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In 1898, a group of Galveston businessmen chartered Texas's first official country club and brought in a Scottish pro with genuine golf royalty bloodlines to lay out nine holes on the beach — protected from wandering cattle by brand-new barbed wire. Two years later, the deadliest natural disaster in American history wiped the course out along with much of the island. What followed is one of the great survival stories in Texas golf: a club that rebuilt, moved inland, burned down, moved back, hired Donald Ross to design a course between the Gulf and a bayou, burned down again, and relocated a third time — all while hosting Bobby Jones, Byron Nelson, Walter Hagen, and Babe Zaharias along the way.

In Episode 2 of Wise About Golf, host Ken Wise traces golf's wild journey from Scotland to Texas—where a preacher and a Saint Bernard helped spark a sport that defined Lone Star golf.

For over a decade, Ken Wise has told the stories that built Texas on Wise About Texas — nearly two million downloads in 178 countries and a top 1% ranking worldwide. Now he’s turning that same back-porch storytelling toward a game he’s loved his whole life. In this introductory episode of Wise About Golf, Ken explains why he’s spending his next chapter on golf history: a 500-year-old game that scholars have largely left alone, a sport whose equipment and courses have changed constantly while its rules on honor and self-policing haven’t, and a country in the middle of a genuine golf boom that makes this the right moment to look back. Texas is the launching point — but if a story’s good enough, the runway goes worldwide.

In this episode
Topics in the order they appear. No timestamps included — add them from your final audio file.
• Why a Scotsman who barely set foot in Texas counts as Texas golf history, and a recap of Episodes 1 through 3
• Musselburgh: golf documented to 1672, certified as the oldest course in the world, and the charge that Mary, Queen of Scots played there days after her husband was found murdered
• Leith, 1744: the Gentlemen Golfers of Edinburgh, what links land actually was, and surgeon John Rattray named Captain of the Golf
• The first written rules of golf, lost until 1937 and found in the back of a club minute book — including teeing within a club length, “stones, bones or any break club,” and the invention of the free drop
• 1836: the club moves to Musselburgh and lays its holes inside a horse racing track, the same year Texas wins independence
• The Park family: Willie Park Sr. wins the first Open in 1860; his brother Mungo wins in 1874
• How a blacksmith’s hole cutter set the golf hole at four and a quarter inches
• British clubs sharing public links versus American country clubs that buy their own land
• The Park–Morris feud with St Andrews: newspaper challenges for £100 a side, a crowd so unruly the referee stopped play, and the tragedy at North Berwick in 1875
• The name Mungo: a sixth-century saint and a West African explorer
• Mungo Park Jr., born 1877, sent to run the family’s New York office in 1897, laying out courses across New York and Vermont
• Galveston, the Queen City of the South, brings him down to build its course on the beach near 53rd Street — how they found him is still an open question
• Argentina: the first Argentine Open in 1905, plus 1907 and 1912; his wife Grace becomes the first Ladies champion; he dies in Scotland in 1960
Also mentioned
Old Tom and Young Tom Morris · Allan Robertson · Willie Dunn · the featherie and gutta percha balls · Royal Musselburgh, the Royal Burgess Golfing Society, and Bruntsfield Links · Muirfield · Prestwick · the Dutchess Golf Club, Mount Anthony, St. Johnsbury Country Club, and Mohonk Mountain House · St. Andrew’s Golf Club, New York
Connect with the show
Leave a five-star review to help other golfers find the podcast. Instagram and Facebook: Wise About Golf. X/Twitter: @WiseAboutGolfTX. Send Texas golf history ideas to golf@wiseabouttexas.com. Also from Ken Wise: the Wise About Texas podcast.
Related episodes
Episode 1 — Introduction to Wise About Golf · Episode 2 — The earliest golf in Texas · Episode 3 — Galveston Country Club