out to be several decades younger than anyone thought. The deeper we travel into golf’s past, the harder it becomes to separate what can be documented from what generations of owners wanted to believe.

Survival alone was difficult. Wooden heads cracked. Ash shafts broke. Leather grips rotted. Paper disappeared through fire, dampness, neglect and ordinary use.

That is what makes the following artifacts so compelling. They survived long enough to provide evidence of a game that existed before golf clubs became social institutions and before championships produced scorecards, medals, trophies and photographs.

They are not presented as an absolute ranking of the three oldest golf objects in existence. That claim would be too broad. Instead, each carries a narrower distinction supported by recognized historical sources.

One recorded golf because lawmakers wanted it stopped. Another shows how golfers approached different shots with different clubs. The third gave the game an entire book of its own.

Eight Clubs Behind a Cupboard Door

Of the three, the Troon clubs are the objects I would most want to stand in front of.

As a PGA professional, I have spent much of my life looking at golf clubs for practical reasons. Does the loft fit the shot? Does the shaft fit the player? What does the wear pattern tell us? With these clubs, the familiar questions give way to a more fundamental one.

How did they survive?

The group consists of six wooden clubs and two irons. They were discovered in 1898 inside a sealed cupboard at Maister House in Hull, England. A newspaper dated 1741 was found with them, providing a useful boundary for when they could have been placed there, though not a manufacturing date for every club. Maister House had been rebuilt after a destructive fire in 1743.

The clubs were sent to Adam Wood, a former captain of Royal Troon Golf Club and a friend of the house’s owner. Wood presented them to Royal Troon in 1915. They are now displayed at the R&A World Golf Museum in St Andrews, with replicas at Royal Troon.

They are often called the Maister House clubs, the Hull clubs or the Troon clubs, depending on whether the speaker is emphasizing their discovery, location or ownership history.

Calling them a “set” can be misleading to the modern golfer. This was not a matched collection built around neatly separated yardage gaps. The six woods include three play clubs and three spoons, apparently providing duplicates in case one broke during play. The woods have hawthorn heads and ash shafts. The irons consist of a light driving iron and a heavier spur-toed iron intended for difficult lies.

That detail brings the equipment to life. Golfers were not simply carrying several versions of the same tool. They were already thinking about trajectory, lie and purpose.

The markings add another layer. A crowned design containing a thistle, letters and a star appears repeatedly across the clubs. Those symbols once helped fuel claims that the clubs belonged to members of the Stuart royal family. Modern research has not substantiated that ownership story. Similar markings were more widely used than earlier historians understood, and the path that would have brought royal clubs to Hull was never adequately documented.

Their exact ages also require care. The wooden heads resemble golf equipment and silver trophy clubs from the mid-18th century. The construction of the iron heads may point to an earlier period, perhaps the middle or later 17th century, with the possibility that they were later fitted to new shafts.

That uncertainty does not weaken the collection. It makes the clubs an excellent example of responsible historical study. Their discovery and later ownership are documented. Their materials and construction can be examined. The royal association belongs in the history of how they were interpreted, not as proven provenance.

A good object can carry mystery without requiring us to solve it through wishful thinking.

Golf’s Oldest Scottish Witness Was a Ban

 

 

Act of Parliament of Scotland, 6 March 1457.

By courtesy of the National Archives of Scotland

 

The oldest object in this group is not a club, ball or trophy. It is a government record.

On March 6, 1457, the Parliament of Scotland under James II prohibited football and golf. The National Library of Scotland identifies the act as the earliest known written mention of golf in Scotland. The original record is held by the National Records of Scotland.

The concern was military readiness. Men and boys were expected to practice archery, and lawmakers believed golf and other games were taking time away from that training. The ban was repeated in 1471 and again in 1491, which suggests the original order did not have the desired effect.

There is something wonderfully contrary about golf’s earliest Scottish documentary landmark. It was not created to celebrate a champion, record a famous match or preserve the game for future generations. It exists because golf had become enough of a nuisance to attract Parliament’s attention.

For collectors, the document sits outside the usual marketplace. It is a national record, not a piece of privately held memorabilia waiting for an auction estimate. That does not make it less relevant to the collecting world.

Artifacts do not need to be available for purchase to teach us how provenance works.

The 1457 act has an exact date, an institutional home and a clearly defined historical claim. It does not ask us to trust an inscription added centuries later or a story passed down through a family. It places golf inside the political and social life of medieval Scotland.

It also tells us the game was already established. Governments do not normally outlaw activities no one is doing.

 

A Golf Match Becomes Literature

 

 

Credit: Lay’s Auctioners. 

 

Nearly three centuries later, golf appeared in a very different kind of record.

Thomas Mathison’s The Goff, published in Edinburgh in 1743, is recognized by the National Library of Scotland as the first printed book devoted entirely to golf. It was not an instruction manual or a formal history. Mathison wrote a mock-heroic poem centered on a match between two young golfers at Leith Links. He even gave the game its own imagined goddess, Golfinia.

The book captures a recognizable side of golf. The match matters intensely to the people playing it, even though the wider world continues around them. The swings, personalities and competitive tension become worthy of literary treatment.

That is quite a leap from the 1457 act. Golf had gone from a distraction condemned by Parliament to a subject expected to entertain readers.

A first-edition copy cataloged by Christie’s provides a useful look at what separates an important old book from a vague claim about an antique one. The copy was published by J. Cochran and Company in 1743. Its catalog description documented restoration, soiling, renewed covers and the bookplate of George Dempster, a Royal and Ancient member who served as club captain in 1861.

Those details matter more than a clean photograph of the cover. Edition, completeness, binding, restoration and prior ownership all affect how a rare book should be understood.

The accessible Christie’s record does not show a verified realized price, so it should not be used to assign a market value to other copies. A catalog listing can document an object without proving what it sold for or what another example might bring today.

That restraint is part of collecting, too.

What Managed to Survive

These three artifacts lasted for very different reasons.

The parliamentary act survived because governments preserve records. The Troon clubs were hidden away and apparently saw limited use before passing into institutional care. Copies of The Goff survived because readers, collectors and libraries eventually recognized the importance of a small book about a game on Leith Links.

Together, they cover nearly 300 years of golf’s development.

The 1457 act confirms that the game was being played. The clubs show golfers developing specialized equipment for the shots in front of them. Mathison’s poem proves golf had become part of the culture, complete with personalities, competition and stories worth printing.

A year after The Goff appeared, the Company of Gentlemen Golfers produced the 1744 Articles and Laws in Playing at Golf for a competition at Leith. Those 13 articles are generally recognized as the origin of the modern Rules of Golf.

By then, the game was becoming more organized and easier to trace. Clubs formed. Competitions created records. Names were engraved on silver. Written rules began to establish common expectations.

The oldest artifacts take us back to the more fragile period before all of that.

They do not preserve perfect answers. The clubs still carry questions about their precise dating and origins. Individual copies of The Goff have their own condition and ownership histories. The 1457 act tells us golf existed, but not exactly what the game looked like to those playing it.

What they provide is something better than a tidy legend.

They provide evidence.