From old Life Magazine, 1900 (Life Publishing Co.)

The period of about 1880 to 1900 marked the first major expansion of golf interest and play among Englishmen. This golf boom was sparked in part by the publication of The Badminton Library: Golf written and edited by Horace G. Hutchinson. Most of the new players were men. However, women’s golf received a boost during this period when the first British Ladies Championship was held at Lytham St. Anne’s in 1893.

Nevertheless, Lord Wellwood may have expressed the prevailing attitude of his fellows when he wrote in Hutchinson’s book,  “If [women] choose to play at times when the male golfers are feeding or resting, no one can object…at other times…they are in the way.” Hutchinson, himself, was even more direct, when he was quoted as saying, “Constitutionally and physically women are unfit for golf.”

In the U.S., the first women’s amateur championship was held in 1895 at the Meadow Brook Club in Hempstead, N.Y. But when golf began in America, the general attitude toward women golfers was anything but supportive. Consider a 1900 cartoon (above) showing a caddie on a knees ostensibly looking for a lost ball but actually looking at a shapely woman golfer nearby. The caption says “ADVICE TO CADDIES – You will save time by keeping your eye on the ball, not on the player.”

Golf poetry, when the subject was a woman golfer, also often focused on the girl and not the golf. Here is an example from Lyrics of the Links, an anthology of golf poems collected by Henry Litchfield West and published in 1921.

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From the USGA Digital Library

In 1923, The American Golfer, the golf magazine of its day, asked its readers to submit entries to answer the question “What Puts Me off My Game Most?” The April 7th issue included the responses of the three prize winners. The winner of the second prize wrote, in part,

“…I can play with the hare type and with the human tortoise…Sun nor wind nor clouds affect me, I enjoy them all. Nor does a bad hole depress me, for there are many such in my life and I should worry.

But delivery me, oh, delivery me from the fiend who coaches my each and every shot! He usually has about a twenty-four handicap. He has made every hole on the course in par, but never by any chance has he gotten two of them in the same round.

As I step up to drive it starts. My stance is wrong. I should waggle more; my backswing is too short. If I take my midiron for one hundred and twenty-five yards, I am patiently told that I should pitch up with a mashie….”

The second prize winner goes on a while longer, but you get the point.

The first prize winner complains about a similar critic that he calls “NEVER-WILLIE.” In his entry he includes these quotes:

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