The Ambassador: Alexander Findlay and Pioneer Golf in America
$50.00
BOOK DESCRIPTION
The Ambassador is the first book-length study of Alexander Findlay’s life and his contributions to the game of golf. Findlay was the best golfer in New England, one of the best in the U.S, the most prolific and important golf course designer on the east coast in the early years of American golf, and the most well-regarded representative of the game in America. He played exhibition matches and tournaments in front of hundreds of thousands, helped establish over 100 separate golf clubs, was the first man who hit a golf ball on film, met with the Pope about establishing a golf course in the Vatican, and built golf holes in the shadows of the pyramids in Egypt. Even today, tens of thousands of Americans play golf on courses that were designed by Findlay. For the American golfer, he was a teacher and a mentor during the fragile, early years of the game in the country.
Despite his early fame and his enduring significance, there is no existing biography of Alex Findlay. His story has never been fully told. As a result, he is a footnote in the histories of American golf that are regularly published. The Ambassador is an attempt to fix that mistake. For the dozens of active golf clubs that claim an Alexander Findlay heritage, it is an attempt to tell part of their story while endeavoring to tell part of the pre-USGA
history of golf in America. It is the story of a man who lived an extraordinary life—the humble salesman who, in his time, came to meet and know Queen Victoria, Chief Sitting Bull, Buffalo Bill Cody, Harry Vardon and every other great golfer of the age, six U.S. presidents, and all the Gilded Age titans of industry. He lived a life worth living.
ADVANCED PRAISE FOR The Ambassador: Alexander Findlay and Pioneer Golf in America
“Casto dives deeply into all of this and more in this exhaustively researched and lucidly written biography—a long overdue book that rightfully places Findlay on a pedestal as the true father of American golf. He dives particularly deeply into Findlay’s work in golf course architecture, his studies of classic courses abroad, and the contributions he made to what is now known as the Golden Age of Golf Course Design. Anyone who reads this book will come away, as Casto clearly did from his research, with a burning question: When it came time to tell the story of golf, how could it be that Findlay was overlooked? —STEPHEN PROCTOR, from his Foreword
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WILLIAM J. CASTO lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with his wife, Danielle and daughter Penelope. He earned a PhD in English from the State University of New York at Albany. He currently works in IT and studies golf history in his spare time. He plays the game and serves as the club historian at the Alexander Findlay-designed Coatesville Country Club.
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