Michigan PGA Celebrates 100 Years
The first 25 years, 1922-46
By Greg Johnson
The first golf professionals in the United States in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s were in most cases immigrants from Scotland and England who brought with them their trained abilities to make the clubs needed for play, teach others proper swings, and design the hundreds of golf courses constructed though the first three decades of the game in this country.
A small group of golf professionals – including Alexander “Alec” Ross of Scotland, the younger brother of famous course designer Donald Ross – met 100 years ago in 1922 at Detroit Golf Club to form the Michigan Section of the PGA of America.
Section records from the early years were either not chronicled or simply not saved, but in addition to Ross, participants in that first meeting may have included W.H. Lewis, the golf professional at the then Detroit Masonic Country Club in Mt. Clemens; Jack Elphick, golf professional at Grosse Ile Golf & Country Club; Al Watrous, one of Michigan’s winningest players ever who was then at Redford Country Club and later served Oakland Hills Country Club for 37 years; and Wilfrid Reid, who had just arrived in Michigan and was soon to design Indianwood Golf & Country Club’s Old Course.
Ross, Lewis, Elphick, Watrous and Reid were clearly active in the Michigan PGA as each served terms as section president during the first 25 years. Alec Ross was famous in golf at that point as a world-class player with multiple significant wins including a record six North and South Open wins and the 1907 U.S. Open Championship. He was hired in 1918 at Detroit Golf Club to serve as its first full-time professional, where he worked for more than 30 years.
In 1922 The American Annual Golf Guide was published in New York by editor John G. Anderson who had surveyed golf courses across the country. The results for that year in Michigan lists 68 courses with just less than half of them listing golf professionals.
This is the first of a four-part series produced in celebration of the centennial year of the Michigan Section PGA. Much more content can be read here.
