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Golf Club Maker
Thomas Carruthers (1840-1924)
Tom Carruthers
ISBN 0 9544416 4 8 pbk £15.99 £7.00
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Thomas Carruthers was a household name in the 1860s, widely known in the world of sport as Scotland’s Champion professional sprinter. Remarkably, he went on to become equally well known as a golf club maker. He lived beside Bruntsfield’s famous links in Edinburgh for 60 years and his life as a golf club maker, which began in the 1880s, is set in an age of unprecedented experimentation and inventiveness.
His invention of the through-bore short socket for metal golf clubs, patented in 1890, was to catapult him into the ranks of the best makers alongside such names as Forrester, Park and Simpson. It is regarded on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most important golf patents of the nineteenth century. His clubs regularly appear in the catalogues of the major auction houses.
Every one of the early United States manufacturers sold Carruthers’ designed iron clubs and club manufacturers used his design long after the patent had expired – indeed, it is used by Callaway today. All the big London sports shops sold his clubs.
Golf Club Maker is a fascinating record of one of the leading golf club makers of the era and the development of his club making and business activities is given through the medium of his trade advertisements over a period of seventeen years when all the best players were using his newly designed clubs. This includes an early Carruthers’ 1892 price list detailing an amazing range of twenty-eight wooden and iron clubs made and finished in his workshops.
About the author: Tom Carruthers, born and brought up in Edinburgh, the fourth generation to be involved in golf, has worked in finance for a number of industrial companies. He is currently working on his second book about professional running and its gambling culture.
Extract from a review by John Moreton, golf historian, in through the green, the magazine of the British Golf Collectors Society, December 2004
Golf Club Maker: Thomas Carruthers 1840-1924 by Tom Carruthers (great-grandson)
In a beautifully produced paperback from Cualann Press he [the author] describes early golf on Bruntsfield Links, the home course of many Edinburgh clubs until congestion forced them, one by one, to seek new pastures. Carruthers moved into a tenement at Wrights Houses as a dairyman, when injury terminated his career as a champion athlete. Wrights Houses overlooked the sixth hole of the seven-hole course. Near neighbours were golf club makers, including the McEwans, and Carruthers, an astute businessman, saw an opportunity to open a new enterprise manufacturing clubs for the multitude of golfers on the links. Using Anderson of Anstruther to forge his designs he eventually patented a cleek with the hose (as it was then described) bored all the way through. This enabled him to reduce the length of the hose and redistribute the weight into the head of the club.
Although this met with general approval, there were critics of the new club, just as modern ‘innovations’ are decried for taking something out of the game. ‘There is nothing new in golf’ may have become something of a cliché, but it is in fact the truth. Callaway thought they had invented something new in 1984 with their short straight hosel, until David Neech pointed out to them that Carruthers had patented the idea nearly 100 years previously and was able to show them an example to their massive surprise.
When Bruntsfield Links was no longer available as a golf course Edinburgh’s golfers moved to the newly-opened Braid Hills municipal course and Carruthers acquired the Golfers Tryst, renting out rooms as clubrooms for the different clubs. He also moved his workshops there. Subsequently his son took over the business and also became the greenkeeper at Braid Hills. Thomas Carruthers had also become a competent golfer and regularly participated, with some success, in the Braid Hills tournaments.
The book describes the various clubs designed by Carruthers, reproduces his patent and relates how he expanded his business at home and in America. Advertising material, articles from Golfing and other sources are included in a fascinating story, which will appeal to readers interested in the social history of the game as well as those seeking to know more about the development of the golf club.
John Moreton
Review by Pete Georgiady published in the U.S. Golf Collectors Society’s Bulletin, December 2004. Reproduced with kind permission from Pete Georgiady.
The volume’s simple title, "Golf Club Maker, Thomas Carruthers 1840-1924," belies the complexity of this very interesting repository of information. Written by the subject’s grandson, Tom Carruthers, it could well have turned out to be a typical family history, dwelling on the family tree with too much attention given to the anecdotal and not enough to the true historical relevance.
Instead, what Mr. Carruthers has done is to not only record the obligatory biography of his antecedent, but also to totally surround it with an examination of the golf club making industry in the 1890s and his grandfather’s role in it. It is the sort of history we are not accustomed to seeing, i.e. not just the facts but the environment, the cause and effect, and the historical perspective as well.
Before his entry into the world of golf, club maker Thomas Carruthers was an Olympic class sprinter—much before the modern Olympics were conceived. His name will ring a bell with most club collectors as the inventor of the bore-through hosel, an idea copied as often a century ago just as it continues to be by Callaway and other modern manufacturers today. But the short socket bore-through was not the only club he made. His work with wooden clubs, gun metal and ordinary irons gave him a depth unfamiliar to most collectors.
The author explores the very famous Carruthers patent and the effect it had on golf club design. He cites dozens of sources along the way and brings a level of detail that will most assuredly impress ardent researchers and historians. That, in itself, is worth the price of the book alone.
Even more entertaining is the information included on Carruthers’ involvement at the old Bruntsfield Links and the newer Edinburgh Braid Hills golf course. It places the golf club maker into the center of the 1890s golf and displays the important part golf played in Scotland’s capitol city. Twenty-five pages are devoted to the course at Bruntsfield and the adjacent buildings, like Wright’s Houses, which were an integral part of Edinburgh golf in the formative years.
The book incorporates dozens of photographs, advertisements, maps and other illustrations, many of which would be difficult to find elsewhere. The section on Carruthers-made clubs shows more variety than most of us has seen in years of collecting. Even the small touches, like the appendix list of 20 addresses important in the Carruthers family history, show the completeness of this historical tour.
There is not nearly enough scholarly research done into the lives and activities of old golf and golfers. Further, there is a dearth of research and publication on the activities of old club makers. It is comforting then to see that Mr. Carruthers has done a remarkable job of recording his grandfather’s history and legacy as well as painting a magnificent image of golf in Edinburgh at the end of the 19th century. Hopefully, this book will serve as inspiration for others to follow suit, but it is a masterpiece on its own.