Golf has a long history, and St Andrews is the Mecca of the game. “The Diary of James Melvill, 1556-1601,” published in Edinburgh in 1829, mentions his golf activities while a student at the university. In reading it, one gathers that at St Andrews and elsewhere during the middle and end of the sixteenth century, not only was the mind cultivated by the study of theology, philosophy, mathematics, and the classics, but the body was also strengthened and developed by the regular practice of archery, fencing, running, wrestling, swimming, and of course, golf. There, in “the aire guid,” Melvill was taught how “to handle the bow for archerie, the glub for goff, the batons for fencing,” with his father buying him “glub and bals” for golf. “A happie and golden tyme indeid,” as he described it.
University students were frequent visitors to the links, and younger school boys also ventured out to partake in the game. In those days the course was very narrow, with players close to each other, even though until the mid-1800s the course was not crowed. In the Records of the Burgh of St Andrews, I found a complaint dated 11 July 1765, in which grammar school student David Banney was seeking justice for being struck in the left eye by a golf ball with no warning cry given beforehand. The defender [defendant], “…a few yards of short space of the informer [plaintiff] did without warning to the informer to go out of the way shuet [shoot] a golf ball with an iron club with great force which ball did strike the [boy] upon his left eye which greatly hurt & bruised the same to the danger of losing his eye and hazard of his life.” The complaint proclaimed that the defendant not only be fined “five pounds Sterling but also deemed to pay to the informant one pound Sterling obligation & for the care of his eye…”
The defendant “did not [shoot] the ball with an intention to hurt anybody, he being in a hollow place & not seeing any[one] in his way,” except for the servant of a club member “who was standing opposite to him.” He admitted that “he was rash in striking his ball without crying to any[one] to hold out before & this he declares to be the truth.” We all yell "fore" on the course, but bad things can still happen. Always good to do so, even when we don’t see anybody in the area – since we don’t want to have a David Banney-like incident.
