How old is musselburgh golf course

Please read our Privacy Policy for more details. Musselburgh Links is one of the original 'Open Championship' venues, hosting this competion on six occasions between and There is also documentary evidence which provides that golf was played on Musselburgh Links as early as 2 March , thanks to the Account Book of Sir John Foulis of Ravelston, which is one of the earliest documented records of golf being played in Scotland!

Today, Musselburgh Links is preserved to an exceptional standard, and continues to offer a stunning 34 par 9 hole links golf course, located in the heart of Musselburgh, surrounded by Musselburgh Racecourse. For a unique golfing experience, you can even hire hickory golf clubs and play the game as it was in The Old Golf Course's heyday.

Mail looked similar to putting or 'target' golf and it is possible that the witnesses did not know which game was being played. Thus we cannot be sure what game Mary played or where. There is definite evidence that Sir John Foulis of Ravelston, a prominent Edinburgh lawyer, who kept copious records of his golf on Leith Links, played golf at Musselburgh in He lost in a match with his friends Gosford and Lyon and others as his notebook records:.

It used to be listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest golf course. It is unlikely the course has moved since their inception or they would have noted it in the records. Consquently we can be sure the existing golfing ground dates back to this time. Musselburgh is an important site in women's golf as the likely place where the fish wives played golf on the links.

On holidays they frequently play at golf; and on Shrove Tuesday there is a standing match at football between the married and unmarried women at which the former are always the victors.

He recorded the event with the regret that he wished his son were as good at anything else as he was at golf. The old links at Musselburgh was originally seven holes, with an eighth added in and final ninth in , called the Sea Hole and now played as the fifth. In those days the course started at the old grandstand, and the first hole is what is now the second. One pound exactly. This size was adopted as the standard size for a golf hole in , though by that time Robert Gay's cutter had been replaced.

For forty years in the 19th century, four of the most important clubs in the world were playing at Musselburgh and all built clubhouses there. They formed a greens committee, paying according to the number of their members. This is based on notes from the Rev Moodie's predecessor, the Rev Alexander Carlyle, who was Minister at Inveresk from until his death in He was also the first to document women playing golf at Musselburgh.

The Reverend 'Jupiter' Carlyle was moderator of the Church of Scotland in and a notable figure in Scottish history. He was a controversial character invoking censure for his behaviour on occasions. He was also a renown golfer and second winner of the Old Club Cup in In , he performed the world's first recorded golf trick shot in London with a club now possibly in the possession the Royal Blackheath Golf Club.

Carlyle resigned from the Musselburgh club in For their first years, the Royal Musselburgh club played over the Old Course at Musselburgh and saw it grow to nine holes by There are no minutes for Royal Musselburgh before , as noted by Robert Clark in , when he published extracts from them in his book 'Golf A Royal and Ancient Game'.

From these, Musselburgh Golf Club appears to have been a relaxed and modern club who did not take themselves too seriously. They met in various hostelries round Musselburgh and elsewhere. In , they accepted the resignation of a member who had subsequently committed suicide, noting that they would not 'try their hands for his resurrection'.

In the same year the club was apparently reformed with much the same members and much the same rules for no discernible reason.