I am not a golfer, but I enjoy viewing the vast, well-maintained green and tree-lined courses that provide a comforting ease to urban eyes. As a boy, I often walked several Indianapolis links (yes, one used to walk the fairways) as my father’s “caddie” while he and his buddies enjoyed playing in the 70s (degrees that is). I washed those dimpled orbs for the foursome, and, more often than not, I joined them searching the rough for drives that had sliced to the right or left. But how Hoosiers came to love this Scottish sport, along with Scotch, but not haggis, therein lies a tale.
In 1895 the Indianapolis News observed, “A number of people think it is about time that Indianapolis had golf links and a golf club.” Within two years the sport of golf arrived in the city when some Butler College students and alumni “outlined on the banks of Pleasant Run” a course of 900 yards. Earlier, Alvin S. Lockard, a member of the Indianapolis Country Club, had laid out a two-hole course, and in the fall of 1897 members of the club organized a Golf Links Club and asked Chicagoan Lawrence Porteous Tweedie, an Englishman who was the younger brother of golf course architect Herbert James Tweedie, to lay out a nine-hole course and become the club’s golf instructor. After the country club moved from its location between White River and Northwestern Ave. and south of Maple Rd. (38th St.) in 1914 to a site south of Crawfordsville Rd near Clermont, Tom Bendelow, “the Johnny Appleseed of American golf,” laid out an 18-hole course.
Charles E. Coffin, civic leader and member of the park board, is regarded as the father of municipal golf in Indianapolis. Soon after he was named to the board, the city’s first public golf course debuted in the summer of 1900 when Prof. James Conacher, a native of St. Andrew’s, Scotland, laid out a 2,145-yard, nine-hole course at Riverside Park. Conacher also was available to “assist all those who are anxious to try the sport.” Nineteen-year old woman’s champion golfer Miss “Johnnie” Carpenter, of Chicago’s Westward Ho Golf Club and the Butler College Golf Club, had the honor of naming the holes — No. 1, Bear Pit; No. 2, Two Trees; No. 3, Railroad; No. 4, Turn; No. 5, Bridge; No. 6, Baby; No. 7 Windmills; No. 8, Due West; and No. 9, Away Home. Initially there were no greens fees, but with the completion of a full eighteen-hole course in 1902 a golfer could play a round for 25ȼ (2017: $7).
In 1909 the city had Indianapolis golf pro Harry L. Schopp lay out South Grove links, an 18-hole golf course, in the portion of Riverside Park north of W. 18th St. and along the east bank of White River. Two years later, Ellenberger Woods was acquired as a city park, and soon after a nine-hole golf course was laid out in the large meadow “devoted to athletic sports” in the eastern portion of the park abutting N. Ritter Ave. With these additional fairways, The American Golfer declared in 1920 that Indianapolis had more golf links per thousand of population than any other American city.
While the city was creating public links, the Highland Golf Club was organized in November 1903 and leased unused land in Riverside Park south of W. 30th St. for a private 6,000-yard, 18-hole course. In 1919 the Highland Golf & Country Club was organized and then relocated in 1921 to an area on the west bank of White River north of 52nd St., where Scottish architect Willie Parks, Jr. laid out an 18-hole course. The old links became Coffin Golf Course and was redesigned by J. Clyde Power. Later, Will Diddel laid out a new 6,789-yard links of 18-holes. The Butler Golf Club relocated its course to the Butler College Irvington campus and laid out nine-holes around the perimeter of the grounds but soon abandoned that short course in favor of playing at the municipal links. An item in an Indianapolis News column devoted to golf, estimated in January 1915 that there were 1,100 regular players (men and women) and another 700 occasional players in the city. Later that summer with the organization of the Woodstock Club on the site of the former Indianapolis Country Club, more golfers would take to the links.
New additions were added to the Indianapolis municipal golf courses in the 1920s with the 18-hole, 5,910-yard Pleasant Run links being laid out in Irvington by Harry Schopp in 1922. He also designed Sarah Shank Golf Course, named in honor of the late wife of Mayor Lew Shank, which opened six years later at Troy and South Keystone avenues. Also during this decade, Broadmoor Country Club, west of Michigan Rd. and south of 56th St., opened in 1924 with a 6,670 yard, 18-hole golf course laid out by Scottish born golf course designer Donald Ross, and northeast of the city off Fall Creek Rd near Ft. Benjamin Harrison Avalon Country Club opened in 1925 with an 18-hole course designed by William H. Diddel. A decade later this club became Hillcrest Country Club. Also, the mid mark of the ‘20s found an 18-hole golf course, designed by Will Diddel, opening on 150 acres of Meridian Hills Country Club along Spring Mill Rd. south of 71st St. A five-hole course for children was also featured.
Indianapolis city planner Lawrence V. Sheridan laid out the nine-hole Brendonwood Golf Course in 1923. These private links were for the use of the residents of this northeast subdivision. Further to the east in Lawrence Township, golfers could play on the Indian Lake Country Club links, located near Oaklandon, for 50ȼ (2017: $7) after it opened in 1928, and adjacent to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway the Speedway Golf Course opened in 1929. To accommodate the city’s de facto segregation policies, the Indianapolis parks department acquired Douglass Park in 1921 for the “exclusive use” of African Americans. Five years later, after repeated requests to the parks board by the city’s black citizens, a six-hole golf course was laid out. The following year additional land was acquired, and a nine-hole course was completed in 1928.
The Great Depression years did not curtail golf course development in Indianapolis. Willow Brook Golf Club, a proprietary concern, opened an 18-hole course to the public in the summer of 1931 at 46th St. and Keystone Ave. Five years later southeast of the city along Carson Ave. and south of Hanna Ave., Lake Shore Country Club opened with a nine-hole golf course.
Today in Marion County there are eleven 18-hole and four 9-hole municipal golf courses providing over 81,000 yards of golfing pleasure. In addition, private country clubs and proprietary clubs offer thirteen 18-hole and ten 9-hole golf courses totaling over 114,000 yards. On these links the words of Charles Coffin continue to thrive, “The municipal value of golf…is the health and happiness it gives its participants. Golf is a game of the masses, for the old and the young, for men and women. The golfer is an athlete so long as he keeps in his heart the love of play.”
