A Swing Through Time

A Swing Through Time Golf in Scotland 1457-1743

by Olive M Geddes

(HMSO 1992 Revised edition 2007)

(58 pages A4)

  1. Golf: An Unprofitable Sport 1457-91
  2. The Royal Game 1502-1682
  3. James Melville: St Andrews Student 1574
  4. A Schoolboy's Grammar: Aberdeen 1636
  5. 'Poor Master Gall': Perth 1638
  6. An Edinburgh Sportsman: Sir John Foulis of Ravelston 1686
  7. Thomas Kinaid: Diary of an Edinburgh Medical Student 1687-8
  8. St Andrews: 'The Metropolis of Golfing' 1691-1716
  9. 'Glotta': An Eye Witness Account, Glasgow 1721
  10. 'The Goffe': Edinburgh, 1743

SetonArmorial1591RAOlive Geddes is a curator of the National Library of Scotland and she has collected and reviewed many of the key documents on golf history in Scotland 1457 to 1743. The book begins with the first mention in Acts of Parliament, which banned it, and finishes at the beginning of the era when the first golf clubs were founded. Careful attention to detail and over fifty colour illustrations.