New Britain herald., 1923-12-28
ST.ANDREWS, SCOT.,
 CAPITAL OF GOLF
GeOsraphers Find No Other
 Reason for Its Existence

Washington. Dee. 2S,-WiU St An drews, bleak old Scotch sea town, hrst in learning and golf, also talk" first place in the hearts of lovers Of English literature and inc staunch Anglo Saxon code?
 This speculation arises from the new custom Of St. Andrews, oldest college in Scotland. O. electing an honorary rector for q year says a bulletin from the Washington hcai- quarters Of the National Geographic society.
 Last year. in his rcctorial capacity. Barrie made his now-famous address On Coura ge: this year Rudyard Kip ling talked 10 the students on In dependence.' The custom is much as if Abraham Lincoln had been elected to an honorary professorship at liar ward and on that occasion gave the Gettysburg address and had been succeeded the following year by Ralph Waldo Emerson speaking on Compensation
 i Much-Copied City.
 AM unconsciously, every fair sized city In the United States has copied a part of St. Andrews on American soil--the golf links, All the jibes and all the praise Of golf must at ast tall on the heads of this villages early residents, because St, Andrews is the capital of golf. And since these St. Andrews golfers happened 10 play over bunny pasture, bumpy pastures have been built for golf en- thusiasts in the arid wastes Of Mon tana, amid cocoanut groves Of the south seas, on Floridas keys and the Himalaya mountains. Because a creek of the Eden happened 10 flow across this Scotch grazing ground no golf course Is complete without water hazard.
 The town Of St Andrews is pc euliar. II is one of the few cities in the world lacking a geographical req son for existence, It has no impor- tsnt railroad junction, no coal field. TO river. Situated on the bleak hesdland between the Firth Of Forth where Edinburgh looks down and the firth which shelters Dundee, St. An drews possesses a poor harbor noted d history Of 'Gofftoon', as the town is called by golfers, goes back so far it is lost in antiquity.
 Legend has it that Regulus. an Irish monk. brought the bones Of St. Andrew to this missionary outpost some time between 500 and 700. The saints bones must have rested un- easily because St Andrews has been the religious whirlpool Of Scotland ever since. Its bishops hanged and were hanged. John Knox used the city as base of operations for the feformists. Patrick Hamilton, a mar trr, was burned before the cathedral While Mary Queen of Scots sought refuge there, enemies planned her assa ssination. In the Cromwell rev. nlntion another bitter storm centered on the town and even today it has not entirely recovered.
 Game and University Boon.
 "l}nt throughout the story or strife runs the thread Of golf Golf and the university appear in the same century. the fifteenth. Wars may rage and men kill each other for the glory Of God but the links on the shore Of the German ocean were held sacred to the game. Three months before the Pilgrim fathers left Delfthsaven James VI approved the contract for the first municipal golf links at St. Andrews. Later these links were acquired by the An- oient and Royal Golf club of st Andrews which. to this day. acts as the Justinian Of golf law for the world.
 Golf may have started in Holland where a game called 'kolf' appar- entity cross between golf. hockey and bowling, was played but is now extinct. It was played on the fee. within covered courts and even in churchyards. Even if the Scotch did import the sport they changed it greatly. The location and peculiarity of terrain at St Andrews is found in golf treminology just as the topog- raphy is produced on every conti- nent. Links for example. is the Scotch term referring 10 rolling close cropped shore fields which have be- come the model for all golf courses. 'Bunkers are really cut banks such as are found along a graded country road. Such banks with sand pits are natural tc this shore. st. Andrews ecu banks are now artifcially ere sted on golf links wherever golf is"