There is evidence that he played for the club in 1745, and it is
believed that this must have been his last round, for the rising of the
clans just at that time compelled him to set out for the north, where
he exerted the utmost of his influence to prevent them from joining the
cause of the Young Pretender. There will be a picture of Francis, fifth
Earl of Wemyss, ancestor of great players, himself playing the game at
Gosford, and there will surely be recovered for that Temple the canvas
that we know, showing one of the most famous and the most worthy of the
fathers of golf, and another captain of the Company, William St. Clair
of Roslin, of whom it was said that his skill at golf and archery were
such that the common people thought that he must be in league with
Satan. “A man considerably above six feet, with dark-grey locks, a form
upright, but gracefully so, thin-flanked and broad-shouldered, built it
would seem for the business of war or the chase, a noble eye, of
chastened pride and undoubted authority, and features handsome and
striking in their general effect. As schoolboys we crowded to see him
perform feats of strength and skill in the old Scottish games of golf
and archery.” That is what was written of William St. Clair of Roslin by
Sir Walter Scott, and Sir George Chalmers painted the picture of him
addressing a golf ball, the picture that they must have in the Temple.
And there will be many others, all telling of the excellence and the
dignity and even the skill of those great golfers of the first age of
the game.
Then there will be a Hall of Science, and there will be a fresco on the
wall showing the great Professor Tait with compasses and instruments
calculating strange curves, many golf balls strewn about the ground.
And there will be one main Gallery of Masters, and there will be
perpetuated the names and forms and feats of the men who went farthest
in their skill at the noble game. There will be Allan Robertson and old
Tom Morris in a great foursome, and there will be a young man with a
wild look of fear on his face, stepping into a boat at North Berwick to
be sailed across the water to St. Andrews, where a loved one lay dying.
There will be Jamie Anderson and Bob Ferguson, triple Champions, and
there will be John Ball, Open and Amateur Champion at once and six times
Amateur Champion. He will be painted mounted on a charger going to the
war. There will be many masters besides.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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