7th March 1744 saw The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers hold their first meeting on Leith Links.
The Gentlemen Golfers of Leith Links asked Edinburgh town council for a prize for an annual golf competition. The golfers had been jealous of the local archers, who received a silver arrow from the town .council for a competition.
The Edinburgh town council presented the golfers with a silver golf club, to be played for, over Leith Links. This was on the understanding that The Gentlemen Golfers of Leith Links set down rules that would govern the game of golf.
A committee of the Gentlemen Golfers of Edinburgh drafted the first 13 rules of golf to compete for a silver golf club, presented by the City of Edinburgh, over Leith Links. John Rattray, a physician and champion archer, was the first winner and was declared 'Captain of the Golf' on 2nd April 1744. The men were;
John Rattray (the winner) Hew Dalrymple, Robert Biggar, James Gordon, James Carmichael, Hon James Leslie, Richard Cockburn, George Suttie, William Crosse, James Veith, and David Dalrymple
The event is commemorated in a plaque on the cairn on Leith Links. This was the first known organised golfing competition of any golf club in the world.
It was on the 7 March 1744 that The Gentlemen Golfers of Leith Links changed their name to the ‘Company of Edinburgh Golfers’. This group of golfers created the first 13 rules of golf.
John Rattray, who won the first annual competition, signed off these rules, as captain. The ‘Company of Edinburgh Golfers’ later became the ‘Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers’ and now reside at Muirfield in East Lothian, Scotland.
The fact that rules were drawn up was very important for the development of the game. It ensured regulation and set the benchmark for the sport moving forward.
These rules formed the basis of the modern game and led to Scotland being viewed as the ancestral Home of Golf.
The original cairn which commemorates Leith Links as the Home of Golf, still lies in The Links close to where a recent statue of Rattray now stands. Three stoma plinths were also added near there with a lot of the history on plaques.
The Gentlemen Golfers built a clubhouse at Leith in 1768. Until then, they usually met in a tavern called Luckie Clephan's, on Kirkgate, now demolished, near the foot of Leith Walk, the clubhouse is long gone, the Leith Academy Secondary School building now stands there. Overcrowding at the Links forced a move out of Edinburgh.
Known by various names, the Gentlemen Golfers became 'The Honourable, the Edinburgh Company of Golfers' in 1800. Subsequently, this was streamlined to the present 'Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers'.
In 1865 they built a new clubhouse in Links Place at Musselburgh, now a children's nursery at 6 Balcarres Road.
Soon overcrowding at Musselburgh, as at Leith, forced Honourable Company to move again, settling on another racecourse, further down the coast, the site of the East Lothian horse races on the Hundred Acres Park owned by the Rt Hon Nisbet Hamilton. This was the Muirfield course, designed by Old Tom Morris. The first 16 holes, built by 'hand and horse', were opened on 3rd May 1891, with the final two holes added in December of the same year. The Open championship moved with them and is still held there from time to time, although, since 1919 the Hon Company have no longer been involved in its management.
The geographical term, The Home of Golf, will always be associated with Scotland, in the eyes of the golfing world. However, in Scotland, at its golfing core, Leith Links is the place where the term finds its origin, in the modern-day game.
