Word: golfe
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Walker Cup, and American golf in general, can trace its roots back to an incident that took place at the French Riviera resort of Biarritz in the winter of 1890-91. William K. Vanderbilt, the son of "Commodore" Vanderbilt who had founded the family fortune, was journeying through the south of France on his Grand Tour when he stumbled upon a Scottish professional named Willie Dunn giving a golfing exhibition. Dunn had every right to be proud of his own blood lines, as his father, "Old Willie" Dunn, had finished second in the very first British Open...
Soon after that landmark encounter, Duncan Cryder, who had been a member of Vanderbilt's party, sounded out another Southampton resident named Samuel Parrish, who was then vacationing in Italy, about the possibility of introducing golf in Southampton. Parrish hurriedly arranged for Willie Dunn to get a passage on a steamship so he could come to Southampton and begin building a golf course at once...
Parrish accompanied Dunn in surveying the land for the most suitable stretch on which to play golf. Parrish later recorded his adventures with Dunn, writing, "Dunn teed up a ball and handed me a driver. By some fortunate dispensation of Providence, I happened to make a drive--all too frequently failing since of repetition in my 32 years of golf--and the ball went sailing over the embankment of the railroad track...this then having been the first ball ever struck on the Shinnecock Hills. It is needless to recall here the experience of thousands, and perhaps hundreds of thousands...
...sugar magnate Theodore Havemeyer, declared that Shippen was just as eligible to play as anyone else. Havemeyer's decisions helped set the precedent that the U.S. Open is genuinely "open" to any qualifier and enabled John Shippen to become the first player of black ancestry to compete in a golf championship...
...became characteristic of prominent clubs. It was the first course to boast a clubhouse, which ever since have become accepted as de rigeur. Moreover, the clubhouse was designed by Stanford White, the legendary architect of the period. By the turn of the century, Shinnecock had become the first American golf club to be incorporated and have a waiting list...