"The Golfer's Creed" Is Relevant Today
Contemplating the words David R. Forgan wrote in 1899
At 13 or 14 years old, a teenager getting bitten hard by the golf bug, I was in a discount shop buying a dozen balls when the person checking me out placed a parting gift in the bag. Printed on faux parchment with a green hue, the document was the size of a sheet of looseleaf paper. When I got home and looked it over, I discovered the store’s giveaway was “The Golfer’s Creed” by David R. Forgan. After reading it, I used a thumbtack to place it on a wall in my bedroom, where it remained for a long time, a reminder of what golf meant in my formative years.
Over time, as my attention shifted from trying to play the game well to reporting on those who can, I would come to understand that Forgan’s definition of golf—originally delivered in a speech at Chicago Golf Club in 1899—was familiar to many golfers who appreciated how the native Scot eloquently summed up the game’s fabric, challenges and benefits.
The Golfer’s Creed
Golf is a science, a study of a lifetime in which you may exhaust yourself, but never your subject.
It is a contest, duel, or a melee, which calls for courage, skill, strategy and self-control.
It is a test of temper, a trial of honor, and a revealer of character.
If affords the chance to play the man and act the gentleman.
It means going into God’s out of doors, getting close to nature, fresh air, exercise.
A sweeping away of mental cobwebs and a genuine reaction of the tired tissues.
It is a cure for care, an antidote for worry.
It includes companionship with friends, social intercourse, opportunities for courtesy and kindness and generosity to an opponent.
It promotes not only physical strength but moral force.
A cynic certainly could say that Forgan swung a bit too hard on this ode to his favorite pastime, but he hit a lot of fairways and greens in those 127 words. They were written before Kitty Hawk or the Model A, and they mostly hold up now, when real life looks more and more like science fiction and golf can seem light years away from the game Forgan knew when he was winning the inaugural Western Amateur in 1899.
David R. Forgan was a Chicago banker and avid golfer who won the first Western Amateur.
He was born in 1862 in St. Andrews, a son of the noted clubmaker Robert Forgan, whose family business by the 1890s was the biggest in golf. David, more interested in banking than fashioning cleeks, left his native Scotland as a young man after working as a teenage messenger for the Clydesdale Bank in his hometown. He moved to Canada and, five years later, to the United States. Forgan eventually established himself as a mover and shaker in Chicago banking and key figure in golf circles.
A Chicago Tribune profile of David Forgan observed that he “is modest and unassuming in manner, almost to diffidence. He is a chum to his children and his whole bearing is of one whose innate good nature is never under curb.”
Creating “The Golfer’s Creed” came easily to Forgan, as the author described to a fellow Scot immigrant Robert Pryde. “I played golf one afternoon, then went home,” Forgan told him. “After dinner I sat in the library and the thought came to me, and I immediately wrote out the words just as they are today.”
Forgan’s creed has seemed particularly relevant lately.
During the Covid-19 Pandemic, golfers old and new to the sport certainly appreciated how “It means going into God’s out of doors, getting close to nature, fresh air, exercise.”
With so much technology being utilized in the teaching and analysis of golf in the 21st century, Forgan’s opening phrase “Golf is a science” is more literally true than he could have ever imagined. The rest of his opening statement—“a study of a lifetime in which you may exhaust yourself, but never your subject”—has been true from hickory shafts to carbon-fiber driver faces.
Another of Forgan’s lines speaks to what he seemed to feel was the heart of the matter, the essence of golf: “It is a test of temper, a trial of honor, and a revealer of character.”
That sentiment—the last two-thirds of it, in particular—has come to mind a few times during 2023.
Think about Patrick Reed’s situation in the third round of the Hero Dubai Desert Classic in January. With an official on the scene concurring, Reed, using binoculars, positively identified his ball high in a palm tree—a different tree than the palm where video of his errant tee shot subsequently seemed to show its resting place.
“Some people love controversy,” Reed later tweeted. “But what happened on the 17th hole at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic was a non-issue. As the DP World Tour confirmed, I was not asked to identify the tree my ball struck (that was done by the ShotLink volunteers and several marshals). I was asked to describe the distinctive markings on the ball I was playing …”
During the Masters, Brooks Koepka, Gary Woodland and their caddies were scrutinized for what happened on the 15th hole of the first round. Video made a case that Ricky Elliott, Koepka’s caddie, and Koepka himself, had possibly violated Rule 10-2a about offering advice to a fellow competitor after he used a 5-iron for his second shot. (Elliott appeared to be mouthing “five” at Woodland caddie Brendan Little; Koepka stretched his hands as if signaling “five” as he removed his glove.) The players and caddies denied breaching a rule, and Masters officials, after questioning them, didn’t issue a penalty.
If those two incidents might have given David R. Forgan indigestion, then what happened last week would have made him delighted about what was revealed about the character of University of Illinois golfer Tommy Kuhl at a U.S. Open local qualifier in Springfield, Ill.
Kuhl had toured Illini Country Club in a course-record 62 strokes, easily advancing to final qualifying. But as Ryan French of MondayQ.com first reported, Kuhl realized after his hot round that he had repaired multiple aeration marks on the greens—a violation given that a local rule permitted such repairs was not in effect. Kuhl told an official what he had done and was disqualified, his U.S. Open hopes dashed but his conscience in good shape.
“I should know better. It comes down to me,” Kuhl told French. “I should know the rule.”
Nearly 125 years since Forgan sat down in his library with pen and paper, the game he loved still can reveal plenty about a person.