The bizarre history of early Olympic golf, 1900-1904 – GolfDigest.com
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Do you know the name Margaret Abbott? Do you know she’s the first woman to win an individual gold medal in the Olympics, and the first-ever woman to a gold medal in golf? It happened in 1900, in Paris, but if you didn’t know that bit of trivia, forgive yourself—Margaret Abbott didn’t know it either, right up until the day she died. As far as the Chicago-based socialite knew, she had simply won a nine-hole golf tournament while studying in Paris against a handful of other women, and then moved on with her life. It was only many years after her death, when a University of Florida researcher contacted her son, that anybody in the family knew what she had accomplished.
That’s just one of the strange stories from the very early days of Olympic golf, but it’s a great stand-in for all of them: Weird, interesting, and unpredictable. Pierre de Coubertin, the founder and godfather of the modern Olympics, had a hand in bringing golf to the second-ever Games in Paris in 1900, and one of the players there—a rich pharmaceutical executive from the midwest—then brought the sport to the second Olympics in 1904 in St. Louis. The problem both times is that a World’s Fair overshadowed the Olympics, and made it hard to decipher which events were part of which exhibition. Those Games in particular are often referred to as the "farcical Olympics," and a close look at any sport, including golf, reveals why.
MORE: This is the second time Olympic golf has been played in France. The first was extremely weird
Even so, those early tournaments are full of drama, culminating with George Lyon, a 46-year-old Canadian former cricket star who journeyed to St. Louis in 1904 in an attempt to make history against some of America’s best young players. His odyssey in the ’04 Games represented a perfect conclusion for Olympic golf, which would not reappear again until it came to Rio 112 years later. On this week’s Local Knowledge podcast, we dive deep into those early Olympic golf events, examine the personalities behind them, and dissect both the forces that brought golf to the Games, and the forces that sent it into the Olympic wilderness for over a century.
Listen below, or wherever you get your podcasts.
MORE: The bizarre history of golf at the Olympics
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