How Times Have Changed Files: When Americans Were Despised For Eschewing Tobacco And Getting To Bed By 10

In preparing for the Walker Cup where I'll be reporting from Southampton for coverage at GeoffShackelford.com, Twitter and in Golf World, I went back through old Golf Illustrated and American Golfer magazines to read up on coverage of the 1922 match at The National Golf Links of America (an 8-4 win by the USA).

I got a kick out of this from James Coxmenelton's "Current Comment" column in a September, 1922 Golf Illustrated.

Following the Walker Cup matches and the National Amateur Championship, a writer in the London Daily Telegraph says as follows: "Personally I see nothing wrong with British golf. The plain truth is we don't make a business of it, and I sincerely hope we never shall. If we are to be beaten by a nation that a couple of decades ago did not possess a single first class player we shall take out licking like men. If the Americans in their pursuit of glory care to live on milk and fish, to eschew tobacco and go to bed at 10 o'clock, let them. I would rather see Tolley, Ray and Vardon blowing clouds of tobacco smoke around the links than with their mouths full of chewing gum."

Fortunately for the rest of us, who have high admiration for British golfers and golf writers, this criticism is so narrow as to be ludicrous and cannot be taken seriously in any way. If by any chance, and I do not think that practices he mentions are as prevalent as he is inclined to believe, our boys do not smoke and drink, stay up after ten o'clock and chew gum rather than tobacco we should probably feel proud of the fact. Incidentally, neither Sweetser nor Evans, this year's finalists, smokes; but, for the most part, I would say our golfers smoke just as heavily as Britishers, the only difference being that the Britishers fancy pipes and Americans cigarettes.