A Look at History
Wawashkamo Roughs Fathered by Historic Course in Scotland
BY FRANK STRAUS

In this summer of 2007, the British Open was played at Carnoustie Golf Links, a historic golf course near Dundee on the east coast of Scotland. The Carnoustie links are important in the history of Mackinac Island, because Alex Smith, designer of Mackinac Island's Wawashkamo, grew up in Carnoustie and learned how to play golf there in the 1880s. When Mr. Smith and his brothers brought their golfing skills to the United States in the early 1900s, they were skills that had been learned in Carnoustie.

Golf is traditionally a democratic game in Scotland, played by persons of all social levels. An act of the Scottish Parliament dated 1457 calls for "golf to be utterly cried down and not [played]." The law was not enforced; the first golf records from Carnoustie date from 1527, just after Columbus's voyages to the New World and before the birth of Shakespeare. Advances in sailboat rigging were making it possible for broad-beamed merchant ships to carry goods back and forth throughout the seas of northern Europe. Seashore towns like Carnoustie were becoming wealthier, and young men had more time to enjoy themselves. The Renaissance had begun.

A postcard view of the Battlefield of 1814, now the Wawashkamo Golf Club grounds. (Postcard courtesy of Tom Pfeiffelmann)

The primary barrier to the spread of golf into a world game lay in technology. The golf ball used at Carnoustie from the 1500s through the 1800s was a small sphere of leather, expertly stuffed with bird feather down. The light, expensive "featherie" balls flew through the air, but it was no fun losing one. The resilient, waterproof sap of a tropical shrub, gutta-percha, was pressed into service in the mid- 1800s to form the "guttie" ball, which was a bit cheaper and heavier. During the gutta-percha era, golfers learned that a dimpled ball would fly farther than a smooth-surfaced one.

This gutta-percha ball game was the golf young Alex learned to play in the late 1800s in Carnoustie. The turfed seashore of Carnoustie formed a topography locally called "the links." Grass grew tall on the sandy dunes and gravelly hill of the foreshore, except in places where the Earl of Dalhousie's sheep ate the grass.

As a young man, golfer Alex emigrated from Carnoustie to the United States in the 1890s, finding a job as club pro at a now-vanished course in Chicago. There he met the Mackinac cottagers who hired him, in 1898, to lay out a nine-hole links golf course on Peter Early's Island farm. These 1898 links, with a few changes, became today's Wawashkamo Golf Course.

Nine-hole courses were the standard length of the 1890s. The first U.S. Open, played at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island in 1895, was played on a nine-hole course. The golfers retraced their steps four times, and the total length of the championship was 36 holes.

In laying out Wawashkamo, Mr. Smith took advantage of the natural features left behind by glaciers and high lake levels on the plateau of Mackinac Island. Long-dry beaches, 50 to 100 feet above today's lake level, became key features of the links. A large wet spot, filled with tall wetland grass, became a hazard. Other grassy areas were allowed to grow into Wawashkamo's famous roughs.

Wawashkamo was born in a year when golf was about to become a world game. The replacement of the gutta-percha golf ball with a new ball made of shock-resistant rubber increased the length of a standard stroke and further lowered the cost of the game to amateur players. The rubber ball was invented in Cleveland in the same year Wawashkamo was laid out, 1898. Medium-quality golfers could swing much harder at a ball, knowing that if it flew into the surrounding woods, their game would suffer, but their pocketbook would not.

Alex Smith's Wawashkamo layout changed and became more challenging in response to the new popularity of the game. The farm stile that bordered Peter Early's fields along British Landing Road disappeared and was replaced by the tall, balldevouring hedge that grows along the first fairway today. The locations of some of the greens changed slightly, too. As Mr. Early's house disappeared from its foundations close to what is now the 11th tee, the first hole was lengthened. As golfers may have noticed, the first green is newer and larger than the others. Older greens, such as the fifth green perched on a gravel hillside, are the tiny greens of the 1898 game. They require a cool, steady Scottish eye to hit from the fairway.

Ahead of Alex Smith lay glory as one of the leading players of early 20th-century golf. Mr. Smith won the U.S. Open at Onwentsia in 1906, becoming the first man to card a win with a score below 300, and repeated his victory in 1910. He used his status to move from the Chicago area to a high-status club on Long Island, New York. As far as is known, Mr. Smith never returned to Mackinac Island.

During the 1910s and 1920s, in response to technological changes and the growing popularity of golf, many American nine-hole courses expanded to 18 holes. For example, Newport, site of the inaugural 1895 U.S. Open, was sharply expanded and completely rebuilt; the current course dates back to 1924, and few traces remain of the earlier course. By contrast, Wawashkamo, laid out as a nine-hole course in 1898, would remain that length. It would be little changed after the construction of the current bunkers in 1912. Although unusually challenging for a course of this length, the nine-hole links course would not host a major tournament. Instead, it would serve as Mackinac Island's community golf course and would provide an unusual golfing experience to enthusiasts from all over the world.

Wawashkamo was elevated to the rank of a Historic American Landmark of Golf by Golf Digest magazine in 1996. As one of Michigan's oldest links courses largely played on its original fairways and greens, Wawashkamo offers today's players an unusual opportunity to rediscover their ties to the earliest days of American golf.