No one knows that exact time or even day or month that the first golf ball felt the smack of hard wood sending it into Sarasota’s sky. For the local pioneers, golf was not on anyone’s radar, and if was witnessed at all, the event would have seemed rather odd. What the heck was golf anyway?
But we do know that the golfer was John Hamilton Gillespie, and the “course” was a two-hole practice area near his home, close to today’s post office building on Ringling Blvd.
To the manor born, the tall young Scottish gentleman swatting the orb back and forth, arrived in Sarasota in 1886 with golf sticks among his luggage. He was described by one of the locals as a large man, standing 6 feet tall, weighing approximately 250 pounds with a 48-inch chest.
According to Alex Browning, one of the colonists: “The natives and early settlers came to look upon him as a great big boy who could take a joke and was ready to do a good turn for his neighbors.”
Gillespie had been sent by his father, the President of the Florida Mortgage and Investment Company, on a mission to rejuvenate their failed effort to colonize what was being billed as “a little Scotland” on the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, the 50,000 plus acres they were trying to sell to start a new homeland was mostly a wilderness with no infrastructure.
For Gillespie the task of transforming a rugged, backwater fishing and agriculture village into a true town was daunting. But even though he had no development/building experience he was up to the overwhelming responsibility and made Sarasota’s success his life’s work.
Perhaps whacking the ball here and there relieved some of the stress. A reminder of his more civilized life when golf was his passion.
Witnesses to his daily battle with the little ball could be forgiven if they thought he was affected.
He liked to tell the story of being mistaken for a suspicious character when he was in another Florida town, designing a golf course. He was reported as a miscreant to law enforcement. In another community he was nearly shot by “an excited and inebriated cowboy, who spied me as I passed the saloon in my red [golfing] coat.”
His love for the sport began when his grandfather gifted him a set of McEvan and Philip golf clubs. He was eight years old, and in short order golf became his passion. As he matured, he became a fine player, noted throughout Florida for his skill and knowledge of the game.
The Sarasota Times called him “perhaps the most ardent of golfers” who “spends many hours every day in the winter season practicing difficult hazards and making famous shots.”
The paper reported “his judgement is the criterion to which all disputes are taken for settlement.”
In those long-ago years the clubs were made of hickory shafts wrapped with sheep skin. Each had a name: niblick, lofter, mashie, mashie niblick, midiron cique.
Oh, add one other. As the Church of Scotland frowned on Sunday golf, the industrious Scots developed what was called a Sunday or sabbath stick. Disguised as a cane, the club head was a perfect fit into the palm, and faster than you could say it’s a sin to golf of Sunday, it could be reversed for a few practice swings with no one the wiser.
Wooden tees came later. The ball was usually set atop sand. The British ball was smaller than its American counterpart.
As a reward for his hard work and industriousness, when the town of Sarasota was incorporated in 1902, Gillespie was elected the first mayor and became known throughout the state as the “golfing mayor.”
As his manservant and friend, Leonard Reid, who arrived in Sarasota in 1900 as a lanky 19-year-old, recalled for an article in the Sarasota Herald, Nov. 12, 1952, he and Gillespie laid out the city’s first links.
The duo walked for miles through palmettos and brush as Gillespie sketched what would become a nine-hole golf course. Later 50 men grubbed the palmettos and set up the fairways.
Reid indicated the fairways were 30 to 40 feet wide and stated, “That’s why the Colonel was so good. He’d always win his match because he could shoot straight. Colonel Gillespie only took a half a swing, and the other men always could out-hit him. But they would end up in the woods while Colonel got in the hole.”
The first hole went east from Links Ave. toward today’s County Administration Building, the second further east, the third doglegged a bit; the fourth and fifth was the turn for home and the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth all headed west ending conveniently in front of Gillespie’s house.
Reid recalled that the seventh hole (where today’s Kane Building is) had a swamp water hazard; Gillespie referred to it as his “sporty” hole.
He shared his expertise by writing a golf column for the New York Golf and The Golfers Magazine. In recalling the earlier days, he remembered that women were not welcomed on the links.
He wrote in 1887, “As for (the golfer’s wife), she must amuse herself as best she can; she cannot even accompany him in his game as a spectator, the presence of ladies being by no means regarded with favor and the links is not the place for women; they talk incessantly, they never stand still, and if they do the wind won’t allow their dresses to stand still.”
In 1905 Gillespie built a clubhouse to go with his nine-hole course, and it became the site of many social events. Women were encouraged to take up the sport, chitter-chatter notwithstanding.
As the sport grew in popularity, he became known throughout the state as the Father of Golf in Florida. He had established courses in Bellaire, Winter Park, Kissimmee, Jacksonville, Tampa and Cuba.
One bright January afternoon in 1923, The Sarasota Times correspondent Harry C. Green sat with Gillespie on his porch near the ninth hole to discuss what for Gillespie had become a way of life, espousing the benefits of the great game.
The article came with the fanciful and fictitious headline: FOUNDED TOWN TO GET HIMSELF A GOLF GAME IS STORY OF COL. GILLESPIE.
As the reporter listened, the elderly golfing legend and town builder espoused what could be religious tenants. Young Green asked him about what the game could do for the man morally. Gillespie, a founder of the Church of the Redeemer and a Lay Reader, replied, “For one, golf teaches self-control, one of the greatest lessons that a man can learn. He must train his hands and eyes to coordinate. He must cultivate patience.”
He believed firmly that the sport taught honesty. As he put it, “Cheating at golf is like cheating at solitaire.” This was a gentleman’s pastime. “A man must play golf like a gentleman whether he is a gentleman or not.”
He shared that golf was self-reflective. “A man comes to know his own weakness and to work long and patiently to overcome it.”
On Sept. 7, 1923, Gillespie left his home at Golf Hall to give instructions to his workers and collapsed on the links. The Father of Sarasota died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
He was eulogized by The Sarasota Times: “The Colonel was a great man. His passing leaves us lonely, mournful, filled with grief. Yet his noble soul will live on forever … his memory is imperishable.”
The paper ended: “Goodbye ‘Jim,’ ye were a bonnie laddie and your heart was young.”
Jeff LaHurd was raised in Sarasota and is an award-winning author/historian.