Who among us does not know about Old Tom Morris and his impressive life in golf? As a competitive player and four-time “champion golfer of the year.” And as a course architect and club and ball maker.
But until I read a recent column by my colleague Lewine Mair, I had no idea that the man also was an avid curler who not only won the St. Andrews curling championship in 1891 but also served as president of the town’s curling club for a time.
That got me wondering about the overall connection between golf and curling. And what I found after conducting a bit of research was that the sports have some very close links.
... curling, like golf, has Scottish origins, and ones that go back centuries.
For starters, curling, like golf, has Scottish origins, and ones that go back centuries. In fact, the first written mention of the game was in 1541, with a notary named John McQuhin recording a challenge between two men throwing stones across the ice of a pond that year. One of those individuals was said to have been a monk at Paisley Abbey, and the other either a relative or representative of the abbot.
In time, curling became quite popular in the Lowlands. It even caught the attention of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns, who lived and worked in the late 1700s and once wrote: “When Winter muffles up his cloak, and binds the mire like a rock; When to the loughs the curlers flock.”
The first governing body for the sport was established in Edinburgh in 1838. Called the Grand Caledonian Curling Club, its mission was to regulate “the ancient Scottish game of Curling by general laws.”
Essentially, that made it that sport’s version of the R&A.
And as was the case with many golf clubs in the British Isles, the Grand Caledonian sought and ultimately procured royal patronage, in its case from Queen Victoria, who conferred that designation after watching a demonstration of the game on a slick ballroom floor of Scone Palace near the Scottish city of Perth.
Curling kept growing, and by the end of the 19th century, every county in Scotland boasted at least one club associated with what had come to be called the Royal Caledonian Curling Club. And almost every parish in the nation operated a custom-made curling pond. Eventually, indoor rinks became the preferred venue, with the first one of those being constructed in Glasgow in 1907.
And speaking of that city in the west of Scotland, the granite long used for curling stones is mined from the Ailsa Craig, a tiny island that looms just off the coast of the Turnberry resort.
And to bring the golf and curling connection full circle, it is worth noting that one of today’s most celebrated course architects, Beau Welling, happens to be a fanatical curler as well as president of the association that now oversees the sport, World Curling.
When asked why he was drawn to the game, Welling cites the similarities of the strategies involved in curling and golf as well as the science of the angles and trajectories and the frictions.
They are both very collegial sports and foster a lot of camaraderie, he added.
I may have to give it a try.
John Steinbreder
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TOP PHOTO: LINTAO ZHANG, GETTY IMAGES