Golf and Municipalities in Great Britain, 1890–1914

Abstract Municipal golf courses emerged in Britain as a byproduct of the late nineteenth-century golf boom. The burgeoning impact of golf meant that the twenty or so courses skirting the Scottish coastline in and around 1850 had suddenly become a phenomenon about to burst forth on a much larger scale. It was a radical change that transformed golf from being played at a handful of courses to being a mainstream sport enjoyed throughout the wider world. To provide golf as a municipal service was now the challenge faced by several municipalities up and down the country and with that went the need to learn how to build, maintain, and manage a golf course. On this new horizon, Edinburgh was to be a pioneer. If this gray city had until the end of the nineteenth century taken a backseat in the Scottish golfing panorama, it took center stage in 1889 by way of a municipal course at Braid Hills, which was an immediate and unprecedented success among players of a wide range of social classes.