The 10th Man
I started collecting in my early 20s. A colleague of mine at the magazine, Ross Goodner, sold me Horace Hutchinson's volume Golf from the Badminton Library collection; a brass door-stopper in the shape of a caddie attending a flagstick (missing); and the one I fell in love with: a chromolithograph "cartoon" of the golfer Samuel Mure Fergusson, which originally appeared in a 1903 edition of British Vanity Fair. I paid $100 for the lot, and thus began a 30-year search to complete my collection of Vanity Fair golfers.
For the longest time, I thought there were eight: famous golfers of the British Isles one and all, and part of a series of more than 2,000 drawings of leading figures of the day that appeared in the weekly magazine from 1869 to 1914. All but one of the golfers were elegantly drawn by Sir Leslie Ward, who signed his art simply "Spy."
I started picking them off in back alleys of London, where they hung in antique print shops. A James Braid here, a John Ball there. Then Mr. eBay entered the picture, and collecting became easier but less fun. No longer did you have to dig up your own treasures. The Internet brought them right to your desktop. Still, I enjoyed the auctions and the sheer pleasure of getting a good price.
The eight Vanity Fair characters all carried golf clubs. Along the way I realized there were two more "hidden" golfers drawn by Spy -- known players but dressed in non-golf attire and without clubs. George Duncan Rowe, I snatched for a pittance, but Marshall Roberts, known as Easton Hall, I had not found in almost three decades.
I put the word out to print dealers around the world. Only one had ever seen Marshall Roberts, but he would keep me in mind. An e-mail came in one night. A seller in the north of England had one. Expensive at $770, but it was the last in my collection. What the heck.
The sale was consummated by Treo while I was at the PGA Merchandise Show in January, and I walked with a smile back to my hotel. Standing in front was my friend Alastair Johnston, who had been featured in the Spring 2007 GD Index as holder of the world's largest private golf-book collection. "Alastair, I've now got all 10 of the Vanity Fairs. Just picked up Marshall Roberts," I said, adding for emphasis, "I've never even seen a collection of all 10."
"Oh, I've got all 10. Had 'em for years," said Alastair, bursting my bubble just as surely as if he'd covered my birdie with an eagle.
I sulked for weeks, even after Mr. Roberts joined the other nine hanging on my office wall. But now I have news for Alastair: My dealer in England has found an 11th golfer, heretofore unrecorded. His name is Oscar Asche, an Australian amateur better known as a stage actor, but a golfer nonetheless. And he's on the way.
There's a wonderful story on collecting golf art by Michael Callahan. All golfers are collectors of golf stuff, I know, especially the readers of GD Index. Maybe the best thing to collect is golf courses. How many of America's 50 Best Modern Golf Clubs (Fall 2007 GD Index) have you played? Warren Stephens' Alotian Club, profiled by David Owen on page 98, is at the top of my list to knock off this year. How many of the World's 50 Best Golf Hotels have you visited? How many of the best whiskeys have you tasted?
If you're not collecting something in golf, now's the time to start. And if you ever complete your collection, start another.
