Pranks a lot

Golf and April Fools’ Day
have a long history

Little does the world know just how important April Fools’ Day is in the history of the royal & ancient game.

April 1 was a big day in the Scotland of ancient times. Playing tricks on others on the first of April was an ancient Scottish custom, but early golfers took the practice to new levels.

The first day of April turned normally genteel men into rampant practical jokers.

Perhaps it was the giddiness of what many saw as the first day of spring that addled the minds of sane men. Maybe it was just the relief of the prospect of good weather after months of rain and wind.

Whatever the reason, few practical jokers could match the pranks of early Scottish golfers.

One now-defunct club, Royal Argyle Golf Club, held an important initiation ceremony for new members every April 1. Prospective members had to take the “gorse run” in order to join the club.

They stripped naked, lined up and had to race through dense gorse to prove their worth to the club.

Historians chronicle ripped flesh and blood dripping off gorse branches as prospective members braved everything to enter one of Scotland’s most elite clubs. Only the first 10 through the gorse were admitted to the club, ample reward for risking danger to private parts in a plant akin to steel wool. The remainder had to go home and nurse multiple scratches until the next year.

The practice ended in 1899 when the Scottish Parliament outlawed the ritual.

Another club, Tay Thistle, landed itself in the courts when it sent out a hoax letter on April 1, 1885, calling for any woman interested in joining the club to apply for membership. A public prosecutor was sent from Glasgow to investigate, much to the embarrassment of Tay Thistle members. The Scottish courts forbade the club from selling alcohol for a month as punishment “for encouraging an artificial spirit in the fairer sex.”

It is partly from April Fools’ Day in late 19th-century Scotland that the term “bogey” derives. The Dunvegan Golf Club of St. Andrews held a competition every April 1 to identify the worst golfer in the club. The poor player who came in last was dubbed “The Bogey Man,” in reference to a popular British Isles song of the time: “Hush, hush, hush, here comes the bogey man . . . he’ll catch you if he can.”

Worse still: The guy in last place was dressed in a long white robe with the words “Bogey Man” painted in black on the front and back and made to parade through the streets of St. Andrews while members walked behind and taunted him.

Perhaps the worst April Fools’ joke ever played was by the Lomond Thistles in 1895. Every year, the captain would try to outdo the previous year’s captain in deviousness.

Captain Horace H. Chambers decided that year it would be fun to pick on one of the local caddies. Chambers held an evening to determine the caddie with the best-lined liver. Thirty men started out in a shot-by-shot tournament. Only this was shots of whiskey.

The evening began with the 30 lined up, all standing on one leg. Participants had to drink the shot and remain standing on the one leg. Additional shots were given to the men until, literally, contestants started to fall out of the race.

The evening ended when a caddie by the name of P.T. Otherone was the last man standing. P.T. had managed to down 30 shots and remain on one wobbly leg.

Unfortunately, P.T.’s prize was a bottle of the club’s vintage malt whiskey, and P.T. wandered off into the night with it. He was found the next morning standing on one leg in the greenside bunker of the 18th hole.

By that time, rigor mortis had set in, however. Seems the lining in P.T.’s stomach wasn’t as strong as the captain had hoped. He had died of alcohol poisoning in the middle of the night. The bottle of whiskey was half empty, but, like the true champion he had been, P.T. hadn’t spilled a drop.

The club named the final hole “P.T.’s Last Shot” in his honor.

Pranks in modern Scottish clubs aren’t quite as daring, but the practice continues. So if your golfing buddy happens to play a prank on you today, just be thankful that you weren’t around in Scotland in the 19th century. Those old boys took April Fools’ Day pretty seriously.