Allan Robertson

Allan Robertson was a golfer, born on September 11, 1815 at St Andrews in Scotland, and is held to have been one of the very first professionals of the game. A professional of that day made his living from money matches, from caddying, from making balls and clubs and from teaching. The Robertsons had made feather-stuffed golf balls, the featheries, since his grandfather’s time, and Allan carried on the family trade as a craftsman. In 1843 he won a challenge match against Willie Dunn Sr., the noted Musselburgh player, over twenty rounds played in ten days. He is also said to have been the first man to break 80 on the Old Course at St Andrews.

From 1839 the eighteen-year-old Old Tom Morris worked in Robertson’s shop as his apprentice, and the two went out as a pair in a great many matches. They later fell out over the new gutta-percha ball, the guttie, and Morris left for Prestwick in 1851. As the cheap guttie took hold the trade in featheries fell away, and Robertson too turned to making gutties.

In course-making, he built the first ten holes at Carnoustie in 1842, with Morris to help him. Carnoustie Golf Links says on its official site that the course of that time was the ten holes laid out by Allan Robertson. Morris extended it to eighteen holes in 1867, and James Braid remodelled it substantially in 1926. Robertson is also said to have widened the greens on the Old Course as the number of golfers grew.

He died at St Andrews on September 1, 1859, having suffered from jaundice. His grave is in the burial ground of St Andrews Cathedral. The following year, 1860, Prestwick Golf Club held a competition to settle who should succeed him as Champion Golfer, and that was the beginning of today’s Open Championship. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2001. GoGolf does not at present list any course designed by Allan Robertson.

See the other golf course architects here.