Hardcover
278 pages

$99.00 includes postage within Australia

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Contents

Early Adelaide Golf is an in-depth survey of golf in Adelaide from the 1870s until the early 20th century. The book begins with the venerable Adelaide Golf Club, which briefly existed from 1870 and was the predecessor to today’s Royal Adelaide Golf Club. It then traces the development of the city’s other budding official and unofficial ‘clubs’, located in Adelaide’s parklands, the sandy wastes at nearby Glenelg and various other sites on the city’s outskirts. Also expounded is the commonly quoted mythology on which most previous Adelaide golf histories were based. In so doing, the book attempts to shed more light on the various clubs’ respective histories.

Foreword by Neil Crafter

The subject of the early days of golf in Adelaide has been touched upon by different authors over a number of years, mostly in connection with the histories of the golf clubs that grew up and prospered as the game took root. The history books of these pre-eminent Adelaide clubs such as Royal Adelaide, Kooyonga, Grange, Glenelg and North Adelaide have all addressed this topic in an early chapter, and all appear to have relied upon the same ‘information’ that the author and researcher Andrew Baker so eloquently describes here as ‘a bundle of clichéd facts.’ It would appear that these authors relied rather heavily upon a newspaper article by children’s author Harold Lindsay published in The Chronicle in 1935 that looked back upon the establishment of the Adelaide Golf Club, the short-lived first golf club in South Australia.

Andrew Baker is by nature a tenacious researcher and he has left no stone unturned in his endeavour to uncover the true facts about the establishment of the Adelaide Golf Club – and its demise – and the foothold the game eventually managed to take in the early days of the colony. That first foothold was found in the Adelaide parklands, a belt of open ground planned by Colonel Light that surrounded the city and separated it from the more gentrified residential area of North Adelaide. However, once the game found the sandy land in the western suburbs of Adelaide, initially at Glenelg along the banks of the Sturt Creek with the establishment of the Glenelg Golf Club, which shortly after merged with the Adelaide Golf Club, and then at Seaton when the Adelaide club split from Glenelg, its security in Adelaide was assured.

Baker examines in detail the establishment of the initial Adelaide Golf Club and discusses the prominent Adelaideans who populated its committees and membership list. Following the club’s hiatus for more than two decades, its re-establishment in 1892 involved some of its original members, although a number had since died and others had left the colony. A course was laid out in sandy ground at Peterhead, adjacent to Largs Bay and another in the north parklands, however the tyranny of distance meant that the Peterhead course soon fell out of favour and was abandoned. However, the parklands course did not hold sway for long, as the Glenelg course proved to be a lure for the Adelaide club, which merged with Glenelg in between the 1895 and 1896 seasons.

The Glenelg club is of particular interest to me as a few years ago I found a silver trophy for the Glenelg Golf Club for sale in an auction, in of all places, San Francisco. It was dated ‘June 7th 1913’ so it could not have belonged to today’s Glenelg Golf Club that was not established until 1927. The trophy was the ‘A. A. Scarfe Trophy’ and was awarded to prominent member Walter Law Smith. I couldn’t resist the temptation and purchased it for a modest sum and it was finally returned to Adelaide. This piqued my interest in the early Glenelg Golf Club, and I began digging into its history and that of its course. Coincidentally, and unbeknownst to me, Andrew Baker was doing the same in the course of researching this fine book, so it was a pleasant surprise when I heard from him about his planned book and we could share some of our findings regarding the Glenelg club.

Andrew’s examination of early golf in Adelaide includes the establishment of the Adelaide club in its new home at Seaton, as well as the creation of the present Glenelg Golf Club, the third entity to bear that name. He also looks at other attempts to establish golf courses in the Glenelg area, including the aptly named ‘Old Gum Tree Links,’ named after the nearby Proclamation Tree under which the colony was proclaimed by Governor Hindmarsh on 26th December 1836. Baker examines in more depth golf in the Adelaide parklands, in particular the establishment of the municipal course at North Adelaide which opened for play in 1923, while other early Adelaide golfing venues at Walkerville, Mitcham, Glen Osmond, Torrens Island, Magill, Victoria Park and even St Peter’s College, all come under Baker’s spotlight.

The book concludes with three appendices, including the final one about Rufus Stewart, South Australia’s first homegrown golf professional, and the State’s first – and only – winner of the Australian Open championship in 1927. I can claim a family connection with Rufus, Kooyonga’s first professional, as Jim Mills, his assistant, took over from Rufus on his retirement in 1946, and my father Brian served time as one of Jim’s assistant professionals in the early 1950s.

Andrew Baker’s book sets a benchmark for historical research of the establishment of the game of golf in an Australian capital city and will hopefully serve club history authors well to ensure they get the story of golf in Adelaide correct in any future publications.

Neil Crafter
Co-founder, Crafter + Mogford Golf Strategies 
Founding member of the Society of Australian Golf Course Architects
Member of the Golf South Australia Hall of Fame
August 2024

About Neil Crafter

Neil Crafter has an illustrious record as an amateur golfer. He has represented Australia on four occasions, including the 1984 World Amateur Teams Championship and the Eisenhower Cup. He is also a four-time South Australian Amateur champion. Neil was a founding member of the Society of Australian Golf Course Architects and has over 25 years of experience as a golf course architect. In 1992, Neil co-founded the leading Australian golf architecture firm Crafter + Mogford Golf Strategies. He is a member of the Golf South Australia Hall of Fame.