By Peter F. Stevens

On February 23, 1926, a United Press article acclaimed "an old Boston ballplayer" [baseball] as the "Real Father of American Golf." Seventy-nine-year-old George Wright, silver-haired, once a sure-fisted shortstop for the old Boston Red Stockings, contended that he had played the first "real game of golf in America" and that he had done so in October 1890 at Franklin Park.

Asserting his claim of being "the man responsible for the general introduction of the Scotch [sic.] game [golf] into this country," Wright stated that he had sold a few clubs and balls at his Boston sporting goods store in 1869 &emdash; 19 years before transplanted Scotsman John Reid, along with several friends, strolled into a Yonkers, New York, cow pasture crudely fashioned into a three-hole tract, and earned status as American golf's trailblazer. George Wright evidently refused to accept Reid's foray into the pasture as a genuine round of golf. Having sprayed "gutta percha" balls across Franklin Park on a fall afternoon in 1890, Wright considered his trial run with a set of clubs as a landmark moment in the game's annals. Few traditional golf historians would concur.

The questions of "firsts" and "Father of American Golf" aside, Wright was not wrong in his contention that Franklin Park held &emdash; and holds &emdash; a unique niche in the history of the game.

For starters, Franklin Park was the second public course in the United States, Van Cortlandt, in the Bronx, the only one older. Wright and other locals were routinely hooking, slicing, and topping balls all over Franklin Park by 1890. Imposing some semblance of order upon errant shots that likely scared birds from local trees and lawns, Willie Campbell, one of the great players in the fledgling days of American golf, laid out Franklin Park's first bonafide 9-hole golf course. The first golf professional at The Country Club and the winner of America's first professional match, at the Newport Country Club in 1893, Campbell was a colorful character for whom a layout such as the Dorchester acreage seemed more fitting in many ways than the Brookline enclave of Brahmin movers and shakers and their families. Professional golfers of the era were viewed as working class, men who shared far more in common &emdash; except for their skill with club and ball &emdash; with the people who showed up to learn the game on America's first public courses.

In the 1890s, Campbell was "imported" from Scotland to serve as The Country Club's head professional and course "keeper," and, as with the other Scottish golfers who took similar posts at early American clubs, he was regarded by bluebloods as "the help," a prized employee, but the help nonetheless.

Campbell's links skills were such that in May 1895, when Scottish golf legend Willie Park, Jr., a two-time British Open champion, arrived at America's grandiloquently named St.Andrew's, in Yonkers, Campbell was the man "brought down" to the New York course for the head-to-head match that would highlight an "astonishing" and eventually lucrative fact. As golf historian Al Barkow notes, in the match between the Boston-based professional and the renowned Willie Park, Jr., "a precedent was set early on in American golf. Lesser golfers would pay to see the game puzzled out by the best players."

The New York Times would hype the match between the British Open giant and the gifted player who tested the turf at Franklin Park as "the most important in many respects that has ever been played on this side of the water." Other East Coast newspapers had touted the caliber of Park and Campbell for weeks, lauding Park's overall game and Campbell's consistency.

In late May 1895, several hundred spectators and a contingent of reporters clotted St. Andrew's to see if Park and Campbell could strike a golf ball as "far and sure" as the motto emblazoned on Park's jacket proclaimed. Both "the pride of Franklin Park" and Willie Park, Jr.,stepped up for their first drives bedeviled by physical problems. A giant boil had risen the previous night on Park's neck, and as he took a few practice swipes, pain rippled through him. Only by cocking his head at an odd angle could he get anything near full extension on his swing, the adjustment doing little to ease his distress. Still, with his reputation and a winner-take-all purse of $100 up for grabs, Park never considered anything except playing the match.

Park's opponent, the man who had routinely lifted shots "pure and true" at the greens of Dorchester and Brookline and whose game revolved around his subtle refinements of grip and touch, was suffering from an infection on his right hand, which had swollen to twice its normal size. Campbell could barely close his fingers around a club, but, like Park, never considered bowing out. Campbell had his own reputation to safeguard, and he lived the unwritten credo of 1890s golf professionals, "working stiffs," as a notable golf historian would call them: "You played if you could stand."

Campbell and Park did not disappoint, dazzling the crowd with crafty iron play and well-read putts. The players' drives, however, really caught the crowd's attention in a 19th-century portent of 20th-century Americans' obsession with distance &emdash; whether that of a tee shot, a home run, a long bomb on the gridiron, and even any 3-pointer launched on courts from the old ABA to the modern-day NBA. Park won the match, 6 and 5, but onlookers realized that the gritty Campbell would likely have fared better if not for many essentially one-handed swings.

While Willie Campbell and George Wright have their places in Franklin Park lore, another turn-of-the-century golf pioneer would leave his literal landscaping fingerprints on the Dorchester course. Recently, it has been unearthed that in 1922, Donald Ross &emdash; one of the greatest golf course architects of them all, as well as a fine player &emdash; redesigned Franklin Park's 18 holes.

Ross emigrated to the U.S. from Scotland at the turn of the century, taking a post as the pro and greenskeeper at Oakley Country Club, in Watertown. Before long, he redesigned the once-undistinctive course into a true test for players, and his design reputation burgeoned. He went on to design or revamp more than 400 courses, which included such gems as Pinehurst, Oakland Hills, and Inverness. In crafting courses, Ross pored over topographic maps, drew meticulous blueprints, and issued concise and exact orders to construction crews. He had summer offices in North Amherst, Massachusetts, and Little Compton, Rhode Island.

At Franklin Park, vestiges of his course wizadry and his respect for the natural surroundings of the area remain. Small bunkers, trees, and even boulders challenge modern players throughout the course. Challenging uphill lies and greens well-protected by bunkers test club selection and mettle. On the 5th hole, there's a blind tee shot, with the fairway flanked by two hills and with bunkers and a sloped green combining to make for a tricky par-4.

The 12th is a par-3 steeped in local lore as the "Bobby Jones Hole," where the man often deemed the greatest player of them all &emdash; before Tiger, anyways &emdash; reportedly practiced as a student at Harvard before dominating the golf world of the Roaring Twenties.

Today, many of the men, women, and children who tee it up at William Devine Golf course at Franklin Park may not realize that there's history in virtually every lie, good or bad, along the 18 holes. Franklin Park, from its very start over a century ago, was and remains a spot where golf is for everyone.

(Journalist Peter F. Stevens is the author of Notorious and Notable New Englanders, Down East Books, and Links Lore &emdash; Dramatic Moments and Neglected Milestones from Golf's History, Brassey's.)