David Sowell has written about golf and golf history for numerous publications, including the United States Golf Association’s Golf Journal, Links Magazine, and Golf Illustrated. He is the author of three books, including The Masters: A Hole-by-Hole History of America’s Golf Classic (Nebraska, 2019). His most recent book America Tees Off: True Tales of Golf’s Rich History (Nebraska, 2025) was published in December.

In 1887 a linen salesman from New York City visited the Old Course at St. Andrews, Scotland, considered to be the oldest golf course in the world. While there, he visited the shop of golf legend Old Tom Morris. He purchased six clubs and some balls. Soon after his return home, this purchase triggered a golf explosion that would soon see America not only take up the game but also take it over. America Tees Off tracks golf’s impact on the country and the game since this historic purchase, with dozens of wide-ranging stories from when the game first took hold in the United States to the present day.

These stories cover both the great amateur and professional players, as well as the golf adventures of average players and the not-so-average, like U.S. presidents, athletes in other sports, Hollywood stars, and the mega-wealthy. You’ll read about what was thought to be a highly questionable land purchase in the Sandhills of North Carolina in 1895 that led to the golf mecca of Pinehurst, how Babe Didrikson Zaharias’s husband used his cigar to give her assistance during tournament play, and how the scientist who worked on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos helped President Eisenhower improve his game.

America Tees Off also covers the effect of American ingenuity on the game’s equipment and how the sport was televised. These lesser-known, behind-the-scenes true stories will entertain and inform the most serious golf enthusiasts as well as those just getting into the sport’s colorful history.

The Father of American Golf

In the fall of 1887, Robert Lockhart, a Scottish transplant who resided in New York City and who was in the fine linen trade, made a trip to his hometown of Dunfermline, Scotland, to purchase linen goods. During his trip Mr. Lockhart took a break from his business responsibilities and made the forty-mile train trip to St. Andrews, which was then, as it is today, the undisputed world capital of golf. His destination was Old Tom Morris’s Golf Shop at the St. Andrews Links.  

No one has ever left a greater imprint on golf than Old Tom Morris. He was Jack Nicklaus, the legendary club maker Karsten Solheim, a magnificent golf course designer à la Donald Ross, and a superb golf instructor like Butch Harmon all wrapped up in one. His crowning achievement as an instructor was his son Young Tom Morris. Young Tom was beating his father on the course by the age of thirteen and had matched his father’s total of four British Open titles by the time he was twenty-two. Sadly, Young Tom passed away at the age of twenty-four from a pulmonary hemorrhage.  

Old Tom’s shop was just a few paces off the eighteenth green at the St. Andrews Links. He had opened it in 1866, and by this time he employed eight craftsmen, who were turning out clubs and balls bearing his name. The shop was filling orders from around the globe, but none were from the United States. But that would soon be changing, thanks to Robert Lockhart. 

It is not known what time of day Lockhart entered the shop. If it was after Old Tom’s daily morning round, Lockhart may have encountered the shop’s famous proprietor. Old Tom loved to talk golf with the shop’s customers. With the smell of gutta boiling on the stove for that day’s ball production permeating the establishment, he would stand among the shavings that covered the floor, explaining to a would-be buyer the qualities of the various components that were used in club making—dogwood, persimmon, apple, hickory, and ash.  

Often Old Tom would take a customer to a special place in the shop. The special place was Young Tom’s locker filled with his clubs and club-making tools. As the customer would gaze at the locker’s contents, Old Tom would say, “Undisturbed since he last touched it.”  

When Lockhart departed the shop that day and made his way back to the train station with his purchase of six golf clubs and two dozen balls neatly packed in a box, the residents of St. Andrews who saw him would have surmised there was nothing special about it. However, this was indeed a very special purchase, as it would trigger a golf explosion in the United States.  

Along with another fellow Scotsman, John Reid, and several others, the group broke in the clubs and balls in a cow pasture in Yonkers, New York. More clubs and balls were ordered. The group soon moved to a thirty-acre field just down the road and laid out a six-hole course.  

In November 1888 the group formally formed a golf club. They chose to name the club after the world capital of golf, St Andrews. And they vowed to hold themselves to the same high standards that were observed there. To distinguish the club from its namesake back in Scotland, an apostrophe was added; their club’s name would be St. Andrew’s Golf Club. Some years later the New York Times would acclaim Robert Lockhart as the “Father of American Golf.” 

The Most Flamboyant Player On Tour Outdoes Himself

Doug Sanders was a rags-to-riches story. He grew up dirt-poor in rural Georgia and was a self-taught golfer. He won the Canadian Open as an amateur in 1955, and he won his first event as a professional two years later, the prestigious Western Open.  

Sanders was famous for his attention-grabbing, flamboyant attire, earning him the nickname “Peacock of the Fairways.” But Sanders’s clothes never grabbed as much attention as his arrival by ambulance did for his second-round tee time at the Pensacola Open in early March 1962.  

Sanders, who had won five times on tour in 1961, had departed the course the day before in a tie for third place, after firing a five-under-par 67. In his motel room that evening, he stepped on a piece of glass from a broken ashtray and cut a small gash in his foot. He didn’t think it was serious and dressed the wound himself.  

The next day when he arrived at the Pensacola Country Club to warm up, he began to have intense pain from the wound, and he was hurriedly taken to the emergency room of a nearby hospital. There a physician examined his wound and found it contained a shard of glass. 

The doctor removed the glass, redressed the wound, gave him medication for the pain, and released him. Since there were only a few minutes left before Doug’s scheduled tee time, he was rushed back to the course by way of an ambulance, with its siren screaming.  

The ambulance delivered Doug to within just a few yards of the first tee with just mere moments to spare. Grimacing in pain, Sanders limped onto the tee. Amazingly, he birdied the first hole, thanks to an approach shot that left him two feet from the pin. He hung on for pars on the next two holes, and then the pain medicine kicked in. With much of the pain subsiding, he played the next fifteen holes at four under for his second straight 67, giving him the lead by three strokes.  

Much improved, Doug shot another 67 on day 3 to keep his three-stroke lead. He slipped slightly in round 4, falling into a tie at the sixteenth hole, but a birdie at seventeen won him the tournament by a stroke.